"Draw a card, then," Dave commanded, touching the strung-out pack.
Carney could see the acute-angled wings of the middle dove on a card; he turned it up—it was the ace of diamonds.
"Some draw!" Dave declared. Then he deftly flipped over the ace of spades, adding: "Horse and horse, Bulldog; draw agin."
"Shuffle and spread-eagle them again, for luck," Carney suggested.
Dave gathered the cards, gave them a riffle, and swept them along the blanket in a tenuous stream.
Carney edged closer to the ribbon of blue-doved cards; and the owner of them, a sneer on his lips, craned his head and shoulders forward in a gambler's eagerness.
Intensity, too, seemed to claim Bulldog; he rested his elbows on his knees and scanned the cards as if he hesitated over the risk. There, a little to the right, he discovered the third ace, the only one in the pack. If he turned that Dave could not tie him again. He knew that the minute he turned over that card the cave-man would know that he had been double-crossed in his sure thing; his gun would be thrust into Carney's face; perhaps—once a killer always a killer—he would not hesitate but would kill.
So Carney let his right hand hover carelessly a little beyond the ace, while his left crept closer to Dave's right wrist.
"Why don't you draw your card?" Dave snarled. "What're you——"
Carney's right hand flopped over the ace of clubs, and in the same split second his left closed like the jaws of a vise on Dave's wrist.