"'Nine next.'
"'Nine next here.'
"'Six next.'
"Tunwell tossed his four that was next on to the table face upward without the movement of an eyebrow.
"'Six wins the $60,000,' said he, and the contractor strolled back from the window.
"'Better luck next time, Tunwell,' said he, smiling, while Burbridge drank a glass of water.
"'There isn't going to be any next time, my boy,' returned Tunwell. 'I'm no hog.'"
[THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE.]
And How a Whirl at It Came Near Decimating the Population of a Section of the Indian Territory.
"I don't just recall the name of the cheerful worker who invented that wise phrase, 'There's a sucker born every minute, and they never die,' but whoever he was he had something inside his head besides mayonnaise dressing," said a giant from the Indian Territory, when the talk among a party of Westerners at a roadhouse the other night switched around to sure-thing games and cinch propositions. "I don't suppose there ever was yet a sure-thing game rigged up that didn't get its quota of nibblers, and even its occasional easy marks, who'd go up against it with their whole rolls. I'm not speaking so much now of brace games as I am of layouts that might just as well have the words, 'You lose,' painted all over 'em, they're such obvious air-tights for the dealers. I suppose we've all been up against brace faro. That's something that a man can't heel himself against; the most he can do when he gets next to it that two of 'em are slipping out of the box at one and the same time is to 'stick up' the dealer at the business end of a .45—if he's quick enough—accumulate all the money in sight, and back toward the door.