"So it was that this Indian mother stood leaning back wearily against the wall, half drunk and dazed with smoke and heat, when all at once the Indian who lived with her said to her in Indian: 'Put in the baby for a week. Then pay-day will come.' It was done. The baby was handed over. That is what civilization has done for the Indian. Its virtues escapes him; its vices inoculate him." One of these vices is gambling. The Indian is kept poor all the year round and plucked of every pinfeather. That is the principal reason why he steals, not only to reimburse himself for loss, but also to avenge himself upon the white man, who he knows well enough has constantly robbed him. Gambling, as witnessed in the Indian camp at night, is a very different affair from the cache. The tom-tom notifies all that the bouts with fortune are about to begin. During the game the music is steadily kept up. In the intervals between the games the players all sing. Crowds surround the camp. When a man loses heavily the whole camp knows it in a few minutes, and not infrequently the wife rushes in and puts a stop to the stake by driving her chief away. Gambling is the great winter game. It is often played from morning till night, and right along all night long. Cheating and trickery of every sort are practiced. "Lizwin" or "mescal" are the two drinks made by the Indians themselves, one from corn and the other from the "maguay" plant. The plains Indians drink whisky. To gamble is to drink, and to drink is to lose. Gambling is the hardest work that you can persuade an Indian to do, unless threatened by starvation. Different tribes gamble differently. The Comanches, undoubtedly, have by far the most exciting and fascinating gambling games. The Comanche puzzles, tricks and problems are also decidedly superior to those of any other nation. The gambling bone is used by the Comanches. The leader of the game holds it up before the eyes of all, so that all can see it; he then closes his two hands over it, and manipulates it so dexterously in his fingers that it is simply impossible to tell which hand the bone is in. In a moment he suddenly flings each closed hand on either side of him down into the outreaching hand of the player next to him. The game commences at this point. The whole line of players passes, or pretends to pass, this bone on from one to another, until at last every hand is waving. All this time the eyes along the opposite line of gamblers are eagerly watching each shift and movement of the hands, in hopes of discovering the white flash of the bone. At last some one descries the hand that holds the bone, or thinks so. He points out and calls out for his side. The hand must instantly be thrown up. If it is right, the watching side scores a point and takes the bone. The sides change off in this way until the game is won. The full score is twenty-one points. The excitement produced by this game is at times simply indescribable.