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Updated: May 5, 2025
Then with a muttered word about his horse he strode out into the storm. Deprived of their best spender, the crowd drifted back to the tables; friendly games of coon-can sprang up; stud poker was resumed; and a crew of railroad men, off duty, looked out at the sluicing waters and idly wondered whether the track would go out the usual thing in Arizona.
He'd been out for two years, just sitting around the water-holes or playing coon-can with the Injuns, when he comes across this mine, or was led to it by some Injun, and he tries to cover it up. He puts up one post, to kinder hold it down in case some prospector should happen along; and then he writes his notice, leaving out the date and everything else, you might say.
There was not a dull moment in that dinner for me nor afterwards when the boys and girls at the piano played the rag-time tunes of their own land, while their elders, inexhaustibly interested, replunged into the discussion of that land's future, till there was talk of coon-can.
For all that, supper was eventually ready and eaten and the dishes washed with Miss Bridger wiping them and with the Pilgrim eying them both in a way that set on edge the teeth of Charming Billy. When there was absolutely nothing more to keep them busy, Billy got the cards and asked Miss Bridger if she could play coon-can which was the only game he knew that was rigidly "two-handed."
Immediately the chairs began to scrape; the stud-poker players cut for the stakes and quit; coon-can was called off, and by the time Number Nine slowed down for the station the entire floating population of Bender was lined up to see her come in.
"What did my hand do, Bill?" he inquired glumly, when at last the scorer picked up his pad and the dealer politely shoved the pack toward his neighbour for cutting. "You ruined me with your four silly hearts," replied the man who had taken his cards. "Did you think you were playing coon-can?" "Sorry, Bill. Sit in for me, there's a good chap. I'm not likely to be back to-night hang it!"
He wished vaguely that the wanderings of Dill would bring them back to the Double-Crank country, instead of leading them always farther afield. He did not, however, admit openly to himself that he wanted to see Miss Bridger again; yet he did permit himself to wonder if she ever played coon-can with any one else, or if she had already forgotten the game.
Shafto, in a smart black-and-gold evening frock, was smoking a cigarette and playing auction-bridge with Mr. Levison and the two Japanese; the Misses Smith and various casual boarders were engrossed at coon-can. Another group was assembled about the piano.
"I wish I hadn't eat the last uh the flour this morning," he regretted anxiously. "I coulda made some bread; there's a little yeast powder left in the can. Darn the Pilgrim!" Prune Pie and Coon-can.
He had managed to seat Miss Bridger so that her back was toward the stove and the Pilgrim, and he did it so unobtrusively that neither guessed his reason. He taught her coon-can, two-handed whist and Chinese solitaire before a gray lightening outside proclaimed that the night was over.
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