The Press., 1890-10-16
[Continued from last weekl GUESTS AT CAMP NINETEEN.

Meanwhile that repren6nSlDle Ia6n0f was seated with Aleck Wiams ten rods distant. A flat stone was between them, and on it's smooth surface were the cards and cash of a game of poker. The moon made light enough for the players, and they were engaged so earnestly that no other talk than the play required was indulged in. When they spoke it was in very low voices, too, and it was mani fest that they did not care to be dis covered. Neither man could have told, if he had tried to, exactly how the game had been brought about, nor could either have recalled anything in his own case but eagerness for it.
 Jack High had airily remarked at the beginning, as he drew his only dollar from vest pocket, There's plenty where that came from, " and so there was if he meant the government mint; but Wiams did not demand an insight of the pocket, and so the first bluff in this game of poker was made and won by the profess sional gambler. Nor did he require other capital than that single dollar. He played to the end of the first hand with only the coin and promissory words. and afterward he had steadily increasing number of bank notes provided by Wiams' losses. Luck and skill allied themselves on his side of the stone, and his accumulation of one dollar and two dollar bills at length bulged the pockets that had been empty before.
 ''Oh, here you be, gents?" and the in- truding figure of Old Jugg Brown stood before the players. "Yes-here you be. !"
 His inebriety had passed of, and he was not only sober but also pompous with the official duty of being the night watchman of the camp. He was too un- trustworthy to be hired for regular work, manual or mental; yet on his sons account, and under the regulating influence of that circumspect young man, he was employed to guard the port able property of the expedition while the rest of the company slept. He was now making his first slow, sauntering round for the evening, and he promptly intermitted his patrol to sit down.
 'Playin' fer keeps, too,' he continued, with wistful eyes on the several bills that lay on the stone.
 "Hush!'' said Wiams, and Old Jugg obeyed, for Wiams was a man of impor- tance.
 ''Hush!'' said Jack High, but this time Old Jugg was about to fout the com mand, for who was this frayed vagabond that he should presume to dictate silencef
 At that instant Jack High won stake, and wadded the money into pocket al ready full.
 "G-r-a-cious g-u-d-ness!' Old Jugg ex- claimed, indulging his mannerism of spelling out the first syllable with more convincing emphasis than orthog- raphy, yet keeping his voice down to a sure-sure. You didn't have dollar when you struck the camp
 ''Pray, don't interrupt us," Jack High hastily interposed.
 ''Oh, don't let me poster you. What I wants to jine into jine in."
 ''Can't be done witsout money" said Wiams, who knew that Will Browns discipline of the erring father permitted no money to him when within a days walk of barroom; ''so you're barred out"
 Old Jugg heaved deep sigh and walked away only to return five min utes later. He squatted by the stone, covertly disc16ed gold watch in his palm and said, with a fabby attempt at braggadocio, ''Does my watch go for ten Z dollars? Say, does it go?"
 With quick look of inspection, but without touching the watch, Jack High remarked that as for him he never re- jected gentleman's collateral. It was Aleck Wiams who should have declined the offer, because he recognized the watch at glance as belonging to Boss Donald, and instantly reasoned that Old Jugg, made desperate by 8 possible chance to get some whisky money, trust ing to luck to restore the timepiece, and induced by his ravening appetite for al cohol to lapse in his redeeming quality of honesty, had sneehngly stolen it. But Wiams assented to third hand at the game, and the watch figured in lieu of money in Old Jugg's bets. But not for long. Its thief, who viewed himself as boomer, was soon an unperturbed player, with the watch safe in his pocket and dozen bank notes besides. Some thing like $500 had been won from Wiams by the two others when the loser remarked that he had lost enough, and the game was stopped.
 "rve divided all my ready money be- tween you," he said, "and pay day for my gang is day after next"
 "Pd enjoy lending you something,' g said Jack High.
 ''Not bit more'n would, MT. Wiams,' g said Old Jugg Brown.
 "No, thank you,' was the reply. "You haven't banhupted me, and Pm not whimpering. Good night to you," and he strode away to his tent.
 The two winners were very jocular. They linked arms as they strolled along. Then Brown thought of the watch and got away from his companion long enough to replace it where it belonged, but he was back again in a minute. It was 10 o'clock and the camp was nearly all asleep. Those who were only dozing as yet were first to hear the low, soft commencement of a song.
 ''That's my daughters voice." Jack High remarked with proprietary, pride.
 Other listeners, and especially those whom the melody awakened from slum- Der, may have drowsily imagined that it was supernal; but as the singing grew louder and stronger, and the words of a familiar sentimental song were enunci ated, the hearers recalled Deuce Low and knew that she was the vocalist. It was an agreeable disturbance of the quiet of the night, and when it ceased