was racked by watchfulness, sense of injustice, selfcontempt, wild hopes, curiosity and dread. Especially the last two.
The complexion of the Big Gambler, as much as you could see of it, continued to darken. For one wild moment Joe found himself wondering if he’d got into a game with a nigger, maybe a witch-craft-drenched Voodoo Man whose white make-up was wearing off.
Pretty soon there came a century wager which the two remaining Big Mushrooms couldn’t fade between them. Joe had to make up a sawbuck from his miserably tiny pile or get out of the game. After a moment’s agonizing hesitation, he did the former.
And lost his ten.
The two Big Mushrooms reeled back into the hushed crowd.
Pit-black eyes bored into Joe. A whisper: “Rolling your pile.”
Joe felt well up in him the shameful impulse to confess himself licked and run home. At least his six thousand dollars would make a hit with his Wife and Ma.
But he just couldn’t bear to think of the crowd’s laughter, or the thought of living with himself knowing that he’d had a final chance, however slim, to challenge the Big Gambler and passed it up.
He nodded.
The Big Gambler shot. Joe leaned out over and down the table, forgetting his vertigo, as he followed the throw with eagle or space-telescope eyes.
“Satisfied?”
Joe knew he ought to say, “Yes,” and slink off with head held as high as he could manage. It was the gentlemanly thing to do. But then he reminded himself that he wasn’t a gentleman, but just a dirty, working-stiff miner with a talent for precision hurling.
He also knew that it was probably very dangerous for him to say anything but, “Yes,” surrounded as he was by enemies and strangers. But then he asked himself what right had he, a miserable, mortal, homebound failure, to worry about danger.
Besides, one of the ruby-grinning dice looked just the tiniest hair out of line with the other.
It was the biggest effort yet of Joe’s life, but he swallowed and managed to say, “No. Lottie, the card test.”
The dice-girl fairly snarled and reared up and back as if she were going to spit in his eyes, and Joe had a feeling her spit was cobra venom. But the Big Gambler lifted a finger at her in reproof and she skimmed the card at Joe, yet so low and viciously that it disappeared under the black felt for an instant before flying up into Joe’s hand.
It was hot to the touch and singed a pale brown all over, though otherwise unimpaired. Joe gulped and spun it back high.
Sneering poisoned daggers at him, Lottie let it glide down the end wall… and after a moment’s hesitation, it slithered behind the die Joe had suspected.
A bow and then the whisper: “You have sharp eyes, sir. Undoubtedly that die failed to reach the wall. My sincerest apologies and… your dice, sir.”
Seeing the cubes sitting on the black rim in front of him almost gave Joe apoplexy. All the feelings racking him, including his curiosity, rose to an almost unbelievable pitch of intensity, and when he’d said, “Rolling my pile,” and the Big Gambler had replied, “You’re faded,” he yielded to an uncontrollable impulse and cast the two dice straight at the Big Gambler’s ungleaming, midnight eyes.
They went right through into the Big Gambler’s skull and bounced around inside there, rattling like big seeds in a big gourd not quite yet dry.
Throwing out a hand, palm back, to either side, to indicate that none of his boys or girls or anyone else must make a reprisal on Joe, the Big Gambler dryly gargled the two cubical bones, then spat them out so that they landed in the center of the table, the one die flat, the other leaning against it.
“Cocked dice, sir,” he whispered as graciously as if no indignity whatever had been done him. “Roll again.”
Joe shook the dice reflectively, getting over the shock. After a little bit he decided that though he could now guess the Big Gambler’s real name, he’d still give him a run for his money.
A little