only, and not art, and who was a sheer master of reality. Also, I was
very proud of that particular piece of work. I had named it "The Last
Turn," and I believed it to be one of the best things I had ever done.

"There are no chips on the table," Sitka Charley explained. "The men are
playing with markers. That means the roof is the limit. One man play
yellow markers--maybe one yellow marker worth one thousand dollars, maybe
two thousand dollars. One man play red markers. Maybe they are worth
five hundred dollars, maybe one thousand dollars. It is a very big game.
Everybody play very high, up to the roof. How do I know? You make the
dealer with blood little bit warm in face." (I was delighted.) "The
lookout, you make him lean forward in his chair. Why he lean forward?
Why his face very much quiet? Why his eyes very much bright? Why dealer
warm with blood a little bit in the face? Why all men very quiet?--the
man with yellow markers? the man with white markers? the man with red
markers? Why nobody talk? Because very much money. Because last turn."

"How do you know it is the last turn?" I asked.

"The king is coppered, the seven is played open," he answered. "Nobody
bet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody one mind. Everybody
play king to lose, seven to win. Maybe bank lose twenty thousand
dollars, maybe bank win. Yes, that picture I understand."

"Yet you do not know the end!" I cried triumphantly. "It is the last
turn, but the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they will never
be turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who loses."

"And the men will sit there and never talk," he said, wonder and awe
growing in his face. "And the lookout will lean forward, and the blood
will be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange thing. Always
will they sit there, always; and the cards will never be turned."

"It is a picture," I said. "It is life. You have seen things like it
yourself."

He looked at me and pondered, then said, very slowly: "No, as you say,
there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is it a true
thing. I have seen it. It is life."

For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial wisdom of
the white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He nodded his head
several times, and grunted once or twice. Then he knocked the ashes from
his pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a thoughtful pause, lighted it
again.