"The superstitious little heathen!" exclaimed Mrs. Lee. "If he should win, I may never lay eyes on him again. He's not the first good cook that I've lost in that way. I have found that, if one once gets the gambling fever, I may as well begin to look immediately for a new one."
"Chris says that he has seen men lose ten thousand dollars at a time," broke in Holland, his eyes big with interest. "Prospectors used to come in from the mines with their gold-dust and nuggets, and they'd spread down a blanket right on the street corner and play sometimes till they'd lose everything they had."
"It's the curse of the West," sighed Mrs. Lee. "I could tell some pitiful tales of the young men and boys I have known, who came out here for their health, got infatuated with the different games of chance, and lost everything. One man I knew was such a nervous wreck from the shock of finding himself a pauper as well as an invalid that he lost his mind and committed suicide. Another had to be taken care of in his last days and be buried by a charitable society, and another had to write to his sister that he was penniless. She sewed for a living, and she sewed then to support him, till she worked herself ill and died before he did. He spent his last days in the almshouse."
"We should have showed Jo Alaka's eyes, and told him the Indian legend," said Mr. Ellestad, pointing up to the stars. "Do you see those two bright ones just over Camelback Mountain? Look up in a straight line from the head, and you will see two stars unusually brilliant and twinkling. Those are the eyes of the god Alaka. He lost them in gambling. An old settler told me the story. He got it from an Indian, and, as I read something like it in a Chicago paper this winter, I think we may be justified in believing it. At least it is as plausible as the old myths the ancients told of the stars,--Cassiopeia's chair, for instance, and Leo's sickle."
"Tell it," begged Lloyd. "I'd rathah heah them than those blood and thundah Apache stories. I'll not be able to close my eyes to-night."
Every voice in the circle joined in the chorus of assents that went up, except Phil's, and no one noticed his silence but Lloyd.
It seemed to her that he had looked uncomfortable ever since Mrs. Lee had spoken so feelingly of the curse of the West; but she told herself that it must be just her imagination,--that it was the flickering shadows of the camp-fire that gave his face its peculiar expression. He moved back into the darkness against the rock, with his hat over his eyes, as Mr. Ellestad began the story: