Alden Leeds whipped a checkbook from his pocket. “I have only one way of expressing my gratitude,” he said.
Mason nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “And while you’re about it, don’t forget that it might be well to make some arrangement for Marcia Whittaker. After all, you know, Leeds, you can’t take it with you.”
Leeds, shaking ink down to the point of his fountain pen, said, “When you see the amount of this check, Mason, you’ll realize I’m not trying to.”
Mason took the loaded dice from his pocket, rolled them casually across the top of the desk, and watched the figures five and seven show up with amazing regularity.
Ned Barkler gave a dry chuckle. Mason looked up inquiringly.
“Seeing you rolling those bones,” the prospector said, “makes me think of something.”
“What?”
“Bill Hogarty,” he said. “Probably you’re wondering why I made a dash to San Francisco — It goes back to something nobody ever inquired about — How I happened to meet Alden Leeds in the first place. It was over a pair of crooked dice.”
Alden Leeds blotted the check he had just written, started totaling figures on the stub and said, “Go ahead and tell him, Ned.”
“You see,” Barkler said, “I knew Hogarty... Met him in Seattle. Got in a crap game when I was a little high, and lost two thousand bucks. Next morning I found out that the dice were crooked. A bartender tipped me off. It took me a while to make a stake to get up to the Klondike, and then I found Hogarty and Leeds were down the Yukon a ways. I took after ’em, found Hogarty, stuck a gun in his belly and made him pay me off in gold dust.