he said, with a cold
ring in his voice, as he straddled a box and sat down. "Wade, lemme
some money."

Wade slipped his hand into his pocket and drew forth a goodly handful of
gold, which he handed to the cowboy. Not improbably, if this large
amount had been shown earlier, before the change in the sentiment, Lem
would have looked aghast and begged for mercy. As it was, he accepted it
as if he were accustomed to borrowing that much every day. Belllounds
had rendered futile the easy-going, friendly advances of the cowboys, as
he had made it impossible to play a jolly little game for fun.

The game began, with Wade standing up, looking on. These boys did not
know what a vast store of poker knowledge lay back of Wade's inscrutable
eyes. As a boy he had learned the intricacies of poker in the country
where it originated; and as a man he had played it with piles of yellow
coins and guns on the table. His eagerness to look on here, as far as
the cowboys were concerned, was mere pretense. In Belllounds's case,
however, he had a profound interest. Rumors had drifted to him from time
to time, since his advent at White Slides, regarding Belllounds's
weakness for gambling. It might have been cowboy gossip. Wade held that
there was nothing in the West as well calculated to test a boy, to prove
his real character, as a game of poker.

Belllounds was a feverish better, an exultant winner, a poor loser. His
understanding of the game was rudimentary. With him, the strong feeling
beginning to be manifested to Wade was not the fun of matching wits and
luck with his antagonists, nor a desire to accumulate money--for his
recklessness disproved that--but the liberation of the gambling passion.
Wade recognized that when he met it. And Jack Belllounds was not in any
sense big. He was selfish and grasping in the numberless little ways
common to the game, and positive about his own rights, while doubtful of
the claims of others. His cheating was clumsy and crude. He held out
cards, hiding them in his palm; he shuffled the deck so he left aces at
the bottom, and these he would slip off to himself, and he was so blind
that he could not detect his fellow-player in tricks as transparent as
his own. Wade was amazed and disgusted. The pity he had felt for
Belllounds shifted to the old father, who believed in his son with
stubborn and unquenchable faith.

"Haven't you got something to drink?" Jack asked of his companions.

"Nope. Whar'd we git it?