For answer Ben spread out his invincibles.
For a moment the silence was painful.
“Are they good?” asked Ben.
“You know damned well they are,” came the answer.
Then Mr. Benjamin Van Buren, mining engineer, of Portland, Ore., gathered in the oof in the most leisurely manner possible.
“Now you can buy me that new hat you promised me, can’t you, Ben?” said Nellie.
“I sure can buy you a dozen hats now if you want them.”
Exactly thirty minutes later three men were lined up against the bar below.
“You can talk from here to the Coast, if you want to,” said one, “but I tell you the woman did the trick. Didn’t she deal the cards? I tell you she short-carded us. She’s a gold mine.”
