ivory, drunk with its worship, maddened by the breath of Chance.

Cherry gathered that Glenister was still winning, for a glimpse of
the wheel-rack between the shoulders of those ahead showed that
the checks were nearly out of it.

Plainly it was but a question of minutes, so she backed out and
took her station beside the faro-table where the Bronco Kid was
dealing. His face wore its colorless mask of indifference; his
long white hands moved slowly with the certainty that betokened
absolute mastery of his art. He was waiting. The ex-crap dealer
was keeping cases.

The group left the roulette-table in a few moments and surrounded
her, Glenister among the others. He was not the man she knew. In
place of the dreary hopelessness with which he had left her, his
face was flushed and reckless, his collar was open, showing the
base of his great, corded neck, while the lust of the game had
coarsened him till he was again the violent, untamed, primitive
man of the frontier. His self-restraint and dignity were gone. He
had tried the new ways, and they were not for him. He slipped
back, and the past swallowed him.

After leaving Cherry he had sought some mental relief by idly
risking the silver in his pocket. He had let the coins lie and
double, then double again and again. He had been indifferent
whether he won or lost, so assumed a reckless disregard for the
laws of probability, thinking that he would shortly lose the money
he had won and then go home. He did not want it. When his luck
remained the same, he raised the stakes, but it did not change--he