# Peak and Prairie/The Boss of the Wheel

WHEN contrasted with the ordinary grog-shop and gambling den of Lame Gulch, the barroom of the Mountain Lion has an air of comfort and propriety which is almost a justification of its existence. If men must drink and gamble,—and no one acquainted with a mining-camp would think of doubting the necessity,—here, at least, is a place where they may do so with comparative decency and decorum. The Mountain Lion, which is in every respect a well-conducted hostelry, tolerates no disorderly persons, and it is therefore the chosen resort, not only of the better class of transient visitors, but of the resident aristocracy as well. In the spacious office are gathered together each evening, mining-engineer and real-estate broker, experts and prospectors from Denver, men from Springtown in search of business and diversion, to ​say nothing of visitors from the eastern and western seaboards; and hither, to the more secluded and less pretentious barroom, at least, come the better class of miners, those who have no special taste for bloodshed and other deviltry, and who occasionally go so far as to leave their firearms at home. Some slight prejudice, to be sure, was created among the independent Sons of Toil, when it was found that the Mountain Lion did not permit its waiters to smoke cigarettes while on duty; but such cavillers were much soothed upon learning that a "bust dude" had been quite as summarily dealt with when he broke forth into song at the dinner-table. This latter victim of severity and repression was a certain Mr. Newcastle, a "gent gone to seed" as he was subsequently described, and he had protested against unkind restrictions by declaring that such exhibitions of talent were typ-sical of a mining-camp. He pronounced typ-sical with an almost audible hyphen, as if his voice had stubbed its toe. But Mr. Newcastle's involuntary wit was of no avail, and he was forced to curb his songful spirit until a more fitting season.
So it came about that the Mountain Lion had not been in existence ten days before ​it had gone on record as a thoroughly "first-class" establishment. No wonder, then, that an air of peculiar respectability attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess, and Dabney Dirke, its presiding genius, was familiarly known among "the boys," as "the boss of the wheel." "Waxey" Smithers,—he who was supposed to have precipitated Jimmy Dolan's exit from a disappointing world,—had been heard to say that "that feller Dirke" was too (profanely) high-toned for the job. Nevertheless, the wheel went round at Dirke's bidding as swiftly and uncompromisingly as heart could wish, and to most of those gathered about that centre of attraction the "boss" seemed an integral part of the machine.
Dabney Dirke was an ideal figure for the part he had to play. He was tall and thin and Mephistophelian, though not of the dark complexion which is commonly associated with Mephistopheles. His clean-shaven face got ​its marked character, not from its coloring but from its cut; Nature's chisel would seem to have been more freely used than her brush in this particular production. The face was long and thin and severe, the nose almost painfully sensitive, the mouth thin and firmly closed rather than strong. The chin did not support the intention of the lips, nor did the brows quite do their duty by the eyes, which had a steely light, and might have gleamed with more effect if they had been somewhat more deeply set. The hair was sparse and light, and the complexion of that kind of paleness which takes on no deeper tinge from exposure to sun or wind or from passing emotion.
There were two indications that "the boss of the wheel" was also a gentleman;—he put on a clean collar every day, and he did not oil his hair. It would have been strange indeed if two such glaring peculiarities had escaped the subtle perception of Mr. Smithers, and it was rather to be wondered at that such inexcusable pretensions did not militate against the "boss" in his chosen calling.—That the calling was in this case deliberately chosen, may as well be admitted at the outset.
Dabney Dirke had once, in a very grievous moment, sworn that he would "go to the ​devil," and had afterwards found himself so ill-suited to that hasty enterprise, that he had been somewhat put to it to get started on the downward path.
He was the only son of a Wall Street magnate who had had the misfortune to let his "transactions" get the better of him. Dirke often thought of his father when he watched the faces of the men about the "wheel." There was little in the outer aspect, even of the men of civilized traditions who stood among the gamblers, to remind him of the well-dressed, well-groomed person of his once prosperous parent. But in their faces, when the luck went against them, was a look that he was poignantly familiar with; a look which had first dawned in his father's face, flickeringly, intermittently, and which had grown and intensified, week after week, month after month, till it had gone out in the blankness of despair. That was when the elder Dirke heard his sentence of imprisonment. For Aaron Dirke's failure had involved moral as well as financial ruin.
He had died of the shock, as some of his creditors thought it behooved him to do,—died in prison after one week's durance. His son envied him; but dying is difficult in early ​youth, and Dabney Dirke did not quite know how to set about.
Sometimes when he gave the wheel the fateful turn, he tried to cheat himself with an idea that it obeyed his will, this wonderful, dizzying, maddening wheel, with its circle of helpless victims. But there were moments when he felt himself more at the mercy of the wheel than any wretched gambler of them all. As he stood, with his curiously rigid countenance, performing his monotonous functions in the peculiar silence which characterizes the group around a gaming table, he sometimes felt himself in the tangible grasp of Fate; as if the figures surrounding the table had been but pictures on his brain, and he, the puppet impersonating Fate to them, the real and only victim of chance. At such times he could get free from this imaginary bondage only by a deliberate summoning up of those facts of his previous existence which alone seemed convincingly real. They marshalled themselves readily enough at his bidding, those ruthless invaders of an easy, indolent life;—penury and disgrace, wounded pride and disappointed love, and, bringing up the rear, that firm yet futile resolve of his to go to the devil. Dabney Dirke, with his tragic intensity, had often been the occasion of humor ​in other men, but it is safe to say that his own mind had never been crossed by a single gleam of that illumining, revivifying flame. For that reason he took his fate and himself more seriously, Heaven help him!—than even his peculiar ill-fortune warranted.
At the time of his father's failure and disgrace he had been the accepted suitor of a girl whom he idealized and adored, and in his extremity she had failed him. She had weakly done as she was bid, and broken faith with him. It was on this occasion that he laid upon himself the burdensome task of which mention has been made.
"Frances," he had said, with the solemnity of a Capuchin friar taking his vows; "Frances, if you cast me off I shall go to the devil!"
Frances was very sorry, and very reproachful, and withal, not a little nattered by this evidence of her negative influence; but she gave him her blessing and let him go, whither he would; and he, with the inconsequent obstinacy of his nature, carried with him a perfectly unimpaired ideal of her, sustained by her tearful assurance that she should always love him and pray for him. Even when he heard within the year that she was about to make a brilliant marriage with a titled Frenchman ​whom she had met at Newport, he persisted in thinking of her as the victim, not of her own inconstancy, but of parental sternness. He sometimes saw her pretty face quite distinctly before his eyes, as he looked out across the swiftly spinning wheel, into the smoke-hung barroom,—the pretty face with the tearful eyes and the quivering lip of shallow feeling, the sincerity of which nothing could have made him doubt,—and somehow that pictured face had always the look of loving and praying for him.
There was a certain little ring, bearing a design of a four-leaved clover done in diamonds, a trinket of her girlhood days, which she used to let him wear "for luck." He had it on his little finger the day his father was sentenced. Its potency might fairly have been questioned after that, yet when she took it back he felt as if the act must have a blighting influence upon his destinies, quite apart from the broken engagement which it marked.
He had accepted for the nonce a place at the foot of the ladder in a bankers' and brokers' office which was offered him by one of the partners, an old friend of his father's. He held the place for some months, and, being quite devoid of ambition, he soon came to ​loathe the daily grind. Through that, as through, the later vicissitudes of his career, his mind clung, with a curious, mechanical persistency, to that troublesome vow which he had made.
The difficulty lay in his entire constitutional lack of vicious tendencies. He had no taste for drink and none for bad company; highway robbery was played out, and the modern substitutes for it were too ignoble to be thought of. Had that not been the case his perplexities might have found an easy solution, for more than one golden opportunity offered for bald, barefaced breach of trust. One day in particular, he found himself in the street with thirty thousand dollars in his trousers' pocket. This not unprecedented situation derived its special significance from the fact that the day was the one fixed for Frances Lester's marriage. As Dirke walked up the street he saw, in fact, the carriages drawn up before Trinity Church, and he knew that the ceremony was going forward. He was struck with the dramatic possibilities of the moment. Were he to decamp on the spot, he might be in time to get into the morning papers, and Frances would know with what éclat he had celebrated her wedding day. He raised his hand to signal a ​cab, but the driver did not see him, and ten minutes later the money had gone to swell his employers' bank-account. He had often questioned what would have been his next step, supposing that particular cab-driver had had his wits about him and seen the signal. He was loath to admit that he would merely have been at the expense of driving the few blocks to the same destination which he had reached more economically on foot!
He had returned in time to stand among the crowd on the sidewalk and see the bridal party issue from the church. When bride and bridegroom crossed the narrow space between the awning and the carriage door, Dirke had his first opportunity of seeing the Count de Lys. He could not but perceive that the man was the possessor of a high-bred, handsome face, but perhaps it was, under the circumstances, not altogether surprising that he found the handsome face detestable. The mere sight of the black moustache and imperial which the Frenchman wore so jauntily was enough to make the unhappy broker's clerk forswear all kindred ornaments to the end of his days.
A broker's clerk he did not long remain, however. He was too restless for that, too much at odds with the particular sort of life ​his situation forced him into. Within a month of the day on which he had proved himself so signally unfitted for the rôle of rascal, he had thrown up his position and cut himself loose from all his old moorings. It was in a spirit of fantastic knight-errantry that he turned his face westward, a spirit that gave him no rest until, at the end of many months, he finally dropped anchor in the riotous little harbor of Lame Gulch. This turbulent haven seemed to promise every facility for the shipwreck on which he had so perversely set his heart, and he was content to wait there for whatever storm or collision should bring matters to a crisis. Perhaps the mere steady under-tow would suck him down to destruction. The under-tow is not inconsiderable among the seething currents of life in a two-year-old mining-camp.
Dirke had not been long in the camp, before his indefeasible air of integrity and respectability had attracted the attention of no less a personage than the proprietor of the roulette wheel, who invited him to run the wheel on a salary. It was now some three months since he had entered upon this vocation, and it had, on the whole, been a disappointment to him. He had accepted the position with an idea that he should be playing the sinister rôle of ​tempter, that he should feel himself at last acting a very evil part. To his surprise and chagrin he found that he was conscious of no moral relation whatever with the victims of the wheel. It was not he who enticed them; it was not he who impoverished them. On the contrary, given his contract with the "bank," he was doing his duty as simply and scrupulously here as in the Wall Street office, performing a certain function for certain pay, accountable to an employer now as hitherto. And, indeed, when he reflected upon the glimpses of Wall Street methods he had got, and upon the incalculable turns of the Wall Street wheel, whirling its creatures into opulence or penury as capriciously as the roulette wheel itself, he could not but feel that he was serving the same master now as heretofore, and to very much the same ends. And now, as heretofore, he had no reassuring sense of being on the downward path.
He used to amuse himself during the day,—for his time was his own from dawn to dark,—in trying to work out the law of averages, following out the hints he gathered from the working of the wheel. He had always had a taste for mathematics, having rather "gone in" for that branch at college. Fleeting visions of becom​ing an astronomer had visited him from time to time; but the paralysis of wealth had deterred him while he was yet ostensible master of his own fate, and now the same inherent weakness of character which had made him a slave to wealth, made him a slave to poverty, and he regarded whatever latent ambition he had ever cherished as a dead issue. His mind sometimes recurred to those neglected promptings of happier days, as he went forth under the stars after hours, and cleared his brain by a walk in the pure night air. It was his habit to make for the hills outside the camp, and his solitary wanderings were much cheered by the light of those heavenly lamps. At this high altitude they had a peculiar brilliance that seemed to give them a nearer, more urgent significance than elsewhere. He felt that it was inconsistent in him to look at the stars and to inquire into the law of averages. It would be more in character, he told himself,—that is, more in the character he aspired to—if he were to embrace the exceptional advantages Lame Gulch offered for doing something disreputable. Yet the stars shone down, undaunted and serene, upon the squalid camp, and into the bewildered soul of Dabney Dirke, so fantastically pledged to do violence ​to its own nature. Sometimes they twinkled shrewdly, comprehendingly; sometimes they glowed with a steady splendor that seemed to dominate the world. There were nights when the separate stars were blended, to his apprehension, in one great symphony of meaning; again certain ones stood out among the others, individual and apart. There was Jupiter up there. He did not look as if he were revolving with lightning speed about the sun, and the moons revolving about him were not even visible. That was the kind of roulette wheel a man might really take an interest in! And while he dallied with the stars and with those higher promptings which their radiance symbolized, he yet clung persistently to the purely artificial bonds he had put upon himself.
Poor Dabney Dirke! If he had possessed the saving grace of humor he could not have dedicated the golden years of youth to anything so hopelessly chimerical and absurd. He would have perceived that he was enacting the part of an inverted Don Quixote; a character grotesque enough when planted on its own erratic legs, but hopelessly ridiculous when made to stand on its head and defy its windmills up-side-down. As it was, he continued to take himself seriously, and to argue with ​himself on every concession made to a nature at bottom sound and well-inclined, if not well-balanced; and he was still standing at his incongruous post, performing its duties with dogged industry, when something happened which created a commotion within him. The man who had married Frances Lester came to Lame Gulch and gravitated, as every guest of the Mountain Lion is sure to do, for the passing moment at least, to the barroom of the house. The count was a member of a French syndicate engaged in the erection of a "stamp-mill" at Lame Gulch, and he was making a flying trip from the East with one of his compatriots, to take a look at the property. He was a man of medium height whose nationality and rank were equally unmistakable, and his air of distinction attracted no little attention upon his entrance. Dirke, however, did not see him. There was a throng of men about the wheel, and the "boss" was regarding their movements with the perfunctory attention which his duties required, when a hand, whiter than the others, was thrust forward. As it placed a silver dollar on the board a flash of diamonds caught Dirke's eye, and he recognized the "lucky ring" he had once worn. It was a closer fit for the little finger of the ​present wearer than it had been for his own. There was little need of further investigation to establish the identity of the new-comer.
The wheel went round and the ball dropped in the stranger's favor. Dirke glanced at him as he pocketed his winnings. The handsome face antagonized him even more strongly than it had six months ago.
M. de Lys did not play again immediately. He watched the wheel with a quiet intentness, as if he were establishing some subtle, occult influence over it. Then the white hand was quietly extended, and a gold piece glittered where it had touched. Again the ball declared itself in favor of the Frenchman.
He played at intervals for more than an hour, with unvarying success. Eager, inexperienced boys rashly staked and often lost; laborers with haggard faces saw their earnings swept away; but the count, always calm and deliberate, won,—won repeatedly, invariably. He rarely risked more than ten dollars on a single turn; he never placed his money on a number. He played red or black, and the ball followed his color as the needle follows the magnet. Dirke began to dread the sight of that white hand; the gleam of the diamonds seemed to pierce and pain him like sharp steel.
​An hour had passed and Dirke estimated that de Lys must have won several hundred dollars. Other men had begun to choose his color, and the "bank" was feeling the drain. Yet the machine itself was not more unconcerned than the "boss" appeared, as he paid out the money lost, and set the wheel spinning to new issues. Black, red,—red, black; so the ball fell, but always in favor of the white hand with the flashing brilliants. The group about the table was becoming excited; Dirke knew very well that if the thing went on much longer the "bank" would have to close down.
There was a moment's pause, while all waited to follow the stranger's lead. Then the white hand reached forward and placed four five-dollar gold pieces upon the red. A dozen gnarled and grimy hands swarmed like a flock of dingy birds above the board, and each one laid its coin upon the red. Round went the wheel; the ball sped swiftly in its groove. Then the speed slackened, the ball seemed to hesitate and waver like a sentient thing making choice; there was the light click of the drop; the "bank" had won.
After that the white hand played with varying luck, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. The other players began staking on their own ​account again. And then, some time after midnight, de Lys began losing, as persistently, as uninterruptedly as he had won. He played as deliberately as before, with a something more of calculating intentness, but the charm was broken; the wheel seemed to whirl with an intelligent revolt. Just as surely as the white hand placed a coin upon the black, the red had it; just as certainly as the diamonds flashed above the red, the ball found its way into the black. The handsome face grew slightly strained and eager—so slightly that the change would have escaped the ordinary observer. For the first time Dirke found a satisfaction in the contemplation of those high-bred features. Silver, gold, banknotes,—each and all were swept into the coffers of the "bank." His losses must already exceed his winnings, Dirke thought. The thought animated him with a malignant joy. For the first time he felt an interest in the fall of the ball; for the first time too, he felt the evil in his nature vibrate into life.
Three turns of the wheel had taken place with no appearance of the white hand upon the board. "Busted," had been the laconic comment of a by-stander. Dirke glanced at the count and their eyes met. The gambler ​was fingering the "lucky ring." As he caught Dirke's eye he drew the ring from his finger.
"What will you place against that?" he asked, handing it over to the boss. His English was careful and correct, yet as Gallic as his face itself.
Dirke examined the ring judicially, wondering, the while, that it did not burn his fingers. The moment in which he last held it thus was far more vivid to his consciousness than the present instant and the present scene.
"Twenty-five dollars," he said, in his most official tone, as he returned the ring to its owner.
The wheel spun, the ring glittered on the red. The count leaned slightly forward. Dirke watched only the wheel. He had a wild notion that the result was life or death to him, yet why, he could not tell. Then the wheel slackened, the ball hesitated, paused, dropped. Black had won!
M. de Lys turned on his heel and left the table. An hour later the room was empty and the lights were out.
When Dirke passed through the office of the Mountain Lion and stepped out on the veranda, the night was far spent, but the deep June sky was still spangled with stars. He ​stood for an instant at the top of the steps, hardly aware of the delicious wash of the night air on his face, which yet he paused to enjoy. There was a foot-fall close at hand and a voice.
"M. le croupier?" the voice queried.
He turned sharp about. The Frenchman stood there with his hat raised, a gentleman to the finger-tips. Involuntarily Dirke lifted his own hat, and lifted it after the manner of a gentleman. The manner was not lost upon the Frenchman.
"Monsieur," said the latter, courteously; "I had the misfortune to lose a ring this evening. I shall redeem it on the morrow, when I can command my resources."
The "boss" looked him full in the face. They could not distinguish one another's features in the starlight, yet the two personalities were as plainly in evidence as could have been the case in the broad light of day.
"No, you won't!" Dirke retorted, coolly, planting his hat firmly on his head again. He was angry with himself for having removed it.
"May I ask Monsieur why not?"
"Because the ring is sold!"
The Frenchman started visibly.
"And the purchaser? Would you have the courtesy to indicate to me the purchaser?"
​"No!"
The rudely spoken monosyllable put an abrupt period to the conversation.
Dirke passed down the steps and along the deserted street. As he paced the length of the board sidewalk, which helped itself over the ups and downs of the ungraded thoroughfare by means of short, erratic flights of steps at certain points, he distinctly heard footsteps following. They sounded plainly on the plank walk, and he did not for a moment doubt whose they were. His hands were in his coat-pockets. On the little finger of his left hand was the ring.
He paused, opposite the brightly lighted windows of the last saloon in the row. The town ended there, the street lapsing into a rough and trackless barren. Here he waited for the Frenchman to come up with him. He watched his progress with a curious interest, noting how the figure was at one moment lost in the shadow, only to emerge, the next instant, into the full light that streamed from some nocturnal haunt. As he came up with Dirke, the electric light over the entrance to the saloon shone full upon them both.
Dirke waited for him to speak. Again he raised his hat, but this time Dirke was on his ​guard and was not to be betrayed into any concession to courtesy. There was a slight shrug of the shoulders as the Frenchman replaced his hat. He spoke, however, in a conciliatory tone:
"It is a fine evening," he observed. "I have followed your example. I go for a walk."
"You have followed me, you mean," said Dirke, bluntly. "I heard you behind me."
Then, moved by a sudden impulse to precipitate matters, he drew his left hand from his pocket. The diamonds flashed in the light.
M. de Lys's eyes flashed in response. With all his unabated elegance, he had something the look of a tiger ready to spring upon his prey. But he held himself in check.
"Monsieur!" he cried, and there was a savage note in his voice, which Dirke would not have credited him with. "Monsieur! If you decline to permit me to pay for that ring to-morrow, I am ready to fight for it to-night!" He pronounced the word "fight" with a peculiar, hissing emphasis.
"Not to-night," Dirke rejoined quietly.
"And why not to-night, Monsieur, may I ask?"
"Because I am armed, and you are not."
​At the word Dirke had drawn his right hand from his pocket; the barrel of a pistol gleamed white between them.
The Frenchman recoiled. His face was not pleasant to look upon, yet his antagonist would have been sorry to lose the sight of it.
Dirke stood, tall and slim and commanding, his face set in the accustomed lines. No emotion whatever was to be seen there, not even contempt for the man who shrank from sure death in such a cause. For fully twenty seconds they faced each other in the glaring light of the saloon, pent up passion visible in the one, invisible in the other. In Dirke's face, and bearing, however, devoid as it was of any emotion, one quality was but the more recognizable for that, and the count knew that the man before him was available as an antagonist.
"Monsieur," he said, with strong self-control, "it is possible that you do not understand—that you are not aware—that—Monsieur! The ring which you are pleased to wear so—so—conspicuously is the property of—The ring, Monsieur, is sacred to me!"
"Sacred!" Dirke repeated. "Sacred!" The word was an arraignment, not to be overlooked.
​"Monsieur!" the count cried.
"I was merely struck by your peculiar treatment of sacred things," Dirke replied, his tone dropping to the level of absolute indifference. "It is—unconventional, to say the least."
He lifted his hand and examined the ring with an air of newly aroused interest. He wondered, half-contemptuously, at the man's self-control.
"Monsieur," he heard him say. "You are a gentleman; I perceive it beneath the disguise of your vocation,—of your conduct. When I say to you that the sight of that ring upon your finger compromises my honor,—that it is an insult to me,—you comprehend; is it not so?"
"Quite so," Dirke replied, with carefully studied offensiveness.
"Then, Monsieur, it will perhaps be possible at another time to correct the inequality in point of arms to which you have called my attention." The challenge was admirably delivered.
"I should think nothing could be simpler," Dirke rejoined, and he deliberately put his pistol in his pocket.
They parted without more words, de Lys stumbling once as he made his way along the uneven sidewalk, Dirke keeping on across the barren upland, sure-footed and serene.
It had come at last, his great opportunity; ​all the evil in his nature was roused at last; jealousy, vindictiveness, unscrupulousness. He gloated over his own iniquity; every feature of it rejoiced him. He had no moral right to that ring,—all the dearer his possession of it! This man had never injured him;—the more delicious his hatred of him. The Frenchman with his exasperating air of success was to him the insolent embodiment of that which had been wrongfully wrested from him, Dabney Dirke, who had as good a right to success as another. Some philanthropists, made such by prosperity and ease, spent their lives in trying to even things off by raising the condition of their fellow-creatures to their own. Well, he had the same object to be attained, by different means. He would even things off by grading to his own level. Was not that a perfectly logical aim, given the circumstances which induced it?
He lifted his hand and moved it to and fro, that he might catch the gleam of the stones in the faint starlight. In the mere joy of seeing the ring there upon his finger he almost forgot for the moment what its significance was. It scarcely reminded him just then of the girl with the tearful eyes, usually so present with him. Her face seemed to be receding from his ​memory; the whole story of his life seemed to grow dim and ill-defined. His mind was curiously elate with a sense of achievement, a certainty that he was near the goal, that fulfilment was at hand.
He was still pursuing his way up the hill, walking slowly, with bent head, like a philosopher in revery, when he became aware that the day was dawning. The stars were growing dim and vanishing one by one, in the pale light which came like a veil across their radiance. A dull, creeping regret invaded his mind. He had loved the stars, he could have studied them with joy; under a happier fate he might have been high in their counsels. As he watched their obliteration in the dawn of a day deliberately dedicated to evil, a profound yearning for their pure tranquil eternal light came upon him, and as Jupiter himself withdrew into the impenetrable spaces, Dirke turned his eyes downward with a long, shuddering sigh. His downcast gaze fell upon the poor earthly brilliance of the diamonds.
It was not until he heard from the count, a few hours later, that Dirke found himself restored to the state of mind which he was pleased to consider natural. The call for action dissipated his misgivings, carried him ​beyond the reach of doubts and regrets, gave him an assurance that Fate had at last ranged itself on his side. For even if duelling were not a peculiarly un-American institution, it is a mode of warfare of such refinement and elaborateness, as to be utterly foreign to the atmosphere of a mining-camp, and Dirke could only regard the challenge which came to him in due form and order that morning, as a special interposition of those darker powers which he had so long, and hitherto so vainly invoked. He went about his preparations for the meeting in an exaltation of spirit, such as he had never before experienced. Paradoxical as it may seem, absurd as it really was, he was sustained, uplifted, by the sense of immolating himself upon the altar of an ideal cause. He was about to do an ideally evil thing, to the accomplishment of an ideally evil end. Insane as this feeling was, it was his inspiration, and he felt himself, for the first time in his life, acting consistently, courageously, confidently.
The meeting took place on a remote, barren hillside, on the edge of a dead forest whose gaunt stems stood upright, or leaned against each other, a weird, unearthly company. As Dirke arrived with his second,—a saturnine Kentuckian, with a duelling record of ​his own,—he glanced about the desolate spot thinking it well chosen. Only one feature of the scene struck him as incongruous. It was a prickly poppy standing there, erect and stiff, its coarse, harsh stem and leaves repellent enough, yet bearing on its crest a single flower, a wide white silken wonder, curiously at variance with the spirit of the scene. Dirke impatiently turned away from the contemplation of it, which had for an instant fascinated him, and faced, instead, the count, who was approaching from below, accompanied by his friend and countryman.
Shots were to be exchanged but once, and though the principals were both good shots, the seconds anticipated nothing serious. The count, for his part, was not desirous of killing his adversary, and he had no reason to suppose that the latter thirsted for his blood. He considered the incident which had led to this unpleasant situation as a mere freak on the part of this morose individual whom he had unfortunately run afoul of. He had, indeed, moments of wondering whether the man were quite in his right mind.
Dirke wore the ring, and he gloried in wearing it, as he took his place, elate, exultant, yet perfectly self-contained.
​"Are you ready?" the Kentuckian asked, and the sense of being "ready" thrilled him through every nerve.
At the given signal, Dirke raised his pistol in deliberate, deadly aim. De Lys saw it, and a subtle change swept his face, while he instantly readjusted his own aim. In Dirke's countenance there was no change, no slightest trace of any emotion whatever. Yet both seconds perceived, in the flash of time allowed, that the combat was to be a mortal one, and that it was Dirke who had thus decreed it.
And then it was, in that crucial moment, that Dirke's groping soul came out into the light,—even as the wide white flower over yonder had come out into the light, springing from its grim, unsightly stem. In that flashing instant of time his true nature, which he had so long sought to belie, took final command. All that was false, fantastic, artificial, loosed its hold and fell away. For the first time in two years Dabney Dirke was perfectly sane.
At the word to fire, he did the one thing possible to the man he was; his pistol flashed straight upwards.
The two shots rang out simultaneously, setting the echoes roaring among the hills. Dirke staggered, but recovered his foothold ​again and stood an instant, swaying slightly, while he slowly, with an absent look in his face and in his eyes, drew the ring from his finger. As de Lys came up, he dropped the trinket at his feet. Then, slowly, heavily, he sank back, and the men gently lowered him to the ground.
De Lys knelt beside him, white with consternation.
"Monsieur!" he cried; "Monsieur! It was a misunderstanding! I mistook you wholly! And you, you were magnanimous! Ah, mon Dieu!"
And then a wonder came to pass, for Dabney Dirke's lips parted in a smile. The smile was faint, yet indescribably sweet, and the voice was faint, and far-away, in which he murmured brokenly; "It was—a message—to—the stars."
The horror in the faces bending over him was lost in a look of awe. There was an influence mystically soothing in the dying man's words. The dry, soft air played about the group, rustling the short, sparse grass. It seemed the only motion left in a hushed and reverent world.
Then, as the smile deepened upon his face, fixed there by the hand of death, the lips parted for the last time, and Dirke whispered; "I am going—in—for astronomy!"