“It were a fatal mistake, an’ Bascom seen it as soon as he’d done it, for the stranger dug again an’ flashed up a thousand-dollar bill. ’Stead o’ raisin’ Winterbottom, as any other player on earth would ha’ done, he just done his fool act over again an’ called. Then he showed down four deuces an’ scooped in the pot as cool as if ’twas eight dollars instead of a little over two thousand. “Bascom sort o’ gasped, for he seen what a mistake he’d made, but Winterbottom, he realized that somethin’ had to be did quick, an’ he reached out with one hand for the money. ‘You never got them deuces honest,’ he says, pullin’ his gun, o’ course, as he spoke. He knowed it meant fight, but he wasn’t lookin’ no more than any of us for the kind of a fight that came. “McCarthy, he was quicker than chain-lightnin’, an’ reachin’ over with one hand he grabbed Winterbottom’s gun while he put the money in his pocket with the other. Then, with a queer sort o’ a twist, he wrenched the gun out o’ Winterbottom’s hand and threw it plumb through the [Illustration: “‘WITH ONE HAND HE GRABBED WINTERBOTTOM’S GUN WHILE HE PUT THE MONEY IN HIS POCKET WITH THE OTHER.’”] window. We was all standin’ ready to see that Winterbottom had fair play, not considerin’ it etiquette to interfere unless he should get the worst of it, but, Lord bless you, he hadn’t no show at all. The stranger he just rose out of his chair an’ give a leap like a buckin’ bronco clean over the table. He come down with both heels on Winterbottom’s chest, an’ Winterbottom was out of it. Blaisdell an’ Bascom both drawed on the instant, but ’twa’n’t no use. That stranger was all over the room at once, swattin’ Bascom behind the ear with his fist an’ kickin’ Blaisdell under the chin at the same time. I didn’t think it was worth while to take a hand myself, seein’ how things was goin’, an’ bein’ some in years, so I stepped behind the bar an’ waited. “Well, them three men tried for a minit or so to get up, but they couldn’t. McCarthy was on top o’ the whole of ’em as fast as they moved, an’ he had ’em all whipped in less time than it takes to tell it. I heerd afterward that he’d lived in Paris some, an’ had learned some outrageous foreign way o’ boxin’ with his feet that no Christian c’d ever stand up against. They all give in after a little, an’ I didn’t blame ’em, havin’ seen for myself what the stranger c’d do. “Well, that was the end of it. The stranger he walked out after the scrimmage was over, lookin’ as cool as ever. He looked back when he got to the door an’ says, ‘Good night. See you again.’ But we never did. He left town the next mornin’ on an early boat. I’ve often thought, though, that it were a merciful dispensation that he didn’t know enough poker to raise instead o’ callin’.” XVII AN EXTRA ACE