In October, 1879 at Mason City, Kansas Bat stops on his way to Dodge City at the Carson Saloon. He runs into an old friend Ellie Winters and watches a player Ken Wills arrested for claiming a dealer in a poker game was crooked. Bat learns from Ellie and the bartender that all the games in town are crooked. The dealers are all members of a protection racket where they pay Sheriff Jeb Crater. Bat buys a dealers' license to start an honest game but when he refuses to pay up, Bat is accused of cheating himself and thrown in jail. While incarcerated he teaches Willis how to beat the dealers at their own game. Bat is banned from playing cards but he makes an agreement with Willis to watch and help him for a fifty-fifty split. Bat taps his cane on the floor when he sees cheating. Willis is so successful that the sheriff hires a man to replace Bat's real cane with one filled with blasting powder.
—David Bassler