Chapter VII: Part 7

"This, of course, is only preliminary and it only puts me next to what the marks around the table have got in their hands before the draw. If they're too well fixed for me before the draw, of course I drop out of it there and then. But if I've got a pretty good fist full myself and am as good as any of 'em before the draw, why of course I draw to my hand. Just as quick as all the fellows that stay in pick up the cards they've drawn the dog does his little act all over again and tips me off on those that have filled their hands. Makes the game dead easy, don't it? If I wanted to play the scheme to its limit, which would be a fool trick and probably result in that dog getting himself stuffed and mounted by some loser getting next to his gag, I'd have too much money. But I never went into it too heavy. I've let good things take coin off me so fast that I almost got pneumonia, and me knowing all the time just what they had in their hands. The Chinese bluffs that some of 'em have put up, too! Of course I'd only play off on 'em for a while, just long enough to make them look on me as something easy, and then me and the dog'd waltz in and chew their manes off close to the hide.

"Yes, siree, that dog's been a sure enough meal ticket for me for a long while. But, as I told you a while back, he sulked on me two or three times and gave me the wrong steer when he was young and perky and hot over something or other, and I got hurt on these occasions, for a fact. Remember one of those times particularly. I'd been playing for several nights in succession with three young jays of real estate men out in Minneapolis and letting 'em take slathers of it off me just to get them interested. All three of 'em had gobs of the green and I figured on making 'em all move out to Seattle or somewhere by the time me and the dog got through with them. The mutt was only a two-year-old then, but he was playing mighty fine poker, and these three Minneapolis ducks looked like a fine clean-up. On the afternoon of the fourth night that we got together in the game I'd got hot over the mutt chewing one of my hats all to pieces--fox terriers are worse than goats for chewing things up--and I'd given him three or four good raps over the side of the head. He didn't like this a little bit--I could see that. He wouldn't have much to do with me for the remainder of the afternoon and I couldn't con him into becoming friendly again, either. He just looked at me out of the tail of his eye, as much as to say, 'I'm going to throw you the first chance I get,' but of course I couldn't figure that he'd carry his sulkiness into the game of draw that night, when I intended to begin on my three good things and crimp up their wallets.

"That night I took the mutt with me, as usual, to the house of one of the good things, where we played. I couldn't get the dog to be very chummy with me, though, even after spending a large part of the afternoon trying to soft soap him. The licking I had given him still rankled within him, but I figured that he would forget all about it in the excitement of the game after we got going. I was more than ever confident that he was all right when he tipped me off right on the first dozen rounds of hands, during which I picked out most of the winnings.

"I dealt the thirteenth mess myself and when the two beyond the ante man declined to stay I made it a jackpot, having the buck. I caught three aces and the pot looked nice for me, even without the mutt to joggle me along. The man after the dealer opened it, the jay next to him stayed and so did I, of course. The dealer stayed with a rush and it looked like a nice, neat jack to win--for it was a $100 limit game and all of the three good things thought they knew how to play poker. The dog tipped me off that the man who opened the pot had three fours, the chap next to him two pairs and the dealer a pair of kings. I drew to my hand, of course, and when the guy that opened the pot stood pat I said to myself, 'That's a pretty cold bluff that duck's making, standing pat on his three fours.' The mutt's tips told me, of course, that I had 'em all topped and I just lay back and listened to their bets, knocking heaps off my chip piles and raising 'em right along with all the confidence in the world.

"I commenced to admire that pot-opener with the three fours who had stood pat for a bluff when he kept raising it the limit. Between us we raised the other two out after it had gone around a number of times, and then that geezer with the three fours sat back to bluff me out, as I thought. I wasn't a bit worried by the cool, confident look on his mug, for I knew that that mutt of mine never made any mistakes, and I knew that I had him beat. When there was $3,800 in the pot I got to the end of my chips, and, as it was table stakes and we had arranged that no more chips could be bought during the playing of a hand, I called the pot opener, at the same time chucking down my three bullets, and was fixing to haul in the pot.

"'Hold on there a minute,' said the man with the three fours--as I thought--when he saw me reaching for the pot, 'I've got a nice pat straight, from one to five,' and he showed the cards up in their order on the table.

"'The dust is yours,' said I, choking back a lot of cuss words, and just then I looked behind the chair of the winner and caught the eye of that dog. If there wasn't a gleam of triumph in his eye, damme! He looked square back at me for ten straight seconds, as much as to say, 'You didn't think I'd dish you in the game, did you?' and then he walked over in front of the fireplace, plunked himself down, and that was the finish of that four-handed game. I knew that I couldn't get any good out of the dog for the rest of that night, and I did a sudden watch-studying act, told the jays of a forgotten engagement, and got out. I had expected to clean up about $10,000 out of those three jays, and durned if I didn't quit more'n $2,000 loser on account of that dog, for I had only begun to win back what I had let them take away from me when the mutt turned me down. The mutt followed me back to the hotel with a sulky eye, as if he expected to be clubbed for his little game of crooked steering, but you can gamble that I cut out the clubbing so far as he was concerned for good. I had won him back inside of a week or so, and he never did me dirt on calling the turn after that.

"Me and the dog were covering Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, and that circuit about three years ago, taking it off easy ones in comfortable hunks, when I stacked up against a pretty wise one. It was in Knoxville, where I had got together a playing squad of three young ones that looked ripe for plucking. I got into 'em pretty fairly after a week's work, and the mutt was in great form. One of the good things--the one that I got into the hole worse than any of the others--seemed to be taking a great interest in the mutt after he had been stacking up, a bad loser, against our game for ten days or so, but there wasn't a pin-head of suspicion in his face. He just seemed to like to watch the dog's rubber-necking antics, and one night, when he was dropping slathers of it to me, he studied the moves of the dog with unusual intentness.

"'You ought to teach that poodle how to play draw,' said he to me, and I was beginning to fear he was getting next. But he kept on looking as moon-faced and easy as usual and losing right along, though I couldn't help noticing how carefully he watched the moves of the mutt.

"The next night, when we again sat down at the game, I again noticed that the young geezer had his eye on the dog's moves behind the chairs. I also noticed that he generally stayed when I fell out after the draw, and that when he did stay, with me out, he very often took big hunks out of the other two young fellows. I couldn't quite get next to this, the duck looked such a Rube. Finally a big jack came around, and I, only having eight high, kept out of it. One of the other young fellows opened the pot, the man next to him stayed, and the moon-faced Rube, who had been watching my dog so carefully, raised the both of 'em before the draw. It was a good, stiff raise he gave 'em, at that. They stood it and stayed in. They bet around for fifteen minutes, and then the slob who had been studying the mutt was called by both of them, and beat them both out with his queen full on sixes. I thought that was kind o' queer, especially in view of his earnest study of my poodle, and so I got cold feet in order to have a chance to think the thing over. Oddly enough, the moon-faced-looking dub got cold feet at the same time, and was out on the street with me a little while later. We had walked a block or so, chinning, when he gives me a dig in the slats, and says he, grinning:

"'Great dog, that, of yours.'

"I turned around and sized him up.

"'Pretty fair mutt,' said I.

"'Only thing about him is,' went on this soft-looking guy that you wouldn't think knew the difference between sand and slag, 'he wants to change his code. It took me a week to get next to it, but I had it safe to-night, all right. I'm only $2,000 ahead on the night's play, which makes me $500 more than even. You want to teach the mutt new business before some other duck that looks as much like a dead one as I do comes along, tumbles to the dog's wig-wag system, and does you out of a good bundle. By the way,' he wound up, 'what kennel did that one come from? Where's the rest of the litter? I'd like to have a brother of him.' Queer how he got onto the game, wasn't it?"

"Yes, very," replied the man who had doubted the fox terrier's possession of any intelligence.

WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER.

_One of the Players Hadn't Long to Live, Anyhow, and So He Took a Hand
for a Final Deal._

"I haven't played any cards on railroad trains, even with friends, for the past seven years," said Joe Pinckney, the Boston traveling man who sells bridges and trestles in every land, at a New York hotel the other night, "and it's more than certain that, for the remainder of my string, I shall never again sit into a train game, whether it's old maid, casino, whist or draw--especially draw. I used to play cards most of the time when I was on the road just to relieve the monotony of traveling. I don't recall that it ever cost me much, for I generally broke even and often a little ahead on a years' play. I very rarely sat into a game in which all of the other players were strangers to me, especially when the game was draw or something else at so much a corner, and so I never got done out of a cent.

"I know so many traveling men that a drummer friend of mine has an even money bet with me that I won't be able to board a single train, anywhere in this country, for the space of a year, without my being greeted by some traveling chap with whom I am acquainted, and he wins up to date, though the bet was made more than eight months ago. So that, when I used to be in the habit of playing cards on the trains I always had some fellow or fellows on the other side of the table that I knew to be on the level. But I had an experience on a Western train seven years ago that sort o' soured me on the train game; in fact, that experience knocked a good deal of the poker enthusiasm out of me, and since then, whenever I've got into a game with friends or acquaintances in a hotel room, I've sized them up pretty carefully to see if they were all robust men. Maybe you don't understand what possible connection there can be between physical robustness and the game of American draw just now, but you'll understand it when I tell you of this experience.

"In the spring of 1891 I got aboard the night train of the 'Q,' Chicago to Denver. The train left Chicago at 9 o'clock at that time. When I was seven years younger than I am now I never sought a sleeper bunk until 1 or 2 in the morning, and when I found that there wasn't a man on this sleeper with whom I had ever a bowing acquaintance I felt a bit lonesome. I started through the train to hunt up the news butcher to get from him a bunch of traveling literature, and in the car ahead of me I found Tom Danforth, the Michigan stove man, an old traveling pal of mine. I sat down to have a talk with Tom when along came George Dunwoody, the Chicago perfumery man, who had also paralleled me a lot of times on trips. Inside of four minutes I had pulled both of 'em back to my car and we had a game of cut-throat draw under way in the smoking compartment. We started in at quarter ante and dollar limit, but when I pulled 'way ahead of of both of them within an hour or so and they struck for dollar ante and five-dollar limit, I was agreeable.

"We were plugging along at this game, all three of us going pretty slow, and both of them gradually getting back the money I had won in the smaller game, when a tall, very thin and very gaunt-looking young fellow of about thirty entered the smoking compartment and dropped into a seat with the air of a very tired man. I sat facing the entrance to the compartment, and I thought when I saw the man's emaciated condition and the two bright spots on his cheekbones, 'Old man, you've pretty nearly arrived at your finish, and if you're making for Denver now I think you're a bit too late.' My two friends didn't see the consumptive when he entered the room, for their backs were turned to the door, but when, while I was dealing the cards, the new arrival put his hand to his mouth and gave a couple of short, hacking coughs, Dunwoody turned around suddenly and looked at him.

"'Why, hello there, Fatty,' exclaimed Dunwoody, holding out his hand to the emaciated man, 'where are you going? Denver? Why, I thought you were there long ago? Didn't I tell you last fall to go there or to Arizona for the winter? D'ye mean to say that you've been in Chicago all winter with that half a lung and that bark o' yours? How are you now, anyhow, Fat?'

"The emaciated man smiled the weary smile of the consumptive.

"'Oh, I'm all right, George,' he said, sort o' hanging on to Dunwoody's hand. 'Going out to Denver to croak this trip, I guess. Didn't want to go, but my people got after me and they're chasing me out there. I wanted them to let me stay in Chicago and make the finish there, but they wouldn't stand for it. My mother and one of my sisters are coming along after me next week.'

"'Finish? What are you giving us, Fatty?' asked Dunwoody, good-naturedly, but not with a great amount of belief in his own words, I imagine. 'You'll be selling terra cotta tiles when the rest of us'll be wearing skull caps and cloth shoes. Cut out the finish talk. You look pretty husky, all right.'

"'Oh, I'm husky all right,' said the consumptive, with another weary smile, and then he had another coughing spell. When that was over Dunwoody introduced him to us.

"'Ed, alias Fatty, Crowhurst,' was Dunwoody's way of introducing him. 'Sells tiles, waterworks pipes and conduits. Called Fatty because he's nearly six and a half feet high, has never weighed more than thirty-seven pounds (give or take a few), and has never since any one knew him had more'n half a lung. Thinks he's sick, and has laid himself on the shelf for over a year past. No sicker than I am. Used to have the record west of the Alleghanies for cigarette smoking. You've cut the cigarettes out, haven't you, Fat?'

"For reply the consumptive pulled out a gold cigarette case, extracted a cigarette therefrom and lit it. It was a queer thing to see a man in his state of health smoking a cigarette. Dunwoody's eyes stuck out over it.

"'Well, if you ain't a case of perambulating, lingering suicide, Fatty, I never saw one,' said he to his friend.

"'It's all one,' was the reply. 'It's too much punishment to give 'em up, and it wouldn't make any difference anyhow.'

"I had meanwhile dished the hands out, and after my two friends had drawn cards and I made a small bet they threw up their hands.

"'Draw, eh?' said the emaciated man, addressing Dunwoody. 'How about making it four-handed?'

"'Oh, you'd better take it out in sleeping, Fat,' replied Dunwoody. 'You look just a bit tired, and we're going to make a night of it, most likely, with whisky trimmings. You can't do that very well without hurting yourself, and if you came in and we got into you you'd feel like playing until you evened up, and 'ud get no rest. Better not come in, Fat. Better hit your bunk for a long snooze. We'll have breakfast together when they hitch on the dining car at Council Bluffs.'

"'I haven't sat into a game of draw for a long while,' said Dunwoody's friend, 'and I'd rather play than eat.'

"There was a bit of pathos in that remark, I thought, and I kicked Dunwoody under the table.

"'Well, jump in then, Fatty,' said Dunwoody, and the poor chap drew a chair up to the table with a look of pleasure on his drawn, hollow face, with its two brightly burning spots on the cheekbones.

"It soon became apparent that Dunwoody's fear about our 'getting into' the consumptive didn't stand any show whatever of being realized. The emaciated man was an almighty good poker player, nervy, cool, and cautious, and yet a good bit audacious at that. I caught him four-flushing and bluffing on it several times, but he got my money right along in the general play, all the same, and after an hour's play he had the whole three of us on the run. I was about $100 to the rear, and Dunwoody and Danforth had each contributed a bit more than that to the consumptive's stack of chips. The fact was, he simply outclassed the three of us as a poker player--and, by the way, I wonder why it is that men that have got something the matter with their lungs are invariably such rattling good poker players? I've noticed this right along. I never yet sat into a poker game with a man that had consumption in one stage or another of it that he didn't make me smoke a pipe for a spell. That would be a good one to spring on some medical sharp for an explanation.

"By the time midnight came around Dunwoody's friend with the pulmonary trouble had won about half as much again from us, and Dunwoody began to look at his watch nervously. The three of us were taking a little nip at frequent intervals, just enough to brush the cobwebs away, but the sick-looking man didn't touch a drop. He smoked one cigarette after another, however, inhaling the smoke into his shrunken lungs, and the sight made all of us feel sorry, I guess, for the foolhardiness of the man. Finally Dunwoody looked at his watch and then raised his eyes and took a survey of the countenance of the consumptive, which was overspread with a deep flush. The consumptive's eyes were extraordinarily bright, too.

"'Fatty,' said Dunwoody, 'cash in and go to bed. 'You've had enough of this. Poker and 112 cigarettes for a one-lunger bound for Colorado for his health! Cash in and skip!'

"'No, I don't want to quit, George,' said the consumptive. 'I haven't had anything like enough yet. What's more, I've got all of you fellows too much in the hole. I only wanted to come in for the fun of it, anyhow, and here I am with a lot of the coin of the three of you. I'll just play on until this pay streak deserts me and give you fellows a chance to win out.'

"When he finished saying this the man with the wasted lungs had another violent spell of coughing and Dunwoody looked worried. But he gave in.

"'All right, Fat,' he said, 'do as you derned please, but I don't want to be boxing you up and shipping you back to the lake front.'

"Then the game proceeded. I don't think any of us felt exactly right, playing with a man who looked as if his days were as short-numbered as a child's multiplication table, but maybe the fact that he was such a comfortable winner from us mitigated our sympathy for him just a little bit. He kept on winning steadily for the next hour, and about half past 1 in the morning there was a good-sized jackpot. It went around half a dozen times, all of us sweetening it for five every time the deal passed, and finally, on the seventh deal, which was the consumptive's, Danforth, who sat on his left, opened the pot. I stayed, and so did Dunwoody. When it was up to the dealer he nodded his head to indicate that he would stay. We were all looking at him, and we noticed that he had gone pale. It was noticeable after the deep flush that had covered his face when he entered.

"Danforth took two cards. I drew honestly and to my hand, which had a pair of kings in it, and I caught another one. Dunwoody asked for three and then the dealer put the deck down beside him.

"'How many is the dealer dishing himself?' we all happened to ask in chorus.

"'None,' answered the sick man, who seemed to be getting paler all the time.

"'Pat, hey, Fatty?' said Dunwoody. 'Must be pretty well fixed, or, say, are you woozy enough to try a bluff on this? You don't expect to bluff Danforth out of his own pot?'

"The consumptive only smiled a wan smile.

"'Well, I hope you are well fixed,' went on Dunwoody, 'for it's your last hand. I'm going to send you to your bunk as soon as I win this jack.'

"'The limit,' said Danforth, the pot-opener, skating five white chips into the center.

"'Five more,' said I, putting the chips in.

"'I'll call both of you,' said Dunwoody, shoving ten chips into the pile.

"It was up to Dunwoody's consumptive friend. He opened his lips to speak and little dabs of blood appeared at both corners of his mouth. His head fell back and at the same time the cards in his hands fell face up on the table. The hand was an ace high flush of diamonds. Dunwoody was standing over him in an instant, and Danforth and I both jumped up. Dunwoody wiped the blood away from the man's mouth with his handkerchief and then put the back of his hand on the man's face.

"'It's cold,' said Dunwoody, with a queer look.

"Then he placed his ear to his friend's heart. We waited for him to look up with a good deal of suspense. He raised his head after about thirty seconds.

"'Crowhurst's dead,' was all he said.

"Dunwoody telegraphed ahead for an undertaker to meet the train at Omaha. He gathered up the cards, too, and the chips.

"'Crowhurst won that pot,' he whispered to us. 'His pat flush beat all of our threes.'

"Dunwoody was banker and he cashed all of the dead man's chips. Then he took Crowhurst's body back from Omaha to Chicago in a box. Dunwoody handed the $580 the dead man had won from us to his mother, telling her that her son had given him the money to keep for him before turning into his sleeper bunk.

"That," concluded the man who sells bridges and trestles, "is the reason I've cut card-playing on trains for the past seven years."

QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER.

_When You Get into a Game of Draw in California It Is Well to Ascertain
the Rules in Advance._

"Before sitting into a game of poker anywhere near tidewater out on the Pacific coast you'll always find it a pretty good scheme to make a few preliminary inquiries of your fellow players as to the kind of poker you're expected to mix up with," said a traveling man who had recently returned to the East after a tour on the Slope. "Because I neglected to do this myself on several occasions I got into all sorts of embarrassing situations and all colors of poker trouble all the way from Portland, Ore., to San Diego, Cal., and the fellows with whom I did little stunts at draw--all good people, business men I met with through letters--put me down as the worst jay in a game of cards that ever crossed the Rocky Mountains. The folks out there think we're all jays back here, anyhow, if for no other reason than that we haven't enough brains to migrate in a body to the Pacific Slope, but they complacently told me that I was the worst of the species they had ever seen, simply because I couldn't seem to get the hang of the queer old game they call poker out in that country.

"The game they dub poker out there isn't poker at all, in my opinion. It's a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy moves that must have been chucked into the original game by early California vaqueros with such a taste for embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. Whatever they call it, it's not American draw poker by a darned sight. The kind of poker that I was raised on--the real thing, the article of draw that we play on this side of the Alleghanies--doesn't take any more account of the joker, for instance, than it does of the card case; but out in California they think a man's plumb blind crazy if he registers a kick over having the joker in the deck. I'd as lief play old maid or grab for corn-silk cigarettes as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it; but out there I had to take the game as it was served up, and, as between poker with a joker and no poker at all, I, of course, accepted the lesser of the two evils and played. But I got dumped on the game for about 2,000 miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn't have to count themselves because they were so many at the game. The trouble was that I played the game of draw that I was brought up on and they played their crossbred game, and the result was just about as queer as it would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby football to a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his hands.

"I'll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker idea. This was my first visit to the slope, you know and, although I'd often heard vaguely that young 'uns, playing draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while shoved the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of course, never dreamed that rational adult human beings in any quarter of the earth could have the nerve to inflict such a dismal outrage upon the noble game of draw as to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found out different the very first game of draw that I sat into out in San Francisco.

"It was a four-handed game, and I was the only Eastern man in the bunch. The other three fellows were business men who belong to the Native Sons' organization, which accounts for the weird brand of poker they played. They played what was taught 'em in their youth out there; didn't know any better, and thought, and no doubt still think, that their game is right.

"I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was 25 cents ante and $5 limit. I gave myself two rattling good pairs, kings up on tens. All of the other fellows stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of dollars more to draw cards. This let two of 'em out of it, but I thought my two pairs were good enough for a $2 raise, and so I played with the raiser. He drew one card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and he came at me on the double with the limit. I'd caught another king, and had as neat-looking a full house as a man needs to have in any kind of a game.

"'Five more'n you,' said I, and we shuttled the limit back and forth until we each had about $50 in the pot. Said I to myself, 'I've got you beat, my boy, for the percentage of the game is 'way against your holding fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter out of the box, and, even if you've filled those two pairs of yours--which you probably haven't, for the percentage is plumb against you--you certainly haven't got aces on top.' Now, that was good poker reasoning, the kind of reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money ahead of the game anyway for twenty years or so, and I gave him the raise-back just as often as he threw it at me.

"'Finally,' said he, 'we are getting out of our depth and beyond the breaker line, ain't we? I've got you man-handled, but you junipers from the East never can feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I'll skate in my little five and call you.'

"We each had about $80 in the pot then.

"I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the pair of tens, and was just about to make some good-natured crack about getting a hoe to scoop in my winnings on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and raked in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a pair of aces up on a pair of sixes and the joker.

"'What the dickens are you doing there?' I asked him when he raked in the pot. 'Can't you see it's a misdeal? I forgot to take the joker out of the deck.'

"'Misdeal nothing,' he said, still smiling. 'You had a good hand all right, but aces beat kings, you know, anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.'

"'Yes,' said I, 'but you've only got aces up, and I've got a full hand, kings up, and it's a misdeal, anyhow'----

"Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought to be in a lunatic asylum.

"'Misdeal?' said my friend who had swiped the pot. 'What the deuce are you giving us, anyhow? I caught the joker on the draw, and it just filled my hand--three aces and a pair of sixes. Don't an ace-full beat a king-full in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from?'

"'You mean you call the joker an ace?' said I, the thing beginning to dawn upon me.

"The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying to find out if I was drunk or not.

"'Why, do you mean to say,' said the man I had played with, 'that you don't know that in poker the joker is any old thing you choose to make it--that, when you get it either on the deal or on the draw, you can call it anything you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full house or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need sleep. You've been working too hard. Turn in and have a long night of it.'

"I couldn't help but laugh.

"'Well,' said I, 'you people may call this joker-jiggling poker, but somehow or another it suggests tag and I-spy and little girls singing "London Bridge is falling down" to me. Why in the devil don't you play poker with a pinochle deck and be done with it? Come on, and we'll build card houses, or what's the matter with playing casino for chalk or pin-wheels?'

"'Why, don't you benighted people back East use the joker?'

"'Yes,' said I, 'we do. We always give the joker in a new deck to babies in arms to cut their teeth on.'

"Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is that straights don't go. I've been catching occasional pat straights and drawing to 'em all my life, and I think the straight is one of the prettiest plays in poker. In playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one card, you've got the fun of trying to figure out whether he's drawing to a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight or a flush, and it's interesting work. If he stands pat, it's up to you to determine by the mind-reading process whether he's simply bluffing or actually has a pat straight or full hand or flush in his paws.

"Well, out on the coast they've heard occasional rumors of such things as straights being played somewhere or another in the game of draw, but you won't meet one coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the straight consists of and what the chances are of a man's getting a pat straight or of filling a one-ended or double-ended straight. As for playing straights, they've never even dreamed of such an absurdity. I found that out in the second game of draw I got into out there.

"It was in Portland, and another four-handed game, the other three fellows being business men also. We played along for a while without my running into any snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on the deal four cards that had in them the making of a corking good straight, capable of being filled at either end, from nine up to queen, so that either an eight or a king on the draw would have fixed me all right. I decided to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw. When I caught my king I was glad I had decided to draw to my straight. A king-high straight is a pretty good mess of cards in any man's game of draw as we know draw back in these parts.

"There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of course, with that clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn't going to let any of 'em put it on me. I met every raise and stuck so persistently and confidently that the whole three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far as that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me. The last time I raised it they kind o' exchanged looks, and the man at my left called me. The other two men followed suit, and there was a general laying down of hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow next to him aces up on treys, and the man at my right three sixes. I projected my right arm to sweep in the good-sized pot after spreading out my king-high straight.

"'Hold up, there!' they all yelled at me at once. 'What's all this? What are you trying to do--hypnotize us?' And the man who had laid down his three eights made a reach for the pot.

"It was now my turn to think the whole three of 'em looney.

"'Is there so much smoke in here,' said I, 'that you three people can't perceive that I've got a king-high straight?'

"'Straight?' said the man with the three eights. 'Straight be damned! You've got one king up on nothing. How old are you, anyhow--seven? Straight? Listen to him!' And the three of 'em gave the hoarse hoot in chorus. I asked 'em to get around me and pinch me, because I wanted to find out if I was dreaming or not, but they were too busy leaning back in their chairs and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay any attention to me. That's what I got for not inquiring beforehand into the kind of draw I stacked up against in Portland.

"The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Barbara. I got into a game of draw with three hotel clerks, all good fellows, but all addicted to the nursery poker they play out there, and again I forgot to nail 'em up against the wall and make 'em exude information about the kind of game they purposed playing. We got along all right for an hour or so, and at the end of the time I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o' tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw three or four times and beat 'em out on their own game-- which is a silly game, and about as brainy as bean-bag, all the same. I also kept away from my inclination to draw to straights, and, having made this much progress, I really didn't think I was in for any more rude and costly surprises in the game. That's where I did the leap-year figuring.

"I gave myself a neat mess of clubs--four of them--with the ace for a capstone. I have always been lucky in bobbing to flushes, and this looked good. Two of the other fellows drew two cards each, and the other man asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to look gloomy and depressed. An ace-high flush has always been good enough for me on this side of the continent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three hotel clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too, and, although there was nothing frantic about the betting, it was nice and smooth and even, and the pot grew in a way that suited me down to the ground. When it got so large on five-dollar raises as we thought it ought to be there was a general suggestion for a call and a show-down. Two of my fellow players had threes, small ones, and the other two pairs that we wouldn't stay with very long back in this neck of the woods. Well, I flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just about to say something about easy money when the man with the best threes scooped in the pot.

"'Must have left your specs at home, my boy,' said I, thinking he was only fooling. 'Pass that pile over.'

"'For why?' said he.

"Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious.

"'For why?' I repeated. 'Well, the instructors at whose feet I sat to learn what is learnable about the game of draw poker always taught me to believe that a flush is better than threes.'

"'Yes,' said he, 'but didn't you draw a card?'

"'What the devil difference does that make?' I inquired.

"'Oh,' said he patronizingly, 'I see you're a bit new at the game. You see, you can't draw to flushes. You've got to hold 'em pat.'

"Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I had to stand for it, on the 'do-as-the-Romans-do' principle.

"In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows who were so warm that they wouldn't play anything but jack-pots. At the start-off of the game--the first hand--none of the four of us could open it. It went around three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of queens. Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught another queen, and played the hand for all it was worth. When I was called I showed down my hand, and had 'em both beat.

"'Foul hand,' said they. 'You didn't have openers,' and they looked at me suspiciously.

"'The dickens you say!' said I. 'I went in with a pair of queens and caught another one--there they are.'

"'But you needed aces,' said they, all at once. 'It went around four times, and jack-pots are progressive, of course. D'ye mean to say you didn't know that? Sorry, old man, that we'll have to split the pot.'

"'Are they always progressive out here?' I asked.

"'Always,' they answered, and that settled it. The pot was split."

THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET."

_Few Gamblers Perceive "the Psychological Moment" For Quitting Play and
Retiring Rich._

An old man whose mind is still alert, and the movements of whose tall, somewhat stooped body are as free and spry as those of many a man fifty years his junior, is Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in this country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the statesmen with a penchant for gaming who lived in Washington fifty, forty, and thirty years ago, when it was deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land to try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above board. Martin is now verging upon 80 years of age, and even to the present generation of Washingtonians his white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His age does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is about as wide now, he says, as it was back in the fifties. He had a great deal of money at one time in his career, but most of it went by the board. He had the caution to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. He has passed most of his life in Washington, but before and after the war of the rebellion he had adventures in many parts of the United States where gaming was at its highest. He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about the statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the national life of the country before the war, and the local newspaper have published many of his reminiscences of this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets into his stride and the company is congenial he talks well and entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of the well-known young American turf plunger who, after having beaten the English racing game to the tune of $150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly that, only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad.

"Another example of the chance taker who has not mastered the fine science of quitting," was his way of summing it up. "That seems to be the most difficult point in the gambling business--to know just the right time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself. I wish I had. Any fool can go on playing when he is away ahead of his game, but it takes a man of unusual strength of character, perception and foresight to knock off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that it begins to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a 'psychological moment.' I don't know of any business in life in which the psychological moment plays a greater part than it does in gambling. Most of this country's old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or, worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of one of them leaving not enough money behind to have his body put into the ground that I don't recall the time when he had tens or hundreds of thousands. The gambler by profession has many a psychological moment in the course of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of them. He goes on dabbling at a percentage that his common-sense tells him is against him, and that he has only temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds himself broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn't break off when he was on top of the wave. I have known a few professional gamblers who knew just when to quit. Some of them are still alive, old men like myself, and they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left good sums of money behind them.

"I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best known of the New Orleans gamblers before the war, win $60,000 in an afternoon's play at faro. This was in Memphis. He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he returned with all of the money and he began to buck the king. He played it open every time and the king lost eight straight times in two deals. That cost Plantagenet $20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the eighth straight losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He was frank enough to admit that he had cold feet.

"'While freely acknowledging that I am more or less of a d--d fool,' he said coolly, 'I strive for the reputation of knowing when I've got enough, even of a good thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If the box were only depleting me gradually but surely I don't doubt that I'd go until I was all up. But I can see legible handwriting on the wall from as considerable a distance as my neighbors, and when I'm on top, as I am now, well and comfortably, and eight straight kings range themselves against me on the left hand side of the layout, that's the kind of a signal I'm waiting for, and I pass. I'll bet any man on the side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that the next king out of the box wins, but no more faro.

"Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was standing by when Plantagenet made this little talk.

"'You are wise in your generation, George,' said he. 'Now, it is about a 10 to 1 shot against the king losing again. Consequently you can afford to give me at least 2 to 1 on that proposition. I'll bet you $2,500 to $5,000 that the king does lose the next time out.'

"'Taken,' said Plantagenet, covering Wooton's money, and the crowd gathered round to watch the dealer riffle the cards. The box was fully half out before a king showed, and it showed on the losing side--nine straight. Wooton pulled down the side bet.

"'Which I may remark,' said Plantagenet with the greatest coolness, 'that this ninth consecutive lose of the king simply confirms and makes good the hunch I had to quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go a bit further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper and sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck your bank now with dummy chips representing all of my winnings and the roll I originally started with, and that, although I shall play as carefully and as cautiously and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really represent money, I shall lose every stack within two hours.'

"Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the latter knew that Plantagenet would try to win with the dummy chips even though he would be $1,000 loser if he did.

"'Go ahead and prove your case,' said Wooton, and a dealer who was off duty was called upon to deal. Plantagenet kept cases himself and played his own particular system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton stood by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular game. Plantagenet's luck had deserted him, and he lost two bets out of every three. It seemed impossible for him to get down right, and he lost steadily. He had played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes and Wooton hand him the $1,000.

"'That's the way it would have been had I been playing with money,' said Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed with him. Plantagenet was one of the men who knew when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren around him, in the early seventies, he left more than $500,000 to be distributed among his heirs.

"Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a professional gambler, but who outdid most of the famous professional gamblers of the South in the late fifties in the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning humor, was another man who knew when to quit. I saw him win $32,000 in one night at bank in the rooms of the old Crescent City Club. Then he curled up all of a sudden and cashed in. He wasn't a quitter in the ungenerous sense, but he used to say that the little angel, supposed by the sailors to sit aloft and watch out for Jack Tar, had a habit of informing him, when he was bucking another man's game, just the proper time to pass it up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him. On this occasion Joe Randolph, a heavy player from Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not pressing his luck--for quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets out of five.

"'All right, Randolph,' said Baker after he had cashed in. 'I'll let you make five $10 bets in my behalf on the deal now running and I'll bet you an even $2,000 that I (or you) lose four out of the five; this, just to show you that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is good.'

"Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with more than an even chance in his favor, and he lost, for every one of the five bets lost. Baker would quit when he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he was away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in a four-handed poker game with friends in one of the parlors of the old St. Charles Hotel between the hours of 6 and 9 o'clock one evening. He had practically an unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering the size of the game--$200 limit--but he yawned and pushed his chair back with the simple statement that it wasn't his night. The next night he lost $2,000 more to the same three friends, and again he resumed his seat. On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four hours' play, but he gave no sign of quitting.

"'Isn't it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms and forsake us again, Baker?' asked one of his friends in the game, jokingly.

"'No,' said Baker, 'I'm going to stay along to-night. I'll begin to win soon, and then you can all stand by.'