“Señor!” An ugly droop to his smiling lips. “Ah, no, señor!” He passed the dollar over to Grant with exaggerated courtesy. Eyes all about the table, which had followed the pantomime with avid interest, now centred on the American’s face. As if on a signal the fat Chinaman at the exchange desk waddled over to shoulder his way officiously to Grant’s side. He growled something in Spanish and held out his hand. Dazedly Grant laid the suspected dollar in a creasy palm. The Chinaman flung it on the green felt with a contemptuous “Faugh!” and he pointed imperiously at Grant’s bulging pocket. “It’s a frame, pardner,” called the Arizonan. “If your money’s bogus it’s what the Chink himself handed you.” “I came in here with American money and changed it at your desk,” Grant quietly addressed the Chinaman. “See here; this is the money I either got from you or won at this table.” He brought from his pocket a brimming handful of Mexican dollars and dumped them on the cloth. Two or three of the heavy discs shone true silver; the others were clumsy counterfeits, dull and leaden. A cry, half snarling laughter, from the crowd about the table, now grown to a score: “Aha--gr-ringo!” A movement of the crowd forward to rush Grant against the wall. Then with a cougar’s spring the big Arizonan was on the solid table, feet spread wide apart, head towering above the tin light shade. He balanced a chair in one hand as the conductor of an orchestra might lift his baton. His gaunt features were split in a wide grin. Before Grant could gather his senses a big paw had him by the shoulder and was dragging him up onto the green island of refuge. “They don’t saw no whizzer off on a white man wiles ole Jed Hawkins’ boy got his health,” Grant’s companion bellowed a welcome. “I got these greasers’ number, brother!” Grant’s gaze as he rose to his feet over the heads all about encountered two interesting objects. One was Colonel Urgo, who stood alone in a far corner of the room; the colonel was smiling with rare good humour. A second was a man wrapped about with a blanket, over whose shoulder appeared the tip of a rifle; he was just coming through from the front room on a run and there were three like him following. Rurales, the somewhat informal bandit-policemen of Mexico. Just what ensued Grant never could quite piece together. He remembered seeing Hawkins wrench off a leg from his chair and send it whizzing at a central cluster of light globes in mid-ceiling. They snuffed out with a thin tinkling of glass. Then the rush. Out of the dark swirl of figures about the table’s edge a vivid spit of flame--roar of a pistol shot. Hands grappling for braced legs on the table top. “Huh” of breath expelled as Hawkins swung his chair in a wide sweep downward. A cry, “Hesus!” Oaths chirped in the voice of songbirds. A knife missing its objective and trembling rigid in the midst of the baize.