Chapter IX: Part 9

"Carmody studied for a moment. He was already out $11,000 in this poker game, and he wanted that money back. The idea of playing his contracts against Feeney's hard cash rather appealed to his imagination, which was not less active on account of the huge quantity of stuff he had been drinking.

"'Well, I'll tell you what I'll do to give you a start in life, Tim,' said Carmody finally. 'You've got my checks for $11,000. Supposing you call those two contracts worth $70,000, return me those checks for $11,000, and say that the two contracts I've got in my pocket are worth $59,000 as they stand. Then I'll give you a chance to take as big a fall out of the contracts as you think you can.'

"That idea suited Feeney to a T, and I stood by to begin dealing again. The two contracts were pushed into the center of the table by Carmody, and it was an additional part of my business, besides dealing, to make note of the changing value of the contracts as the game progressed.

"Well, the game continued to go Feeney's way, and Carmody just looked at his contracts as Feeney began to edge them nearer and nearer to his end of the table. Carmody, while he figured that the contracts were so much velvet, didn't look happy when Feeney picked $12,000 more out of them, leaving their value to Dan only an approximate $47,000, but he played on in the hope of better luck. Finally a queer hand came around. Carmody caught two queens, an eight and a seven. So did Feeney. This thing made Carmody mad.

"'Of all the niggering out I ever saw,' he exclaimed, 'this is the worst. But it's about time I had the best of it when it comes to pure bull-head luck.'

"So he bet the limit that he had a better card in the hole than Feeney. Feeney came back at him every clip, and when I interposed a remonstrance over the heftiness of the game, expressing the opinion that both of them would probably be sorry they had gone into the thing so heavily when the gray dawn came around, they said they knew they'd be sorry, and went right ahead.

"'This is surely the hottest case of a stand-off in a deal in stud that I've seen yet,' said Feeney, 'and I shouldn't be surprised if we had to split the pot when the show-down comes. But I'm as good as you, Carmody, on the four that show, and I'm with you all night if you're going to keep it up that long.'

"When my tab of the shifting value of the contracts showed that Carmody's interest therein was only an even $30,000, Carmody looked up at the ceiling of the card-room and reflected.

"'Here,' he said, 'is where I get my contracts back and break even, or where I have to go into partnership with a slow-witted Irishman on those buildings at The Dalles. Feeney, I call you.'

"Feeney turned over a six spot. Carmody's card in the hole was a five. Feeney was the possessor of a half interest in Carmody's fine contracts at The Dalles, and that's how it happened that these two builders, who had always gone it singly and alone, built up The Dalles in partnership. They got along so well together at The Dalles work that three years later they went into a general contracting partnership and they've been getting rich ever since. But it was their stud game on The Dalles boat that induced me to conclude that old-fashioned draw was good enough for me."

THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN.

_With the Result That His Clothes Finally Went into a Pot, and Fortune
Scowled upon Him._

"When a man arrives at that pitch where he'll bet the clothes off his back over a jackpot, it's about up to him to let the game of draw alone, in my opinion," said a traveling special agent of the Treasury Department. "I'm talking about a game of draw that happened last fall down in the Territory, on the south bank of the Canadian River, in the Chickasaw country, between four St. Louis men. They were on their annual hunting trip down there. They were well-known business men of old St. Loo, pals of a half a lifetime, and they had been after bear, deer, feathered game, or any old thing shootable down in the Territory every year together for more than a decade. They always played poker on these outings, too, and the bank president always got all the money. The other three couldn't do anything whatever with the bank president's brand of poker. They'd been digging at him on these excursions for ten years, trying every conceivable scheme to get his money, and even playing in combination against him, but when it came time to strike camp he always had all the money in the crowd, owned all the camp fixtures, and served out smoking tobacco to his three chums in a lordly way only when he felt generous. It made 'em hot, but they had to accept his alms if they wanted to smoke.

"The three of 'em determined when the party set out from St. Louis in their special car last autumn that the bank president wasn't going to come back from the hunting trip with all the money, even if they had to leave his bones to bleach on the banks of the Canadian. They declared together that the bank president's sassiness for the remainder of the year after eating them up at poker down in the Territory was something unbearable, and they didn't intend to stand for it any more.

"They played a little poker in their car on the trip down from St. Louis, and this gave one of the three conspirators a chance to get hold of the bank president's two decks of cards. The conspirators carefully marked these two decks of cards--marked 'em both just the same way--and then, during the temporary absence of the bank president in another part of the car, he elaborately explained to his two companions in infamy how he had done it, the three going over the bank president's two decks in detail, so as to master the markings. Then the two decks were returned furtively to the bank president's grip, and the rest of the playing on the trip down was done with ordinary packs. They never played big on these journeys, anyhow, but reserved their stiff games for the bad-weather days in camp.

"When they got to their point of debarkation on the line, they left their car on a siding and struck out for their regular camp, about seventy-five miles from the railroad. They stuck to the bagging of pelts and antlers for a week or so; then a threatening morning came along and the bank president suggested poker.

"'What's the use?' they all demurred, eying the bank president gloomily. 'You always get the whole works, and then you're insufferable for the rest of the year. We don't think you're on the level, anyhow.'

"'Oh, I'll give you all a chance this time,' said the bank president, grinning. 'I won't be hard upon you. Then, you see, the more you fellows play with me in the game, why, the more you learn about poker, and I'm sure the instruction you get helps you a lot in your games with the dubs up in St. Loo. I'm noted, anyhow, for my generosity in giving others the benefit of my wisdom.'

"'Well,' said the spokesman and arch-conspirator of the three, 'we'll play a little game of table-stakes, but checks don't go; this thing of the three of us writing you checks that keep your large family in opulence for a year is'----

"'All right, let it be table stakes,' replied the bank president amiably. 'I'm not a man to take bread out of the mouths of the impoverished,' and with more of such badinage the game started.

"An ordinary deck was used at first--a deck out of the satchel of the real estate man, the infamous member of the conspiring trio who had marked the bank president's cards. The bank president, as usual, had all of the luck from the jump. He seemed to rake down every pot. The three glared at him and made all sorts of insinuating remarks about the phenomenal luck of the bank president that had continued for a dozen years. The bank president regarded them indulgently, and told them they'd learn the elementary principles of the game after they'd camped with him for another ten years or so.

"After an hour's play the bank president beat the real estate man--the other two had dropped out--out of a stiff jackpot with a pair of better threes, and the real estate man simulated great rage and tore the deck of cards into many pieces.

"'For heaven's sake, give us another deck!' he exclaimed, passionately, with a furtive wink at his two companions in crime.

"The bank president reached back of him, collared his grip, and produced one of his decks with a bland smile. They surely were scientifically marked, for this bank president had an eye in his head, and he didn't get next.

"'Well, we'll try one of my decks,' said the bank president. 'Of course, it'll be a shame to plug you with a new musket--none of my decks has been riffled yet--but maybe my unfamiliarity with the range of the fresh gun'll give you all a show at me.' Oh, this bank president was arrogant in victory, all right.

"Well, he wasn't one, two, three, from then on, of course. It was done mighty well, and not so as to excite the bank president's suspicions in the least, but he found himself topped practically every time, and his face grew long. He was quite heavily in the hole at the end of an hour's play with his own deck.

"'Oh, we've got on to your bluffing style of play, that's all,' said the real estate man complaisantly. 'You just had us scared together for the past ten years, but you're as clear a proposition now as a mountain creek. I always thought you were more or less of a counterfeit and a four-flusher, anyhow, didn't you, fellows?'

"Of course the other two thought so, too, and the bank president's brow clouded as, time after time, after he had bet hard on hands that looked to him to be worth every dollar he ventured on them, he found himself topped, niggered out. The real estate man increased the bank president's worry by flashing a nine-high straight against the financier's eight-high straight, and then the latter did a card-tearing stunt himself. He ripped his deck into ribbons with a running commentary of strong talk.

"'It must be a rank deck that'll permit of a set of amateur skates like you fellows putting it on me,' he said. Then he dug into his grip again and produced the other 'phony deck, his three companions warning him against letting his angry passions rise, and so on.

"The three conspirators let the bank president pull down a couple of sizable pots with this deck just for the sake of enjoying his renewed impertinence, and then they went at him good and hard. At the end of an hour they had the bank president's supply of ready cash--about $500--badly wilted. He had only $100 left when it came around the real estate man's turn to dish out a jackpot round. The bank president was under the gun, as they say out there of the man who's to the left of the dealer of a jackpot, and he cracked the pot open for the limit. The other two stayed, and when it got up to the real estate man he raised it the limit. This knocked his two confederates out of it--as a matter of fact the arch-conspirator winked them out of it--but the limit was just what the bank president wanted with his four bullets.

"The bank president took one card with a crafty, I'll-make-him-think-I'm-four-flushing expression of countenance. The real estate man, with a queen-high sequence flush of hearts remarked that the bunch he had was good enough for him. Then they got to betting, and it was no time at all before the bank president had done the apology act with the remains of his $500. He pulled out a check-book then and was fumbling around for a fountain pen when the real estate man called him down.

"'Not on your life,' he said. 'Agreement was that checks don't go, you'll remember.'

"'But this hand'----the bank president started to say.

"'Makes no difference about that hand,' interrupted the real estate man. 'Agreement was for table stakes.'

"'But, great Caesar, man,' pleaded the bank president. 'I want to get some kind of a decent run for this hand. Why, I'd bet the clothes right off my back on it.'

"'Well,' said the real estate man calmly, 'we didn't make any stipulation about clothes and personal possessions, and you can get the clothes off your back if you want to. But no checks.'

"'Well,' said the bank president, peeling off a big solitaire ring, 'this stone's worth $400, and I'll raise you that much.'

"'I see you,' said the real estate man. 'What else have you got that I can raise against?'

"'Well,' replied the bank president, 'this watch is worth $300 and'----

"'Skate it in,' interrupted the real estate man. 'Raise you $300 then, your valuation of the ticker.'

"'Dog-gone the luck,' said the bank president, 'I don't want to call you. I know I've got you beat. I'd be willing to bet my corduroys, shoes and hat that I've got you soaked, for'----

"'Rush 'em to the center, then,' calmly replied the real estate man. 'Supposing I appraise the corduroys, shoes and hat at $50 for the bundle. That satisfactory?'

"'It's got to be,' replied the bank president mournfully.

"'All right, then, put 'em in the pot and I'll consider that you've called me,' said the real estate man.

"The bank president stood up, peeled off his coat and waistcoat and hunting breeches and dropped them on the blanket that served for a table. Then he removed his pair of high hunting shoes and placed them on top of the clothes, and tossed his fore-and-aft cap on the heap. Then he sat down in his underclothes, picked up his four aces, and said:

"'Now, dern you, put down your little straight or full and I'll show you what you're up against.'

"The wealthy depositors of the St. Louis bank of which he was the head would have enjoyed seeing his face when the real estate man calmly laid down his sequence flush and hauled down the pot, togs and all, without a word.

"'You're a good thing, ain't you?' said the other two, who had been taking the play in with a positive knowledge of how it was going to come out.

"The bank president looked pretty forlorn as the three sat there and guyed him. Finally he stood up.

"'Well,' said he to the real estate man. 'I'll just write you a check for the fifty you allowed on those togs of mine,' and he started to reach for the clothes in order to dress himself. The real estate man held the suit, shoes and hat out of the bank president's reach.

"'These things ain't for sale,' he said. 'They'll all just about fit me,' trying on the hat, 'and I guess I'll just hang on to them as a sort of No. 2 outfit.'

"'But, great Scott, man!' exclaimed the bank president, 'don't you know that I haven't got another stitch in camp--that that rig-out's the only one I brought from the car?'

"'Too bad,' said the real estate man. 'You hadn't ought to've skated the togs into the pot, then. Sorry, old man, but honest, I really couldn't think of parting with these things for any amount of money. I've only got one suit along with me, too, and only one hat and pair of shoes, and if they get wet what am I going to do? Got to have a change, you know. I really feel very deeply for you in your predicament, and so do the other boys--don't you fellows?--but I need this outfit in my business.'

"The other two men nodded their heads in grave endorsement of this stand and the bank president frothed at the mouth.

"'What the devil do you expect me to do, you blamed idiot?' he shouted at the real estate man. 'Stand around the tent and shiver, or cut across the trail in my underclothes for the car to get another set of togs?'

"'I wish I could think of some plan to help you out, old man,' answered the real estate man with commiseration in his countenance, 'but I really couldn't think, under any consideration, of giving up these things,' and he made the suit, the shoes and the hat up into a neat bundle as he spoke. Just then one of the other men, who had been prowling outside, came running into the tent breathless.

"'Say, fellows,' he exclaimed, 'there's some fresh bear tracks right over there in the clearing,' and he grabbed his gun. So did the other two. The bank president made as if to pick up his rifle, too, when his eye fell on his lack of raiment. By that time the real estate man was fifty yards from the tent, at a lope with the other two.

"'Hey, come back here, you confounded cut-throat!' the financier yelled after the real estate man, who had the bank president's clothes, shoes and hat slung in a neat bundle over his shoulder. But the three men were out of voice range in a jiffy.

"They came back, beaming, along toward nightfall, with the pelts of two nice young black bears. They found the bank president moping around, wrapped up in a blanket and sulphurizing the air when they reached the tent. Then they sat around him in a circle and expressed their sincere sympathy with him and told him his case was only one more instance of the awful evil of gambling. After supper and a pipe they all turned in, leaving the bank president still sulking and uttering terrible maledictions under his breath.

"The real estate man and the other two went out early the next morning--the bank president's clothes along with them--and when they got back they found the blanketed financier on the verge of apoplexy from sheer wrath. The real estate man then made a great show of charity by giving up the togs, and the bank president was in a state of good-nature by the time camp was struck. The three conspirators united in a letter of explanation, inclosing all of their winnings, to the bank president when they got back to St. Louis, and when the bank president got the letter and his disgorged losings he was most tickled to death and instantly became as perky and impudent as ever.

"'I knew you couldn't have done it if you'd played on the square,' said he, the first time he met them. 'Wait till next year, that's all.'"

THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS.

_Wherein It Is Shown That It Is Easy Enough to Be Cool When Playing with
Another Man's Money._

"I happen to know that a considerable number of the most famous professional gamblers in this country made their reputation with other men's money," said a Rocky Mountain man of large experience. "These men have had their names heralded far and wide as the stakers of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, upon the turn of a card, and innumerable yarns have been spun as to their cool, John Oakhurst-like manner of scooping in a table full of money upon the smashing of a bank, or of calmly lighting their cigars and strolling out when fortune went against them. So far as the stories themselves are concerned, some of them are undoubtedly right; but all of them leave out the very essential fact that the men were simply players of other men's money--'table touts,' we call 'em out West. I suppose it is a reasonable proposition that it is a whole lot easier to risk another man's money at the table than it is to endanger your own. Of all the men I am telling you about hardly a one had enough luck at the tables to keep himself warm when putting up his own coin; perhaps it was owing to the extreme caution of their play under these conditions and the far greater strain involved in the hazarding of their own money. They could take another man's money--the money of a man who probably did not know the difference between 00 and 33 in a wheel layout, but who could afford to venture almost an unlimited amount of money on a game--and in at least eight cases out of ten they could run the initial stake into a pile that would mean for themselves a rake-off or percentage of thousands or tens of thousands; but in venturing their own money I have seen few of them who were any good in the matter of keeping their nerve under rein.

"Back in the sixties Tom Naseby was generally considered the most dangerous man at a faro table on the Pacific Slope. Bank after bank, from Portland to San Diego, went to the wall under his system of play--or lack of system, I ought to say--and at the end the San Francisco banks shut him out altogether, so that he was compelled to start a layout of his own. Among Naseby's smashes that were famous on the coast was that of breaking Byron McGregor's Kearny street institution to the tune of $150,000; of hitting up Tillottson's $10,000 limit game in San Francisco for $100,000 and closing the doors, and of banging Ned Jordan's bank in Portland for $125,000, all within the space of three months. Yet Naseby told me himself that on none of these plays was he venturing a _sou marque_ of his own money--that it had all been handed over to him, the initial stakes for each big play, that is, by Ralston, the millionaire San Francisco banker, who committed suicide. Out of each winning Naseby of course got a big cut of the money, for Ralston went into the thing for the sport of it and was a very generous man. Naseby, who belonged to the tribe of savers for a rainy day, hung onto these rolls. Naseby played faro with just about as much skill as a Zulu wields a war club, and he frankly confessed that his coups were simply the result of unlimited confidence and unlimited backing allied to bull-head luck.

"Frank Burbridge, the most famous poker player that Portland has ever brought out, was another man who made his reputation as a gambler upon the strength of the vast winnings he hauled out upon stakes furnished by wealthy men. Some of these rich backers of Burbridge remained behind the screen and only received Frank's reports as to how he made out in the games for which they staked him, but others came out into the open and sat alongside Burbridge when he was playing with their money--not for the purpose of watching him, for he was strictly on the level, but just for the fun of watching the game. One of the big contractors for the building of the Oregon Short Line, a man worth many millions of dollars, was one of Burbridge's clients who liked to watch the expert poker player play the hands. He was constantly staking Burbridge for big games with dangerous opponents. If Frank won, all right; he got most of the money himself. If he lost, all right, too; the contractor simply went into the thing for the mental distraction it afforded him.

"I was a witness of one of those big games in which Burbridge engaged with a stake furnished by the contractor. It was played at the old Willamette House in Portland, and it was a two-handed game. The other player was a very wealthy Portland man who was said to have made a big pot of money by simply making the suggestion that he intended to parallel the Oregon Short Line. This rich man thought he knew how to play poker until his friend, the contractor of the Short Line who was Burbridge's staker, put him up against the latter--partly for the interest of watching the game, and partly, perhaps, for other reasons. Anyhow, the Portland man had a whole heap of an opinion of what he knew about poker, and played the game incessantly for pastime. He had never happened to sit in a game with Burbridge, and Burbridge's backer finally suggested to the Portland man that he have a try at what he could do with the man who was known to be the most expert player of poker in the Northwest.

"'Oh, he's a professional,' said the Portland man, 'and I don't play cards with professionals in a contest of skill such as I see you want to make this. I play with 'em once in a while just to study their games, but not for big money. I wouldn't trust them under such circumstances.'

"'Well, you trust me, I suppose, don't you?' said the contractor.

"'Certainly,' was the reply.

"'All right, my friend,' said the contractor, 'I'd just like to find out to satisfy my own curiosity how good you can play poker. I don't amount to much at it myself, and I don't think you're any better than I am. Very well. You sit into a game with Burbridge, and I'll deal all the hands myself, and sit by to see fair play--though Burbridge plays just as fairly as I would myself under the same circumstances. Does that proposition suit you?'

"'Yes,' said the Portland man, 'I'd just like to give Burbridge a whirl under those circumstances.'

"So the game was arranged. Four or five of us were invited around to the old Willamette House to look on while the game progressed. The two men sat down to the game about 8 o'clock at night. The Portland man--I will call him Tunwell, which is pretty close to his right name--had occasionally met Burbridge, who was a very smooth, urbane sort of chap of thirty, and so they nodded good-naturedly to each other when Tunwell came into the room. The contractor was on hand with his check-book. The conditions were simply that the contractor was to deal each of the hands, and then retire from the table with the remainder of the deck until the call for cards. Then he was to dish out what cards were called for, and get away from the table again until the hand was played. The rest of us were to sit around, with the privilege of having peeps at the hands. Tunwell was to have the privilege of asking the advice of any of us as to proper plays, as Burbridge was to be permitted to refer hands that heavily involved the contractor's purse to the latter--not to seek advice, but simply to inform him what he intended to do in the play. The game was to be without limit, and the chips were worth $5, $25, and $50.

"So the game began. Tunwell soon proved himself a pretty cool man. He didn't put up a stingy game, but he simply had the proper sort of regard for the worth of the cards the contractor dished out to him, and he played them right, as we who were watching the game and had a chance of seeing both hands soon discovered. Two or three times in the early part of the game I, for one, thought he was a bit overcautious, but in general his line of play was away above the average. Tunwell was a big, gray-eyed man of the type that is jammed full of well-controlled nerve, and he held himself on this night in additional check because he knew that he was up against a hard proposition. The play at first didn't amount to much--fifty or hundred-dollar bets occasionally--and both men seemed to be sparring for information on the style of each other's play. Tunwell finally decided upon a bluff. He had a nine high, and he went up to $500 on it. Burbridge laid down. This was pretty good for Tunwell, but he had the sense to show no exultation. Now, after making a thing like that go through, most men would keep on bluffing until called when on steep and craggy ground, but Tunwell didn't. He resumed the system of playing for what his hands were worth. This he stuck to for half an hour or so, when he was $800 ahead of the game and then he made another bluff on a pair of queens. Burbridge, who had three aces, laid down, and Tunwell's pile was amplified by $1,000.

"'That was a cold bluff, Burbridge,' said Tunwell.

"'Oh, I don't think so,' said Burbridge. 'There was too much confidence in your eye for that.' Which shows that even a great poker player is as likely as anybody to get mixed when it comes to studying eyes in a game.

"After a while Burbridge caught a pat full house, and Tunwell filled a still better full hand. It was Tunwell's bet, and he went $1,000 on it. Burbridge laid down--wherein it was plain to be seen that he was a man who possessed that indefinable thing, the poker player's 'hunch.'

"Now, all these plays I'm telling you about were simply part of the warming up. The two men were simply studying each other. They didn't really begin to play poker until two hours after they sat down.

"Then the contractor dealt Burbridge a promising set of threes, and gave Tunwell a neat two pairs, with aces on top. Tunwell filled with another ace, and Burbridge got nothing worth mentioning in the draw, so that his three nines didn't look very big to us against an ace full. It was Burbridge's bet. He was one of those men who lay their cards down on the table and look up at the ceiling before making a bet.

"'Five thousand dollars,' said he finally, still looking up at the ceiling reflectively, and the contractor, who had seen Tunwell's draw, winced a bit.

"Tunwell looked at him pretty hard and scanned his hand. He raised him $5,000.

"'And $5,000,' said Burbridge, quietly. Now, the contractor was a pretty game sort of man, but we could see that he felt badly over this.

"Then Tunwell laid down. Burbridge's bluff worked. Of course, not until after the game did we tell him what Tunwell held that time, and when we did he said:

"'I felt from the first, before I made a bet that he had me beat--but the bigger a man's hand, the easier it is to bluff him out of the money.' Queer remark, wasn't it?

"Tunwell kept his nerve like a major after this heavy fall, and we couldn't see the slightest sign of faltering in his style of play. The game went back to the $100 basis, and was comparatively uninteresting for an hour or so. In the course of the play during this time Tunwell caught four queens pat--a very remarkable thing--and got 50 only out of the hands. But unlike what most poker players would do under such circumstances, he didn't throw down the hand face upward on the table with an oath. He wasn't that kind of poker player.

"Just about midnight both men simultaneously decided upon a bluff--and it's not often that men happen to do this in a two-handed poker game; when they do, something always drops. Both men stood pat. There wasn't a pair in either hand. It was a choice experience to note the offhand way with which Burbridge made the first bet on this pat hand of his.

"'Ten thousand dollars,' said he, and his backer, the contractor, went to the window, raised it, and poked his head out for air.

"'Same, more than you,' said Tunwell, scanning his hand as if it was the real thing.

"Burbridge raised him another $10,000 and flicked a bit of ashes off his collar. Now Tunwell felt that his man was bluffing.

"'I call you,' said he.

"'Ace high,' said Burbridge.

"'Ace high here,' said Tunwell.

"'Queen next.'

"'Queen next here.'

"'Nine next.'

"'Nine next here.'

"'Six next.'

"Tunwell tossed his four that was next on to the table face upward without the movement of an eyebrow.

"'Six wins the $60,000,' said he, and the contractor strolled back from the window.

"'Better luck next time, Tunwell,' said he, smiling, while Burbridge drank a glass of water.

"'There isn't going to be any next time, my boy,' returned Tunwell. 'I'm no hog.'"

THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE.

_And How a Whirl at It Came Near Decimating the Population of a Section
of the Indian Territory._

"I don't just recall the name of the cheerful worker who invented that wise phrase, 'There's a sucker born every minute, and they never die,' but whoever he was he had something inside his head besides mayonnaise dressing," said a giant from the Indian Territory, when the talk among a party of Westerners at a roadhouse the other night switched around to sure-thing games and cinch propositions. "I don't suppose there ever was yet a sure-thing game rigged up that didn't get its quota of nibblers, and even its occasional easy marks, who'd go up against it with their whole rolls. I'm not speaking so much now of brace games as I am of layouts that might just as well have the words, 'You lose,' painted all over 'em, they're such obvious air-tights for the dealers. I suppose we've all been up against brace faro. That's something that a man can't heel himself against; the most he can do when he gets next to it that two of 'em are slipping out of the box at one and the same time is to 'stick up' the dealer at the business end of a .45--if he's quick enough--accumulate all the money in sight, and back toward the door.

"But a man who'll lay up alongside of a brace faro layout or a brace wheel need not necessarily be sucker enough to hand his dust over to a smooth duck who's dealing a game that has all the scars, moles, tattoo marks and other perfectly visible Bertillons of a dead open and shut sure-thing layout. Yet I've seen men who were wise in their own business--horse-rustling, for instance--go broke against games that you'd think a ten-year-old would size up correctly without the assistance of an X-ray apparatus.

"I'm thinking of the time that Jink McAtee, afterward one of the foxiest horse-thieves who ever used an upside-down brand in the Southwest, got interested in squeeze-spindle in Guthrie. It was in Guthrie, in May, 1889, just after Oklahoma had been opened up, that the two Reeves brothers, Bill and Al, and Arthur Pendleton started an all-round layout in what was the first two-story shack that had been thrown up in the town. The two Reeves boys are still running the biggest layout in Guthrie, but Pendleton is dead. The Reeves-Pendleton brand of faro, as well as their keno, wheel, stud, and other legitimate games, was perfectly on the level, but in addition they had a few games in operation that was plain cases to most of the patrons of the layout of the sure-thing. The Reeves and Pendleton people didn't club anybody into stacking up against their sure-thing games. They just started 'em going, hired a man named Gately to run 'em, and struck the attitude that if among the sooners and boomers of Guthrie there was people imbecile enough to want to hit up these sure-thing games, it wasn't their funeral.

"The most alluring among these sure-thing games was the outfit called the squeeze-spindle. You used to run across a squeeze-spindle quite often down in the Southwest, but so many of the dealers of that game got shot up and slithered that it has sort o' passed out. It's a lottery game ostensibly, where the player makes what the dealer calls 'conditional' winnings, and the dealer has to have the assistance of 'boosters' to throw confidence into the suckers. It took a good con man to run a squeeze-spindle game. The sucker would put up a hundred to win five hundred; he'd cop the coin 'conditionally'--that is to say, the arrow that flew around in the middle of the box had to point to another number of the sucker's selection before the money would be his to walk away with, and in the event of the arrow pointing to the right number the player would get twice the sum.

"Of course the arrow never went the sucker's way twice hand-running, and equally, of course, it was a game where the dealer got all of the money. The reason it was called a squeeze-spindle was because the dealer had only to squeeze a button beneath the table to stop the arrow at any old point in its flight around the numbers that he wanted to. When a sucker was up against the game, a 'booster' would prance in with a big roll of the house's money, treble it on a couple of straight turns of the spindle, squeezed just his way by the dealer, and then the sucker would conclude that it was only his lack of capital that caused him to lose--just as the pin-head who doubles on favorites at the races tries to convince himself when's he's broke and smoking a punk pipe that he'd have been able to put all the bookmakers out of business if he'd just had the capital to keep on with his system. Once in a great while a squeeze-spindle dealer would let one of his good things get away with a bunch of money, if he felt reasonably sure that the sucker would come back at it with the coin later on; and thus the ingenuous little fiction 'ud go around that So-and-So had pasted a squeeze-spindle dealer for his whole roll, and this would make business.

"Now, here was a game that you wouldn't think a man with the sense he was born with would bet twenty cents worth of zinc money on. But this man Gately, who ran the squeeze-spindle for the Reeves-Pendleton layout on a salary and commission basis, was a pretty smooth gazzabo in his generation, and he landed the good things with his layout right along, and often for sizeable money. He was a quiet, red bearded chap, with a mighty convincing, persuasive way about him, and a man who'd put up a fight, too, in a corner. He had free rein in the running of the squeeze-spindle and two or three other sure-thing devices that formed a sort of side-show to the main Reeves-Pendleton layout, and the proprietors pretended that his outfit was really independent of their plant--that Gately was simply renting space from them and going it alone. But all Guthrie knew differently.

"Well, up against this squeeze-spindle plant goes this here Jink McAtee that I started to tell you about. Jink wasn't then known as a horse-thief. He had been a sooner--he got in long before the trumpet call on a thoroughbred Kentucky horse that he was afterward found to have pinched out of a barn--and he had made a pretty good thing out of the Guthrie corner lot that he had staked off. He sold it three days after the dash for $6000, and then he laid back on his liquor with a whole lot of content. He was a low forehead in looks and manners. He was the veriest duffer in his attempts to make the Reeves-Pendleton combination put up their shutters by attacking their square games, and he lost over $3000 of his corner-lot money at their faro tables. He blew in another couple of thousand of the bunch at the honkatonks around town before his little beady eyes fell on Gately's squeeze-spindle, and he perceived a chance to get all of his money back in jig-time. Gately pointed it out to him just how easy it was.

"Before McAtee put a dollar down on the spindle Gately got Jink's eyes to popping by roping in a booster who pulled $3200 out of the squeeze-spindle in quicker time than a cayuse could make two jumps, and when Gately looked chagrined and sorrowful McAtee bit. Gately knew his man pretty well, and he permitted Jink to not only win $1600 'conditionally,' right off the reel, but he actually passed $400 of Jink's winnings over to him. Then he proceeded to wipe Jink out. When McAtee was all trimmed up, Gately looked sad.

"'You didn't have quite enough along with you, McAtee,' he said, shaking his head real mournfully. 'If you'd had another $200 to cover that $1600 that you'd won and left in the hole, why, you'd had me heading for the Canadian River by this time.'

"McAtee ate this spiel of Gately's up as if it was so much lunch on a counter, and went away filled with the idea that there was riches in the squeeze-spindle if it was hit right, and with enough money to back up the plays. So he went to just eleven of his sooner friends and talked squeeze-spindle to 'em. He put it to them just what a good thing the squeeze-spindle was rightly hammered. He told 'em how near he'd been to pulling out his losings, and more besides, through the medium of Gately's squeeze-spindle at the Reeves-Pendleton layout. They took Jink's word for it, and they all joined the pool that McAtee organized to smash that spindle. They got together $2600, and on the afternoon following Jink's play they walked down to the Reeves-Pendleton plant in a body. Each man had a rifle along with him. There wasn't anything remarkable about that. During the first year of Guthrie's existence every man carried a long-iron over his arm. If twelve men, all with rifles, were to line up in front of the Reeves-Pendleton layout in Guthrie to-day there'd be good reason for the people inside to suppose that they were going to be 'stuck up,' but there was no reason to suppose anything of the kind when Jack McAtee brought along his eleven subscribers to his squeeze-spindle-smashing pool that afternoon. Gately wasn't worried a little bit.

"'My friends is all got a interest in this, podner,' explained Jink to Gately, 'and they come along jest t' see th' play.'

"'Certainly,' said Gately, and then Jink and his bunch began to get action on the spindle. It all went their way at first. Gately didn't actually hand them any money out, but he let 'em make 'conditional' wins until they had their whole $2600 on the layout. Another correct twist of the arrow would enable Jink to double the money; on the other hand, if the arrow didn't hit the right number, Jink and his bunch only stood to lose, as Gately explained, $600 of their 'conditional' winnings.

"Now, the situation was one calculated to rattle almost any man. Gately didn't intend that Jink or his twelve stalkers with the long-irons should get away with any of that money, and it shows that he was a man of nerve in making up his mind to that idea. He intended to get the $2600 after a long series of plays, and then take a chance on the Jink McAtee gang roaring and opening up on him. That's what he intended to do. But he was a bit rattled and stampeded over the intense way the gang had of looking upon the plays, and that's how he happened to make a mistake. He gave his button too short a squeeze, and blamed if the arrow didn't stop at precisely the number that stood to win Jink and his gang $2600 of the house's money, in addition to pulling down the $2600 they had in!

"Gately saw his mistake almost as soon as he had made it, but a booster named Gilpin, who was watching the play, was the quicker thinker of the two. He jumped off a stool upon which he had been standing looking over the heads of Jink's crowd, and yelled out:

"'Stand clear, there! Don't shoot!'

"It was a ruse. Nobody had any idea of shooting. Jink and his gang were simply flooded with joy over their winning. But when they heard Gilpin's warning, they all jumped back, and that was Gately's chance to redeem his bad break. He snatched up the $5200--the rule of the spindle game is that the dealer must show the same amount of money the sucker has got in play, and Gately had $2600 of the house's money spread out--and back he jumped through the door, which led out into an alley. Jink and his crowd were stupefied. They stood stock still. Gately had gone with their money and the house's money, and they didn't think of taking after him. They figured it that the house would make good, perhaps. Anyhow, by the time they came to, Gately had mazed it through the wilderness of shacks of which Guthrie was already composed, and Bill Reeves had appeared on the scene.

"I had been with Bill in the main layout in the next room, and we heard the shout of Gilpin. That's what took us in there. Jink made his talk, which was a pretty hot and threatening one, and he was backed up in it pretty forcibly by all the rest of his gang.

"'Well, Gately jumped, that's all,' said Reeves. 'What am I going to do about it?'

"'Hand over $5200, quick,' said McAtee and some others of his bunch.

"'I haven't got anything like that much money in the place,' said Reeves. 'But I'll give you a check for it on the bank down the way.'

"They demurred over the check proposition for awhile, but they finally took Bill Reeves's check for $5200. While they were demurring, Bill Reeves had a chance to scribble a note to the cashier of the bank, telling him not to cash the check when it would be presented--to make some excuse about not having just that amount of money on hand, or something of that sort. Now, I didn't want to be in that place at all just then, but there was no way of my getting out. I had come into the room with Bill Reeves, and I knew that if I tried to mosey away I'd be called back; that they figured me to have some sort of connection with the layout, which I didn't.

"Jink took the check and went over to the bank to get the money. The cashier turned the check down on the ground that he had just shipped most of the bank's money to St. Louis. We knew that there was going to be trouble and a whole lot of it when Jink got back from the bank with that word, and I don't think any of us expected to last much longer. Jink came a-loping back from the bank, and when he came into the room and tore up the check with appropriate remarks his gang all lined up together, and we figured it that the shooting was going to begin right then. When the whole situation looked so squally that I had my eye on the nearest window to drop out of, Arthur Pendleton popped into the room.

"'What's all this?' he yelled, for there was a lot of clicking going on in the room. Jink and his gang thought they saw a final chance of getting their money. So, smoldering, they told the story to Pendleton. Pendleton was a shrewd man, a forceful talker, and a diplomat from away back.

"'All the money I've got, or that there is in the roll just now,' he said, 'is $600,' pulling the roll out of his pocket. 'You are perfectly welcome to that. When Gately comes back, or when you get him, as I wish you would, you can have the rest that's coming to you out of the roll he pinched.'

"Well, the $600 looked like better than no bread to Jink and his bunch, and they took it and went out after Gately. It was getting along toward twilight. Reeves and Pendleton figured it that Gately, in pulling down the roll, had been acting in the interest of the house. They hadn't the slightest notion that Gately had eloped with the $5200. They thought he'd plant the money, keep out of sight for a few days until the Jink McAtee push could be compromised with, and then come back.

"McAtee's gang beat up every shack in town thoroughly, but there was no Gately. They whipped the prairie for miles around, but they didn't spring Gately. Gately had gone. The gang came back to the Reeves-Pendleton layout, all of 'em pretty ugly. Pendleton got them bunched, made a speech to them to the effect that if Gately wasn't corralled within a week he'd make good the whole amount coming to them out of his own pocket, and soft-soaped them into accepting those terms. They dispersed.

"When Gately didn't come back the next day, or give any indication to his employers where he was, they got worried.

"'I think Gately has drilled,' Pendleton said to me that day. 'He's an Iowan, and there's going to be a big conclave and tournament of firemen in Council Bluffs next week. I'll bet Gately has made for Council Bluffs. I'm going after him. Come along with me.'

"I told Pendleton that I hadn't anything to do with the game, but I wasn't overlooking business propositions, and when he offered me 50 per cent. of all the money we might reclaim from Gately, I went with him. We got onto Gately's trail in Council Bluffs, as Pendleton had shrewdly guessed we might, but he had been tipped off that we were after him, and he chased over to Omaha. We were right after him, and he jumped for a town in Southwestern Iowa called Red Oak. We were hot on his trail, and we met up with him squarely next day in Red Oak.

"'Let's have the money, Gately,' said Pendleton.

"'I'll pass you back the house bunch, $2600,' said Gately, 'but the rest of it I keep,' and he looked as if he meant it, good and hard, at that.

"'How do you make that out a square deal?' asked Pendleton.

"'Because,' replied Gately, pretty convincingly, 'it was me that took the chance. I made a mistake, and stood to lose the house's $2600. If I hadn't taken a chance, they'd have got the coin. If I'd have won their $2600, your shack would have been shot into a sieve, and me into the bargain. It was a case of run. I had to do the running. I earned the $2600, and I hang on to it.'

"It struck me that this was pretty square talk, and I told Pendleton so, and advised him to cut out any idea of getting all the money back from Gately through the medium of a gun-play. Gately handed out $2600, and then he told us how he had got away. He had struck across the prairie for Mulhall, and some of the McAtee gang, in scouring the country a-horseback, had not only been right behind him, but they had passed him. He heard them coming from behind, and he thought they had recognized him in the twilight. He didn't dare to look back, but he stooped down as if to tie his shoe, and looked at them under his arm while in that stooping posture. They didn't figure that the man they were after would be taking things so leisurely as all that, and so they passed right by him in the gathering gloom, a-hunting Gately. Gately got to Mulhall, and took the first train up for Omaha.

"Before we got back to Guthrie, Jink McAtee and several of his pals in the pool to smash the Gately squeeze-spindle had been given the sudden chase by the United States Deputy Marshals for some horse-rustling operation of theirs that had just come to light, and when Jink McAtee got shot full of slugs by a posse down in the Brazos bottoms, three years later, the Reeves-Pendleton layout still stood indebted to him in the sum of $4600 with accrued interest, the balance that Jink and his push did not pull down in their attempt to stampede a squeeze-spindle layout."

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_Nine Splendid Novels by_ WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

THE PIRATE OF PANAMA

A tale of old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventure. The scene is laid in San Francisco on board _The Argus_ and in Panama. A romantic search for the lost pirate gold. An absorbing love-story runs through the book.

_12mo. Cloth, Jacket in Colors. Net $1.25._

THE VISION SPLENDID

A powerful story in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars against graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates the story.

_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Net $1.25._

CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT

A story of Arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter feud between cattle-men and sheep-herders. The heroine is a most unusual woman and her love-story reaches a culmination that is fittingly characteristic of the great free West.