Of course others was also crowding these numbers, though not so many as you'd think, because every one said the run must be at an end, and they'd be a fool to play 'em any farther; and them that did play 'em was mostly making ten-cent bets to be on the safe side. Only Sandy and Cora kept right on showing up one Egbert Floud as a party that had much to learn about pulling off a good bazaar. It's a sad tale. Cousin Egbert had to send out twice for more cash, Cora Wales refusing to take his check on the Farmers and Merchants National for hers. She said she was afraid there would be some catch about it. I met Egbert out in the hall after the second time she'd made him send and he'd lost much of his sparkle. "I never thought it was right to strike a lady without cause," he says bitterly; "but I'd certainly hate to trust myself with that frail out in some lonely spot, like Price's Addition, where her screams couldn't be heard." "That's right," I says; "take it out on the poor woman that's trying to win a nice bungalow with big sawed corners sticking out all over it, when that cut-throat Sandy Sawtelle has win about twice as much! That ain't the light of pure reason I had the right to expect from the Bazaar King of Red Gap." "That's neither here nor there," says he with petulance. "Sandy would of been just as happy if he'd lost the whole eighteen dollars him and Buck come in here with." "Well," I warns him, "it looks to me like you'd have to apply them other drastic methods you met with in this deadfall at the San Francisco Fair--strong-arm work or medicine in the drinks of the winners, or something like that--if you want to keep a mortgage off the old home. Of course I won't crowd you for that two dollars you promised me for every one that goes out of the hall. You can have any reasonable time you want to pay that," I says. "That's neither here nor there," he says. "Luck's got to turn. The wheel ain't ever been made that could stand that strain much longer." And here Luella Stultz comes up and says Mrs. Wales wants to know how much she could bet all at once if she happened to want to. I could just see Cora having a sharp pain in the heart like a knife thrust when she thought what she would of win by betting ten dollars instead of one. Cousin Egbert answers Luella quite viciously. "Tell that dame the ceiling sets the limit now," says he; "but if that ain't lofty enough I'll have a skylight sawed into it for her." Then he goes over to watch, himself, being all ruined up by these plungers. Leonard was saying: "Now don't be rash, Pettie!" And Pettie was telling him it was his negative mind that had kept her from betting five dollars every clip, and look what that would mean to their pile!