choose to play with you, this once. Sixty dollars on
this card." He was fumbling his money on the table.

"You ain't playin'," repeated the dealer. "You're a butt-in. You
ain't in this game at all."

"Sure he's in," said the crowd.

"Sure he's in," repeated the big fellow who had interfered before.
"He's a stranger here, but you play with him or you don't play no more
in this joint, see?"

"That's hittin' me twice in the same spot, an' hittin' me hard," whined
the dealer, "but you got it on me. Turn 'er up."

The card was red.

Dave looked at it stupidly. It was a moment or two before he realized
that his money was gone. Then, regardless of those about, he rushed
through the crowd, flinging by-standers right and left, and plunged
into the night.

He walked down a street until it lost itself on the prairie; then he
followed a prairie trail far into the country. The air was cold and a
few drops of rain were flying in it, but he was unconscious of the
weather. He was in a rage, through and through. More than once his
hand went to his revolver, and he half turned on his heel to retrace
his steps, but his better judgment led him on to fight it out with
himself. Slop-eye was now a dream, a memory, gone--gone. Everything
was gone; only his revolver and a few cents remained. He gripped the
revolver again. With that he was supreme. No man in all that town of
men, schooled in the ways of the West, was more than his equal while
that grip lay in his palm. At the point of that muzzle he could demand
his money back--and get it.

Then he laughed. Hollow and empty it sounded in the night air, but it
was a laugh, and it saved his spirit. "Why, you fool," he chuckled.
"You came to town for to learn somethin', didn't you? Well, you're
learnin'. Sixty dollars a throw. Education comes high, don't it? But
you shouldn't kick. He didn't coax you in, an' gave you every chance
to back away. You butted in and got stung. Perhaps you've learned
somethin' worth sixty dollars."

With these more philosophical thoughts he turned townward again, and as
he tramped along his light heartedness re-asserted itself. His sense
of fairness made him feel that he had no grievance against the card
sharper, and in his innocence of the ways of the game it never occurred
to him that the friendly stranger who had showed him how to play it,
and the big fellow who insisted on his being "in", and the other player
who had won a hundre