Branch stared about as if searching for a reason. "Jack's upstairs sulking; Patterson hasn't come home yet." And Black Gandil, who heard all things, said without looking up: "A man that saves a shipwrecked fellow, he gets bad luck for thanks." Pierre turned a considerable eye on him, and Gandil scowled back. "You've been croaking for six years, Morgan, about the bad luck that would come to Jim from saving me out of the snow. It's never happened, has it?" Gandil, snarling from one side of his mouth, answered: "Where's Patterson?" "Am I responsible if the blockhead has got drunk someplace?" "Patterson doesn't get drunk--not that way. And he knows that we were to start again today." "There ain't no doubt of that," commented Branch. "It's the straight dope. Patterson keeps his dates," said Bud Mansie. The booming bass of Jim Boone broke in: "Shut up, the whole gang of you. We've had luck for the six years Pierre has been with us. Who calls him a Jonah?" And Black Gandil answered: "I do. I've sailed the seas. I know bad luck when I see it." "You've been seeing it for six years." "The worst storms come on a voyage that starts with fair weather. Patterson? He's gone; he ain't just delayed; he's gone." It was not the first of these gloomy prophecies which Gandil had made, but each time a heavy gloom broke over Red Pierre. For when he summed up the good fortune which the cross of Father Victor had brought him, he found that he had gained a father, and lost him at their first meeting; and he had won money on that night of the gambling, but it had cost the life of another man almost at once. The horse which carried him away from the vengeance in Morgantown had died on the way and he had been saved from the landslide, but the girl had perished. He had driven McGurk from the ranges, and where would the penalty fall on those who were near and dear to him? In a superstitious horror he had asked himself the question a thousand times, and finally he could hardly bear to look into the ominous, brooding eyes of Black Gandil. It was as if the man had a certain and evil knowledge of the future. CHAPTER 17 The knowledge of the torment he was inflicting made the eye of Black Gandil bright with triumph. He continued, and now every man in the room was sitting up, alert, with gloomy eyes fixed upon Pierre: "Patterson is the first, but he ain't the last. He's just the start. Who's next?" He looked slowly around. "Is it you, Bud, or you, Phil, or you, Jim, or maybe me?" And Pierre said: "What makes you think you know that trouble's coming, Morgan?" "Because my blood runs cold in me when I look at you." Red Pierre grew rigid and straightened in a way they knew. "Damn you, Gandil, I've borne with you and your croaking too long, d'ye hear? Too long, and I'll hear no more of it, understand?" "Why not? You'll hear from me every time I sight you in the offing. You c'n lay to that!"