Chapter XX: Kenney’s Royal Flush 253 (6)

“Consequences was that Pete, havin’ found his theory of business success, devoted himself to the workin’ on it out, with a persistency that would ’a’ growed wool on a nigger’s heel ’f he’d devoted hisself to that particular form of effort. Why, Pete’d give his nights an’ days to poker. He never allowed business to interfere with a game, long’s he’d money to play with.

“Just naturally his theory of the game interfered with his general success. Mostly it does interfere, I’ve noticed, when a man gets theories in his head an’ plays the game different f’m the ordinary run o’ people. These here sharps that figgers out some particular thing in the game as bein’ a dead certainty, always loses money on it, for you can say what you like about the great American game, but it certainly does beat anything else for the preponderance of uncertainty that has to be calculated on, whenever you have a dead sure thing in your mind--all excepting a royal flush, as Pete used to say with ondeniable wisdom.

“Pete’s mind bein’ fixed, so to speak, on that royal flush, you can see for yourself that it warped his judgment on the question o’ drawin’ cards. Many a time I’ve seen him split a pair of aces, an’ draw three cards to a ace an’ queen, or ace an’ ten o’ the same suit. Once I even seen him split two pairs, aces an’ queens, an’ draw two cards to the ace, queen an’ jack o’ diamonds, an’ Joe Hooker says he seen the blamed ijjit split three kings to draw to three hearts just because they was court cards o’ the same suit. An’ the first card he picked up in the draw was the fourth king. Shows how a man’ll overlook the blessin’s o’ Providence right in his fist, reachin’ out after things he hain’t no reason to hope for in the natural course of events. Stands to reason a man’ll lose money defyin’ fate with such monkey-shines as them.

“‘Twasn’t no use to argue with Pete, though. He were as obstinate as a mule an’ stuck to his notion o’ gettin’ a royal flush like a sick nigger sticks to the Methodist Church. You couldn’t persuade him. One day I says to him, ‘Look a’ here, Pete, a royal flush is most onquestionably a good piece o’ property, but what show hev you got o’ gettin’ one. You put me out o’ patience. Look at the pots you might ’a’ scooped with two pairs an’ three of a kind if you’d only drawed like a Christian,’ says I, ‘instead o’ puttin’ your trust in strange gods, an’ sacrificin’ your good chips an’ the principles o’ the game in a strange an’ foolish endeavour. It’s flyin’ in the face o’ Providence,’ I says to him, ‘an’ you’ll go down to your grave unhonoured, unwept, an’ unhung if you persist in it. More’n that,’ I says, ‘you’ll be dead broke all the days o’ your life.’

“But you couldn’t convince him. ‘There’s four royal flushes in the deck, ain’t there?’ says he, ‘an’ them five cards is just as likely to come as any other five, ain’t they? An’ if there’s anything certain in this here world o’ trouble an’ oncertainty, ’tis that a man’ll get ’em sometime, if he keeps on tryin’. An’ say! When I do get ’em if the Lord spares me till that happy day, I won’t do anything but swat the gang.’

“‘The Lord can spare you easy enough,’ says I, disgusted, ‘an’ so can the community if you go on tryin’ to break up our national institutions by propagatin’ sich revolutionary idees. It’s worse’n anarchy,’ I says. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

“But there wa’n’t no movin’ of him, an’ we just had to leave him to the error of his ways, an’ what we thought was the inevitable vengeance of heaven. An’ the boys calculated that bein’ as how he was a self-app’inted vessel o’ wrath, an’ bound to be skinned in the game as long as he continnered to play it, it was a sort o’ missionary work to assist in the skinnin’. Most of ’em devoted themselves to the missionary work, too, with such holy zeal that Pete was broke most of the time.

“He was good grit, though. Nobody never heard him complain, for he seemed to be sustained by a calm confidence in that royal flush, an’ every time he went broke he’d go back to work as chipper as a catfish an’ stick to it till he had a stake to sit into the game with.

“That was another thing I used to talk to him about, while I was trying to show him the error of his ways. ‘Supposin’ you do get a royal flush sometime,’ I says, ‘how can you expect to get a legitimate profit out of it, if you go broke all the time trying to get it? You won’t have no money to bet with,’ I says.

“But all he ever said to that was, ‘Oh! the Lord will provide. You don’t suppose things is goin’ to be so ordered, do ye, that heaven’s richest blessin’ would come to a man, an’ him not have the means to back it up?’ Which was next door to blasphemy as I told him frequent, but he on’y smiled. An’ when the time come, as it did finally, when his faith was justified, an’ he reaped the reward o’ persistency, it were developed that he had good reason to smile, for he had provided for that there contingency with a wisdom compared to which the guile o’ the sarpent was as the babblings o’ babes an’ sucklin’s. Oh! Pete was a polished article even if we did size him up for a deluded fanatic all them years.

“It went on for a matter o’ fifteen year or more, an’ Pete’s royal flush come to be a standin’ joke in town. Fellers would laugh about it every time he set into a game, an’ it were esteemed a great piece o’ wit for some feller to say, ‘I’ll bet a thousand to one in town lots that Pete won’t get a royal flush to-night.’ ’Course, nobody ever took it up, but everybody’d laugh, an’ Pete would laugh with ’em, for he was good-natured, an’ he’d say, ‘I’ll get it sometime, boys, if I don’t to-night.’

“An’ he did. If ever a man won success by long-continued, persistent strugglin’ for it, Pete Kenney did, an’ things fell out about as he’d always said they would. It were a pretty good game from the first, for there was a couple o’ crossroads gamblers who’d come to town lookin’ for blood, an’ it happened that there was two planters just back from New Orleans with their crop money in their pockets, an’ they was lookin’ for excitement. One of ’em knowed Pete an’ liked him an’ ast him to join in the game that was started just about the time they got off at Arkansas City here, an’ Pete havin’ a hundred in his clothes, just naturally did.

“He played lucky from the start. It happened, fortunately, that he didn’t get a chance to make one of his fool draws more’n once in half an hour or so, an’ as his play outside o’ that was fairly good he managed to scoop in some rattlin’ good pots on flushes an’ fulls, besides two or three that he took in on deuces and nerve, or some sich hand.

“Anyhow, he had near a thousand in front of him when there come a big jack-pot with fifty in it before it was opened. Pete sat next to the dealer an’ he passed, havin’ on’y a king, jack, an’ ten o’ clubs, an’, o’ course, not bein’ permitted to open under the rules. The next man opened it for fifty, the next three come in, an’ Pete raised it a hundred. That was his fool play. Whenever he’d see a show for a royal flush he used to play as if he had it, for fear he wouldn’t get the good of it when it did come.

“Well, it worked pretty well. One of the crossroads professionals dropped out, but the other one had a seven full, pat, an’ after the two planters had come in, he raised Pete another hundred. Pete came back at him with another and one of the planters dropped. The other had a four flush and he stayed. The gambler, for some reason, didn’t raise again, but simply saw the raise, and there was thirteen hundred dollars in the pot.

“In the draw Pete got the ace an’ queen o’ clubs. I suppose if I’d a caught them cards under the circumstances, I’d a dropped dead, but Pete never turned a hair. There was al’ays a kind of a drop to the left side of his face an’ it looked a little droopier than usual, for a minute, but he gave no other sign, and the others thought he had three of a kind at the most. The planter filled his flush, an’ so Pete had two good hands to play against, which was as much as anybody could expect. He had about six hundred on the table to bet with, besides, and more’n that, he had resources that nobody at the table knew about.

“The planter sat next to the opener, who dropped out, and as it was his first bet and he had a flush, he pushed up a hundred, not carin’ to go too heavy against the gambler who had stood pat and who had stood the third raise before the draw. The gambler raised, of course, pushin’ up three-fifty.

“Things was a-goin’ Pete’s way, but he never grinned. What he had to do was to make the others think he was bluffing, so he studies his cards careful for awhile an’ then says, sort o’ desperate-like an’ sudden, ‘I’ll see that, an’ I’ll go you two-fifty better,’ an’ he pushes his pile to the middle of the table, barrin’ fifteen or twenty dollars he had in loose change.

“The planter’s flush was king high, so he saw it, but didn’t raise, an’ the gambler raised it five hundred, thinking that Pete would drop out. ‘That’s more than your threes are worth, I reckon,’ he said, with a sneer, but Pete never answered him. He studied his cards awhile longer and then said, pretty slow, ‘I haven’t got the cash to see you, but I’ve got the deeds to some property here that’s pretty valuable, an’ if you’ll take that for security, I’ll raise you a thousand.’

“He pulled some law papers out of his pocket as he spoke and laid them on the table, but the gambler spoke up, very nasty, an’ says: ‘I ain’t buyin’ no property without looking at it, an’ money is the on’y thing that talks in this game.’

“Pete looked at the planter, but he shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t mind as far as I am concerned,’ he said, ‘but there is an objection made. I don’t see how I can help you.’

“‘Very well,’ says Pete, pretending to look troubled, ‘then I’ll have to ask for a few minutes’ time till I can get some money to play with. Sam,’ he says to the nigger that was bringing them drinks, ‘take these papers over to Mr. Stevens an’ ask him if he will loan me ten thousand dollars on them.’

“Then there was a little wrangle. The other gambler who had dropped out objected to the delay, but the two planters spoke up for Pete and the gambler who held the full house said he was willin’ to wait while the gentleman got some more money, as he was goin’ to win it anyhow, so Sam went over to Mr. Stevens’s house. Stevens bein’ the president of our bank an’ a gentleman with proper sporting habits.

“Some of us that was lookin’ on was guessin’ for fair. We never knowed o’ Pete havin’ no property, an’ we thought he was bluffin’, but we couldn’t see just how he reckoned he could work it, or what he expected to do. I says to myself, ‘I reckon he’s caught that royal flush, but what this move means is more’n I know.’ Anyhow, there warn’t nothin’ to do but wait, an’ I waited as all the others did, for it looked as if there’d be some fun.

“Pretty soon Mr. Stevens came back with the nigger, an’ says, ‘What’s this mean, Pete? The nigger says you want to borrow ten thousand dollars.’

“‘Yes, I do,’ says Pete.

“‘Well,’ says Stevens, ‘you can have the money on these deeds, of course, if you’ll come to the bank to-morrow, but you--’

“‘I want it now,’ says Pete, interruptin’, an’ as he spoke he picked up his cards from the table where they had been lying, an’ holdin’ ’em kind o’ careless, just so that Stevens could see ’em, but pretendin’ not to notice that they could be seen.

“‘Oh!’ says Stevens, ‘you want the money to play with, do you? But certainly you ain’t goin’ to bet on that hand?’

“‘You’ll oblige me,’ says Pete, pretendin’ to get in a terrible rage, ‘by sayin’ nothin’ about my hand. It may not be the strongest hand in the deck, but it’s the best one out. Besides, it’s my own business what I do with the money. The question is whether you’ll let me have it.’

“Oh, yes,’ says Stevens, ‘I’ll let you have it, all right. That is, I’ll give you my personal check.’

“I reckon that’s good,’ says Pete, an’ so it was, for everybody on the river knowed Stevens.

“It was the neatest play I ever expect to see, for them papers wasn’t worth the ink that was on ’em. It seems that Stevens had come to know about Pete always playin’ for a royal flush, an’ had joked him about it, knowin’ Pete pretty well an’ likin’ him as a man gets to like a bartender that treats him right, an’ Pete had got him to promise to lend him all the money he needed to play with, whenever he should get the royal flush.

Then when Stevens came over to lend him the money if he really had the cards, him knowin’ that the deeds was a bluff, he was sport enough and liked Pete well enough to help him along with his little remark about not betting on that hand.

“Of course, when they heard that, the other players thought sure he was bluffing, an’ Pete coaxed ’em along till he cleaned up $18,000. Then he invested the money, an’, as I said, become a respectable taxpayer. It all shows what a man can do by stickin’ to what he has to do in this world.”

THE END.

* * * * *