"This game is bein' played with cahds, even if they are crooked cahds, and not guns, sah!"
"Crooked!" breathed Blacksnake. "Are yuh hintin' that I'm a crook?"
"I'm not hintin'," said The Kid, with a flashing smile. "I'm sayin' it right out. The aces in that deck were marked in the cornahs with thumb-nail scratches. It might have gone hahd with me, if I hadn't mahked the othah cahds too—with thumb-nail scratches!"
"Yuh admit yuh marked them cards?" yelled Blacksnake in fury. "What about it, men? He's a cheat and ought to be strung up!"
Most of the onlookers were doing their best to conceal grins, and even
Blacksnake's sympathizers made no move to do anything. Perhaps The
Kid's two drawn six-shooters had something to do with it.
"Yuh got two thousand dollars from this game—twenty hundred even,"
Blacksnake snarled. "Are yuh goin' to return that money?"
"I'll put the money wheah it belongs," the Texan drawled. "Gentlemen, when I said I wasn't a gamblin' man, I meant it. I nevah gamble. But when I saw that this game was not a gamble, but just a cool robbery, I sat in."
He holstered one of his guns and swooped up the pile of money from the center of the table. This cleaned it, save for one pile of chips in front of the bearded bully.
"It's customary," said Kid Wolf, "always to kick in with a chip fo' the 'kitty,' and so——"
His Colt suddenly blazed. There was a quick finger of orange-colored fire and a puff of smoke. The top chip of Blacksnake's stack suddenly had disappeared, neatly clipped off by The Kid's bullet. And the Texan had shot casually from the hip, apparently without taking aim!