“Some of us that was lookin’ on was guessin’ for fair. We never knowed o’ Pete havin’ no property, an’ we thought he was bluffin’, but we couldn’t see just how he reckoned he could work it, or what he expected to do. I says to myself, ‘I reckon he’s caught that royal flush, but what this move means is more’n I know.’ Anyhow, there warn’t nothin’ to do but wait, an’ I waited as all the others did, for it looked as if there’d be some fun.
“Pretty soon Mr. Stevens came back with the nigger, an’ says, ‘What’s this mean, Pete? The nigger says you want to borrow ten thousand dollars.’
“ ‘Yes, I do,’ says Pete.
“ ‘Well,’ says Stevens, ‘you can have the money on these deeds, of course, if you’ll come to the bank to-morrow, but you—’
“ ‘I want it now,’ says Pete, interruptin’, an’ as he spoke he picked up his cards from the table where they had been lying, an’ holdin’ ’em kind o’ careless, just so that Stevens could see ’em, but pretendin’ not to notice that they could be seen.
“ ‘Oh!’ says Stevens, ‘you want the money to play with, do you? But certainly you ain’t goin’ to bet on that hand?’
“ ‘You’ll oblige me,’ says Pete, pretendin’ to get in a terrible rage, ‘by sayin’ nothin’ about my hand. It may not be the strongest hand in the deck, but it’s the best one out. Besides, it’s my own business what I do with the money. The question is whether you’ll let me have it.’
“Oh, yes,’ says Stevens, ‘I’ll let you have it, all right. That is, I’ll give you my personal check.’
“I reckon that’s good,’ says Pete, an’ so it was, for everybody on the river knowed Stevens.
“It was the neatest play I ever expect to see, for them papers wasn’t worth the ink that was on ’em. It seems that Stevens had come to know about Pete always playin’ for a royal flush, an’ had joked him about it, knowin’ Pete pretty well an’ likin’ him as a man gets to like a bartender that treats him right, an’ Pete had got him to promise to lend him all the money he needed to play with, whenever he should get the royal flush.