"'Well, we'll try one of my decks,' said the bank president. 'Of course, it'll be a shame to plug you with a new musket—none of my decks has been riffled yet—but maybe my unfamiliarity with the range of the fresh gun'll give you all a show at me.' Oh, this bank president was arrogant in victory, all right.
"Well, he wasn't one, two, three, from then on, of course. It was done mighty well, and not so as to excite the bank president's suspicions in the least, but he found himself topped practically every time, and his face grew long. He was quite heavily in the hole at the end of an hour's play with his own deck.
"'Oh, we've got on to your bluffing style of play, that's all,' said the real estate man complaisantly. 'You just had us scared together for the past ten years, but you're as clear a proposition now as a mountain creek. I always thought you were more or less of a counterfeit and a four-flusher, anyhow, didn't you, fellows?'
"Of course the other two thought so, too, and the bank president's brow clouded as, time after time, after he had bet hard on hands that looked to him to be worth every dollar he ventured on them, he found himself topped, niggered out. The real estate man increased the bank president's worry by flashing a nine-high straight against the financier's eight-high straight, and then the latter did a card-tearing stunt himself. He ripped his deck into ribbons with a running commentary of strong talk.
"'It must be a rank deck that'll permit of a set of amateur skates like you fellows putting it on me,' he said. Then he dug into his grip again and produced the other 'phony deck, his three companions warning him against letting his angry passions rise, and so on.
"The three conspirators let the bank president pull down a couple of sizable pots with this deck just for the sake of enjoying his renewed impertinence, and then they went at him good and hard. At the end of an hour they had the bank president's supply of ready cash—about $500—badly wilted. He had only $100 left when it came around the real estate man's turn to dish out a jackpot round. The bank president was under the gun, as they say out there of the man who's to the left of the dealer of a jackpot, and he cracked the pot open for the limit. The other two stayed, and when it got up to the real estate man he raised it the limit. This knocked his two confederates out of it—as a matter of fact the arch-conspirator winked them out of it—but the limit was just what the bank president wanted with his four bullets.
"The bank president took one card with a crafty, I'll-make-him-think-I'm-four-flushing expression of countenance. The real estate man, with a queen-high sequence flush of hearts remarked that the bunch he had was good enough for him. Then they got to betting, and it was no time at all before the bank president had done the apology act with the remains of his $500. He pulled out a check-book then and was fumbling around for a fountain pen when the real estate man called him down.
"'Not on your life,' he said. 'Agreement was that checks don't go, you'll remember.'
"'But this hand'——the bank president started to say.
"'Makes no difference about that hand,' interrupted the real estate man. 'Agreement was for table stakes.'