But whatever can I do?"
"'"Do!" says his friend; "do! You-all can quit goin' ag'inst it,
can't you?"
"'"But you don't onderstand," says Peg-laig, eager an' warm. "It's
all plumb easy for you to stand thar an' say I don't have to go
ag'inst it. It may change your notion a whole lot when I informs you
that this yere is the only game in town," an' with that this
reedic'lous Peg-laig hurries back to his seat.
"'As I asserts former, it's no use me tryin' to make old Peg-laig
stop when once he's started with them schemes of his, so I turns
over my two hundred dollars, an' leans back to see whatever Peg-
laig's goin' to a'complish next. As he says, he's got a box an' a
deck to deal with. So he fakes a layout with a suite of jimcrow
kyards he buys, local, an' a oil-cloth table-cover, an' thar he is
organized to begin. For chips, he goes over to a store an' buys
twenty stacks of big wooden button molds, same as they sews the
cloth onto for overcoat buttons. When Peg-laig is ready, you should
have beheld the enthoosiasm of them Rock Island folks. They goes
ag'inst that brace of Peg-laig's like a avalanche.
"'Peg-laig deals for mighty likely it's an hour. Jest as he puts it
up, he's a careful dealer, an' the result is we win all the big bets
an' most all the little ones, an' I'm sort o' estimatin' in my mind
that we're ahead about four hundred simoleons.
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