“You played poker until three o’clock this mornin’ with some strangers,” he said, staring at the prosperous one. “And me and my pardner have found out that they’re nothin’ but a pair of sharps out to do you.”
“Out to do me? Out to do Lucky Cochran? It’s a joke! Why, boys, I won fifteen hundred dollars last night. Nobody can beat me. I’m Cochran. Lucky Cochran!”
And his “Haw, haw, haw!” was so loud it startled even the deck steward, who barely missed dropping a cup of hot coffee he was carrying to an invalid, and prompted an A. B. on the boat deck to peer over, to learn whether there was a menagerie aboard.
“Oh, you’re lucky, are you?” David answered with a badly concealed sneer. “And you’ve won at the first sitting, have you? Well, see here, Cochran, I’m goin’ to tell you something. The boob always wins at first—until the stakes get high. After that his luck changes. If we’re either locoed, or talkin’ through our hats, I’ll tell you what we overheard this mornin’.” And then, in confidential tones, he repeated all the conversation that had come through the cabin window shutters, and ended with, “If you’ll take a little pasear with me I’ll point the two crooks out to you, so that you can steer clear of another game with them, and quit fifteen hundred to the good.”
“Psho!” said Lucky Cochran. “You don’t mean it! Come on and show ’em to me.”
The three men promenaded the deck, casually looked into the smoke room, and finally discovered their quarry in the bows holding earnest conversation.
“There they are,” David said, pointing at them.
“That’s them, all right,” Cochran agreed. “And right nice sociable fellers they are, too. Don’t see how it kin be that two such nice fellers as them could be out to skin a good old feller like me. Think I’ll go over and tell ’em what I think of ’em, right now.”
“Suit yourself,” said David. “We’ll come along and see you through.”
Cochran moved as if to carry out an intention, then stopped, looked at the partners and wagged his head slowly and solemnly.