Steve squeezed his cards with both hands for a final corroborative inspection, scratched his head and rolled his eye solemnly around the festal board. "Eleven hundred dollars of my good coin in there now, and here I sit between the devil and the deep, blue sea. One thousand bucks. Much money. Ugh! One thousand days, each day of twenty-four golden hours set with twenty near-diamond minutes! Well! I sure hate to give you fellows this good gold." "Steve's got one of them things!" surmised the Stockman. "A fellow _does_ hate to lay down a bobtail straight flush when there's such a chance for action if he fills," chimed in the Eminent dealer. "It's face up, Steve. You'd just as well show us. My boy, you ought to wear a mustache," said the Judge, critically. "Your lips get pale and give you away when you try to screw your courage up. Of course, you've got a sweet, little, rosebud mouth; but you need a big, ox-horn mustache in this vocation." "Don't show it, Steve," advised the Stockman. "I judge his Honor's got one of them same things his black self. You might both fill--and you don't want to let him see how high yours is." "If I only don't fill the wrong way," said Steve. "Want to split the pot or save stakes with me, Judge?" "That would be a foolish caper. If I fill--I mean," the Judge corrected himself hastily--"I mean, I've got the money won now, unless you draw out, and that's a 52 to 1 shot." "Me, too," said the dealer. "We both got it won. But I'll save out a hundred with you, Steve. That'll pay your bills and take you home." "That'll be nine hundred to draw cards for a chance at nine thousand and action on what I got left. Faint heart never won a jackpot. Here goes nothin'!" said Steve, pushing the money in. "One from the top, when you get to me. If I bet after the draw, you all needn't call unless you're a mind to." "Got that side money and pot straight?" queried the dealer lightly. "All right?" He stretched out a long left arm and flipped the cards from the pack with a jerk of the wrist. "Cards and spades? (I'm pat, myself, of course.) Cards to you? None? Certainly. None to you, and one to you, one to you, none----" Steve's card, spinning round as it came, turned over and lay face up on the table--the three of hearts. (Laymen will please recall that, as already specified, a straight flush was, in this game, the Best.) As the dealer was sliding the next card off to replace it, Steve caught the thin glint of a red 8 on the corner. With a motion inconceivably swift he was on his feet, his left hand over the pack. "Hold on!" he cried. "Look at this!" He made a motion as if to spread out the four cards he had retained, checked himself and glared, crouching. "Sit down, Steve. Don't be a fool," said the Stockman. "You know you've no right to an exposed card, and you know he didn't go to do it."