A game of cards was about to be started. The three men were seated round the table, and before two of them--the younger man, Jim, and the heavy-set man, the leader, Johnson--was an even distribution of chips. The third man, Glover, was smoking a short-stemmed pipe, evidently having been cut out of the play. "Jim," said Johnson, showing his perfect teeth with an unpleasant grin, "we'll hop right to this! I think my little proposition here is fair and square. Thirty dollars in money against that black horse out there. I told you where you could get a good horse, and you got one sure enough! And he's yours! But I've taken a kind of shine to him myself, and why ain't this a good way to push it over? My little gray and thirty dollars in money. What's the matter with it?" The other did not appear greatly pleased, nevertheless. Thoughtfully he riffled the cards a long moment. Then he looked up into Johnson's black eyes steadily. "Poker?" he asked, quietly. "Draw poker," replied the leader, giving his black mustache a satisfied twist. He jerked his head in the direction of the chips. "Win all, take all," he added. Jim lowered his eyes again. He was not more than a boy, this outlaw, and he had formed a strong attachment for the black horse. And because he had come to understand Pat and to appreciate him, he hated to think of the horse's serving under this bloodless man opposite. Pat's life under this man would be a life of misery. It was so with all of Johnson's horses. Either they died early, or else, as in the case of the little gray, their spirits sank under his cruelty to an ebb so low that nothing short of another horse, and one obviously capable of rendering successful protection, roused them to an interest in their own welfare. This was why the little gray, he recalled, had approached the black the first night after reaching the shack. Evidently she had recognized in him an able protector, should he care to protect her, against the brutality of her master. And so to play a game of cards, or anything else, with a view to losing possession-- "I don't hear you saying!" cut in the cold voice of the other upon his thoughts. "Ain't the stakes right?" Jim looked up. "I guess so," he said. "I'm tryin' to figure--percentages and the like." Again he relapsed into thought. He feared this man as he feared a snake. For Johnson had a grip on him in many ways, and in ways unpleasant to recall. So he knew that to refuse meant a volley of invectives that would end in his losing the horse anyway, losing him by force, and a later treatment of the animal, through sheer spite, the brutality of which he did not like to contemplate. So he did not reply; he did not dare to say yes or no. Either way, the horse was gone. For Johnson was clever with the cards, fiendishly clever, and when playing recognized no law save crookedness.