What gave him such recklessness?
Why should he be so eager to risk such a sum on an inferior hand?
McAfee, sitting next him, leaned over, managed to gain swift glimpse at
what he held, and eagerly whispered to him a word of encouragement.
The Judge straightened up in his chair, grasped a filled glass some one
had placed at his elbow, and gulped down the contents. The whispered
words, coupled with the fiery liquor, gave him fresh courage.
"By God, Kirby! I'll do it!" he blurted out. "You can't bluff me on
the hand I've got. Give me a sheet of paper, somebody--yes, that will
do."
He scrawled a half-dozen lines, fairly digging the pen into the sheet
in his fierce eagerness, and then signed the document, flinging the
paper across toward Kirby.
"There, you blood-sucker," he cried insolently. "Is that all right?
Will that do?"
The imperturbable gambler read it over slowly, carefully deciphering
each word, his thin lips tightly compressed.
"You might add the words, 'This includes every chattel slave legally
belonging to me,'" he said grimly.
"That is practically what I did say."
"Then you can certainly have no objection to putting it in the exact
words I choose," calmly. "I intend to have what is coming to me if I
win, and I know the law."
Beaucaire angrily wrote in the required extra line.
"Now what?" he asked.
"Let McAfee there sign it as a witness, and then toss it over into the
pile." He smiled, showing a line of white teeth beneath his moustache.
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