"Oh!" said Red, as a great light broke upon him. "Oh, I see what you're thinking about. The old boy who corralled the Jews, and made 'em work for the first and last time in their history, and they filled him full of fleas, and darkness, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences to break even? Well, I was not talking about him at all. My faro is a game played with a lay-out and a pack of cards and a little tin box that you ought to look at carefully before you put any money on the board, to see that it ain't arranged for dealing seconds; and there's a lookout and a case keeper and—well, I don't believe I could tell you just how it works, but some day I'll make a layout and we'll have some fun. It's a bully game, but I say, it's a great deal like life—the splits go to the dealer; that is to say, that if the king comes out to win and lose at the same time, you lose anyhow, see?"
"No," said Miss Mattie, truthfully.
Red thrust his fingers through his hair and sighed. "I'm afraid I know too much about it to explain it clearly," he replied. "But what I mean is this: some people try to play system at faro, and they last about as quick as those that don't. I always put the limit on the card that's handiest, and the game don't owe me a cent; as a matter of fact, some of the tin-horns used to wear a pained expression when they saw me coming across the room. I've split 'cm from stem to keelson more than once, and never used a copper in my life—played 'em wide open, all the time. Now," and he brought his fist down on the table, "I'm going to play that young man wide open, and I'll bet you I don't lose by him neither. He looks as honest as a mastiff pup, for all he dresses kind of nice. I might just as well try him on the fly, as to go lunk-heading around and get stuck anyhow, with the unsatisfactory addition of feeling that I was a fool, as well as confiding."
Most of the argument had been ancient Aryan to Miss Mattie, but the ring of the voice and the little she understood made the tenor plain. A sudden moisture gathered in her eyes as she said, "You're too good and honest and generous a man to distrust anybody: that's what I think, Will."
"Mattie, I wish you wouldn't talk like that," said he, in an injured voice. "It ain't hardly respectable."
After which there was a silence for a short time. Then said Miss Mattie, "Do you think you could content yourself here, Will, after all the things you've seen?"
Red brightened at the change of topic. "I'll tell you how that is: if I hadn't any capital, and had to work here as a poor man, I don't believe I'd take the trouble to try and live—I'd smother; but having that pleasant little crop of long greens securely planted in the bank where the wild time doesn't grow, and thusly being able to cavort around as it sweetly pleases me, why, I like the country. It's sport to take hold of a place like this, that's only held together by its suspenders, and try to make a real live man's town out of it."
Miss Mattie drew a deep breath of relief. "You came like the hero in a fairy story, Will, and I was afraid you'd go away like one," she said.
He reached across the table and patted her hand. "You'd have had to gone, too," said he. "The family'll stick together."
She thanked him in a soft little voice. "Dear me!" she murmured.
"It does seem that you've been here a year, Will."