"You won't," rasped Cadger to the agent; "and you won't," he hissed at Appah. "All right, I'm not goin' to sit down while you ruin me between you. It's a deadlock, and I decide it. I decide that you gamble for it, and I kin shoot quicker'n either one of you. Is that a go?"
There was a pause while each of the others looked the impasse in the face. It seemed the only way out of a situation that involved the pride of each of these reckless men as well as the asphalt stakes.
Both antagonists were born gamblers. Each believed in his luck.
Cadger paused for a moment while each antagonist quickly weighed his chances; then the trader saw there was silent acquiescence. It was obviously the only way out of a dangerous dilemma.
The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and the long shadows had quickly melted into night. There was a sudden chill in the air. Chapita cooked in the open air. There was a smouldering fire before the lean-to which was a sort of summer kitchen. The two friends of Appah threw some dry greasewood on the ashes and coaxed the embers into a blaze. The players sat down before the fire, their faces lit by its fitful blaze.
"We haven't any cards here," said Ladd.
"Appah, you or your friends got a set of bones?" asked Cadger, but he knew they never were without them.
Appah produced them from his pouch.
"Good! The best three in five," said the umpire.
The "bone-game," sometimes called "the moccasin game," because the bones were formerly hidden and juggled in a moccasin, is, I suppose, a sort of Indian version of the "three-shell-game" of the white man.