"Oh, nothin'."
"Shore?"
"Positive, stranger, positive."
"That's good. Change seats, will yuh?"
The lanky citizen hesitated. Loudon remained standing, his gray eyes cold and hard. Then slowly the other man arose, circled the table, and sat down. Loudon slid into the vacated chair.
The lanky man dealt. Loudon watched the deft fingers—fingers too deft for the excessively crude exhibition of cheating that occurred almost instantly. To Archer the dealer dealt from the bottom of the pack, and did it clumsily. Hardly the veriest tyro would have so openly bungled the performance. For all that, however, it was done so that Loudon, and not Laguerre, saw the action.
"Where I come from," observed Loudon, softly, "we don't deal from the bottom of the pack."
"Do you say I'm a-dealin' from the bottom of the pack?" loudly demanded the lanky man.
"Just that," replied Loudon, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest.
"Yo're a liar!" roared the lanky one, and reached for his gun.