| OCR Text |
Show . MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE. Philosophical View Taken by Detected Detect-ed Card Sharper. N. C Goodwin tolls a story of a poker fame In a far western town where (ambling Is permitted by law and regulated by tho gamesters, who generally have the moral support of tho community when they administer atrenuous punlahment for crooked dealing. Four men "sat In" on this occitslns. and two of them worked together to-gether with so much dlsastor to the other two, who wore playing fairly, that the suspicions of the latter were aroused. They Boon discovered the system In operation against them. One, two, or the required number of fingers were laid with apparent raroleasneas on the tnhlo- for signaling purposes. Tt-o fingers were resting on the tablo when quirk as a flash one of the cheated sliced them off with a knife, ending the gnnio. The following morning morn-ing the victim or thla Impromptu bit of surgery waa heard alnglng and whistling cheerfully In his mom In tho local hotel, and waa asked by a surprised sur-prised stranger who had heard of tho avenlng's game and Ita flnUh If cheerfulness cheer-fulness were not somewhat out of order or-der on tho part of a man who hnd Just lost two fingers and boon branded as a cheat "Why, I'm In luck!" was the unctuous unctu-ous reply. "Suppose I had boeu hold-Ing hold-Ing a lull hand at that stage of the game!" |
