Flem obeyed, displaying an ace, a deuce and a six.
“And nine more makes twenty-one in all!” chortled Fox triumphantly.
As though dazed, the barkeeper shook his head.
“Well, Foxey, ole pardner, you shore got me that time,” he confessed begrudgingly. “Whut’ll it be, gents? Here, I reckin the cigars is on me too, after that.” From a glass-topped case at the end of the bar alongside Gash Tuttle he produced a full box and extended it hospitably. “The smokes is on the house—dip in, gents. Dip in. Try an Old Hickory; them’s pure Tampas—ten cents straight.”
He drew the beers—large ones for the two, a small one for himself—and raised his own glass to them.
“Here’s to you and t’ward you!” he said.
“Ef I hadn’t a-met you I wouldn’t a-knowed you,” shot back Gash Tuttle with the lightning spontaneity of one whose wit moves in boltlike brilliancy; and at that they both laughed loudly and, as though dazzled by his flashes, bestowed on him the look that is ever the sweetest tribute to the jester’s talents.
The toast to a better acquaintance being quaffed and lights exchanged, the still nonplussed Flem addressed the winners:
[106]
“Well, boys, I thought I knowed all there was to know about dice—poker dice and crap dice too; but live and learn, as the feller says. Say, Fox, put me on to that trick—it’ll come in handy. I’ll ketch Joe on it when he gits back,” and he nodded toward the lunch counter.
“You don’t need to know no more’n you know about it already,” expounded Fox. “It’s bound to come out that way.”