I just do appreciate it without being able to express my feelings.
But I am sure almighty curious, and I'd like terrible to know, Mr. Letton, what your figures of our winning is.
Can you-all give me a rough estimate?"
Nathaniel Letton did not look appealingly at his two friends, but in the brief pause they felt that appeal pass out from him.
Dowsett, of sterner mould than the others, began to divine that the Klondiker was playing.
But the other two were still older the blandishment of his child-like innocence.
"It is extremely—er—difficult," Leon Guggenhammer began.
"You see, Ward Valley has fluctuated so, er—"
"That no estimate can possibly be made in advance," Letton supplemented.
"Approximate it, approximate it," Daylight counselled cheerfully.
"It don't hurt if you-all are a million or so out one side or the other.
The figures'll straighten that up.
But I'm that curious I'm just itching all over.
What d'ye say?"
"Why continue to play at cross purposes?" Dowsett demanded abruptly and coldly.
"Let us have the explanation here and now.
Mr. Harnish is laboring under a false impression, and he should be set straight.
In this deal—"
But Daylight interrupted.
He had played too much poker to be unaware or unappreciative of the psychological factor, and he headed Dowsett off in order to play the denouncement of the present game in his own way.
"Speaking of deals," he said, "reminds me of a poker game I once seen in Reno, Nevada.
It wa'n't what you-all would call a square game.
They-all was tin-horns that sat in.
But they was a tenderfoot—short-horns they-all are called out there.
He stands behind the dealer and sees that same dealer give hisself four aces offen the bottom of the deck.
The tenderfoot is sure shocked.
He slides around to the player facin' the dealer across the table.
"'Say,' he whispers, 'I seen the dealer deal hisself four aces.'
"'Well, an' what of it?" says the player.
"'I'm tryin' to tell you-all because I thought you-all ought to know,' says the tenderfoot.
'I tell you-all I seen him deal hisself four aces.'
"'Say, mister,' says the player, 'you-all'd better get outa here.
You-all don't understand the game.
It's his deal, ain't it?'"
The laughter that greeted his story was hollow and perfunctory, but Daylight appeared not to notice it.
"Your story has some meaning, I suppose," Dowsett said pointedly.
Daylight looked at him innocently and did not reply. He turned jovially to Nathaniel Letton.
"Fire away," he said.
"Give us an approximation of our winning.
As I said before, a million out one way or the other won't matter, it's bound to be such an almighty big winning."
By this time Letton was stiffened by the attitude Dowsett had taken, and his answer was prompt and definite.
"I fear you are under a misapprehension, Mr. Harnish.
There are no winnings to be divided with you.
Now don't get excited, I beg of you.
I have but to press this button..."
Far from excited, Daylight had all the seeming of being stunned.
He felt absently in his vest pocket for a match, lighted it, and discovered that he had no cigarette.
The three men watched him with the tense closeness of cats.
Now that it had come, they knew that they had a nasty few minutes before them.
"Do you-all mind saying that over again?" Daylight said.