Carver suddenly realized that the pair had become a trio as Noll supplied himself with chips from the accumulation before the other two. When these had joined their fellows in the check rack he appropriated a fresh supply. Carver was conscious of a growing dislike for this uninvited partner. He tapped Noll’s hand with a forefinger as the man reached for a third stack of chips.
“Try keeping it in your pocket,” he mildly advised. “It’s as active after chips as a sand rat after a beetle; and it makes me restless.”
“Half of these chips belong to Bart,” Noll insisted. But this sudden assumption of the close-knit bond of brotherhood failed to rouse any corresponding enthusiasm in the younger Lassiter.
“You’re blasting our luck,” he asserted. “Not to say annoying us. Take yourself off somewheres.”
Noll, however, declined to heed this bit of counsel. Bart and Carver pushed their chips across the board and cashed in.
“Cheerful companion, Noll is, when he’s packing a skinful,” Bart commented as the doors of the Silver Dollar closed behind them. “And he’s equally genial when he’s sober.”
“Offhand I’d pass unfavorable judgment on your relative,” Carver confessed. “I don’t see much family resemblance. How come you’re brothers?”
“Half-brothers,” Bart amended. “We had the same father. I came along a dozen years late. Spoiled younger son, you know. Leastways I was always spoiled in spots where Noll had been working on me. When I turned sixteen I set out to spoil Noll. Since his convalescence he’s had a notion I might declare another open season on the dove of peace so we get along nowadays in regular family style. Say; now since we’re rolling in wealth you wouldn’t mind if I held out twenty in case fortune failed us? It’s not quite the thing to do but——”
“Bury it,” Carver agreed, waving his hesitancy aside. “Tuck it away somewhere.” He knew his man and was certain that the twenty was destined to fill some urgent necessity. “We’ll never even miss a little piece like that.”
Lassiter led the way to a rooming house above a store and turned into a dimly lighted room on one side of the narrow hall. Articles of man’s attire lay scattered about the place.