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“Cocked dice, sir,” he whispered as graciously as if no indignity whatever had been done him. “Roll again.”

Joe shook the dice reflectively, getting over the shock.

After a little bit he decided that though he could now guess the Big Gambler’s real name, he’d still give him a run for his money.

A little corner of Joe’s mind wondered how a live skeleton hung together. Did the bones still have gristle and thews, were they wired, was it done with force-fields, or was each bone a calcium magnet clinging to the next?this tying in somehow with the generation of the deadly ivory electricity.

In the great hush of The Boneyard, someone cleared his throat, a Scarlet Woman tittered hysterically, a coin fell from the nakedest change girl’s tray with a golden clink and rolled musically across the floor.

“Silence,” the Big Gambler commanded and in a movement almost too fast to follow whipped a hand inside the bosom of his coat and out to the crap table’s rim in front of him. A short-barreled silver revolver lay softly gleaming there. “Next creature, from the humblest nigger night-girl to … you, Mr. Bones, who utters a sound while my worthy opponent rolls, gets a bullet in the head.”

Joe gave him a courtly bow back, it felt funny, and then decided to start his run with a natural seven made up of an ace and a six. He rolled and this time the Big Gambler, judging from the movements of his skull, closely followed the course of the cubes with his eyes that weren’t there.

The dice landed, rolled over, and lay still. Incredulously, Joe realized that for the first time in bis crap-shooting life he’d made a mistake. Or else there was a power in the Big Gambler’s gaze greater than that in his own right hand. The six cube had come down okay, but the ace had taken an extra half roll and come down six too.

“End of the game,” Mr. Bones boomed sepulchrally.

The Big Gambler raised a brown skeletal hand. “Not necessarily,” he whispered. His black eyepits aimed themselves at Joe like the mouths of siege guns. “Joe Slattermill, you still have something of value to wager, if you wish.

Your life.”

At that a giggling and a hysterical littering and a guffawing and a braying and a shrieking burst uncontrollably out of the , whole Boneyard. Mr. Bones summed up the sentiments when he bellowed over the rest of the racket, “Now what use or value is there in the life of a bummer like Joe Slattermill’

Not two cents, ordinary money.”

The Big Gambler laid a hand on the revolver gleamin) before him and all the laughter died.

“I have a use for it,” the Big Gambler whispered. “Jo<

Slattermill, on my part I will venture all my winnings of to night, and throw in the world and everything in it for a sid<

bet. You will wager your life, and on the side your soul. Yo~

to roll the dice. What’s your pleasure?”

Joe Slattermill quailed, but then the drama of the situatiol took bold of him. He thought it over and realized he certain ly wasn’t going to give up being stage center in a spectacli like this to go home broke to his Wife and Mother an(

decaying house and the dispirited Mr. Guts. Maybe, he toll himself encouragingly, there wasn’t a power in the Bi; Gambler’s gaze, maybe Joe had just made his one and only crap-shooting error. Besides, he was more inclined to ac cept Mr. Bones’s assessment of the value of his life than th<

Big Gambler’s.

“It’s a bet,” he said.

“Lottie, give him the dice.”

Joe concentrated his mind as never before, the power, tingled triumphantly in his hand, and he made his throw, j The dice never hit the felt. They went swooping down, then up,- in a crazy curve far out over the end of the table, and then came streaking back like tiny red-glinting meteors I toward the face of the Big Gambler, where they suddenly]

nested and hung in his black eye sockets, each with thei single red gleam of an ace showing, i Snake eyes. !

The whisper, as those red-glmting dice-eyes stared mock-j ingly at him: “Joe Slattermill, you’ve crapped out.” i Using thumb and middle fingeror bone ratherof either i hand, the Big Gambler removed the dice from his eye sockets j and dropped them in Lottie’s white-gloved hand. j “Yes, you’ve crapped out, Joe Slattermill,” he went onj tranquilly. “And now you can shoot yourself”he touched*

the silver gun”or cut your throat”he whipped a gold-j handled bowie knife out of his coat and laid it beside the) revolver”or poison yourself”the two weapons’ werei joined by a small black bottle with white skull and cross- \

bones on it”or Miss Flossie here can kiss you to death.” l He drew forward beside him his prettiest, evilest-lookingi - sporting girl. She preened herself and flounced her short violet skirt and gave Joe a provocative, hungry look, lifting her carmine upper lip to show her long white canines.

“Or else,” the Big Gambler added, nodding significantly toward the black-bottomed crap table, “you can take the Big Dive.”

Joe said evenly, “I’ll take the Big Dive.”

He put his right foot on his empty chip table, his left on the black rim, fell forward … and suddenly kicking off from the rim, launched himself in a tiger spring straight across the crap table at the Big Gambler’s throat, solacing himself with the thought that certainly the poet chap hadn’t seemed to suffer long.

As he flashed across the exact center of the table he got an instant photograph of what really lay below, but his brain had no time to develop that snapshot, for the next instant he was plowing into the Big Gambler.

Stiffened brown palm edge caught him in the temple with a lightninglike judo chop … and the brown fingers or bones flew all apart like puff paste. Joe’s left hand went through the Big Gambler’s chest as if there were nothing there but black satin coat, while his right hand, straight-armedly clawing at the slouch-hatted skull, crunched it to pieces. Next instant Joe was sprawled on the floor with some black I clothes and brown fragments.

i He was on his feet in a flash and snatching at the Big I Gambler’s tall stacks. He had time for one left-handed grab.

‘ He couldn’t see any gold or silver or any black chips, so he stuffed his left pants pocket with a handful of the pale chips and ran.

Then the whole population of The Boneyard was on him and after him. Teeth, knives and brass knuckles flashed. He was punched, clawed, kicked, tripped and stamped on with spike heels. A gold-plated trumpet with a bloodshot-eyed black face behind it bopped him on the head. He got a white flash of the golden dicegirl and made a grab for her, but she got away. Someone tried to mash a lighted cigar in his eye.

Lottie, writhing and flailing like a white boa constrictor, almost got a simultaneous strangle hold and scissors on him.

From a squat wide-mouth bottle Flossie, snarling like a feline fiend, threw what smelt like acid past his face. Mr. Bones peppered shots around him from the silver revolver. He was stabbed at, gouged, rabbit-punched, scragmauled, slugged, kneed, bitten, bearhugged, butted, beaten and had his to trampled.

But somehow none of the blows or grabs had much re force. It was like fighting ghosts. In the end it turned o that the whole population of The Boneyard, working t gether, had just a little more strength than Joe. He felt hic self being lifted by a multitude of hands and pitched oi through the swinging doors so that he thudded down on h rear end on the board sidewalk. Even that didn’t hurt mucl It was more like a kick of encouragement.

He took a deep breath and felt himself over and worke his bones. He didn’t seem to have suffered any seriOl damage. He stood up and looked around. The Boneyard ws dark and silent as the grave, or the planet Pluto, or all tb aarK ana silent as ine grave, or me pianel riulo, or an. ii: rest of Ironmine. As his eyes got accustomed to the starligl and occasional roving spaceship-gleam, he saw a padlocke sheet-iron door where the swinging ones had been.

He found he was chewing on something crusty that he’

somehow carried in his right hand all the way through th somenow camea in nis rigai nana an ine way Lurougn int.

final fracas. Mighty tasty, like the bread his Wife baked foi best customers. At that instant his brain developed the photograph it had taken when he had glanced down as he flashed across the. center of the crap table. It was a thin wall ol flames moving sideways across the table and just beyond the flames the faces of his Wife, Mother, and Mr. Guts, all looking very surprised. He realized that what he was chewing was a fragment of the Big Gambler’s skull, and he remembered the shape of the three loaves his Wife had started to bake when he left the house. Ana he understood the magic she’d made to let him get a little ways away and feel half a man, and then come diving home with his fingers burned.

He spat out what was in his mouth and pegged the rest of the bit of giant-popover skull across the street.

He fished in his left pocket. Most of the pale poker chips had been mashed in the fight, but he found a whole one and explored its surface with his fingertips. The symbol embossed, on it was a cross. He lifted it to his lips and took a bite. It’

tasted delicate, but delicious. He ate it and felt his strength revive. He patted his bulging left pocket. At least he’d start out well provisioned.

Then he turned and headed straight for home, but he took the long way, around the world.

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