"Yeah's to thu gyurl thet is faih an' kind, An' yeah's to thu man who is game!" The taunt stung him back to composure again. Every gambler is a fatalist by nature; the chance was, after all, more than he had any logical right to expect under the circumstances. And Big Bart Coogan was game to the core of his calloused heart! With an admirable effort he recovered his self-control, and the hand that held the lighted match to the fresh cigar which Strang politely tendered him was as steady as a rock. "Anything to oblige a fellow sport!" he said with a fine return to his professional deference. "Have you a blank form about you, Lew?" Ballard produced one already filled out; the gambler glanced at him meaningly. "Got it all framed up, eh?" "Framed up nothing!" said the marshall, indignantly. "If you win out this business will be dropped. I think, myself, that you are in big luck to get so favorable a deal! In his place I'd have settled it in another way." "Well," said Coogan, affably, as he scrawled his name with a fountain pen at the bottom of the instrument, "after I've won out suppose you take his place." Ballard jerked his head in instantaneous acquiescence. "If you win out!" he assented, gravely. Then he summoned the bartender, who was a notary public, to take Coogan's acknowledgment of signature; the stakes were removed to a side table and the men cut for the deal, each man was given ten chips. In poker everything goes that can be made go; Coogan knew perfectly well that there would be positively no interference on the part of the spectators, no matter how open and vile his attempts to cheat his antagonist. Douglass would be left severely alone in his self-defense, and he resolved to employ every means at his command to win, and that meant play of the foulest kind. Just so long as his opponent (for whom by the way he very foolishly felt the professional's contempt of amateurism) should not detect his crooked work, he would not be interfered with by his victim's friends. He had never watched Douglass's play before, but smiled confidently at what he mistook for awkwardness when Ken clumsily shuffled the cards, the deal having fallen to him. It was dealer ante and Douglass stayed when Coogan came in. The gambler filled his hand, aces on sixes, on a three card draw. He passed the bet and Douglass bet one chip; Coogan raised it two and Douglass called. The latter had three queens and Coogan took the pot. He was quite certain of his man now; this cowpuncher was either rattled and had lost his nerve, or else he was an amateur of the rawest kind, it being evident from the fact of his drawing only two cards that he had the three queens before the draw, his other cards being a deuce and seven.