l you that before you take it."

"One in five?" asked the man, looking around cautiously, leaning
forward, whispering.

"Not one in twenty," discounted the doctor. "But if it goes, it goes as
smooth as grease."

The man stood considering it, looking as grave as a Scotch capitalist.
Suddenly he jerked his head.

"I'll take it!" said he.

Over a greasy supper, in a tent away out on the edge of things, they
arranged the details of their plot against Hun Shanklin's sure thing.
What scheme the doctor had in mind he kept to himself, but he told
his co-conspirator how to carry himself, and, with six small bills
and some paper, he made up as handsome a gambler's roll as could have
been met with in all Comanche that night. Out of the middle of its
alluring girth the corner of a five-dollar note showed, and around the
outside Slavens bound a strip of the red handkerchief upon which the
little man had mopped his sweating brow. It looked bungling enough for
any sheep-herder's hoard, and fat enough to tempt old Hun Shanklin to
lead its possessor on.

After he had arranged it, the doctor pushed it across to his admiring
companion.

"No," said the little man, shaking his head; "you keep it. You may be a
crook, but I'll trust you with it. Anyhow, if you are a crook, I'm one
too, I reckon."

"Both of us, then, for tonight," said the doctor, hooking the smoked
goggles behind his ears.

CHAPTER X

HUN SHANKLIN'S COAT

Several sheep-herders, who had arrived late to dip into the vanishing
diversions of Comanche, and a few railroad men to whom pay-day had just
supplied a little more fuel to waste in its fires, were in Hun
Shanklin's tent when Dr. Slavens and his backer arrived.

Shanklin was running off about the same old line of talk, for he was
more voluble than inventive, and never varied it much. It served just as
well as a new lecture for every occasion, for the memory of suckers is
even shorter than their judgment.

Gents were invited to step up and weigh the honesty of those dice,
and gaze on the folly of an old one-eyed feller who had no more sense
than to take such long chances. If anybody doubted that he took long
chances, let that man step up and put down his money. Could he throw
twenty-seven, or couldn't he? That was the question, gents, and the
odds were five to one that he could.

"I ain't in this business for my health, gents," he declared, pouring
the dice out on his table, shaking them, and pouri