"Well?"
"Well—why not git even with him, an' at the same time clean up big fer yerself? They ain't no chanct to git caught."
"What do you mean?" Brent's voice rasped a trifle harshly, but Claw did not notice.
"I got it all doped out. Cold deck him—an' I'll play agin the fixed deck an' make a cleanin'—an' we'll split."
"You mean——"
"I mean this. Me an' you will fix up a deck, an' I'll copy off how the cards lays. Then you slip 'em into the box an' start the deal, an' I'll lay the bets. Of course, knowin' how they'll fall, I kin win whenever I want to. No one'll ever b'lieve it's a frame-up, 'cause they know you're square, an' likewise they know you hate me, an' they wouldn't figger we'd git together. I'll make the play strong
by comin' in fer a night er two before we spring it an' braggin' that I've got a system. Then I'll have my slip of paper an' I'll look at it, an' make bets, an' of course I'll lose—'cause they ain't no system. An' the next night I'll do the same an' the third night we'll slip in the fixed deck—an' then my system'll win. An' all the time I'll be sneerin' at you, like I hated yer guts——"
The sentence was never finished. In a blind rage Brent hurled himself upon the man, and both crashed to the floor together. The fight was fast and furious while it lasted. But, flabby, and with his brain befuddled with liquor, Brent was no match for the other, who a year before, he could have killed with his bare hands. He got in several good blows at the start, which slowed up his antagonist, and rendered him incapable of inflicting serious damage later, when Brent winded and gasping, was completely at his mercy. A referee would unhesitatingly have declared it Claw's fight, for when he slipped from the cabin it was to leave Brent nursing two half-closed and rapidly purpling eyes, with nose and lips to match.
When, four days later he showed up at Stoell's, the latter called him aside and weighing out what was coming to him in dust, informed him that his services were no longer required.