CHAPTER II: LEN AYRES RETURNS
“I tell yuh, nothin’ never happens around here,” declared Johnny Harris. “Gimme three cards, mostly aces.”
“Some day,” said Smoky Ash seriously, “yo’re goin’ to fill one of them two-card flushes yo’re always drawin’ to, Johnny. How many do you desire, Harry?”
Harry Cole, owner of the Oasis Saloon and Gambling House, indicated that he wasn’t drawing any cards.
“Out on a limb, eh?” grinned Johnny. “Some day I’m goin’ to saw that limb off between you and yore bank roll.”
He peeked carefully at the cards he had drawn, spat disgustedly and shoved the cards aside.
“Just like I said,” he declared plaintively, “nothin’ ever happens in Lobo Wells. Punch cows twenty-nine days in the month for enough to have a few drinks and try to make two danged deuces beat a pat hand.”
Johnny Harris was lean, lank, with a long nose, sad eyes and stringy hair. He had been voicing the same complaint as far back as any of them could remember, but he stayed on at the JP ranch in spite of all the drawbacks.
Harry Cole was an ex-sheriff of Lobo Wells, a man about forty years of age; a big man physically, swarthy of complexion, with black hair and a small moustache. Just now business was dull, and he was playing draw poker with a few of the cowboys, who had finished loading a train of cattle.
“Nothin’ never happens nowhere as fur as that goes,” said Smoky Ash, who also worked for the JP outfit. “Yuh can read about things happenin’ in the newspapers, but they don’t. I’ve heard that them newspaper fellers are bigger liars than cowboys. That’s prob’ly exaggerated, but—I’ll pass it to a pat hand, Harry. Make yore bluff, feller.”