“That’s right,” I says; “take it out on the poor woman that’s trying to win a nice bungalow with big sawed corners sticking out all over it, when that cut-throat Sandy Sawtelle has win about twice as much!  That ain’t the light of pure reason I had the right to expect from the Bazaar King of Red Gap.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” says he with petulance.  “Sandy would of been just as happy if he’d lost the whole eighteen dollars him and Buck come in here with.”

“Well,” I warns him, “it looks to me like you’d have to apply them other drastic methods you met with in this deadfall at the San Francisco Fair—­strong-arm work or medicine in the drinks of the winners, or something like that—­if you want to keep a mortgage off the old home.  Of course I won’t crowd you for that two dollars you promised me for every one that goes out of the hall.  You can have any reasonable time you want to pay that,” I says.

“That’s neither here nor there,” he says.  “Luck’s got to turn.  The wheel ain’t ever been made that could stand that strain much longer.”

And here Luella Stultz comes up and says Mrs. Wales wants to know how much she could bet all at once if she happened to want to.  I could just see Cora having a sharp pain in the heart like a knife thrust when she thought what she would of win by betting ten dollars instead of one.  Cousin Egbert answers Luella quite viciously.

“Tell that dame the ceiling sets the limit now,” says he; “but if that ain’t lofty enough I’ll have a skylight sawed into it for her.”

Then he goes over to watch, himself, being all ruined up by these plungers.  Leonard was saying:  “Now don’t be rash, Pettie!” And Pettie was telling him it was his negative mind that had kept her from betting five dollars every clip, and look what that would mean to their pile!

Cousin Egbert give ’em one look and says, right out loud, Leonard Wales is the biggest ham that was ever smoked, and he’d like to meet him, man to man, outside; then he goes off muttering that he can be pushed so far, but in the excitement of the play no one pays the least attention to him.  A little later I see him all alone out in the hall again.  He was scrunched painfully up in a chair till he looked just like this here French metal statue called Lee Penser, which in our language means “The Thinker.”  I let him think, not having the heart to prong him again so quick.

And the game goes merrily on, with Sandy collecting steadily on his hunch and Cora Wales telling her husband the truth about himself every time one of these three numbers didn’t win; she exposed some very distressing facts about his nature the time she put five apiece on the three numbers and the single-o come up.  It was a mad life, that last hour, with a lot of other enraged ladies round the layout, some being mad because they hadn’t had money to play the hunch with, and others because they hadn’t had the nerve.