The Argosy, September 1915 — page 217: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

°Y Bob Strang in and clapping out each other, to the delight of the bench-warmers. At the end of each dance the ladies led their escorts up to a little box-office in the corner, where each man laid HE night was cold, even for northern Alaska. The one little straggling street that formed the camp of Kobuk was deserted, but be- hind the storm- doors of the saloons and dance-halls there was enough doing. Some husky dogs hitched to sleds were curled up in the snow in the street, while their owners caroused or gainbled in one of the resorts. In the Last Chance saloon business was normal, though it was after two in the morning. A row of “all-ins’ occupied benches facing the bar around the sides of the gambling-room in the rear. A shock-headed youth played a piano on a little, raised platform. On his long, pale, nervous face was the dismal look of a drug-fiend. As he played “My Old Kentucky Home,” tears coursed from his half-closed eyes; -he reveled in a sublime state of maud- lin sentimentality. On the left of the gambling-room, and separated by a row of timber pil- lars, was the Monte Carlo dance-hall, where twelve or fifteen highly made- up women, jeweled and nuggeted, danced the square dance with as many moccasined miners, to music supplied by a cornet and violin. They shouted and stamped as they danced, clapping 431 gold. down his dollar, in return for which a check good for fifty cents was hand- ed each girl. Here and there stood an Eskimo in mukluks and parka, as stoical as his own totem-pole. In the spacious gambling-room little bands of men were gathered around blanket-covered tables, over each of which hung suspended from the roof a large brass lamp that cast fitful gleams on the more or less tense faces of the players. In the farthest corner from the en- trance was a_ roulette-table, round which was gathered the largest crowd. At one end of it sat a little, shriveled- up man with a scrubby beard, a hang- ing nether lip, and glittering black eyes. Say, Shorty, Ben Levi over there’s some gambler, ain’t he?” whispered Three-Fingered Bill. ‘“T should say he is!” rejoined Shorty. “I knew. Ben out in the Ceceur de Lion country, and he was just the same as he is now. He goes out and makes a stake somewhere in mi- ning or dry-goods, and never touches a card till his poke’s bustin’ full of Then he turns himself loose. COMIC OOO KS (@)