Yet the sheriff’s eyes rested scarce an instant before they went traveling again, for he wanted to show as yet no special interest in the object of his suspicions. The gathering was a motley one, picturesque in its diversity. For here had drifted not only the stranded derelicts of a frontier civilization, but selected types of all the turbid elements that go to make up its success. Mexican, millionaire, and miner brushed shoulders at the roulette-wheel. Chinaman and cow-puncher, Papago and plainsman, tourist and tailor, bucked the tiger side by side with a democracy found nowhere else in the world. The click of the wheel, the monotonous call of the croupier, the murmur of many voices in alien tongues, and the high-pitched jarring note of boisterous laughter, were all merged in a medley of confusion as picturesque as the scene itself. “Business not anyways slack at the Nugget,” ventured Collins, to the bartender. “No, I don’t know as ’tis. Nearly always somethin’ doing in little old Epitaph,” answered the public quencher of thirsts, polishing the glass top of the bar with a cloth. “Playing with the lid off back there, ain’t they?” The sheriff’s nod indicated the distant faro-table. “That’s right, I guess. Only blue chips go.” “It’s Wolf Leroy—that Mexican-looking fellow there,” Hawkes explained in a whisper. “A bad man with the gun, they say, too. Well, him and York Neil and Scotty Dailey blew in last night from their mine, up at Saguache. Gave it out he was going to break the bank, Leroy did. Backing that opinion usually comes high, but Leroy is about two thousand to the good, they say.” “Scotty Dailey? Don’t think I know him.” “That shorthorn in chaps and a yellow bandanna is the gentleman; him that’s playing the wheel so constant. You don’t miss no world-beater when you don’t know Scotty. He’s Leroy’s Man Friday. Understand they’ve struck it rich. Anyway, they’re hitting high places while the mazuma lasts.” “I can’t seem to locate their mine. What’s its brand?” “The Dalriada. Some other guy is in with them; fellow by the name of Hardman, if I recollect; just bought out a livery barn in town here.” “Queer thing, luck; strikes about as unexpected as lightning. Have another, Del?” “Don’t care if I do, Val. It always makes me thirsty to see people I like. Anything new up Tucson way?” The band had fallen on “Manzanilla,” and was rending it with variations when Collins circled round to the wheel and began playing the red. He took a place beside the bow-legged vaquero with the yellow bandanna knotted loosely round his throat. For five minutes the cow-puncher attended strictly to his bets. Then he cursed softly, and asked Collins to exchange places with him. “This place is my hoodoo. I can’t win—” The sentence died in the man’s throat, became an inarticulate gurgle of dismay.