Kendric opened vest and shirt and after a moment of fumbling drew forth and slammed down on the table a money belt that bulged and struck like a leaden bar.

"Gold and U. S. bank notes," he announced.  "Keep your eye on me, Señor Don Ruiz Rios de Mexico, while I count 'em."

Unbuttoning the pocket flaps, he began pouring forth the treasure which he had brought back with him after two years in Old Mexico.  Boyish and gleeful, he enjoyed the expressions that came upon the faces about him as he counted aloud and Rios watched with narrow, suspicious eyes.  He sorted the gold, arranging in piles of twenties and tens, all American minted; he smoothed out the bank notes and stacked them.  And at the end, looking up smilingly, he announced:

"An even ten thousand dollars, señor."

"You damn fool!" cried out Twisty Barlow hysterically.  "Why, man, with that pile me an' you could sail back into San Diego like kings!  Now that dago will pick you clean an' you know it."

No one paid any attention to Barlow and he, after that one involuntary outburst, recognized himself for the fool and kept his mouth shut, though with difficulty.

Ruiz Rios's dark face was almost Oriental in its immobility.  He did not even look interested.  He merely considered after a dreamy, abstracted fashion.

Again a quick eager hand was laid on his arm, again his companion whispered in his ear.  Rios nodded curtly and turned to Ortega.

"Have you the money in the house?" he demanded.

"_Seguro_," said the gambling house owner.  "I expected Señor Kendric."

"You do me proud," laughed Jim.  "Let's see the color of it in American money."

With most men the winning or losing of ten thousand dollars, though they played heavily, was a matter of hours and might run on into days if luck varied tantalizingly.  All of the zest of those battling hours Jim Kendric meant to crowd into one moment.  There was much of love in the heart of Headlong Jim Kendric, but it was a love which had never poured itself through the common channels, never identified itself with those two passions which sway most men: he had never known love for a woman and in him there was no money-greed.  For him women did not come even upon the rim of his most distant horizon; as for money, when he had none of it he sallied forth joyously in its quest holding that 

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