"Turn over a card with your left hand, quick!" he commanded.
Dave, as if in the act of obeying, reached for his gun with the left hand, but a twist of the imprisoned wrist, almost tearing his arm from the shoulder socket, turned him on his back, and his gun was whisked from its pigskin pocket by Carney.
Then Bulldog released the wrist and commanded: "Draw that card, quick, or I'll plug you; then we'll talk!"
Sullenly the other turned the card: as if in mockery it was a "jack."
"You lose," Carney declared. "Now sit back there against the wall."
Cursing Bulldog for a cold-deck sharp, the other sullenly obeyed.
Then Carney turned up the end of Dave's blanket and found, as he knew he should, Hadley's plethoric wallet, and his own six-gun. This proceeding had hushed the other man's profane denunciation; his eyes held a foreboding look.
Carney stepped back to the fire, saying:
"You're Tacoma Jack—you're the man that staked Seth Long to this marked pack." He drew from his pocket the ace of hearts and held it up to Tacoma's astonished view. "Here's the missing ace."
He put it back in his pocket and resumed: "That was to rob Hadley, when you found he was leaving the money in Seth's strong box while he went with you up into the hills to look at a mine that didn't exist. If he had taken the money with him he would have been killed instead of Seth. When the game was over that night, Seth signaled you with a lamp in the window, and when you went in to settle with him the sight of the money was too much, and you plugged him."