Du Sang now looked sharply at him, and Smith looked at his cigar. Others were playing around the semicircular table--it might mean nothing. Du Sang waited. Smith lifted his right hand from the table and felt in his waistcoat for a match. Du Sang, however, made no effort to take up the dice. He watched Whispering Smith scratch a match on the table, and, either because it failed to light or through design, it was scratched the second time on the table, marking a cross between the two dice. The meanest negro in the joint would not have stood that, yet Du Sang hesitated. Whispering Smith, mildly surprised, looked up. "Hello, Pearline! You shooting here?" He pushed the dice back toward the outlaw. "Shoot again!" Du Sang, scowling, snapped the dice and threw badly. "Up jump the devil, is it? Shoot again!" And, pushing back the dice, Smith moved closer to Du Sang. The two men touched arms. Du Sang, threatened in a way wholly new to him, waited like a snake braved by a mysterious enemy. His eyes blinked like a badger's. He caught up the dice and threw. "Is that the best you can do?" asked Smith. "See here!" He took up the dice. "Shoot with me!" Smith threw the dice up the table toward Du Sang. Once he threw craps, but, reaching directly in front of Du Sang, he picked the dice up and threw eleven. "Shoot with me, Du Sang." "What's your game?" snapped Du Sang, with an oath. "What do you care, if I've got the coin? I'll throw you for twenty-dollar gold pieces." Du Sang's eyes glittered. Unable to understand the reason for the affront, he stood like a cat waiting to spring. "This is my game!" he snarled. "Then play it." "Look here, what do you want?" he demanded angrily. Smith stepped closer. "Any game you've got. I'll throw you left-handed, Du Sang." With his right hand he snapped the dice under Du Sang's nose and looked squarely into his eyes. "Got any Sugar Buttes money?" Du Sang for an instant looked keenly back; his eyes contracted in that time to a mere narrow slit; then, sudden as thought, he sprang back into the corner. He knew now. This was the man who held the aces at the barbecue, the railroad man--Whispering Smith. Kennedy, directly across the table, watched the lightning-like move. For the first time the crap-dealer looked impatiently up. It was a showdown. No one watching the two men under the window breathed for a moment. Whispering Smith, motionless, only watched the half-closed eyes. "You can't shoot craps," he said coldly. "What can you shoot, Pearline? You can't stop a man on horseback."