Chapter VI: Part 6

"Well, in order to do that, I've got to plead guilty to having been a table arranger and sweep-out boy at the St. Charles at the time the thing happened," said the horseman from New Orleans. "However, having achieved greatness since, I see no reason why I shouldn't be willing to acknowledge that. Besides being table arranger and sweep-out boy, it was one of the functions of my job at the St. Charles to sort o' stand by, as sailor-men say, when games were on in the private parlors, and run errands for the gentlemen playing. There was plenty of high poker play to be had at any of the first-rate New Orleans clubs at that time--too much of it, in fact, for the club games became so open, owing to the too generous distribution of visitors' cards by the club members that many of the high-playing men of the town abandoned club poker playing altogether. When they felt the hunch to get into a game of draw they adjourned to the St. Charles, where, in the seclusion of a private parlor, they enjoyed freedom from the neck-craning gaze of onlookers, and freedom also from that bane of the genuine lover of a game of draw, the chap who stands behind one's chair and keeps up a running commentary of approval or disapproval.

"Phil Cuthbert was a raiser of perique tobacco up in St. James's parish, and he had besides several thousand acres in cotton. His father, who died before the war was well under way, was supposed to be worth from $2,000,000 to $3,000,000, and it all went to his only son, Phil. At the close of the war the estate had dwindled to some $800,000, and Phil started in to flatten it out still more. It was the talk of Louisiana that he had taken a $250,000 crimp in the estate within two years after he had entered upon it, and it had nearly all gone at cards. He wasn't a dissipated man at all, but he just naturally couldn't help but play poker, and he belonged to a family of losers at poker. Before this big game that I'm going to tell you about wound him up I'd frequently seen him win as much as $25,000 in a single night's play at the St. Charles. Instead, though, of making a run for it for his St. James's plantation when he made a winning like this, he'd be back again with a party of more or less solvent friends the very next night, and his winnings and an amount equal thereto that was not velvet, but hard, soil-wrung cash, would float out of his keeping into the hands of his friends. Wherefore, to insert a tiny bit of moralizing on the side, I want to say that your greatest gambler is not the man who possesses the greatest amount of skill in manipulating the cards, dice or wheel, but the man who knows to a T when the psychological moment arrives for him to quit, winner or loser.

"Joe Lescolette--called Joe familiarly because he was under 40, a rounder of French nativity who loved Americans and their nicknames and diminutives of good fellowship--was probably the richest of the New Orleans fruit importers at that time. His father before him had had a line of South American and West Indian sailing packets hauling fruit into New Orleans for the American market, and Joe came into the whole business at the old gentleman's death. To go a little ahead of the story, Joe went to France at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, entered the French Army, and was killed at Gravelotte. He wasn't a hectic flush gambler during the few years that he kept his name pretty constantly in the mouths of New Orleans folks on account of his extravagances, but he was a scientific master of the game of American draw, all the same, and, by the same token, as nervy a little man in a game of cards, or in any other affair of life, for the matter of that, as ever came out of Gaul. He was the original subsidizer of the French opera in New Orleans, by the way, and it was at a performance of 'Aida' that Joe met Phil Cuthbert on the night Phil struck the poker snag that wrecked his estate. The two men were friends of some years' standing, members of the same clubs, and they had had various business dealings with each other besides. On the night of the 'Aida' performance Cuthbert had just struck town from his St. James plantation and he had the poker light in his eye. Cuthbert met Joe Lescolette in the smoking-room of the opera house during the final intermission and slipped his arm through Lescolette's and said:

"'Joe, I desire to accumulate, accrue and win a very large portion of your currency, even unto half of your kingdom, this night. There is too much conversation in a game of four. Suppose, then, when the dying strains of _Rhadames_ are only echoes and this act is finished we slit each other's weazens, pokerishly speaking, over at the hotel.'

"Well, when they came I was the buttons in charge of the parlor they selected for play. Much as they desired solitude, they couldn't achieve it. About half a dozen of their friends traipsed along with them, and took one of the tables in the same parlor and went at a dinky game of $20 limit.

"I piled a couple of dozen of decks of cards within easy reach of Cuthbert and the Frenchman, and, after they had each taken two brandies and sodas apiece, talking the while of everything else on earth besides poker, they began to play. Both of them had their check-books beside them on the table, and the bank was to keep itself, as the saying goes. There was to be no limit. New Orleans men who, in those days, were poker players of the old time sort, didn't ever play with a limit. None of them ever took advantage of this unwritten clause of the game to raise an opponent a million of dollars or so, and therefore out, but they played according to their means, and if any of them was raised a bit too strong by a confident opponent he only had to let out a word to have the raise reduced. I don't suppose more absolutely on-the-level poker was ever played in this country than the game as enjoyed by men of wealth in New Orleans after the close of the war.

"The white chips in this game between Lescolette and Cuthbert were worth $10, the reds $25, the blues $50, and the yellows $100. This was double the usual value of the chips even in big games at the St. Charles, and I could see that both men were out for it--in a perfectly friendly and cordial way, of course, but out for it nevertheless. Lescolette was a scientific, cool, all-around, percentage player of poker. He had made a study of the game just as he had made a study of the fruit trade, and he had very little of the mercurial disposition of his race. Withal, he was a generous man in the game, and never took advantage of an opponent's overgrown confidence. Cuthbert was an uneven player, not a cool-headed man at all. He had no license to play cards for big stakes under any circumstances. In the first place, he drank too much over the game, and, in the second place, he tried to play poker by intuition instead of by mathematical calculation and the study of the other fellow's forehead. He knew poker thoroughly, of course, and he had flashes of genius at it, but in general, as I look back to his work now, I'd call his poker ragged, uneven, and unproductive.

"For all that, Cuthbert had Lescolette's checks to the aggregate of nearly $13,000 after a couple of hours' play. The friends of the two men at the other table knocked off to watch the play at the two-handed table. Lescolette, while he showed no nervousness, indicated by a somewhat deepened earnestness of manner that he didn't relish being $13,000 or anything like it in the hole. After he had dashed off the check that put him that amount out, he sent me to the cafe for a lunch, and the two men and their friends spent an hour or so over the salads and wines.

"'We'll resume, then?' said Lescolette, and they began play again. It was about 1 o'clock in the morning. Cuthbert had taken three pints of wine to wash down his luncheon, and then a rather heavy swig of cognac. When they resumed there was too much color in his cheeks for a successful poker player. Lescolette had drunk only Apollinaris.

"Cuthbert split open a new deck when play was resumed, and riffled them rather uncertainly.

"'Damn a new deck of machine-burnished cards,' said he. 'Joe, you limber them up and deal this hand.'

"Lescolette took the deck and riffled them for fully two minutes. Then he spread them out all over the table, tossed them about every which way for a bit, straightened them together in a bunch, riffled them again, and passing them over to Cuthbert for the cut, dished them out.

"Cuthbert was one of those poker players who pick up their cards one by one. It is terribly bad form, that, but Cuthbert, with his nervous disposition, was addicted to it. He picked up his first card this time and said, 'Ah, a good beginning.' When he looked at his second card, said he, 'Better yet.' He made no comment upon his third card, but he flushed and gave a start that was perceptible to every man in the room save Lescolette, who was scanning his own hand. His fourth card took the flush out of his cheeks and steadied him. He went pale when he looked at it. He forgot to pick up his fifth card until Lescolette, looking up, remarked: 'Phil, are you strong enough to beat me with only four cards?' Then Cuthbert picked up his fifth card mechanically. It was a bad break, his leaving his fifth card untouched until reminded of it. It announced, simply, that he had pat fours. But he didn't seem to think of this.

"Cuthbert's $50 anteing chip was in the middle of the table. Lescolette looked at it for a second, and seemed to be in more than one mind about playing or making it a jack pot. He decided to play, and joggled in his blue chip.

"'Suppose,' said Cuthbert, still pale but steady, 'we make it $100 more to play, Joe?'

"'Of course,' said Lescolette, and he shoved in a yellow chip to match Cuthbert's.

"'How many?' asked Lescolette, ready to dish out cards.

"'None,' said Cuthbert, who looked queer and unnatural with his white countenance and glowing eyes.

"'So strong as that on the go-in?' said Lescolette, elevating his eyebrows. 'You have me seined. I require a card.' And he served himself with it.

"I pretended to have a bit of business to attend to behind Cuthbert's chair, so I could glance at his hand. He had four aces. I couldn't get behind Lescolette's chair, for three of the players' friends were seated behind him. Lescolette didn't make any sign either of elation or disappointment when he looked at the card he had drawn. He looked up for a bet, for it was up to Cuthbert.

"'A thousand dollars, make it, Joe,' said Cuthbert.

"'Oh, I'm not in so deeply that I can't pull out of this pot,' said Lescolette good-naturedly. 'However, seeing it's you, your thousand is sighted, and it's $5000 more.'

"This was precisely what Cuthbert wanted.

"'Now you're racing,' said he. 'Ten thousand more, Joseph Marie.'

"Lescolette looked up at Cuthbert suddenly.

"'I say, Cuthbert,' said he, 'isn't this a bit tumultuous and headlong, as it were?'

"'I don't see why you should consider it so, Joe,' replied Cuthbert. 'I'm playing according to the value of my hand. However, if it seems to strong, why'----

"'No, no, no,' put in Lescolette, quickly. 'I can stand it, and I do not seek to have you lower any of your raises. I simply was considering my own almost invincible strength herein.'

"'I stood pat, and you drew a card, you know,' said Cuthbert. 'I rarely bluff. You are to regard me as a bit of an Atlas in this likewise. You see the $10,000 raise?'

"'Surely' said Lescolette, 'and elevate it another notch of $10,000. Will one of you gentlemen'--addressing the somewhat wrought-up group of lookers-on--'keep track of this with a bit of a pencil?'

"One of the men in the group got out a note-book and stood by to register the bets.

"'Having emerged from the narrow domain of chance into the field of uncertainty,' said Cuthbert, 'I fear me I'll have to make it still another $10,000, Joe.'

"Lescolette, the more common-sense man of the two, rested his hands on the table before him and reflected.

"'I don't think I want any more of this, Cuthbert,' he said. 'There is now a great deal of money in the pot. It would be idle for either one of us to say that we could easily afford to lose our respective share in the pot as it stands. And yet, I don't exactly feel like calling you. I'm too well fixed. I haven't had such a hand at poker since'----

"'That being the case,' said Cuthbert, interrupting, 'why not be a sportsman and play your string?'

"That remark nettled Lescolette just enough to hold him in indefinitely. There was no more talk on his part.

"'Ten thousand more than you,' he said, short and sharp.

"Then the friends of the two men began to mutter.

"'This is all very fine as an exhibition of gameness,' they said, collectively, 'but there is a stopping point, or should be.'

"When there was nearly $275,000 in the pot both Cuthbert and Lescolette pulled out their notebooks and began to run over their bank accounts. Both found that they had about tapped their supply of ready banked cash. They wrote checks, payable to each other's order, for their respective shares of the amount in the pot, and then Cuthbert said:

"'Joe, I can't let down in this. I could never quite forgive myself if I did. Appraise my St. James land.'

"Lescolette protested. He had often visited Cuthbert at his beautiful St. James place. He protested hard. Yet he wouldn't call.

"'Appraise the St. James land, Joe,' said Cuthbert again. Lescolette declined to do it, and Cuthbert appealed to one of his friends to do it.

"'I should say your St. James plantations are worth close to $250,000,' said this gentleman, unwillingly.

"'Very well,' said Cuthbert. 'Shall I say, Joe, that those three squares of yours on Canal street are worth the same amount?'

"Lescolette nodded gravely.

"'Rather more than they're worth, I should say,' he remarked.

"'Well, they'll serve. I approximate their value,' said Cuthbert, the flush back in his face again and his eyes burning like coals. 'It is now my bet, is it not? Joseph Marie, my St. James plantations, at their appraised value of $250,000, against these, your Canal street property, if you elect--and we'll show down.'

"Lescolette nodded.

"'Old man,' said Cuthbert, then, 'you don't think I play it low down upon you? I couldn't throw them away, you fully understand? Joe, I've got four aces!'

"'Truly?' said Lescolette, inquiringly and quietly. 'Put them down, that we may see.'

"Cuthbert, confident then that he was the winner, nervously placed his hand face up on the table. Lescolette threw down, then, amid a very intense silence, the deuce of hearts, face up. Next, he threw by the side of the deuce the trey of hearts. Then the four of hearts. Then the five of hearts. He halted then for a second. Cuthbert was as haggard looking a man as I ever saw. Lescolette threw down the six of hearts.

"Cuthbert simply said, 'All right, Joe,' walked over to the sideboard, poured out a whopping big tumblerful of brandy, gulped it down, and, with a murmured 'Good morning' (it was dawn) he walked unsteadily out. That afternoon he made his St. James plantations over to Lescolette, notwithstanding the latter's protests. He had about $20,000 out of the wreck of his estate. He went to Honduras on a prospecting tour, found gold, and died in a Tegucigalpa hut of the fever."

GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME.

_A Poker Game in Abilene, When Abilene Was Bad, in Which a Tenderfoot
Came Near Crossing the "Divide."_

"I had so much luck in a poker game I once sat into that I've never played draw since," said a civil engineer who helped to build several of the railroads west of the Missouri. "It happened in Abilene in the summer of '70. We had then pushed the road about eight miles to the west of Abilene. You know what Abilene was in '70. Dodge City was then a camp-meeting grove compared with Abilene. The men belonging to our construction gangs were a bad enough lot to make it worth any man's while to go light on them, but they were cooing doves alongside of the batch of evil devils who had thrown the town of Abilene together in anticipation of the building of the railroad. Before we got anywhere near Abilene there was a pretty fair-sized and comfortably-filled cemetery plotted out near the town. But when we got close enough to Abilene to make it practicable for our construction men to put in their spare time there, drinking 'sumac' whisky and playing cards, between knock-off on Saturday afternoon and jump-in on Monday morning, Joe Geddes, the pine-box undertaker of Abilene, had more business than he could handle, working night and day.

"From the time that we got ten miles this side of Abilene until the rails were set twenty miles the other side of it, we lost construction men so fast that the road's employing agents in Leavenworth and Kansas City had trouble in filling their places. Every Monday morning there was a round-up of the dead and wounded in the whitewashed calaboose and hospital in Abilene that reminded the ex-soldier surveyors who were with me of their war experiences. The construction men got the worst of it, of course. While they were game enough men, their weapons were their fists, their knives, and sometimes their picks. But they were not up to the science of fine gun work, whereas the Abileneites, composed chiefly of left-over cowboys from the great Texas cattle-trail, whisky-dishers from the slumped Colorado mining camps, and tin-horners and desperadoes from everywhere, all knew how to pump lead like lathers spitting nails.

"Although a pretty young man at that time, I was in charge of the surveyors' gang. Most of the men in my gang were experienced, taciturn chaps. The experiences they had picked up in bad towns along other Western lines they had helped to map out had taught them the sense of steering clear of such towns and of sticking to their tents. I don't suppose that a man of my gang walked through the streets of Abilene when we brought the road there--not because they were in any sense cowardly, but because they had learned in the course of years of frontiering that trouble, and a whole lot of it, often overtakes men who are least in search of it in towns like Abilene.

"These old-timers tried to talk me out of my determination to have a look around in the town where so many of the men of the construction gangs were being killed off--for I wanted to see what thorough out-and-out bad men looked like. They told me that if I ever wanted to see my folks back East any more I'd better not do any monkeying around in Abilene. But I knew it all in those days, and so, without letting any of the men in my gang know anything about it, I slipped over to the chainmen's tents one night and roped in a couple of them to handcar me down to Abilene. When we reached the town I sent the chainmen back with the handcar, telling them to return for me in the morning.

"Abilene rather surprised me at first. I at least expected to have my hat shot off a few times in the course of an hour's rambling around, and, in fact, I was prepared to do a little impromptu dancing for the edification of Abileneites, who enjoyed toying with strangers. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the fellows hanging around the whisky mills and the brace faro layouts good-naturedly took me in hand and started in to give me a good time. I was a breezy young chap, you see, and able to hold my own in any public exhibition of the swelled head I unquestionably possessed at that time. Anyhow, things had not thoroughly warmed up for the night when I fell in with the gang early in the evening. It all looked so smooth and easy, and the heavy-artilleried chaps that I ran into seemed so square and peaceable that I drank a good deal more sagebrush whisky than I had any right to drink or than I had ever drank before.

"Around about midnight five of us, including Jim Cathcart, a bad man who was hanged a few years later for the murder of a Sheriff in Texas, pulled up at Toole Kingsley's 'Kansas or Bust' saloon and faro bank. The three other fellows I was with were outlawed cowboys, although I didn't know it then, and even if I had it wouldn't have made any difference in the shape I was in. Cathcart suggested a game of draw. He had probably noticed my good-sized wad of money, and I guess he reckoned on getting it. I didn't have any more sense than to agree, and, the other three chaps being willing, of course, we went up to the second floor of Kingsley's rum and faro honkatonk and waded in. When Cathcart suggested the game I noticed that a tall, broad-shouldered, very muscular-looking man, with long hair and a heavy mustache, who was standing with his back to the bar, eyed us pretty carefully, and at the time I rather wondered what he meant by it, though I forgot all about him five minutes later in the intensity of the game.

"'Intense' is not the word to describe that game of poker. I had been plugging along at the game of draw more or less ever since I was a growing lad, and after I had begun to shoulder an azimuth I had been an onlooker at some mighty queer games. But I never saw cards run the way they did that night. I was just about a fair to middling poker player; certainly nothing extra, although I was deft of hand and knew how to riffle cards in a way to bluff fellows not acquainted with my comparative inferiority as a poker player into the belief that I was some pumpkins with the pasteboards. But, second-rate player as I was, and something over two parts loaded as I was, besides, in common with my four fellow-players, the luck that I had from the very beginning of the game was positively miraculous. None of the other men had a half-skilletful of luck. It all came my way. It was embarrassing for a while, but later on it became dangerous; for I was a total stranger to these four men and a good deal oilier in manners and speech than they--a thing that was likely to excite suspicion in towns like Abilene in those days, especially in the minds of men steadily losing in a game of draw.

"Every man of the four persisted in giving me such massive hands to play against the utterly no-account hands they dished out to themselves that I didn't know what to make of it. All four of them were reasonably good poker players, but they were none of them short-carders--able to stack a deck; and I had certainly never sat into a squarer game of draw. But my own luck was absolutely magical. Pat hands were given to me about as often as pairs were served out to the other fellows. Every time this happened, and one or more of my opponents determined to find out if I was bluffing on my pats, I laid down the hands with a little fear growing within me; for after we had been playing for an hour or so I noticed all four of 'em snatching glances at me out of the tails of their eyes.

"After I had continued whacking all four of them pretty hard on their own deals (rarely dealing myself a hand worth anything) for a couple of hours, the luck took a peculiar switch, although it stayed with me. I began to get nothing whatever on the deals of the other fellows, but on my own deals I fed myself hands that actually smelt of brimstone, they were so weird and inexplicable. One time I got four eights pat on my own deal. I drew a card to give the impression that I was either drawing to two pairs or bobbing to a straight or flush, and won a corking pot. I was given some bad looks for this. Ten minutes later, when it was my deal, I was kind enough to give myself a pat full, kings up on sevens, and, the whole four staying, I rapped them again with all my might, although the chill of fear was creeping over, in spite of the copious quantities of fiery red liquor I was getting outside of along with the others. Once the luck veered around this way, it seemed as if I never got as much as ten high when the other fellows dealt. So the only thing I could do was to drop my hands and stay out on their deals. They were quick to notice this, and it didn't improve my situation any, either.

"This extraordinary luck jumped me on my own deal only once after I had caught and played those two self-dealt pat hands for all they were worth. The result was that I was out of the game for quite a little while, none of the other men serving me with hands fit to draw to. Meanwhile the four of them played listlessly with me out of it, for I had a good deal of the money of each, and they wanted it back. I think all four of them had fully decided in their own minds by this time that I was crooked and were only waiting for a chance to nail me.

"I had the buck when it came my turn to deal again, and so it was a jackpot. I was wishing myself well out of it, and had cold feet, if ever a man did, though I was afraid to say so with so much of my opponents' money in my clothes. My hands probably trembled a little as I dealt that round, and even this fact probably caused them to suspect that I was monkeying with the deck and to watch me narrowly. The man on my left opened the pot for the size of it, and all stayed. When I picked up my hand and saw that I had given myself a clean, pat flush, ace on top, it made me pretty nervous, and before I stayed I did a heap of considering.

"'The best thing you can do, young fellow,' said I to myself, 'is to stay out of this jack altogether, or else throw that straight of yours face up in the center of the table, proving your squareness to these cutthroats, and let them play the jack out among themselves. If you don't do one of these things, you're going to get hurt in just about three minutes.'

"Then I considered some more. Here I had a fine and probably winning hand that I had come by perfectly on the level, and it would be rank cowardice to throw it away, and mighty poor poker, besides.

"'I'll be damned if I do any such thing just to convince these chaps that I'm not a thief,' was my final conclusion; and with that I made it twice the size of the pot to draw cards. They all glowered I tell you what, but they all stayed, every one of 'em. They not only stayed, but they bet and raised each other like the devil, and forced me to out-raise all of their raises every time it came around to me.

"Jim Cathcart, whose beady eyes had been blazing ever since I doubled the value of the pot to draw cards, was as bad-looking a man as I want to see when, finally, the man at my left called my last big raise. There had probably been some signals in knee-rubbing under the table, for the other two cowboys followed the lead of the first and called me in turn. When it got around to Cathcart he slammed his bundle of greenbacks into the pile with an oath.

"'Podner,' said he, looking hard at me with his little red eyes, 'some o' your work here to-night has been so cut-an'-dried lookin' as to excite a whole lot of doubt about your bein' on the level; an' if you happen to have anythin' in that fist o' your'n this time that'll top these here three aces o' mine, then, by hell, you havin' dealt this mess yourself, there won't be no manner o' question but that you're a damned proper crook.'

"Was I scared? Well, the hand just fell out of my paw, face up on the table, I was so scared! I was so paralyzed with fear that I simply couldn't move or say a word, and, what's more, I'm not a particle ashamed to own up to it. When the cards fell out of my hand Cathcart reached over and spread them out with his left hand.

"'Well, by hell, you are a crook, ain't you?' he snapped when he saw the value of the hand that beat his own good one, and as he spoke he whipped out the big gun on the right side of his belt. I was blind with terror, and when I heard the loud report of a gun I gave it all up and figured that I was already three-quarters of the way over the Big Divide.

"When I opened my eyes a second later I saw Cathcart staring at the door, his right arm hanging limp at his side. His gun had fallen on the table without being discharged, and his left arm was in the air. So were the six arms of the other three men, and they also had their eyes glued on the door. I wheeled around to look that way myself. Standing quietly under the lintel of the door, with his two big guns covering the five of us, was the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man I had noticed eyeing us before we started the game of poker. The man was Wild Bill, Abilene's celebrated Marshal. The shot I had heard when I had given the whole thing up was from one of Wild Bill's unerring guns. It had pinked Cathcart in the right shoulder just in the nick of time, causing the gun with which he had intended to shoot me to fall from his hand.

"'Slope for your camp, son,' said Wild Bill to me quietly, still covering the four men. Well, for all I know, he might be covering them yet. I do know, though, that I was out of that room like a cat out of a bag, and the way I cut for our camp, over the newly-laid ties, eight miles away, was a warning to grasshoppers.

"It was while I was making this little journey, hitting a high place only once in a while, that I came to the determination that for a man who could not fight shy of bull-head luck any better than I could, the game of draw poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for health and peace of mind; and I haven't departed from that determination down to the present moment of time."

CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS.

_Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Professional Sharpers Who
"Work the Liners."_

An Englishman who travels a good deal was generalizing at one of the clubs last night on the subject of the card sharpers who devote themselves exclusively to the ocean steamers.

"It's a marvel to me," he said, "that the American steamship people, or the police, or somebody, can't drive these sharpers off the American steamers. It's nothing short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong somewhere. Can't be collusion, I don't suppose, or"----

"Oh, come now, stow that, mate," said an American who does a bit of traveling himself. "If they're not worse, and more of them, on the English transatlantic steamers, I'll turn British subject, take the Queen's shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks from Dahomey to"----

"Humbug! We don't fight naked blacks. We only subdue them, that's all. Punitive expeditions, you know. But about these card sharpers on the American ships. Why, it's simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of it is, the cads get themselves up like gentlemen, so how's a man to know"----

"Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man," put in the American.

The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen will when compelled to admit that the universe is not entirely an open book to them.

"Well, yes, I did," he admitted gamely. "Not very hard, though. I think twenty guineas would about cover it. But it wasn't the money so much. It was the way the thing was done--positively beastly, I say. Man was introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an American I know well. Good fellow, too. Man had been introduced to him by somebody else, and so on, so that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst of it was, I myself presented the chap to any number of fellows I knew on the ship, and all of 'em got bit more or less, and all of 'em looked at me reproachfully when it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper, just as I looked reproachfully at the man who"----

"Sort of endless chain, wasn't it?" put in the American.

"Well, if you want to put it that way," said the Englishman. "And worse still, the man got my guineas at my own game. If it had been poker, now, I wouldn't have minded so much, for I never could master that queer game, and I don't believe there's anything in it, anyhow. But nap! Chap beat me clean at nap, that I've been playing ever since I was at Harrow. Odd, too, that I beat him easily at first and had all the luck, and was probably fifty guineas ahead of him. Then suddenly the luck changed, you see"----

The American smiled.

"What the deuce are you grinning at? The luck changed, as I say, and, by Jove, the fellow positively couldn't lose. If my daughter hadn't become ill on the fourth day out, I dare say I might have lost quite a bit of money, and"----

"Unquestionably you would have," put in the American. "So that in one respect your daughter's illness--which I trust was not serious--was really a blessing to you. It's queer to me that no Englishman I have ever met in ocean voyaging is able to perceive that when he is playing at cards with a stranger who permits him to win easily and heavily at first, it is time for him to make his devoirs, more or less respectful, to the stranger, and proceed to take a constitutional on the main deck, henceforth abjuring cards with said stranger. Now, an American is able to see into that game right away. If he is playing with a friend, and the friend is a winner from the go-off, as we say over here, all well and good. The American voyager who is up to snuff puts his friend's initial winnings down to the chances of the game. But when he gets into a game with a stranger, and the stranger simply shoves money from the outset over to his side of the table--well, do you know what the American of to-day does under those circumstances? He simply awaits the moment when the luck begins to change, and then he has an imperative appointment with his wife in the cabin. He thus picks up quite a bit of cigar money from a man who he instinctively knows is a sharper."

"Fancy now," said the Englishman. "If I had only known that"----

"But you didn't know, and, as I say, I never came across the Englishman who did. Why, the ocean voyaging card sharpers have become so well aware of this little shrewd habit of American passengers with whom they sit down to a game that of late years they have altogether abandoned that old, old trick of permitting their victims to win with ease at the outset. They only work that trick nowadays on Englishmen. Fact is, I think there ought to be a rule on all transatlantic steamships, English and American, absolutely prohibiting British subjects from playing cards at all aboard ship."

"Tommyrot!" said the Englishman.

"Not so much so as you might imagine," said the American. "Of course, I don't mean that literally, and yet I don't know but what, after all, it might be a good thing. I have watched the wake of a steamer on the trip across the Atlantic fifty-two times--that is, I have made twenty-six round voyages--and I suppose that on these voyages I have seen as many as a thousand men plucked at cards. I will venture to assert that 80 per cent. of them were Englishmen. So you will perceive there is some justification for what I said about your countrymen playing cards aboard ship.

"I've seen some clever men of your country badly done by the ocean-going card sharpers, too. At the time your Lord Lonsdale came to the United States--Violet Cameron incident, you know--he was a pretty young man, even if he did at that period of his life stand in urgent need of a guardian with a heavy club. Well, amid the newspaper uproar over his landing in this country with the Cameron, the fact did not come out that Lonsdale was plucked of $12,000 on the trip over by Ned Turner, one of the most notable of the older clique of steamship sharpers. But it's a fact, all the same. I was not only a board the steamer at the time, but I was one of a number of men who endeavored to pound some sense into young Lonsdale's head while the plucking was going on. But he was a stubborn chap and would listen to no one, and even when he was quite convinced that Turner was a sharper, at the end of the voyage he stood for his big loss like a little man, and became genuinely angry at some of his English friends aboard who recommended him to stop payment on the checks he had given Turner to cover the greater portion of the plucking.

"I think Turner had it in mind to do Lonsdale when he got aboard at Liverpool. Turner had been working the ships for fifteen years, in spite of the efforts of the steamship companies to keep him off their vessels, and at this time he was a man of 40 or thereabouts. Lonsdale was pretty liberal in the use of wine at this time, and it was at the buffet that Turner, who was a fine-looking insinuating and accomplished man, found young Lonsdale on sailing day. The two men struck up a friendship from the very first day of the voyage, and it was Lonsdale himself who first suggested, as he afterward acknowledged--for he was a manly fellow--the poker game. Lonsdale had only recently learned the hands in poker--which is about all any man ever learns about it, if the truth were told--and he had the poker initiate's enthusiasm for the game to an exaggerated extent. Before going any further, I ought to say that Turner always maintained afterward that in his play with Lonsdale he was perfectly on the level.

"'The young fellow insisted on playing,' said Turner, 'and he couldn't play any more than my aunt in Connecticut. I played with him, because that's my business. But I didn't have to play crooked--and I don't admit that I ever did play crooked, understand--to get his $12,000.'

"Well, at any rate young Lonsdale and Turner started the game on the first day out, and kept it going almost until the steamer passed Fire Island. Of course Turner beat him right along. He made no effort to let Lonsdale win from him at first. He simply played poker and raked in the young man's money and checks. A lot of us aboard knew Turner, and those of us who had met Lonsdale in England got him aside on the second day out and diplomatically put it to him that he was engaged in a pretty difficult encounter--that, in brief, Turner was a professional player of cards. For our pains we were told that we were too confoundedly officious, that he was more than 7 years of age and knew what he was about, and all the rest--you know the talk of a boy; and this boy was flushed, too, you understand.

"At any rate, when the steamer was drawing near this shore Lonsdale decided that he had had enough--not that he would not have gone on playing for another seven days, had the voyage been protracted to that extent, but he had to get ready to land. Several of us were in the card-room when the last hand was played. Turner won the hand and Lonsdale scribbled a check on his American banker for the amount the hand represented. Then he looked up at Turner for a minute and said:

"'Some of my friends here estimate you a little unkindly, Mr. Turner.'

"'How's that?' inquired Turner, looking not a whit surprised.

"'Well,' said Lonsdale, 'they maintain that your skill at cards affords you something better than a livelihood.'

"'I never denied that,' said Turner coolly.

"'In playing with me on this voyage you have employed skill alone?'

"'At your suggestion, I have played draw poker with you for seven days. I understand draw poker, and I have $12,000 of your money. Do you want it back?'

"You see, that was a magnificent bluff on Turner's part. The young chap, he knew, would not welch.

"'Oh, if you choose to be insulting'----said Lonsdale, flushing hotly, and he rose from the card-table and left the room.

"Well, a couple of elderly Englishmen aboard who knew Lonsdale and his father before him went to him then and told him that it would be perfectly proper and right for him to stop payment on the checks he had given to Turner, who, they told him in so many words, was nothing short of a swindler.

"'Mind your own damned business,' said Lonsdale. 'I'll do nothing of the sort,' and that was the end of it. It must be confessed that you folks over there have a wonderfully game fashion of sticking to a bad proposition; but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was kept off the ships of all the lines after that, and I don't know what became of him.

"How they contrived to keep Turner off the ships unless he really wished to remain off is something that I can't explain, for it is simply a plain statement of fact to say that the steamship companies have always found, and probably always will find, it impossible to prevent the card sharpers from running on their boats. They have often tried it. They tried it on one notable occasion, as I remember, with George McGarrahan, in 1881. McGarrahan was the Nestor of the steamship card sharpers, and all the steamship companies knew him. The president of one of the most prominent transatlantic lines sent for McGarrahan--who, by the way, has since died in New York--and told him that he would not be permitted to travel henceforth on the vessels of the line.

"'The deuce you say!' replied McGarrahan. 'How are you going to stop me?'

"'Refuse to give you passage,' answered the president.

"'You will, will you?' said McGarrahan. 'Well, if you do that, I'll get enough damages out of your line to make it unnecessary for me ever to touch a card again as long as I live.'

"His position was correct in law, as the president of this line found out upon investigation. The steamship company, you understand, is not the regulator of the habits of its steamers' passengers. If the passengers don't know any better than to play cards with sharpers, that is their own lookout. And a steamship company cannot decline to sell passage to a man because it claims he is a short-card player. It devolves upon the company to prove that the man is a card sharper, and the steamship people know that this is practically impossible, for no man who is done at cards by one of these men on an ocean steamship is going to rise in his seat and make announcement of the fact to the world.

"Observation tells me that there are not nearly so many of these men on the ships now as formerly. The short-card players who make a business of traveling have found the trains much more profitable, since the officers of the steamers got into the habit of going quietly among the voyagers of a card-playing turn and warning them of the danger of getting into games with such and such men. That was the system, and a pretty effectual one, too, adopted by the steamship companies to squelch the ocean card sharpers. The result has been that the sharper can now only make a general campaign of all the big steamers--and the big steamers are the only steamers they consider worth working--before the officers know them, and then their game is dead practically. So that they find it more profitable to take to the swell trains on the swell runs, making the same trip rarely, and thus preventing their countenances from getting too familiar to the railroad people."

"How the deuce do you know all this?" inquired the Englishman.

"Well," replied the American, "you may be pretty certain that I haven't dreamed it. Besides, I figured it that you required some consolation for the loss of your twenty guineas. Didn't you?"

THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER.

_That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner
Ought to Know._

"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a whole lot," said one of the men in the back room of an uptown cafe.

The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in the lap of his master and wagging his stump of a tail foolishly. His master was a squat, thin-faced man of the all-aged class; that is, he might have been anywhere from 30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners of his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up he looked like ready money. He lapped the dog's clipped ears one over the other and looked reminiscent.

"Well," said he, replying to the other man's remark, "I can't say that he does look dead wise and smooth to the naked eye. He's not one of these here fresh sooner dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows the first clatter out o' the box. He's no trick mutt, anyhow. I raised him from a pup, and I never taught him any of the jay tricks that these pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts go through. What he don't know about standing up in a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub and waltzing on his front feet and playing 'possum, and all that kind o' dinky work, would fill a big book. But if any of you people think you can give him any points on the value of hands in a game of poker, then you need a new dope cook, and that's which."

"Poker?" said another of the party, incredulously. "Say, shoot it in light. Your yen-hok's overworked."

"That's what I said--poker," replied the fox terrier's owner, firmly. "I'm putting you next now, because I don't make it a business to do pals in a poker game. He's the best poker dog on the American continent, that mutt. Can't begin to figure on how many times he's won me out, and for how much. He's sulked on me two or three times at critical junctures in games of draw, and given me the wrong tips, just to get square with me for something or other, but that was when he was young and sassy and disposed to work his edge on me. He's been tipping me off right now for seven straight years, and--well, I've got a dollar or two scattered around," and the owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a 25-cent cigar.

"Didn't have a bit o' trouble teaching him the game, I suppose?" asked one of the men at the table.

"Well," replied the fox terrier's owner, striking a match on his diamond-incrusted match safe, "I can't say that teaching him the hands was altogether a snap. At first he used to get the kings and jacks mixed once in a while, and then he had a habit, when he was learning the game, of getting the eights and tens twisted, too. But I broke him of those defects after a while. It wasn't so much trouble teaching him the value of the hands in poker as it was to fix up a sign manual by which he could express himself and tip me off on the hands held by the other fellows. But patience was my long suit in teaching that dog the game of poker, and in less than a year after I showed him the first pack of cards he ever saw, he was able to put me onto the worth of every hand around a table without any of the marks falling to the scheme. His method of communicating such information to me during the progress of a game is a bit involved and intricate, and we've got a lot of little code signs that would require too much elaboration in the explaining, but I'll just give you a little idea of the way the thing works.

"Suppose I'm sitting in a four-handed game. The dog is nosing around the room, not in any ostentatious kind of way and not getting himself noticed at all by the other three in the game. A hand is dished out. The dog noiselessly rubbernecks behind the chair of the first player on his route. The first player, we'll say, has got a pair of sevens, and I've got my eye on the dog. The dog quietly gapes twice, to indicate that player No. 1 has a pair, and then blinks both of his eyes seven times in rapid succession. See? Of course I know then that No. 1 has only got a pair of bum sevens. I pretend to scan my hand, while the dog quietly gets behind the chair of player No. 2. We'll say No. 2 has three queens. The dog passes his right paw over his right eye three times. If it's three kings, left paw over his left eye three times. If it's three bullets he puts his left paw at his nose and holds it there for a second, and, if three jacks, his right paw at his nose. Savvy? And so on. He's got the whole manual and code worked out to a stretch finish. If No. 3 has got a pat flush he closes his left eye and keeps it closed until he sees I'm noticing him. If No. 3 has got a pat full house he shuts up his right eye in the same way.