He could see Andy sitting
at his post, clouded in a halo of tobacco smoke, a red-bearded,
shaggy-headed giant of a man whom the town affectionately called the
River Pirate. All his life Andy had spent in digging gold out of the
mountains or the river, and like grim death he had hung to the bars
above and below McCoffin's Bend. Keith smiled as he remembered old
Andy's passion for bacon. One could always find the perfume of bacon
about the Betty M., and when Duggan went to town, there were those who
swore they could smell it in his whiskers.
Keith left the river trail now for the old logging road. In spite of
his long fight to steel himself for what Conniston had called the
"psychological moment," he felt himself in the grip of an uncomfortable
mental excitement. At last he was face to face with the great gamble.
In a few hours he would play his one card. If he won, there was life
ahead of him again, if he lost--death. The old question which he had
struggled to down surged upon him. Was it worth the chance? Was it in
an hour of madness that he and Conniston had pledged themselves to this
amazing adventure? The forest was still with him. He could turn back.
The game had not yet gone so far that he could not withdraw his
hand--and for a space a powerful impulse moved him.
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