Page:AH Lewis--Wolfville.djvu/223

Rh the grass country, but this was shorely the toughest. It even overplays anythin' Rainbow Sam ever is ag'inst; an' the hard luck of Rainbow Sam is a proverb of Arizona.

"'Which I reckons I was foaled with a copper on me,' says this Rainbow Sam to Enright one day. 'In all my born days I never makes a killin'—never gets up winner once. I was foaled a loser, an' I'll keep a-losin' ontil this yere malady—which it's consumption-which has me in charge delivers me to the angels an' gets its receipt.'

"It's a mockery what transpires touchin' this Rainbow Sam. Jest as he states, the consumption's got him treed an' out on a limb. Doc Peets says, himse'f, nothin' can he'p him; an' when Peets quits a little thing like consumption an' shoves his chair back, you-alls can gamble a gent's health, that a-way, is on a dead kyard.

"I recalls how Rainbow Sam dies; which he rides out into eternity easy an' painless. We-alls is into a poker-game nne night-that is, five of us—when Doc Peets is called away.

"'See yere, Rainbow,' says Peets to Rainbow Sam, who's penniless an' tharfore lookin' on; 'you never has a morsel of luck in your life. Now, yere: You play my hand an' chips awhile. I'm on velvet for three hundred an' fifty, an' I'd as soon you'd lose it into the game as any sport I knows. An' to rouse your moral nacher