Daughter of the Sun | Page 7

low throw.
Ortega strained forward, saw and flushed. Had he but been man enough
to say "Yes!" to the odds offered him he would have been five thousand
dollars richer this instant! Five thousand dollars! He ran a flabby hand
across a moist brow.
"Where's the luck in that throw?" demanded Kendric, fully enjoying the
play of expression on Ortega's face.
"The luck," grumbled Ortega, "was that I did not bet you. If I had bet it
would have been a six, no less."
"Tony Muñoz," called Kendric, turning. "Will it be you?"
"No!" shouted Ortega, already angered in his grasping soul, ready to
spew forth his wrath in any direction, always more than ready to rail at
his son-in-law. "Muñoz has no business in my house. Who is boss here?
It is me!"
Kendric seeing that Tony Muñoz was contenting himself with sneering
and certainly would not play, began gathering up the money on the
table. It was then that for the first time he heard the voice of Ruiz Rios's
companion.
"I will play Señor Kendric."
The voice ran through the quiet of the room musically. The utterance
was low, gentle, the accent was the soft, tender accent of Old Spain

with some subtle flavor of other alien races. No man in the room had
ever heard such sweet, soothing music as was made by her slow words.
After the sound died away a hush remained and through men's
memories the cadences repeated themselves like lingering echoes.
Kendric himself stared at her wonderingly, not knowing why her
hidden look stirred him so, not knowing why there should be a spell
worked by five quiet words. Nor did he find the spell entirely pleasant;
as her look had done, so now her speech vaguely disturbed him. His
emotion, though not outright irritation, was akin to it. He was opening
his lips to say curtly, "I do not play dice with women, señora," when
Ortega's sudden outburst forestalled him.
Kendric had barely had the time to register the faint impression of the
odd sensation which this companion of Ruiz Rios awoke in him, when
he was set to puzzle over Ortega's explosion. Why should the
gaming-house keeper raise so violent an objection to any sort of a game
played in his place? Perhaps Ortega himself could not have explained
clearly since it is doubtful if he felt clearly; it is likely that a childishly
blind anger had spurted up venomously in his heart when Kendric had
exposed the deuce and men had laughed and Ortega felt as though he
had lost five thousand dollars. In such a case a man's wrath explodes
readily, combustion breaking forth spontaneously like an oily rag in the
sun. At any rate, his fat face grown hectic, he lifted hand and voice,
shouting:
"I will have no women gambling here. This is my place, a place for
men. You," and he leveled his forefinger at the slim figure, "go!"
She ignored him. Stepping forward quickly, she whipped off her left
glove and in the bare white fingers, blazing with red and green stones
set in golden circlets, she caught up the dice cup. Even now little was
seen of her face for the other hand had drawn lower the wide hat,
higher the scarf about the throat.
"One die, one throw for it all, Señor Kendric?" she asked.
"I tell you, No!" shouted Ortega. "And No again!"

Then, when she stood unmoved, her air of insolence like Ruiz Rios's,
but even more marked, Ortega burst forward between the men standing
in his way, shoving them to right and left with the powerful sweep of
his thick arms. His uplifted hand came down on her shoulder, thrusting
her backward. Her ungloved hand, the left as Kendric marked while he
watched interestedly, flashed to her bosom, and leaped out again, a
thin-bladed knife in the grip of the bejewelled fingers. Ortega saw and
feared and, grown nimble, sprang back from her. Quickly enough to
save the life in him, not so quickly as entirely to avoid the sweep of the
knife. His sleeve fell apart, slit from shoulder to wrist, and in the
opening the man's flesh showed with a thin red line marking it.
There was tumult and confusion for a little while, hardly more than a
moment it seemed to Kendric. He only knew that at the end of it Ortega
had gone grumbling away, led by a couple of friends who no doubt
would bandage his wounded arm, and that the woman, having put her
knife away, appeared not in the least disturbed. He knew then that
while men talked and shouted about him he had not once withdrawn his
eyes from her.
"One throw?" she was asking again, the voice as tender, as vaguely
disquieting