He wore city clothes, and a white shirt with a fine diamond in the front of it, while there was a keen intentness behind the half-ironical smile in his somewhat colorless face.  The whiteness of his long nervous fingers and the quickness of his gestures would also have stamped his as a being of different order from the slowly-spoken prairie farmers, while the slenderness of the little pile of coins in front of him testified that his endeavors to tempt them to speculation on games of chance had met with no very marked success as yet.  Gambling for stakes of moment is not a popular amusement in that country; where the soil demands his best from every man in return; for the scanty dollars it yields him, but the gamester had chosen his time well, and the men who had borne the dreary solitude of winter in outlying farms, and now only saw another adverse season opening before them, were for once in the mood to clutch at any excitement that would relieve the monotony of their toilsome lives.

A few were betting small sums with an apparent lack of interest which did not in the least deceive the dealer, and when he handed a few dollars out he laughed a little as he turned to the barkeeper.

“Set them up again.  I want a drink to pass the time,” he said.  “I’ll play you at anything you like to put a name to, boys, if this game don’t suit you, but you’ll have to give me the chance of making my hotel bill.  In my country I’ve seen folks livelier at a funeral.”

The glasses were handed around, but when the gambler reached out towards the silver at his side, a big, bronze-skinned rancher stopped him.

“No,” he drawled.  “We’re not sticking you for a locomotive tank, and this comes out of my treasury.  I’ll call you three dollars, and take my chances on the draw.”

“Well,” said the dealer, “that’s a little more encouraging.  Anybody wanting to make it better?”

A young lad in elaborately-embroidered deerskin with a flushed face leaned upon the table.  “Show you how we play cards in the old country,” he said.  “I’ll make it thirty—­for a beginning.”

There was a momentary silence, for the lad had staked heavily and lost of late, but one or two more bets were made.  Then the cards were turned up, and the lad smiled fatuously as he took up his winnings.

“Now I’ll let you see,” he said.  “This time we’ll make it fifty.”

He won twice more in succession, and the men closed in about the table, while, for the dealer knew when to strike, the glasses went around again, and in the growing interest nobody quite noticed who paid for the refreshment.  Then, while the dollars began to trickle in, the lad flung a bill for a hundred down.

“Go on,” he said, a trifle huskily.  “To-night you can’t beat me!”

Once more he won, and just then two men came quietly into the room.  One of them signed to the hotel keeper.

“What’s going on?  The boys seem kind of keen,” he said.