nd that's a fact. He ain't a bad
guy, Old Man Curry ain't. He stakes the hustlers every once in a
while."

"Well," said Goldmark insinuatingly, "if he should be such a sucker
as to stake you, don't forget you was on my pay roll _first_; that's
all I ask."

"Aw, whadda you take me for?" growled Squeaking Henry, virtuously
indignant at the barest hint of duplicity. "I ain't that kind of a
guy."

Since the tout lives by his wits and his tongue, he is never without
a hard-luck story--a dependable one, tried, but seldom, if ever,
true. He circles human nature, searching for the weak point and,
having found it, delivers the attack. Squeaking Henry knew the armour
plate to be thinnest on man's sympathetic side, and the hard-luck
story which he told Old Man Curry would have melted the heart of a
golf club handicapper. The story was overworked and threadbare in
spots, but it brought an immediate result.

"And that's how I'm fixed," whined Squeaking Henry in conclusion. "I
think I can rustle the eats all right enough--one meal a day
anyway--and if I just had a place to sleep----" He paused and
regarded Old Man Curry expectantly.

"Come in, son," said the patriarch. A wiser man than Squeaking Henry
might have found Curry's manner almost too friendly. "Come in.
There's a spare cot here and you're welcome to it. Mose, my little
nigger, sleeps here too, but I reckon you won't mind him. He's
clean."

Strange to say, it was Jockey Moseby Jones who minded. He minded very
much, in plain English, waylaying Old Man Curry as he made the
rounds of the stalls that night, lantern in hand.

"This yer Squawkin' Henry, boss, he's a no-good hound. He's no good
a-a-atall. They ketched him at Butte last year ringin' in hawss dice
on 'e crap game 'mong friends an' 'ey jus' nachelly sunk his floatin'
ribs an' kicked him out on his haid. Thass all they done to him,
Mist' Curry. Betteh watch him clost, else he'll steal 'em gol'
fillin's outen yo' teeth!"

"You know him, do you, Mose?" asked Old Man Curry.

"Do I knows him!" ejaculated the little negro. "I knows him well
'nough to wish yo' hadn't 'vited him to do his floppin' in yo'
tack-room!"

"Ah-hah!" said Old Man Curry reflectively. "Mose, I reckon you never
heard what Job said?"

Jockey Moseby Jones heaved a deep sigh.

"Heah it comes again!" he murmured. "No, boss; he said such a many
things I kain't seem to keep track of 'em all. Whut he say now?"

"Something about the wise be