I've picked my man.

It don't make any difference to me how many times he played hookey when he was a kid, or how many men he's licked since he growed up.

I've hired him to help run the Double Cross, and run it right; and I ain't a bit afraid but what he'll make good." He smiled and knocked the ashes gently from his pipe into the palm of his hand, because the pipe was a meerschaum just getting a fine, fawn coloring around the base of the bowl, and was dear to the heart of him.

"Down to the last, white chip," he added slowly, "he'll make good.

He ain't the kind of a man that will lay down on his job." He got up and yawned, elaborately casual in his manner.
"You lay around and take it easy this afternoon," he said.