It had fooled him, Burning Daylight, one of its chiefest and most joyous exponents.
He was nothing--a mere bunch of flesh and nerves and sensitiveness that crawled in the muck for gold, that dreamed and aspired and gambled, and that passed and was gone.

Only the dead things remained, the things that were not flesh and nerves and sensitiveness, the sand and muck and gravel, the stretching flats, the mountains, the river itself, freezing and breaking, year by year, down all the years.

When all was said and done, it was a scurvy game.

The dice were loaded.

Those that died did not win, and all died.