s
saying it was entirely his fault that they hadn't already got their neat
little home; but she would have it before she left the place or know the
reason why.

It just did seem as if them three numbers had been resting while Sandy
was away talking to me. They begin to show up again the minute he
resumed his bets, and Cora was crowding onto the same with a rising
temperature. Yes, sir, it seemed downright uncanny or miraculous the way
one or the other of 'em showed up, with Sandy saying it was a shame to
take the money, and Cora saying it was a shame she had to bet on all
three numbers and get paid only on one.

Of course others was also crowding these numbers, though not so many as
you'd think, because every one said the run must be at an end, and
they'd be a fool to play 'em any farther; and them that did play 'em was
mostly making ten-cent bets to be on the safe side. Only Sandy and Cora
kept right on showing up one Egbert Floud as a party that had much to
learn about pulling off a good bazaar.

It's a sad tale. Cousin Egbert had to send out twice for more cash, Cora
Wales refusing to take his check on the Farmers and Merchants National
for hers. She said she was afraid there would be some catch about it. I
met Egbert out in the hall after the second time she'd made him send and
he'd lost much of his sparkle.

"I never thought it was right to strike a lady without cause," he says
bitterly; "but I'd certainly hate to trust myself with that frail out in
some lonely spot, like Price's Addition, where her screams couldn't be
heard."

"That's right," I says; "take it out on the poor woman that's trying to
win a nice bungalow with big sawed corners sticking out all over it,
when that cut-throat Sandy Sawtelle has win about twice as much! That
ain't the light of pure reason I had the right to expect from the Bazaar
King of Red Gap."

"That's neither here nor there," says he with petulance. "Sandy would
of been just as happy if he'd lost the whole eighteen dollars him and
Buck come in here with."

"Well," I warns him, "it looks to me like you'd have to apply them other
drastic methods you met with in this deadfall at the San Francisco
Fair--strong-arm work or medicine in the drinks of the winners, or
something like that--if you want to keep a mortgage off the old home. Of
course I won't crowd you for that two dollars you promised me for every
one that goes out of the hall. You can have any reasonable time you want