CHAPTER I.THE MAN OF "CARD HONOR".
"I'll wager you ten dollars that my fly gets off the mirror before yours does." "I'll take that bet, friend." The dozen or so of waiting customers lounging in Abe Morris's barber shop looked up with signs of renewed life.
"I'll make it twenty," continued the first speaker.
"I follow you," assented the second speaker.
*Truly, if men must do so trivial a thing as squander their money on idle bets, here was a novel enough contest.
Each of the bettors sat in a chair, tucked up in white to the chin.

Each was having his hair cut.
At the same moment a fly had lighted on each of the mirrors before the two customers.
The man who had offered the bet was a well known local character--Jim Duff by name, by occupation one of the meanest and most dishonorable gamblers who had ever disgraced Arizona by his presence.
There is an old tradition about "honest gamblers" and "players of square games." The man who has been much about the world soon learns to understand that the really honest and "square" gambler is a creature of the imagination.

The gambler makes his living by his wits, and he who lives by anything so intangible speedily finds the road to cheating and trickery.
Jim Duff had been no exception.

His reputation was such that he could find few men among the residents of this part of Arizona who would meet him at the gaming table.

He plied his trade mostly among simple-minded tourists from the east--the class of men who are known in Arizona as "tenderfeet." Rumor had it that Jim Duff, in addition to his many years of unblushing cheating for a living, had also shot and killed three men in the past on as many different occasions.
Yet he was a sleek, well-groomed fellow, tall and slim, and, in the matter of years, somewhere in his forties.