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The faro-dealer and the lookout jerked round then slowly backed toward the side of the room. The man at the wheel paused with his hand in the air. The players, intent upon the game, glanced up curiously. Pino, who stood near White-Eye and almost in front of him, dropped his cigarette. The room became as still as the noon desert.
The room was quiet save for the soft click of the chips, the whirring of the ball, an occasional oath, and the monotonous voice of the faro-dealer. Pino nudged White-Eye and indicated the little pile of gold that was stacked before a player at the faro table. White-Eye shook his head and stepped casually back. Pino sauntered over to him. "Chanct for a clean-up?" whispered Pino. "No show.
It is a small world and I had just found out that my friend, Bunt McBride horse-wrangler, miner, faro-dealer and bone-gatherer whose world was the plains and ranges of the Great Southwest, was known of the Three Black Crows, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan, and had even foregathered with them on more than one of their ventures for Cyrus Ryder's Exploitation Agency ventures that had nothing of the desert in them, but that involved the sea, and the schooner, and the taste of the great-lunged canorous trades.
"And who in hell is Weedon Scott?" the faro-dealer demanded. "Oh, one of them crackerjack minin' experts. He's in with all the big bugs. If you want to keep out of trouble, you'll steer clear of him, that's my talk. He's all hunky with the officials. The Gold Commissioner's a special pal of his." "I thought he must be somebody," was the faro-dealer's comment.
"Don't kill an old pal, Pony!" And the sound of his voice was lost in the blunt roar of a shot that loosened Baxter's fingers from the automatic. It clattered to the floor. Baxter braced himself against the door-frame and, turning, staggered to the desk 'phone. The Spider nodded to the faro-dealer. "Close your cases," he said, and he hiccoughed and spat viciously. "Get me downstairs I'm done."
He paused beside Scott and touched him on the shoulder, saying ominously: "Don't break them teeth, stranger." "Then I'll break his neck," Scott retorted, continuing his shoving and wedging with the revolver muzzle. "I said don't break them teeth," the faro-dealer repeated more ominously than before. But if it was a bluff he intended, it did not work.
"Miller has hired a new faro-dealer, and you don't go on until midnight." Briefly Pierce retold the story that had come to his ears when he reported for duty that evening. Broad and Bridges listened without comment, but they exchanged glances. They put their heads together and began a low-pitched conversation. They were still murmuring when Rouletta appeared, in company with 'Poleon Doret.
But so had Tom Hagard, the faro-dealer, and Frank Sauter, who played poker over Sudden's, and Dick Bander, who got his money from Madame Blank because he happened to be a swashing slugger, and many another Tom, Dick, and Harry whose reputations were, to say the least, questionable.
I never knew a faro-dealer that wouldn't shoot craps. No, I haven't met no banker's son and I ain't likely to in this place. These pilgrims have sewed their money in their underclothes, and they sleep with their eyes open. Seems like they'd go blind, but they don't. These ain't Rubes, Lucky; they're city folks. They've seen three-ringed circuses and three-shell games, and all that farmer stuff.
To-morrow I'm thirty, and then I'll be an old man. It's the last fling of youth. Are you-all with me? Surge along, then. Surge along. "Hold on there, Davis," he called to the faro-dealer, who had shoved his chair back from the table. "I'm going you one flutter to see whether you-all drink with me or we-all drink with you."
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