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272 men going to the door, Rice at his heels. If he were a fool to take the long chances offered a man at the wheel, well, at least Bill Steele knew that as well as another. If he chose to risk, to lose ten or twelve thousand tonight, well, he had risked and lost more before now. But he was not the man to miss the chance he thought he saw to "smash Joe Embry." Just outside Rice caught up with him.

"Mean it, Steele?" asked Rice, his voice a trifle excited. "Goin' after him that strong?"

"Yes, I am," returned Steele.

"Then," cried Rice, hanging on his heel, "I'll just stick around and keep my eye on that lay-out until you get back! The table is as square as any of them, and it's goin' to stay that way."

"With that crowd watching they'd hardly dare monkey with it," said Steele. But Bill Rice merely grunted and turned back to see whatever might be done.

At his cabin Steele spent upwards of two hours smoking and thinking. From tomorrow on he was going to do what a man could to put himself upon a new footing with Beatrice Corliss. If one day he could make her think of him a little as he felt toward her, that was his one aim in life. Just how one did this sort of thing, just how he, Bill Steele, should set about "making love" seriously, he did not know. But he saw his work cut out for him and it was to begin as soon as might be. In the meantime, tonight he had to do with Joe Embry.

So far as Steele knew Joe Embry might be a very