“That’s all you know about it, Buckeen,” said a tall man with a red nose and a squint, who looked as if he were gazing at the bottles behind the bar, though he really was watching Mr Gideon.
“I will take a thousand to five hundred from any one,” said Buckeen, who liked to talk loudly about bets which no one who knew him would think of taking from him or dream of his ever intending to pay.
“Not from me, Buckeen,” said the tall man, whose name was Crotty, as he continued to squint hideously while he watched Mr Gideon.
Mr Crotty was remembering a little battle at the noble game of poker which he once engaged in with Mr Gideon. On that occasion he—Crotty—had been dealt four kings; and as at last they showed their hands after much money had been staked, Mr Gideon had said, “For the first time in my life, believe me—though I have played since I was a lad in California, in ’49—four aces.” And as he remembered this little episode in his life and watched Mr Gideon he hoped soon to be even with him.
“Bedad, I must go and see after me patients. I am just murthered be the work I have to do in me profession,” said Buckeen, and he swaggered out of the club.
“Well, Mr Crotty,” said Gideon when the doctor had gone, “what will you do about the stakes?”
“Even money against The Pirate,” was Mr Crotty’s answer.
“It is odds against my horse. Come, I will take two to one,” said Gideon.
Mr Crotty only shook his head and asked Mr Gideon to take a drink with him, which offer the other excused himself from accepting on the plea that he had to go and see a man on business. “See you again in a half-an-hour or so,” he said, as he left the club to visit several other places where betting men congregated.
However, he found there was not much to be done about his horse; betting men, like politicians, like to know how the cat jumps before they commit themselves to any great extent; and there was a tendency to wait a bit before doing much about “the Stakes.”