Go to it, old girl."
He released his arm and thrust her playfully on the shoulder, at the same time turning to the poker-players.
"Take off the limit and I'll go you-all."
"Limit's the roof," said Jack Kearns.
"Take off the roof."
The players glanced at one another, and Kearns announced,
"The roof's off."
Elam Harnish dropped into the waiting chair, started to pull out his gold-sack, and changed his mind.
The Virgin pouted a moment, then followed in the wake of the other dancers.
"I'll bring you a sandwich, Daylight," she called back over her shoulder.
He nodded.
She was smiling her forgiveness.
He had escaped the apron-string, and without hurting her feelings too severely.
"Let's play markers," he suggested.
"Chips do everlastingly clutter up the table....If it's agreeable to you-all?"
"I'm willing," answered Hal Campbell.
"Let mine run at five hundred."
"Mine, too," answered Harnish, while the others stated the values they put on their own markers, French Louis, the most modest, issuing his at a hundred dollars each.
In Alaska, at that time, there were no rascals and no tin-horn gamblers.
Games were conducted honestly, and men trusted one another.
A man's word was as good as his gold in the blower.
A marker was a flat, oblong composition chip worth, perhaps, a cent.
But when a man betted a marker in a game and said it was worth five hundred dollars, it was accepted as worth five hundred dollars.
Whoever won it knew that the man who issued it would redeem it with five hundred dollars' worth of dust weighed out on the scales.
The markers being of different colors, there was no difficulty in identifying the owners.
Also, in that early Yukon day, no one dreamed of playing table-stakes.
A man was good in a game for all that he possessed, no matter where his possessions were or what was their nature.
Harnish cut and got the deal.
At this good augury, and while shuffling the deck, he called to the barkeepers to set up the drinks for the house.
As he dealt the first card to Dan MacDonald, on his left, he called out:
"Get down to the ground, you-all, Malemutes, huskies, and Siwash purps!
Get down and dig in!
Tighten up them traces!
Put your weight into the harness and bust the breast-bands!
Whoop-la! Yow!
We're off and bound for Helen Breakfast!
And I tell you-all clear and plain there's goin' to be stiff grades and fast goin' to-night before we win to that same lady.
And somebody's goin' to bump...hard."
Once started, it was a quiet game, with little or no conversation, though all about the players the place was a-roar. Elam Harnish had ignited the spark.
More and more miners dropped in to the Tivoli and remained.
When Burning Daylight went on the tear, no man cared to miss it.
The dancing-floor was full.
Owing to the shortage of women, many of the men tied bandanna handkerchiefs around their arms in token of femininity and danced with other men.
All the games were crowded, and the voices of the men talking at the long bar and grouped about the stove were accompanied by the steady click of chips and the sharp whir, rising and falling, of the roulette-ball.
All the materials of a proper Yukon night were at hand and mixing.
The luck at the table varied monotonously, no big hands being out.
As a result, high play went on with small hands though no play lasted long.
A filled straight belonging to French Louis gave him a pot of five thousand against two sets of threes held by Campbell and Kearns.
One pot of eight hundred dollars was won by a pair of treys on a showdown.
And once Harnish called Kearns for two thousand dollars on a cold steal.