"Seems to me I ain't got it just exactly right.
You-all said...?"
He hung with painful expectancy on Nathaniel Letton's utterance.
"I said you were under a misapprehension, Mr. Harnish, that was all.
You have been stock gambling, and you have been hard hit.
But neither Ward Valley, nor I, nor my associates, feel that we owe you anything."
Daylight pointed at the heap of receipts and stubs on the table.
"That-all represents ten million twenty-seven thousand and forty-two dollars and sixty-eight cents, hard cash.
Ain't it good for anything here?"
Letton smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
Daylight looked at Dowsett and murmured:—
"I guess that story of mine had some meaning, after all."
He laughed in a sickly fashion.
"It was your deal all right, and you-all dole them right, too.
Well, I ain't kicking.
I'm like the player in that poker game. It was your deal, and you-all had a right to do your best.
And you done it—cleaned me out slicker'n a whistle."
He gazed at the heap on the table with an air of stupefaction.
"And that-all ain't worth the paper it's written on.
Gol dast it, you-all can sure deal 'em 'round when you get a chance.
Oh, no, I ain't a-kicking.
It was your deal, and you-all certainly done me, and a man ain't half a man that squeals on another man's deal.
And now the hand is played out, and the cards are on the table, and the deal's over, but..." His hand, dipping swiftly into his inside breast pocket, appeared with the big Colt's automatic.
"As I was saying, the old deal's finished.
Now it's MY deal, and I'm a-going to see if I can hold them four aces—
"Take your hand away, you whited sepulchre!" he cried sharply.
Nathaniel Letton's hand, creeping toward the push-button on the desk, was abruptly arrested.
"Change chairs," Daylight commanded.
"Take that chair over there, you gangrene-livered skunk.
Jump!
By God! or I'll make you leak till folks'll think your father was a water hydrant and your mother a sprinkling-cart.
You-all move your chair alongside, Guggenhammer; and you-all Dowsett, sit right there, while I just irrelevantly explain the virtues of this here automatic.
She's loaded for big game and she goes off eight times.
She's a sure hummer when she gets started.
"Preliminary remarks being over, I now proceed to deal.
Remember, I ain't making no remarks about your deal.
You done your darndest, and it was all right.
But this is my deal, and it's up to me to do my darndest.
In the first place, you-all know me.
I'm Burning Daylight—savvee? Ain't afraid of God, devil, death, nor destruction.
Them's my four aces, and they sure copper your bets.
Look at that there living skeleton.
Letton, you're sure afraid to die. Your bones is all rattling together you're that scared.
And look at that fat Jew there.
This little weapon's sure put the fear of God in his heart.
He's yellow as a sick persimmon.
Dowsett, you're a cool one.
You-all ain't batted an eye nor turned a hair.
That's because you're great on arithmetic.
And that makes you-all dead easy in this deal of mine.