"WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?"
From Stoell's Brent drifted to "The Nugget," where for a month, he dealt faro on percentage in a "limit" game—for with the tin-horns and the chechakos had come also "limits" and "table stakes."
Here, "The Queen of the Yukon" passed and repassed his layout a dozen times in an evening on her way to and from the dance-hall in the rear, but never by even so much as a look did she admit that she recognized him.
On the afternoon of his first payday, he sat in a "table stakes" game of stud and a run of luck netted him seven hundred dollars. Whereupon he promptly went on a spree that lasted three days and when he again showed up for duty another dealer was presiding over his layout.
The next day Cuter Malone called him into a little back room and sounded him out. "Hear how yer out of a job," quoth Cuter, as he set two glasses and a bottle upon the little table between them. Brent nodded, and the other continued: "Want to keep on dealin'?"
"Why yes, I guess so. I'm going to hit the trail right after the break-up, but until that comes I might as well be doing something."
"Sure. Well I got a good percent proposition fer you. You'll draw quite a little trade—you done it at Stoell's, an' then swung the heft of it over to 'The Nugget.'"
"Is it a limit game?" asked Brent. "What percentage will you pay?"
Malone filled the glasses from the bottle, and having drank combed at his black beard with his fingers: "W-e-e-l, that's accordin'. This here game I'm figgerin' on is a sure thing—that is, o' course, lots o' turns has got to lose, but in the long run she wins big."
"What do you mean—a sure thing?"