The Project Gutenberg eBook, Winner Take All, by Larry Evans

Title: Winner Take All

Author: Larry Evans

Release Date: July 14, 2006 [eBook #18829]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINNER TAKE ALL***

[Frontispiece: That, after all, was as much as anyone could ask.]

WINNER TAKE ALL

BY

LARRY EVANS

AUTHOR OF

THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU,
ONCE TO EVERY MAN, ETC.

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS ——— NEW YORK

Copyright, 1920, by
THE H. K. FLY COMPANY

Copyright, 1920, by
THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY

TO
GEORGE C. TYLER

Some of these pages you have criticised,
some of them you have praised; and
all of them beg leave to recall herewith
the Author's esteem and affection.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

That, after all, was as much as anyone could ask . . . Frontispiece

He tore at them, mad with rage.

Lucky interference.

"Come on, now--'fess up?"

WINNER TAKE ALL

CHAPTER I

IS LUCK A LADY?

By easy stages Blue Jeans had arrived at the water tanks.

That had not pleased him much, though the water which fell in a musical drip from the stack nearest the rails into what impressed one as a sensible, frugal tub, until it, too, filled and overflowed and betrayed its trivial nature, was sweet on his tongue and grateful to his mare.

Arriving anywhere by easy stages had never appealed to him. Swift and sudden, that was the better way. Rather would he have whirled into Reservoir with zest and some commotion. But Girl o' Mine was in no shape for that. She drooped. Events which had jostled him roughly in the last few weeks had dealt with her unkindly as well. There had been many weary miles and not much grain.

And yet his poverty had not been a thing of easy stages. It had seemed both swift and sudden, and he liked it none the better for that. But he would not enter Reservoir with ostentation. He'd ride in without enthusiasm, and thus call no attention to the pass to which he'd come.

Nor was he in a hurry to get there, either. The town, a quarter of a mile across the track, squat and squalid in the dust, held nothing for his mood.

Reservoir was a poor town, anyway.

And Life was a poor thing, too.

He'd tried for hours and hours to think of one fair promise which it still held for him—just one!—tried hard! And couldn't!

Blue Jeans was twenty-two.

And Luck had trifled with him over-long.

One brief month earlier he had been a man of ambition, a man of promise. He'd even found his Dream. An Easterner had helped him to that foolishness; an -ologist from a university who expected to find prehistoric bones and relics entombed under the hills.