“And what is there to do?”
“Continue, slowly, and wait for luck to change.”
“But with women?”
“No gambler has luck with women. He is too concentrated. He works nights. When he should be with the woman. No man who works nights can hold a woman if the woman is worth anything.”
“You are a philosopher.”
“No, hombre. A gambler of the small towns. One small town, then another, another, then a big town, then start over again.”
“Then shot in the belly.”
“The first time,” he said. “That has only happened once.”
“I tire you talking?” Mr. Frazer suggested.
“No,” he said. “I must tire you.”
“And the leg?”
“I have no great use for the leg. I am all right with the leg or not. I will be able to circulate.”
“I wish you luck, truly, and with all my heart,” Mr. Frazer said.
“Equally,” he said. “And that the pain stops.”
“It will not last, certainly. It is passing. It is of no importance.”
“That it passes quickly.”
“Equally.”
That night the Mexicans played the accordion and other instruments in the ward and it was cheerful and the noise of the inhalations and exhalations of the accordion, and of the bells, the traps, and the drum came down the corridor. In that ward there was a rodeo rider who had come out of the chutes on Midnight on a hot dusty afternoon with the big crowd watching, and now, with a broken back, was going to learn to work in leather and to cane chairs when he got well enough to leave the hospital. There was a carpenter who had fallen with a scaffolding and broken both ankles and both wrists. He had
