“You say so!” Kelson observed, before he knew what he was saying.  “And yet you have just got engaged to one.  But you’ve got a bad attack of the pip this morning, you have had enough of it here—­you want to get another post.”

The girl ceased doing her hair and eyed him in amazement.  “Well!” she said.  “Of all the queer men I’ve ever met you are the queerest.  Are you a seer?”

“No!” Hamar observed, suddenly joining in.  “He’s only very hungry, miss.  Hungry body and soul! hungry all over.  And so are we.”

“Well, then, go into the room over there,” the girl cried, pointing in the direction of a half-open door, “and breakfast will be brought you in half a jiffy.”

“Who’s that playing cards?” Curtis asked.

“How do you know any one is playing cards?” the girl queried with an incredulous stare.  “You can’t see through walls, can you?”

“No! and I’m hanged if I can explain,” Curtis said, “I seem to hear them.  There are two—­one is called Arnold, and the other Lemon, or some such name, and they are rehearsing certain card tricks they mean to play to-night.”

“That’s right,” the girl said, “two men named Arnold and Lemon are here.  They were playing all last night with two of the clerks in Willows Bank, in Sacramento Street, and they cleared them out of every cent.  You knew it!”

“No!  I didn’t,” Curtis growled, “I don’t lie for fun, and I’m just as much in a fog, as to how I know, as you are.  Let’s have breakfast now, and we’ll look up these two gents afterwards, if they haven’t gone.”

“Your friend’s a brute, I don’t like him,” the girl whispered to Kelson.  “Let him lose all he’s got—­you stay out here.”

“Nothing I should like better,” Kelson said, “it’s a bargain!”

The breakfast was so good that they lingered long over it, and the bar-room had a fair sprinkling of people when they re-entered it.  Leaving Kelson to chat with the girl, Hamar and Curtis, obeying her directions, found their way to a small parlour in the rear of the building, where two men were lolling over a card table, smoking and drinking, and reading aloud extracts from a pink sporting paper.

“It’s a funny thing,” one of them exclaimed, “we can’t be allowed to sit here in peace—­when there’s so much spare space in the house.”

“We beg your pardon for intruding,” Curtis said, “but my friend and I came in here for a quiet game of cards.  We’re farmers down Missouri way, and don’t often get the chance to run up to town.”

“Farmers, are you!” the man who had not yet spoken said, eyeing them both closely.  “You don’t look it.  My friend Lemon, here, and I were also wanting to have a game—­would you care to join us?”

“By all means,” Curtis at once exclaimed.  “What do you play?”

“Poker!” the man said, “Nap!  Don!  But I’ll show you something first, which, being fresh from the country, you’ve probably never seen before, though they do tell me people in Missouri are mighty cute.”  He then proceeded to show them what he called the Bull and Buffalo trick, the secret of which he offered to sell them for ten dollars.