For a moment the Kid circled his lips with the tip of his tongue, and flirted his hair back from his forehead with an uncertain, jerky motion of his hand; then he snatched up his glass, spilled a portion of its contents, gulped down the remainder, and began to fumble under his vest, finally wrenching out a money-belt.
“Go on—what do you think!” he said thickly. “I ain't done yet! I'll get mine back, an' yours, too! Table stakes—eh? I'll get you this time—b'God! Table stakes—eh—again? What do you say?”
“Of course!” murmured Three-Ace Artie politely.
And then the crowd shuffled its feet uneasily. Murdock Shaw, who had edged his way close to the table, leaned over and touched the Kid's shoulder.
“I'd cut it out, if I was you, son,” he advised bluntly. “You're drunk—and a mark!”
A sort of quick, sibilant intake of breath came from the circle around the table. Like a flash, one of Three-Ace Artie's hands, from the deck of cards, vanished under the table; and the dark eyes, the slumber gone from their depths, narrowed dangerously on Murdock Shaw. Then Three-Ace Artie smiled—unpleasantly.
“It isn't as though you were new in the Yukon, Murdock”—there was a deadliness in the quiet, level tones. “What's the idea?”
Like magic, to right and left, on each side of the table, the crowd cleared a line behind the two men—then silence.
The gambler's hand remained beneath the table; his eyes cold, alert, never wavering for the fraction of a second from the miner's face.
Perhaps a minute passed. The miner did not speak or move, save that his lips tightened and the tan of his face took on a deeper hue.