an feel warm--money does. I'd sleep in
ten-dollar bills, I'd have my clothes made of them, if I could; I'd have
my house papered with them; I'd eat 'em. Oh, I know, I know about you--and
her--Diana Welldon! You've sworn off gambling, and you've kept your pledge
for near a year. Well, it's twenty years since I gambled--twenty years. I
gambled with these then." He shook the dice in the box. "I gambled
everything I had away--more than two thousand dollars--more than two
thousand dollars." He laughed a raw, mirthless laugh. "Well, you're the
greatest gambler in the West. So was I--in the East. It pulverized me at
last, when I'd nothing left--and drink, drink, drink. I gave up both one
night and came out West. I started doctoring here. I've got money, plenty
of money--medicine, mines, land got it for me. I've been lucky. Now you
come to bluff me--me! You don't know old Busby." He spat on the floor.
"I'm not to be bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I'd
talk. But to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand
dollars--yes, I'd like the sting of it again. Twos, fours,
double-sixes--the gentleman's game!" He rattled the dice and threw them
with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. "Come! You
can't have something for nothing!" he growled.

As he spoke, a change came over Rawley's face. It lost its cool
imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood out,
a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler's spirit was
alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery
abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension and the
surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he
remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the
conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was her
brother and his certain fate if the two thousand dollars were not paid in
by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's sake. He
approached the table, and his old calm returned.

"I have no money to play with," he said, quietly.

With a gasp of satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat
and drew out layers of ten, fifty, and hundred dollar bills. It was lined
with them. He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He
placed a similar pile before himself.

As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his mind,
"You have it--keep it!" but