The Winds of Chance | Page 2

un. Now then, shoot, Kid; you
can't miss me!"
The onlookers stirred with interest; with eager fingers the artless
Norwegian fumbled in his pocket. At the last moment, however, he
thought better of his impulse, grunted once, then turned his back to the
table and walked away.
"Missed him!" murmured the dealer, with no display of feeling; then to
the group around him he announced, shamelessly: "You got to lead
those birds; they fly fast."
One of Mr. Broad's boosters, he who had twice won for the Norseman's
benefit, carelessly returned his winnings. "Sure!" he agreed. "They got
a head like a turtle, them Swedes."
Mr. Broad carefully smoothed out the two bills and reverently laid
them to rest in his bank-roll. "Yes, and they got bony mouths. You got
to set your hook or it won't hold."
"Slow pickin's," yawned an honest miner with a pack upon his back.
Attracted by the group at the table, he had dropped out of the
procession in the street and had paused long enough to win a bet or two.
Now he straightened himself and stretched his arms. "These Michael
Strogoffs is hep to the old stuff, Lucky. I'm thinking of joining the big
rush. They say this Klondike is some rich."
Inasmuch as there were no strangers in sight at the moment, the
proprietor of the deadfall gave up barking; he daintily folded and tore
in half a cigarette paper, out of which he fashioned a thin smoke for
himself. It was that well-earned moment of repose, that welcome recess
from the day's toil. Mr. Broad inhaled deeply, then he turned his eyes
upon the former speaker.

"You've been thinking again, have you?" He frowned darkly. With a
note of warning in his voice he declared: "You ain't strong enough for
such heavy work, Kid. That's why I've got you packing hay."
The object of this sarcasm hitched his shoulders and the movement
showed that his burden was indeed no more than a cunning counterfeit,
a bundle of hay rolled inside a tarpaulin.
"Oh, I got a head and I've been doing some heavy thinking with it," the
Kid retorted. "This here Dawson is going to be a good town. I'm getting
readied up to join the parade."
"Are you, now?" the shell-man mocked. "I s'pose you got it all framed
with the Canucks to let you through? I s'pose the chief of police knows
you and likes you, eh? You and him is cousins, or something?"
"Coppers is all alike; there's always a way to square 'em--"
"Lay off that 'squaring' stuff," cautioned a renegade crook, disguised by
a suit of mackinaws and a week's growth of beard into the likeness of a
stampeder. "A thousand bucks and a ton of grub, that's what the sign
says, and that's what it means. They wouldn't let you over the Line with
nine hundred and ninety-nine fifty."
"Right!" agreed a third capper. "It's a closed season on broken stiffs.
You can't monkey with the Mounted Police. When they put over an
edict it lays there till it freezes. They'll make you show your 'openers' at
the Boundary. Gee! If I had 'em I wouldn't bother to go 'inside.' What's
a guy want with more than a thousand dollars and a ton of grub,
anyhow?"
"All the same, I'm about set to hit the trail," stubbornly maintained the
man with the alfalfa pack. "I ain't broke. When you boys get to Dawson,
just ask for Kid Bridges' saloon and I'll open wine. These woollys can
have their mines; me for a hootch-mill on Main Street."
Lucky addressed his bevy of boosters. "Have I nursed a serpent in my
breast, or has the Kid met a banker's son? Gimme room, boys. I'm

going to shuffle the shells for him and let him double his money. Keep
your eye on the magic pea, Mr. Bridges. Three tiny tepees in a row--"
There was a general laugh as Broad began to shift the walnut-shells, but
Kid Bridges retorted, contemptuously:
"That's the trouble with all you wiseacres. You get a dollar ahead and
you fall for another man's game. I never knew a faro-dealer that
wouldn't shoot craps. No, I haven't met no banker's son and I ain't likely
to in this place. These pilgrims have sewed their money in their
underclothes, and they sleep with their eyes open. Seems like they'd go
blind, but they don't. These ain't Rubes, Lucky; they're city folks.
They've seen three-ringed circuses and three-shell games, and all that
farmer stuff. They've been 'gypped,' and it's an old story to 'em."
"You're dead right," Broad acknowledged. "That's why it's good. D'you
know the best town in America for the shells? Little old New York. If
the cops would let me set up at the