ok embracing them all but lingering
upon Jim Kendric, "I have a curiosity to know who of you in my house is
the most favored of the gods!"

"There's a goodly pile there, Senorita," said Barlow who could never
look upon gold without hungering. "You mean it all goes to the man who
wins? And you don't play?"

"All that," she answered him steadily, "goes to the man who wins. With
perhaps much more? Who knows?"

Bruce stepped eagerly to the table where already Barlow was before him
with a heap of the gold drawn up to his hand. Ruiz Rios took his place
indifferently, affecting a look of ennui. Kendric held back. Betty,
aloof from them all, looked about her as though to escape. But at each
door, as though forbidding exit, stood one of Zoraida's men.

"You yourself do not play?" Barlow asked of Zoraida.

"This time, my friend," she replied, "I am content to watch."

Content rather, thought Kendric, to amuse herself by stirring up more
bad blood among friends. For the look he saw on her face was one of
pure malicious mischief. It occurred to him that she had sorrowed not
at all over the taking off of Escobar at Rios's hand; he had the
suspicion that in her cleverness she discerned looming trouble as a
result of encouraging the infatuations of two men like Bruce and
Barlow, and that before she would let herself be destroyed by an
inevitable jealous rage she meant to set them at each other's throats.
Such an act he deemed entirely germane to Zoraida's dark methods.

"Senor Jim does not care to play?" she asked quietly.

Had not Betty chosen to look at him then Kendric's answer would have
been a blunt, "No." But Betty did look, and the glance was as eloquent
as a gush of stinging words. Without a clue to the girl's thoughts, he
merely set her down as the most illogical, impertinent and irritating
creature it had ever been his bad lot to encounter. For her eyes told
him that he was an animal of some sort of a crawling species which she
abhorred. This after he had put in long troubled hours seeking the way
to be of service to her!

"Bah," he said in his heart, staring coldly at her until she averted
her eyes, "they're all the same." And to Zoraida, "I'll play but I
play with my own money."

Zoraida only laughed. His open rudeness seemed unmarked.

"Barlow," said Kendric, "I want a word with you first."

Barlow did not turn or lift his eyes.

"Talk fast then," he retorted. "The game's waiting."

"In p