"Lak it! Voila! No wataire! No snow! Too mooch, w'at you call, de leezard! Een de wintaire, A'm so Godamn hot A'm lak for die. Non! A'm com' way from dere. A'm goin' Nort' an' git me nodder job w'ere A'm git som' wataire som'tam'. Mebbe so git too mooch col' in wintaire, but, voila! Better A'm lak I freeze l'il bit as burn oop!"
The Texan laughed. "I don't blame you none. I never be'n down to Yuma but they tell me it's hell on wheels. Go ahead an' deal, Pedro."
"Pedro, non! Ma moder she nam' Moon Eye, an' ma fader she Cross-Cut
Lajune. Derefor', A'm Batiste Xavier Jean Jacques de Beaumont Lajune."
The bottle thumped upon the table top.
"What the hell is that, a name or a song?"
"Me, das ma nam'—A'm call Batiste Xavier Jean——"
"Hold on there! If your ma or pa, or whichever one done the namin' didn't have no expurgated dictionary handy mebbe they ain't to blame—but from now on, between you an' me, you're Bat. That's name enough, an' the John Jack Judas Iscariot an' General Jackson part goes in the discards. An' bein' as this here is only a two-handed game, the discards is dead—— See?"
At the end of an hour the half-breed watched with a grin as the Texan raked in a huge pile of chips.
"Dat de las'," he said, "Me, A'm broke."
"Broke!" exclaimed the cowpuncher, "you don't mean you've done lost all that there six hundred an' forty-eight bucks?" He counted the little piles of silver and gold, which the half-breed had shoved across the board in return for stack after stack of chips.