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The thermometer outside Garvey's door already registered one hundred and five. Heat devils chased one another across the valley. But inside the building it was comparatively cool. Glasses tinkled on the long, smooth bar. The roulette wheel whirred, and even at that early hour, cards were being slapped down, faces up, at the stud-poker table.
After a decent period of losing and winning, which gave Trampas all proper time for a change of luck and a repairing of his fortunes, he looked at Steve and said amiably: "How does bed strike you?" I was beside their table, learning gradually that stud-poker has in it more of what I will call red pepper than has our Eastern game.
Three men sat in at stud-poker, but they played with small chips and without enthusiasm, while there were no onlookers. On the floor of the dancing-room, which opened out at the rear, three couples were waltzing drearily to the strains of a violin and a piano. Circle City was not deserted, nor was money tight.
They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing to the "sports;" and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.
After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith.
"Wonder if the professor's there yet?" said Lin, and he went across the railroad tracks. The bartender nodded to him as he passed through into the back room. In that place were many tables, and the flat clicking and rattle of ivory counters sounded pleasantly through the music. Lin did not join the stud-poker game.
But the eye came back to him drawn by that inexpressible something which had led the dealer to speak so much at length about him. Still, "black-headed guy" justly fits him and his next performance. And now the highly appreciative town of Medicine Bow was to be treated to a manifestation of genius. He sat playing his stud-poker.
It is hard to be blithe and all but broke. Nor had he pled this latter state to urge himself upon them. Anybody could draw that conclusion now, if he wanted to, just from the look of his clothes. He'd tried Claiborne town. Little jobs they had offered him there menial! And that had made him rebellious. Thus by well-defined stages, and hugging now his Dream, to the stud-poker game.
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.
For one thing, I'm sooperstitious about makin' of onyoosal arrangements to protect my play. I never yet tries to cinch a play, an' never notes anybody else try, but we- all quits loser. It ain't no use. Every gent, from his cradle to his coffin, has got to take a gambler's chance. Life is like stud-poker; an' Destiny's got an ace buried every time.
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