"It's face up, Steve. You'd just as well show us. My boy, you ought to wear a mustache," said the Judge, critically. "Your lips get pale and give you away when you try to screw your courage up. Of course, you've got a sweet, little, rosebud mouth; but you need a big, ox-horn mustache in this vocation."
"Don't show it, Steve," advised the Stockman. "I judge his Honor's got one of them same things his black self. You might both fill—and you don't want to let him see how high yours is."
"If I only don't fill the wrong way," said Steve. "Want to split the pot or save stakes with me, Judge?"
"That would be a foolish caper. If I fill—I mean," the Judge corrected himself hastily—"I mean, I've got the money won now, unless you draw out, and that's a 52 to 1 shot."
"Me, too," said the dealer. "We both got it won. But I'll save out a hundred with you, Steve. That'll pay your bills and take you home."
"That'll be nine hundred to draw cards for a chance at nine thousand and action on what I got left. Faint heart never won a jackpot. Here goes nothin'!" said Steve, pushing the money in. "One from the top, when you get to me. If I bet after the draw, you all needn't call unless you're a mind to."
"Got that side money and pot straight?" queried the dealer lightly. "All right?" He stretched out a long left arm and flipped the cards from the pack with a jerk of the wrist. "Cards and spades? (I'm pat, myself, of course.) Cards to you? None? Certainly. None to you, and one to you, one to you, none——"
Steve's card, spinning round as it came, turned over and lay face up on the table—the three of hearts. (Laymen will please recall that, as already specified, a straight flush was, in this game, the Best.) As the dealer was sliding the next card off to replace it, Steve caught the thin glint of a red 8 on the corner.
With a motion inconceivably swift he was on his feet, his left hand over the pack. "Hold on!" he cried. "Look at this!" He made a motion as if to spread out the four cards he had retained, checked himself and glared, crouching.
"Sit down, Steve. Don't be a fool," said the Stockman. "You know you've no right to an exposed card, and you know he didn't go to do it."