?--they're solid silver, hammered out and engraved by hand. Those
Mexicans sure do turn out some fine work on their silver fixings!" He
felt in his pocket for a match.

"Pity I didn't let well enough alone," he went on. "I had the price of
the outfit, and ten dollars over. But then I got hoggish. I thought I
stood a good chance of making seven lucky passes straight--I did once,
and I never got over it, I guess. I was going to pinch down to ten--but
I didn't; I let her ride. And SHOT CRAPS!"

He drew the match along the stamped saddle-skirt behind the cantle,
because that gave him a chance to steal a look behind him without being
caught in the act. Good, wide hat-brims have more uses than to shield
one's face from the sun. He saw that Evadna was riding in what looked
like a sulky silence beside her friend, but he felt no compunction for
what he had done; instead he was exhilarated as with some heady wine,
and he did not want to do any thinking about it--yet. He did not even
want to be near Evadna. He faced to the front, and lighted his cigarette
while he listened to the sympathetic chorus from the boys.

"What did you do then?" asked Gene.

"Well, I'd lost the whole blamed chunk on a pair of measly aces," he
said. "I was pretty sore by that time, I'm telling you! I was down
to ten dollars, but I started right in to bring back that hundred
and sixty. Funny, but I felt exactly as if somebody had stolen that
headstall and spurs right out of my hand, and I just had to get it
back pronto. I started in with a dollar, lost it on craps--sixes, that
time--sent another one down the same trail trying to make Little Joe
come again, third went on craps, fourth I doubled on nine, lost 'em both
on craps--say, I never looked so many aces and sixes in the face in my
life! It was sure kay bueno, the luck I had that night. I got up broke,
and had to strike Riley for money to get out of town with."

So for a time he managed to avoid facing squarely this new and very
important factor which must henceforth have its place in the problem of
his life.

CHAPTER XII. "THEM DAMN SNAKE"

Three hundred yards up the river, in the shade of a huge bowlder, round
an end of which the water hurried in a green swirl that it might the
sooner lie quiet in the deep, dark pool below, Good Indian, picking his
solitary way over the loose rocks, came unexpectedly upon Baumberger,
his heavy pipe sagging a corner of his flabby mouth, while he
painstaking