Sandy said nothing, did not move. As the play began he turned and looked at the "killer" who had been named "Butch," after he had shot two heads of families that had preempted land on the range that Brady claimed as part of his holding. Whatever the justice of that claim, it was generally understood that Butch had killed in cold blood, Brady's political pull smothering prosecution and inquiry. Butch had a hawkish nose and an outcurving chin. He was practically bald. Reddish eyebrows straggled sparsely above pale blue eyes, the color of cheap graniteware. His lips were thin and pallid, making a hard line of his mouth. He packed a gun, well back of him, as he sat at the game. Meeting Sandy's lightly passing gaze, Butch sent out a puff of smoke from his half-finished cigar. The pale eyes pointed the action, it might have been a challenge, even a covert insult. Sandy ignored it, devoting his attention to the case-keeper. The jacks came out early, three of them losing, showing second on the turn. A dozen bets went down on the fourth jack to win. Sandy placed the luck-piece on the card, reached for a "copper" marker, and played it to lose. "That's a luck-piece, Hahn," he said. "If it loses, I'll take it up." Hahn gave him an eye-flick of acknowledgment. He was used to mascots. Sandy watched the play until at last the jack slid off to rest by the side of the case, leaving the winning card, a nine, exposed. Sandy alone had won. The luck-piece had proved its merit. In twenty minutes Sam borrowed a stack from Sandy's steadily accumulating winnings and departed for the craps table. He wanted quicker action than faro gave him. Luck flirted with him, never entirely deserting him. And Sandy won until the news of his luck spread through the room. The gamblers began to get the hunch that the Three Star man was going to break the bank. Not all at the faro layout attempted to follow his bets. Plimsoll's roll had never yet been very badly crimped. With the peculiar paradox of their kind, while they told each other that Plimsoll's game was square, they held the secret conviction that Hahn's fingers would manipulate the case in an emergency so that the house would win. And they waited feverishly for the time to come when such a show-down would arrive. Sandy did not have many chips in front of him, but there were five small oblongs of blue, markers representing five hundred dollars apiece. Hahn laid the fingers of his right hand lightly across the top of the case, the fingers of his left hand curled about it. It had come down to the last turn of the deal again. Every player and onlooker knew what the three cards were--a queen, a five and a deuce. The checking-board showed that the queen had lost twice and won once, the five had won three times and the deuce had won twice and lost once. Most of the players shifted their bets accordingly, the queen to win, the five and deuce to lose. Hahn still waited. "Goin' to call th' turn?"