“We all looked at one another in silence for a good while. My blood ran cold at the idea of riding out alone into that pack of fiends, but I realized that our only chance was for somebody to go, and I knew life was as sweet to the others as it was to me. Instinctively we began first talking about the way the man who should go should manœuvre to best advantage, before raising the question who should be the man. It took only a few minutes, though, for the scout to give his advice, which was for one to ride out, waving a white handkerchief. He was to keep to the eastward and ride as far as he dared toward the Indians, looking sharply for the weakest point in their line toward his right. He should then make a dash and ride as hard as possible until it was all over, firing as often as he could. Then we had to decide who should go, and I supposed, of course, that we would draw lots, but one of the men spoke up unexpectedly: “‘Whoever goes,’ he said, ‘doesn’t want to start for some hours. The scout says just after daybreak is the best time. What is the matter with settling this thing with poker? We can play freeze-out, and three games will settle it, the winner dropping out each time.’ “The proposition caught me. You know I used to pride myself on my poker. After a little hesitation the others agreed. The man who proposed it had the cards, and we counted out six hundred coffee beans for chips and began playing on a blanket folded and laid on the ground. You would think the details of a game like that would fix themselves in the memory, so that I would be able to tell you every hand I held and every bet I made, wouldn’t you? Well, I can’t. In fact, I can’t tell anything about the first game excepting that I was the first man to lose all his chips. I had played often enough for what I thought were high stakes, but the thought that I was playing for my life rattled me completely, and I really believe I bet at random. Whatever I did I lost, and the man who had proposed the game won out. He was shot in a gambling house three months later--had an extra ace in his sleeve, I believe, or something like that. “The next freeze-out, between three of us, was a comparatively short one. It did not take more than twenty minutes for the scout to gather in all the chips, but short as it was, I managed to get myself together a little, though I was still full of the thought of the value of the stakes--a thing which, I have noticed, always interferes with my play. When I consider the value of a chip it always influences my betting one way or the other, even though I try not to allow it to do so, and in this case I said to myself that each bean represented the one hundred and fiftieth part of my life. In other words, I was gambling away months and years instead of money.