"If your cards don't add enough, you can get as many more as you ask for. But if you ask for a card and it makes you run over 21, you lose and push your money over. Say you get a king and a 9--that is 19, and you stand on that, and push your cards under your money. "When all the rest have all the cards they want, the dealer turns his over. Say he has a 10 and a 8. He draws. If he gets a card that puts him over 21, he goes broke and pays everybody. But if he gets say 18--then he pays all those who are nearer 21 than he; but all who have less than 18 lose." While Noah had been explaining, he had been playing, and lost a dollar on each of two hands. They moved on to a chuck-a-luck game. "This, you see," said Noah, "is a sort of bird cage with three overgrown dice. You put your money on any one of these six numbers. He whirls the cage and shakes up the fat dice. They fall--and if one of the three numbers which come up is yours, you win. Otherwise--ouch!" Noah had played a dollar on the 5; and a 1, 2 and a 6 came up. As they moved away Noah was shaking his head disconsolately. "Money is like a shadow that soon flees away--and you have to hoe cotton in the morning." "Don't you know," said Bob, earnestly, "that everyone of these games give the house from 6 to 30 per cent., and that you are sure to lose in the end?" "Yeah," said Noah, wearily. "You're sure to die in the end, too; but that don't keep you from goin' on tryin' every day to make a livin' and have a little fun. It's all a game, and the old man with the mowin' blade has the last call." "But," persisted Bob, "when you earn a thing and get what you earn, it is really yours, and has a value and gives a pleasure that you can't get out of money that comes any other way." "Don't you believe it," Noah shook his head lugubriously. "The easier money comes the more I enjoy it. Only it don't never come. It goes. This here gamblin' business reminds me of an old dominecker hen we used to have. That hen produced an awful lot of cackle but mighty few eggs. It is what my dad would have called the shadow without the substance. But your blamed old tractor gives me a durned lot more substance than I yearn for." They were still pushing among the jostling crowd. There were more than a thousand men in the hall--and a few women. Soiled Mexicans passed through the jostle with trays on their heads selling sandwiches and bananas. Fragments of meat and bread and banana peelings were scattered upon the sawdust floor. It was a grimy scene. And yet Bob still acknowledged the tremendous pull of it--the raw, quick action of the stuff that life and death are made of. Noah nudged Bob and nodded significantly toward the bar, where Reedy with his three friends and two or three Mexicans, including Madrigal, were drinking. "He's cookin' up something agin you," said Noah in a low tone. "Better go over and talk to him. He's gettin' full enough to spill some of it."