lle bank, on a mortgage, and there
they went and sold the mortgage to Lanpher of the 88 and Luke Tweezy.
And there's the rub, Racey. The bank would 'a' renewed all right, but
you can put down a bet and go the limit that Lanpher and Tweezy won't.
I done asked 'em."

"Five thousand dollars is a lot of money," said Racey, soberly. He had
been thinking that the mortgage would not have been above two thousand
at the outside. But five thousand! What in Sam Hill had old Dale
done with the money? In the next breath Dale answered the unspoken
question.

"I needed the money," he said in a low voice, his eyes lowered,
"and--and I had bad luck with it."

"Yeah, I know, the cattle dying and all."

"Cattle! What cattle?" Mr. Dale stared blankly at Racey. "Oh, them!
Hell, they didn't have nothin' to do with it, them cattle didn't. I'd
worked out a system, Racey--a system to beat roulette, and I was shore
it was all right. By Gawd, it was all right! They was nothin' wrong
with that system. But I had bad luck. I had most awful bad luck."

"And the system, I take it, didn't work?"

"It didn't--against my bad luck."

Mr. Dale again dropped his eyes, and Racey stared down at the
hump-shouldered old figure with something akin to pity in his gaze.
Certainly he was sorry for him. He was not in the least scornful
despite the fact that it did not seem possible that any sensible man
could be such a fool. A system--a system to beat roulette! And bad
luck! The drably ancient and moth-eaten story with which every
unsuccessful gambler seeks to establish an alibi.

"Whose wheel was it?" said Racey.

"Lacey's at Marysville."

"In the back room of the Sweet Dreams, huh? An' there's nothing
crooked about Lacey's wheel, either. It's as square as Lacey himself."

"Lacey's wasn't the only wheel. They was McFluke's, too."

So McFluke had a wheel, had he? This was news to Racey Dawson.

"How long has McFluke been runnin' a wheel?" inquired Racey.

"Quite a while," was the vague reply.

"A year?"

"Maybe longer. I dunno."

"Funny it never got round."

"It was a private wheel. Only for his friends. Nothin' public about
it."

"Who used to play it besides you?" persisted Racey, hanging to his
subject like a bull-pup to a tramp's trousers.

Mr. Dale wrinkled his forehead. "Besides me? Lessee now. They were Doc
Coffin, Nebraska Jones, Honey Hoke, and Punch-the-breeze Thompson."

"Nobody else?"

"Aw, Galloway and Norton and that bunch,