ice! You might as well
have a share in all this here money and wealth, and you would be sharin'
it if you had the nerve of my young friend."

The one-eyed man turned the dice out and lost again. There was a little
movement of the crowd, a little audible intaking of breath, a little
crowding forward, like that of cattle massed in a pen.

The suckers never did seem to get it through their heads, thought the
doctor as he beheld their dumb excitement with growing contempt, that
the one-eyed man switched the dice on them just as often as he
pleased between the table and the box, by a trick which was his one
accomplishment and sole capital. Without that deftness of hand the
one-eyed man might have remained a bartender, and a very sloppy and
indifferent one at that; but with it he was the king-pin of the
gamblers' trust in Comanche, and his graft was the best in the town.

"There it goes, gents!" he said, shaking his long, hound-shaped head
with doleful expression of face. "The tide of luck's turned ag'in' me.
You can see that as plain as water in a pan, but they ain't one of you
got the nerve to step up and help my young friend trim me.

"You fellers know what you make me think of? Well, you make me think of
a lot of little boys with ten cents to spend on Fourth of July. You
stand around with your fingers in your mouth, afraid you'll see
somethin' you like better if you let loose of your little old dime, and
you hang on to it till the fun's all over and the ice-cream's all gone.

"But my young friend here--Now, now!" he remonstrated as the highly
excited young man took up his winnings, added them to the money which he
held in reserve in his left hand, and placed the whole amount upon the
table. "Now you're a comin' it purty strong! Go easy, young feller, and
give a old man with only one eye and a game leg a chance. But you won't
do it; I can see that in the cast of your eye; you're bound to clean me
out at one smack; that's what you're bound to do."

The one-eyed man shook the dicebox very carefully, as if mixing some
rare prescription. Then he stopped shaking and held his hand over the
mouth of the box, as if he expected the cubes might jump up and join in
his ruination while his head was turned.

"Now, look-a here!" said he, addressing them generally. "I've traveled
this wide world over ever since I was a tender child, as the man said,
and I never seen a chance like this to skin a feller slide by without
more'n one l