Wilson bet a white chip. Long Mike chipped. Cosgrove shoved in his pile, having caught a third ace. The others all stayed, and Wilson showed three tens. Thorp had a small straight, and Long Mike had a king-high flush. It was quick action and called for another jack. As three of the conspirators bought more chips, they consoled themselves as well as they could with the thought that sheer luck like that seldom comes to one player frequently in one sitting. This time Baxter opened it under the guns. Wilson passed. Hunnewell raised it one dollar on a small straight. Long Mike stayed on a pair of deuces. Cosgrove and Thorp laid down and Baxter saw the raise, having kings up. In the draw Long Mike caught the three aces Cosgrove had had the deal before. After Baxter and Hunnewell had bought again, there was fifty-five dollars on the table, of which over thirty was in Long Mike’s pile. In the next deal he caught nothing and promptly went to sleep again. They woke him up in time to look at his next hand, and that failed also to interest him. In the following deal, however, he caught three sevens. It had been his ante, and the money had been put up out of his pile without waking him, but even under existing circumstances no one cared to go so far as to play his hand for him, the more especially as they all had pretty good cards and saw his raise when he made it two dollars to play. Catching the fourth seven in the draw, he made good on two raises that had been made before it came to him, and threw in five dollars more. Thorp and Wilson both called for their piles, one having a flush and the other a full. Just what might have happened in a few hands more it is impossible to say, for the whistle of the _Prairie Belle_ startled the crowd as she steamed up to the levee, and Long Mike staggered to his feet, stuffing his winnings in his pockets as he rose. Neither whiskey nor poker was potent to hold him when there was business to be done. As he stepped unsteadily into the open air, Sam heard him asking of the wide, wide world, “Where is that man Gallagher?” V STUMPY’S DILEMMA The only thing stirring on the levee at Brownsville on Sunday morning, usually, was a small dog belonging to Stumpy. It was of record that when Stumpy arrived at Brownsville with his dog Peter, bringing their entire earthly possessions wrapped in a large red handkerchief, Peter came across the gangplank first, being in hot pursuit of a rat. The rat escaped, finding its way into a crevice near the edge of the water, and the most of Peter’s spare time for the two years that had elapsed since then had been spent near that crevice. No sign of the rat had ever been discovered, but Peter’s faith was abiding.