McCartney smiled oddly as he folded the edge of the cigarette paper into place and tapped the ends lightly against his hand.
"Shouldn't have any trouble findin' a little entertainment in this bunch," he observed.
She regarded him coldly. "You didn't hear me sayin' anything about entertainment, did you?" she returned.
Without making any immediate reply he gave her the cigarette and offered his own for a light.
"Tell you what, Anne," he said at last, "I've a hunch you've brought me luck to-night an' I'd like to sit in to a game. I'd like to know if the boys here play the kind of a game I'm used to. Come on over, Anne, an' look on."
They walked over to the corner where the men were playing cards. On the far side of the table was Lush Currie, the pile of chips before him indicating that he had held a few good hands during the evening. As McCartney took his place at the table, Currie hesitated for a moment and acted as if he wanted to withdraw from the game. McCartney received his pile of chips and arranged them in three little piles under his right hand, then scanned the faces of the men before him.
For men who take life as it comes, one day at a time and little thought of the morrow, poker is the game of games. It matters little whether it is played in the Far North where men take fortunes from the beds of frozen creeks, or on the quieter and less rugged frontiers where they build the nation's highways at a dollar a day and three square meals always in sight. In one case the stakes are for thousands, with a jack-pot sometimes growing into six figures. In the other the limits are set by the meagre earnings of a season of some six months or so between the spring and the freeze-up. One man risks a fortune he may retrieve in a single month of good luck with his shovel and pan. The other lays a wager that will take him a whole season to pay if he comes off loser. But in any case, whatever the circumstances, the game is the same, and the men are the same—playing the game for the game's sake and despising nothing so much as a poor loser—unless it be a crooked winner.
For the first half hour or so the game that McCartney had just taken a hand in went along very quietly—like the first rounds of a match with the boxers sparring for an opening. The cards having been cut, the deal fell to the man on McCartney's left. The round found them all without openers and the pack was dealt again. This time Lush Currie opened the game and the others stayed.
"Cards?" said the dealer, who was Dan Martin, of Rubble's gang.
He came to Currie and looked at him questioningly.