"Bin losing quite a bit, haven't you?" persisted his tormentor. Steve growled out that he had lost "some," and turned his back on old Rampike with an emphatic rudeness which would have silenced most men.
"'Scuse me, sir, one moment," remarked Rampike utterly unabashed, and half rising to inspect Steve's hand over his shoulder.
A glance seemed to satisfy him.
"Who cut those cards?" he sung out.
"Dan Cruickshank," answered a voice from the crowd.
"Who dole those cards?" he persisted.
"Bub Cruickshank," replied the voice.
"Then, young man, you pass;" and without stirring a muscle of his face he coolly took from the astounded Steve four queens, and threw them upon the table.
For a moment Steve sat open-mouthed, utterly astounded by his adviser's impudence, and when he tried to rise and give vent to his feelings, Corbett's heavy hand was on his shoulder and kept him down.
Meanwhile an angry growl rose from the gamblers, but it was drowned at once in the laugh of the crowd, as without a sign of feeling of any kind, or a single comment, old Rampike slowly pulled from a pocket under his coat-tails an old, strangely-fashioned six-shooter, which he began to overhaul in the casual distrait manner of one who takes a mild interest in some weapon of a remote antiquity.