“And you say that there's more, all she wants, where that comes from.”
“Yessir.”
Then, shaking his mop of brown, curly hair as though to relieve his head of a burden, he took the girls for what he felt was a much-needed round of drinks.
By midnight the place was wild!
“Sam,” shouted Curly, “what's the limit on your pesky old game?”
“The ceiling's the limit.”
“Well, I'll put up one bet! Bein' on Easy Street I was goin' back to the States to marry my girl, but I'm blamed if I don't put up my swag for one turn of the cards.”
He sent for his “dust,” and piled the long, buckskin bags criss-cross before Faro Sam's table.
“I'll copper the jack, gentlemen,” he shouted. “All on the jack!”
Teddy Karn's face turned a pasty hue, and the tip of his tongue slid along his puffed lips, but the lines of Faro Sam's face never changed, and his eyes retained the blank impassivity of a snake's as he slipped his cards. There was a sudden, tense silence. The girls pressed forward with hurried breathing and the men waited, rigid as stones.