The men began to edge closer to the crowd, giving little, swift,
desperate, searching looks from left to right, and right to left, moving
nervously about, like weasels in a trap. "Close up there tight," said
Harkless, sharply. "Don't let them out."
"W'y can't we git no square treatment here?" one of the gamblers whined;
but his eyes, blazing with rage, belied the plaintive passivity of his
tone. "We been running no skin. Wy d'ye say we gotter give up our own
money? You gotter prove it was a skin. We risked our money fair."
"Prove it! Come up here, Eph Watts. Friends," the editor turned to the
crowd, smiling, "friends, here's a man we ran out of town once, because he
knew too much about things of this sort. He's come back to us again and
he's here to stay. He'll give us an object-lesson on the shell game."
"It's pretty simple," remarked Mr. Watts. "The best way is to pick up the
ball with your second finger and the back part of your thumb as you
pretend to lay the shell down over it: this way." He illustrated, and
showed several methods of manipulation, with professional sang-froid; and
as he made plain the easy swindle by which many had been duped that
morning, there arose an angry and threatening murmur.
"You all see," said Harkless, raising his voice a little, "what a simple
cheat it is--and old as Pharaoh. Yet a lot of you stood around and lost
your own money, and stared like idiots, and let Hartley Bowlder lose
eighty-odd dollars on a shell racket, and not one of you lifted a hand.
How hard did you work for what these two cheap crooks took from you? Ah!"
he cried, "it is because you were greedy that they robbed you so easily.
You know it's true. It's when you want to get something for nothing that
the 'confidence men' steal the money you sweat for and make the farmer a
laughing stock. And you, Jim Bardlock, Town Marshal!--you, who confess
that you 'went in the game sixty cents' worth, yourself--" His eyes were
lit with wrath as he raised his accusing hand and levelled it at the
unhappy municipal.
The Town Marshal smiled uneasily and deprecatingly about him, and, meeting
only angry glances, hearing only words of condemnation, he passed his hand
unsteadily over his fat mustache, shifted from one leg to the other and
back again, looked up, looked down, and then, an amiable and pleasure-
loving man, beholding nothing but accusation and anger in heaven and
earth, and wishing nothing more than to sink into the waters under the
earth, but having no way of reaching them, finding his troubles quite
unbearable, and unable to meet the manifold eye of man, he sought relief
after the unsagacious fashion of a larger bird than he. His burly form
underwent a series of convulsions not unlike sobs, and he shut his eyes
tightly and held them so, presenting a picture of misery unequalled in the
memory of any spectator. Harkless's outstretched hand began to shake.
"You!" he tried to continue--"you, a man elected to----"