“‘Beats the devil!’ Narcisse thought, ‘how quick folks fill your place when you’re dead!’ Gave him a tight feeling in the throat to think how someone was laughing inside, and Jacques somewheres up trail with the coyotes sniffing at him and the snow blowing over him all day and all night!
“Then Narcisse slips up quiet as could be to the window and peeps in. He falls back like someone had hit him hard in the face. But nobody had. All he saw inside was Paulette and Jacques!
“Narcisse leans against the cabin, dazed like, for quite a spell. Seemed like he couldn’t get it all through his head at once. Then he saw it all—the cards had been stacked on him. He should’ve been dead and he wasn’t. That was the trouble.
“Didn’t cuss Jacques even then, Narcisse didn’t. Wasn’t mad—just ached in his chest like. And by and by he goes up to the window and taps on it with his fingers. And Jacques comes out into the starlight, whistling.
“When he runs into Narcisse a-tottering around the corner like a drunken man, he gasps and leans against the cabin, a-holding on to it and staring.
“‘Good God!!’ he wheezes. ‘Good God!’
“‘Old pard,’ says Narcisse; and his voice was like it had smoke in it, ‘you win; I pass; mine’s a bob-tail flush; but you stacked the deck!’
“‘For Christ’s sake, Narcisse,’ whispers Jacques, ‘don’t let her see you! Don’t let her hear you! Come on!’
“And he takes down toward the river, a-walking like the devil was after him; but it wasn’t anybody but Narcisse, limping a little with the bad leg.
“And when they came to the river Jacques didn’t seem to have anything to say but ‘O, it’s a devil of a mess! A hell of a mess!’ Said it over and over like he was half crazy. And Narcisse said: ‘Last fall I’d have killed the man who’d said this about you, Jacques. It isn’t the girl so much, Jacques; but you and I have starved and frozen together many’s the time, and we always split fair till now. It was hard sledding up there without the grub and with only one leg. You stole the cards on me this deal, Jacques; but I’m not going to call for a new deal. I’ll play the hand.’