though interest did not abate.

"There's ce'tainly something doing at the Silver Dollar this glad
mo'ning. Chinks, greasers, and several other kinds of citizens
driftin' that way, not to mention white men. I expect there will
be room for you, Bucky, if you hurry before the seats are all
sold out."

He cantered down the plaza, swung from the saddle, threw the rein
over the pony's head to the ground, and jingled across the
sidewalk into the gambling house. It was filled with a motley
crowd of miners, vaqueros, tourists, cattlemen, Mexicans,
Chinese, and a sample of the rest of the heterogeneous population
of the Southwest. Behind this assemblage the newcomer tiptoed in
vain to catch a glimpse of the cause of the excitement.
Wherefore, he calmly removed an almond-eyed Oriental from a chair
on which he was standing, tipped the ex-Cantonese a half dollar,
and appropriated the point of vantage himself.

There was a cleared space in the corner by the roulette table,
and here, his chair tipped back against the wall and a glass of
whisky in front of him, sat a sufficiently strange specimen of
humanity. He was a man of about fifty years, large boned and
gaunt. Dressed in fringed buckskin trousers and a silver-laced
Mexican sombrero, he affected the long hair, the sweeping
mustache, and the ferocious aspect that are the custom of the
pseudo-Westerners who do business in the East with fake medical
remedies. Around his waist was a belt garnished with knives by
the dozen. These were long and pointed, sharpened to a razor
edge. One of them was in his hand poised for a throw at the