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later I had to kill a man, which makes concentration difficult.
    I dealt a few hands of faro and finished ahead, no slight accomplishment when you consider it’s the serious ones who keep track of the cards who will sit at a man’s table when someone like Poker Annie is dealing in the corner. Tonight she had a silver comb in her hair and a red silk choker around her neck that just naturally drew the eyes down the front of her dress, which was some kind of layered thing of lace and percale that made you think it was cut lower than it was, anchored at the shoulders by two simple bows. It was a rare bettor who could pay attention to the pasteboards when it looked like one of those bows would work loose any second, spilling her femaleness out over the table. Men have no understanding of costume architecture.
    About ten o’clock I ran out of dedicated players and went to spell Irish Andy behind the bar. You couldn’t have pounded a shim between customers there and for half an hour Junior and I were too busy washing and filling glasses to talk. When at last there was a lull he mopped his face and slung the towel over his shoulder. “I always wanted a job with a collar,” he said. “I never thought I’d be sweating into it so much. I might as well be roping and throwing.”
    â€œThis pays better and doesn’t smell as bad. How are we doing?”
    â€œNot as well as she is. What do you suppose it is makes a man bet so foolish with a woman he can’t even have?”
    â€œJudge Blackstone told me once there’s no desert harder to cross than the two feet that separate a man’s brain from his penis. He was hanging a man for rape at the time.”
    â€œIt ain’t my business asking what soured you on her.”
    I drew a beer for a miner at the end of the bar, sliding it down the side of the glass to cut down on foam, and skidded it into his hand. “She is too much cards for me. There were three sides to take in Breen and she laid side bets with all of them. If I lived she won. If I got killed she won too. A situation like that is hard on a man’s good opinion of himself.”
    â€œMight could be you were expecting too much.”
    â€œNo might-coulds about it,” I said. “But I won’t compound the mistake by repeating it.”
    â€œI don’t know. Some of my best mistakes was made on the second run. How’s the keg?”
    I pulled the bung-starter out of its socket next to the sawed-off and gave the beer keg a couple of raps. “Better have one ready.”
    â€œFirst one generally lasts past eleven on Friday. You have to stop being so generous, running the beer down the glass that way. We charge the same for air.”
    I was putting away the starter when three fresh customers came through the flap door. Trouble clung to them like wolf scent.
    Men had been coming in and going out, but when they arrived in a bunch they either stayed together or split between the bar and Colleen’s table. This crew peeled off in three directions. One, puny and consumptive-looking in a duster snagged with nettles and a miner’s cap made of greasy ticking, went straight to the table without pausing. Another, larger and bulkier in a slouch hat and a hide coat too heavy for the weather, stepped to the side wall and placed his back against it, the one spot in the room that yielded an unobstructed view of the tables, the bar, and the door to the street.
    The third didn’t look like he belonged with the first two. The shortest of the three and stocky, he wore a corduroy shooting coat with leather patches, a black plug hat with a feather in the band, and a cartridge belt slantwise across his chest loaded with rifle shells belonging to the .45-70 Springfield drooping lazily in his left hand. There was something about the set of the bones in his face, with its neat beard and swooping moustaches, that reminded me of someone, but that wasn’t the