"Nobody bet on other cards. Other cards all gone. Everybody one
mind. Everybody play king to lose, seven to win. Maybe bank lose
twenty thousand dollars, maybe bank win. Yes, that picture I
understand."
"Yet you do not know the end!" I cried triumphantly. "It is the
last turn, but the cards are not yet turned. In the picture they
will never be turned. Nobody will ever know who wins nor who
loses."
"And the men will sit there and never talk," he said, wonder and
awe growing in his face. "And the lookout will lean forward, and
the blood will be warm in the face of the dealer. It is a strange
thing. Always will they sit there, always; and the cards will
never be turned."
"It is a picture," I said. "It is life. You have seen things like
it yourself."
He looked at me and pondered, then said, very slowly: "No, as you
say, there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is
it a true thing. I have seen it. It is life."
For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial
wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life.
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