a drink! But that lemon-pop didn't agree with your
stomach--now did it, Charlie?"

"I tell you I only had two glasses of beer!" cried Charlie, goaded, "and
I can prove it by Johnny Challan."

Orde turned to survey the pink-cheeked, embarrassed young boy thus
designated.

"How many glasses did Johnny Challan have?" he inquired.

"He didn't drink none to speak of," spoke up the boy.

"Then why this joyless demeanour?" begged Orde.

Charlie grumbled, fiercely inarticulate; but Johnny Challan interposed
with a chuckle of enjoyment.

"He got 'bunked.'"

"Tell us!" cried Orde delightedly.

"It was down at McNeill's place," explained Johnny Challan; encouraged
by the interest of his audience. "They was a couple of sports there who
throwed out three cards on the table and bet you couldn't pick the jack.
They showed you where the jack was before they throwed, and it surely
looked like a picnic, but it wasn't."

"Three-card monte," said Newmark.

"How much?" asked Simms.

"About fifty dollars," replied the boy.

Orde turned on the disgruntled cook.

"And you had fifty in your turkey, camping with this outfit of hard
citizens!" he cried. "You ought to lose it."

Johnny Challan was explaining to his companions exactly how the game was
played.

"It's a case of keep your eye on the card, I should think," said big Tim
Nolan. "If you got a quick enough eye to see him flip the card around,
you ought to be able to pick her."

"That's what this sport said," agreed Challan. "'Your eye agin my hand,'
says he."

"Well, I'd like to take a try at her," mused Tim.

But at this point Newmark broke into the discussion. "Have you a pack of
cards?" he asked in his dry, incisive manner.

Somebody rummaged in a turkey and produced the remains of an old deck.

"I don't believe this is a full deck," said he, "and I think they's part
of two decks in it."

"I only want three," assured Newmark, reaching his hand for the pack.

The men crowded around close, those in front squatting, those behind
looking over their shoulders.

Newmark cleared a cracker-box of drying socks and drew it to him.

"These three are the cards," he said, speaking rapidly. "There is the
jack of hearts. I pass my hands--so. Pick the jack, one of you," he
challenged, leaning back from the cracker-box on which lay the three
cards, back up. "Any of you," he urged. "You, North."

Thus directly singled out, the foreman leaned forward and rather
hesitatin