Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/255

their bright eyes at the shackled youth as if to say, "We're chums of yours." He wondered vaguely if the little couple would hatch out their nestlings before he dropped through the trapdoor of a gallows.

Across the street, his eyes noted a hen scratching fussily with a new brood of fuzzy chicks about her. A group of idlers lounged in the shady porch of the Wortley Hotel, smoking, gossiping languidly. Two Mexican boys were spinning tops down near La Rue's store. He remembered when he was spinning tops back in Silver City not so many years ago; he was only twenty-one now. Nobody else was in sight. Lincoln was taking a siesta. The sun was pouring down its heat from a cloudless, indigo sky. The dusty road was a crooked ribbon of white; at its edges the shadows of houses and trees lay as if painted in solid black. He could hear plainly the murmur of the Bonito River through the noonday stillness. It was like a lullaby.

The Kid took a luxurious drag at his cigarette, tossed the butt out the window, and turned back into the room.

"Let's have a little game of monte, Bell," he drawled, "to pass the time. What do you say?"

"Might as well kill a little time that way, Kid, if it'll amuse you," answered Bell.

"Well, not much time left to kill."

On a large round table standing at the front of the room near the door were a deck of cards and a box of matches. The table was a relic of Murphy's prime. Many a roistering poker game for big stakes the old Lord of the Mountains and his knights of the round table had enjoyed about it, with the drinks coming fast from the bar below stairs. Almost every day the Kid and Bell had been accustomed to while away monotonous hours playing cards. Now it was a game of freeze-out poker with matches for chips;