“You distrusts these doctrines.  You shore won’t if you sets down hard an’ thinks.  Suppose twenty gents has made a surround an’ is huntin’ a b’ar.  Only one is goin’ to down him.  An’ in his clumsy blunderin’ the b’ar is goin’ to select his execootioner himse’f.  That’s a fact; the party who downs the b’ar, final, ain’t goin’ to pick the b’ar out; the b’ar’s goin’ to pick him out.  An’ it’s the same about wealth; one gent gets the b’ar an’ the other nineteen—­an’ they’re as cunnin’ an’ industr’ous as the lucky party—­don’t get nothing—­don’t even get a shot.  I repeats tharfore, that you-all settin’ yere this evenin’, firin’ off aimless observations, don’t know whether you’ll quit rich or not.”

At the close of his dissertation, my talkative companion puffed a cloud which seemed to hang above his venerable head in a fashion of heavy blue approval.  I paused as one impressed by the utter wisdom of the old gentleman.  Then I took another tack.

“Speaking of wealth,” I said, “tell me concerning the largest money you ever knew to be won or lost at faro—­tell me a gambling story.”

“Tell you-all a gamblin’ tale,” he repeated, and then mused as if lost in retrospection.  “If I hesitates it’s because of a multitoode of incidents from which to draw.  I’ve beheld some mighty cur’ous doin’s at the gamblin’ tables.  Once I knows a party who sinks his hopeless head on the layout an’ dies as he loses his last chip.  This don’t happen in Wolfville none.  No, I don’t say folks ain’t cashed in at farobank in that excellent hamlet an’ gone singin’ to their home above; but it ain’t heart disease.  Usual it’s guns; the same bein’ invoked by sech inadvertencies as pickin’ up some other gent’s bet.

“Tell you-all a story about gamblin’!  Now I reckons the time Faro Nell rescoos Cherokee Hall from rooin is when I sees the most dinero changed in at one play.  You can gamble that’s a thrillin’ eepisode when Faro Nell steps in between Cherokee an’ the destroyer.  It’s the gossip of the camp for days, an’ when Wolfville discusses anything for days that outfit’s plumb moved.

“This gent who crowds Cherokee to the wall performs the feat deliberate.  He organises a sort o’ campaign ag’in Cherokee; what you might term a fiscal dooel, an’ at the finish he has Cherokee corralled for his last peso.  It’s at that p’int Nell cuts in an’ redeems the sityooation a heap.  It’s all on the squar’; this invadin’ sport simply outlucks the bank.  That, an’ the egreegious limit Cherokee gives him, is what does the trick.

“In Wolfville, we-all allers recalls that sharp-set gent who comes after Cherokee with respect.  In fact he wins our encomiums before he sets in ag’in Cherokee—­before ever he gets his second drink at the Red Light bar.  He comes ramblin’ over with Old Monte from Tucson one evenin’; that’s the first glimpse we has of him.  An’ for a hour, mebby, followin’ his advent, seein’ the gen’ral herd is busy with the mail, he has the Red Light to himse’f.