It was Smoke’s varied play that obfuscated them.  Sometimes, consulting his note-book or engaging in long calculations, an hour elapsed without his staking a chip.  At other times he would win three limit-bets and clean up a thousand dollars and odd in five or ten minutes.  At still other times, his tactics would be to scatter single chips prodigally and amazingly over the table.  This would continue for from ten to thirty minutes of play, when, abruptly, as the ball whirled through the last few of its circles, he would play the limit on column, colour, and number, and win all three.  Once, to complete confusion in the minds of those that strove to divine his secret, he lost forty straight bets, each at the limit.  But each night, play no matter how diversely, Shorty carried home thirty-five hundred dollars for him.

“It ain’t no system,” Shorty expounded at one of their bed-going discussions.  “I follow you, an’ follow you, but they ain’t no figgerin’ it out.  You never play twice the same.  All you do is pick winners when you want to, an’ when you don’t want to, you just on purpose don’t.”

“Maybe you’re nearer right than you think, Shorty.  I’ve just got to pick losers sometimes.  It’s part of the system.”

“System—­hell!  I’ve talked with every gambler in town, an’ the last one is agreed they ain’t no such thing as system.”

“Yet I’m showing them one all the time.”

“Look here, Smoke.”  Shorty paused over the candle, in the act of blowing it out.  “I’m real irritated.  Maybe you think this is a candle.  It ain’t.  No, sir!  An’ this ain’t me neither.  I’m out on trail somewheres, in my blankets, lyin’ flat on my back with my mouth open, an’ dreamin’ all this.  That ain’t you talkin’, any more than this candle is a candle.”

“It’s funny, how I happen to be dreaming along with you then,” Smoke persisted.

“No, it ain’t.  You’re part of my dream, that’s all.  I’ve hearn many a man talk in my dreams.  I want to tell you one thing, Smoke.  I’m gettin’ mangy an’ mad.  If this here dream keeps up much more I’m goin’ to bite my veins an’ howl.”

On the sixth night of play at the Elkhorn, the limit was reduced to five dollars.

“It’s all right,” Smoke assured the game-keeper.  “I want thirty-five hundred to-night, as usual, and you only compel me to play longer.  I’ve got to pick twice as many winners, that’s all.”

“Why don’t you buck somebody else’s table?” the keeper demanded wrathfully.

“Because I like this one.”  Smoke glanced over to the roaring stove only a few feet away.  “Besides, there are no draughts here, and it is warm and comfortable.”