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Updated: June 9, 2025
His hands, Gordon saw, were extraordinarily supple, and emanated a sickly odor of glycerine. His companion's were huge and misshapen, but they, too, were surprisingly deft, quick. "What'll it be?" Jake demanded; "Jackpots; stud; straight draw " "Hell, let's throw cold hands," Mr. Ottinger interrupted, "chop the trimmings. We're here for the stuff, ain't we?"
He regained his poise, and returned blow for blow with Mr. Ottinger; neither man guarded, both were solely intent upon marking, crippling, the other. A chair fell, sliding across the floor; a washstand collapsed with a splintering crash of china, a miniature flood. Em stood on the outskirts of the conflict, armed with the whisky bottle; Jake crouched watchful with the leather club.
"Come up to my room," the woman directed from the foot of a stairway; "where no amateur John Condons will tell us how to play our cards. I got some good liquor, too." In her room she lit a small lamp, which proved insufficient, and Mr. Ottinger brought a second from his quarters.
The woman's bulk got in Jake's way, and he struck her across the eyes with the back of his hand, consigning her to eternal hell. Mr. Ottinger, confused by the irregularity of the turmoil, worked inefficiently, swinging at random his hard fists, kicking impartially. Gordon now had both feet upon the floor; he straightened up.
The woman threw herself on his back, forced him to his knees. "Won't none of you do for him?" she complained hysterically. She pressed his head into her breast, and Mr. Ottinger hit him below and just back of his ear. Gordon slipped out full length on the floor. He was waveringly conscious, but he had lost all interest, all sense of personal connection, with the proceedings.
"Jake!" she called at the entrance to the crude hotel office; "Jake! Mr. Ottinger! here's a gentleman wants a little game." Two men hastily rose and advanced toward the door. The first, Jake, was small, with the narrow, high shoulders, the long, pale face, the long, pale hands, of a cripple.
Late in the night they were still playing without a change in their positions. Em still perspired; but Mr. Ottinger no longer protruded his tongue, a sullen anger was evident in his every move; Jake's affable flow of conversation was hushed; Gordon's face set. It was, indisputably, not funny he had won nearly two hundred dollars. "Make it ten?" Jake queried. The others nodded.
A preliminary drink was indispensable; and, served in two glasses and a cracked toothbrush mug Mr. Ottinger elected to imbibe his "straight" from the bottle it was drunk with mutual assurances of tender regard. "Happy days," the woman pronounced.
Luther's public judgment being of such weight, and his counsels so influential with the Elector Frederick, Philip informed him, through pastor Ottinger of Cassel, of his preparations for war, lest he might otherwise be wrongly given to understand that he was meditating a step against the Emperor.
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