LITMIR.BIZ

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      Beer all round it was. Gash Tuttle, too eager for gore to more than sip his, toyed with the dice, rolling them out and scooping them up again.

      “Want to shake for the next round, anybody?” innocently inquired the squint-eyed person, observing this byplay.

      “The next round’s on the house,” announced Flem, obeying a wink of almost audible emphasis from Fox.

      “This here gent thinks he’s some hand with the bones,” explained Fox, addressing the stranger and flirting a thumb toward Gash Tuttle. “He was sayin’ jest as you come in the door yonder that he could let anybody else roll three dice, and then he could tell, without lookin’ even, whut the tops and bottoms would add up to?”

      “Huh?” grunted the squinty-eyed man. “Has he got any money in his clothes that says he kin do that? Where I come frum, money talks.” He eyed Gash Tuttle truculently, as though daring him to be game.

      “My money talks too!” said Mr. Tuttle with nervous alacrity. He felt in an inner vest pocket, producing a modest packet of bills. All eyes were focused on it.

      “That’s the stuff!” said Fox with mounting enthusiasm. “How much are you two gents goin’ to bet one another? Make it fur real money – that is, if you’re both game!”

      “If he don’t touch the dice at all I’ll bet him fur his whole roll,” said the impetuous newcomer.

      “That’s fair enough, I reckin,” said Fox. “Tell you whut – to make it absolutely fair I’ll turn the dice over myself and Flem’ll hold the stakes. Then there can’t be no kick comin’ from nobody whatsoever, kin there?” He faced their prospective prey. “How strong are you?” he demanded, almost sneeringly. “How much are you willin’ to put up against my pardner here?”

      “Any amount! Any amount!” snapped back the other, squinting past Fox at Gash Tuttle’s roll until one eye was a button and the other a buttonhole. “Twenty-five – thirty – thirty-five – as much as forty dollars. That’s how game I am.”

      Avarice gnawed at the taproots of Gash Tuttle’s being, but caution raised a warning hand. Fifteen was half of what he had and thirty was all. Besides, why risk all on the first wager, even though there was no real risk? A person so impulsively sportive as this victim would make a second bet doubtlessly. He ignored the stealthy little kick his principal accomplice dealt him on the shin. “I’ll make it fur fifteen,” he said, licking his lips.

      “If that’s as fur as you kin go, all right,” said the slit-eyed man, promptly posting his money in the outstretched hand of the barkeeper, who in the same motion took over a like amount from the slightly trembling fingers of the challenger.

      Squint-eye picked up the dice cup and rattled its occupants.

      “Come on now!” he bantered Gash Tuttle. “Whut’ll they add up, tops and bottoms?”

      “Twenty-one!” said Mr. Tuttle.

      “Out they come, then!”

      And out they did come, dancing together, tumbling and somersaulting, and finally halting – a deuce, a trey and a four.

      “Three and two is five and four is nine,” Gash Tuttle read off the pips. “Now turn ’em over!” he bade Fox. “That’s your job – turn ’em over!” He was all tremulous and quivery inside.

      In silence Fox drew the nearest die toward him and slowly capsized it. “Four,” he announced.

      He flipped the deuce end for end, revealing its bottom: “Five!”

      He reached for the remaining die – the four-spot. Dragging it toward him, his large fingers encompassed it for one fleeting instance, hiding it from view entirely; then he raised his hand: “Six!”

      “Makin’ twenty-one in all,” stuttered Gash Tuttle. He reached for the stakes.

      “Nix on that quick stuff!” yelled his opponent, and dashed his hand aside. “The tops come to nine and the bottoms to fifteen – that’s twenty-four, the way I figger. You lose!” He pouched the money gleefully.

      Stunned, Gash Tuttle contemplated the upturned facets of the three dice. It was true – it was all too true! Consternation, or a fine imitation of that emotion, filled the countenances of Flem and of Fox.

      “That’s the first time I ever seen that happen,” Fox whispered in the loser’s ear. “Bet him again – bet high – and git it all back. That’s the ticket!”

      Mr. Tuttle shook his head miserably, but stubbornly. For this once, in the presence of crushing disaster, the divine powers of retort failed him. He didn’t speak – he couldn’t!

      “Piker money! Piker money!” chanted the winner. “Still, ever’ little bit helps – eh, boys?”

      And then and there, before Gash Tuttle’s bulging and horrified eyes, he split up the winnings in the proportion of five for Flem and five for Fox and five for himself. Of a sudden the loser was shouldered out of the group. He looked not into friendly faces, but at contemptuous backs and heaving shoulders. The need for play acting being over, the play actors took their ease and divided their pay. The mask was off. Treachery stood naked and unashamed.

      Reaching blindly for his valise, Gash Tuttle stumbled for the door, a load lying on his daunted spirit as heavy as a stone. Flem hailed him.

      “Say, hold on!” He spoke kindly. “Ain’t that your quarter yonder?”

      He pointed to a coin visible against the flat glass cover of the cigar case.

      “Sure it is – it’s yourn. I seen you leave it there when I give you the change out of that dollar and purposed to tell you ’bout it at the time, but it slipped my mind. Go on and pick it up – it’s yourn. You’re welcome to it if you take it now!”

      Automatically Gash Tuttle reached for the quarter – small salvage from a great and overwhelming loss. His nails scraped the glass, touching only glass. The quarter was cunningly glued to its underside. Surely this place was full of pitfalls. A guffawed chorus of derision rudely smote his burning ears.

      “On your way, sucker! On your way!” gibed the perfidious Fox, swinging about with his elbows braced against the bar and a five-dollar bill held with a touch of cruel jauntiness between two fingers.

      “Whut you got in the gripsack – hay samples or punkins?” jeered the exultant Slit-Eye.

      “Yes; whut is the valise fur?” came Flem’s parting taunt.

      Under their goadings his spirit rallied.

      “Cat’s fur, to make kittens’ britches!” he said. Then, as a final shot: “You fellers needn’t think you’re so derned smart – I know jest exactly how you done it!”

      He left them to chew on that. The parting honours were his, he felt, but the spoils of war – alas! – remained in the camp of the enemy. Scarcely twenty minutes at the outside had elapsed since his advent into city life, and already one-half of the hoarded capital he had meant should sustain him for a whole gala week was irretrievably gone, leaving behind an emptiness, a void as it were, which ached like the socket of a newly drawn tooth.

      Vague, formless thoughts of reprisal, of vengeance exacted an hundredfold when opportunity should fitly offer, flitted through his numbed brain. Meantime though adventure beckoned; half a mile away or less a Great White Way and a street fair awaited his coming. That saffron flare against the sky yonder was an invitation and a promise. Sighing, he shifted his valise from one hand to the other.

      The Belt Line car, returning stationward, bore him with small loss of time straightway to the very centre of excitement; to where bunting waved on store fronts and flag standards swayed from trolley poles, converting the County Square into a Court of Honour, and a myriad lights glowed golden russet through the haze of dust kicked up by the hurrying feet of merrymaking thousands. Barkers barked and brass bands brayed; strange cries of man and beast arose, and crowds eddied to and fro like windblown leaves in a gusty November. And all was gaiety and abandon. From the confusion certain

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