“Give it up.”
“That ain’t all. Mebby I’ve got somethin’ that’ll help us git a twist on this little game o’ muggins. But I sort o’ begun my yarnin’ wrong end to. I ort to have commenced at the start, ’stead o’ goin’ along down toward where you write finish. When your trail and mine forked, a spell ago, I had a notion I’d keep track o’ Uncle Si and the shuffer. I seen ’em on a bench in the plaza, thick as two thieves, but I couldn’t get nigh enough to catch the run o’ their conversation. I’ll bet it was crooked palaver, though, ’cause old Rocks ain’t no better than Hibbard, and you and me sabe what Hibbard is.
“I didn’t linger long around the plaza when them two got up and hiked. Two silver dollars was burnin’ a hole in my pocket, so I moseyed over to the Palace and played ’em on the red——”
“You gambled with that money?” Owen demanded sharply.
“I didn’t think it was gamblin’, pard—I reckoned it was a cinch. You’d saved my scalp on the cliftside, hadn’t you? And you and me was pards, wasn’t we? And that thatch o’ yours is carmine! Figgerin’ from all that, I allowed I’d drop two cases on the red and pull out four, then I’d stake the four on red to win and corral eight, leave the eight on the same color and grab sixteen. I was plannin’ to keep this up till I had dinero sufficient to buy a garage for you and a private yacht and a few other things for myself, but—dog-gone it! red didn’t win that fust time, and the croupier juggled my little two bones into the till. Ain’t it scandalous?”
“I should say so!” muttered Clancy. “I didn’t give you that money to use in gambling, Fortune, but to keep you going till you landed a job. Now your money’s gone, and you haven’t a thing to show for it!”
“Easy, pard! Sure I’ve got somethin’ to show for it. If I hadn’t gone to the Palace I wouldn’t ’a’ met Slim Simmons, would I?”
“Who is Slim Simmons?”
“Desert rat. I’ve seen him a heap o’ times, and we sabe each other a hull lot. He come over the same trail we did, but he was ahead of us. I got to palaverin’ with Slim, and refers incidental to Hibbard and the way he forked me over the cliffs. Simmons allows Hibbard was the same juniper he’d seen gassin’ with Long Tom, otherwise Tom Long. You see, Slim stopped at Chantay Seeche’s for a drink, and he glimpsed Hibbard and Long powwowin’ cautious and careful by the ranch corral. Slim asked Hibbard for a ride into town, and Hibbard wouldn’t have it. Hibbard must have stayed at Tom Long’s quite a while, for Slim was able to get pretty well over the trail afore Hibbard came along and passed you and me. That’s how I diskivered where Hibbard had been. There’s more, though. While Slim and me was gassin’ in one corner o’ the Palace, who rolls into the place but Chantay Seeche himself?”
“This Long Tom came to the gambling house?”