Part 1

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Queer Luck

Queer Luck

Poker Stories from the New York Sun

By David A. Curtis

❦

New York Brentano’s 1899

COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1897, 1898, BY THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY BRENTANO’S

Contents

PAGE

WHY HE QUIT THE GAME 1

FREEZE-OUT FOR A LIFE 19

A GAMBLER’S PISTOL PLAY 35

QUEER RUNS OF LUCK 57

STORMS’S STRAIGHT FLUSH 75

FOR A SENATE SEAT 93

THE BILL WENT THROUGH 109

POKER FOR HIGH STAKES 127

“OVERLAND JACK” 149

HIS LAST SUNDAY GAME 169

FOSS STOPPED THE GAME 181

HE PLAYED FOR HIS WIFE 203

THE CLUB’S LAST GAME 221

Why he Quit the Game

_THE EXCITEMENT OF A PHENOMENAL STRUGGLE TOOK HIM TO THE VERGE OF DISHONOR_

Five men of better nerve never dealt cards than the five who sat playing poker the other night in one of those up-town club-rooms that are so quietly kept as to be entirely unknown to the police and the general public. The game proved to be phenomenal.

The play was high. The party had played together once a week, for a long time, and the limit had always been one dollar at the beginning of the evening, though occasionally it had gone as high as ten before morning. This particular night, however, the cards ran remarkably well, and by midnight the limit was ignored if not forgotten. Two of the players had laid their pocketbooks alongside their chips. They had not played so before, but the gambling fever had come upon them with the excitement of good hands, one against another, until the friendly contest had become a struggle for blood. Fours had been shown several times since midnight, and beaten once, while straight flushes had twice won important money. Deck after deck had been called for, and tossed aside in turn after a few deals, till the carpet was strewn thickly with the discarded pasteboards, but there was no change in the remarkable run of the cards. Pat fulls and flushes showed in deal after deal, and the luck in the draw was so extraordinary and so evenly distributed that they all grew cautious of betting on any ordinary hand, and a bluff had not been tried for an hour. Yet no one had offered a remark, though the play grew higher and harder. It was as if each man feared to break the run by mentioning it. At length the Colonel spoke.

“The devil himself is playing with his picture books to-night, I think,” he said, with a short laugh, as he lost two stacks of blues on a seven full.

It had been the Doctor’s deal, and he looked up quickly. Gazing at the Colonel, he said:

“The hands are certainly remarkable. I never saw so many big ones at one sitting.” The words were simple, but there was a curious tone, half of question, in his voice. There had not been such nervous tension in the party before, but they were all men of experience, and had seen trouble between friends resulting from careless words on many different occasions.

The Colonel detected the tone and answered quickly and gracefully:

“That’s so, Doc. I’ve beaten some strong hands myself to-night.”

“A new pack, Sam,” said the Editor, who was the next to deal. The imperturbable darky by the sideboard produced one instantly, and the Editor shuffled it carefully. Then he offered it to the other players in turn. They all refused to touch it, and, shuffling the deck himself once more, he laid it down for the cut and began to deal. It was a little thing, but so far out of the ordinary as to mark the fact that they were fencing now with bare blades, and from that on, there was a strict observance of the punctilio of the game.

One by one the cards fell in five symmetrical little piles, as perfect as Herrmann could have made them, for the Editor was deft with his fingers, but one after another of the players passed out and a jack pot was made. The big hands had failed to appear.

It was the Congressman’s deal, and he doubled his ante and took the cards. The Colonel sat next and pushed out four blue chips--twenty dollars. The others all came in, the Congressman making good and dealing without a word. There was a hundred dollars in the pot, and there came that curious certainty to all of them which sometimes comes to experienced players, that a mighty struggle was at hand.

The Colonel made a pretense of looking at his hand, but in reality looked only at the first two cards. They were both aces. He passed.

The Lawyer sat next. He found a four flush and a pair of tens; so he passed.

The Doctor was next player. He held a pat straight, king high. He opened the pot for twenty dollars.

The Editor came in on three deuces, and the Congressman with a pair of queens put up his money. The others came up promptly.

The Colonel, having first call, looked over his hand carefully. The last card was an ace also, and he called for one, holding up a seven. The four hearts in the Lawyer’s hand were the queen, ten, nine, and eight. He promptly discarded the other ten, and drew one card. The Doctor, of course, stood pat, and the Editor drew two. The Congressman also drew to the strength of his hand.

With all the players in, the Doctor felt that a straight was a doubtful hand, but he put up twenty and waited. The Editor looked anxiously for the fourth deuce, but, finding neither that nor a pair, laid down his cards.

Three sixes had fallen to the Congressman’s queens, and he raised it twenty. Thereupon they all looked keenly at the Colonel. Not a muscle moved in his stern, handsome face, as he saw the raise, and went fifty better.

It was ninety dollars for the Lawyer to come in. He simply made good, and looked anxiously to see if there would be another raise. They criticised his play afterward, claiming that he should have raised back, but he defended it by saying that there were two players yet to hear from. The first of these resigned. A king straight was no hand for that struggle. The Congressman was still confident of his full hand, however, for he had drawn three sixes, and he came back at the Colonel with fifty more.

The Colonel raised him a hundred. It looked as if it would be a duel between him and the Congressman, but the Lawyer was still to hear from. He raised it a hundred. The Congressman made good, and the Colonel raised again.

The Lawyer counted his chips carefully, and finding exactly the right amount, covered the last raise. Then, opening his pocketbook, he drew out a hundred-dollar bill and pushed that to the middle of the table.

Once more the Congressman made good, and the Colonel raised it a hundred. The Lawyer came back, and the Congressman dropped out.

The Colonel raised it a hundred. The Lawyer made it another, and there was over twenty-five hundred dollars on the table.

The struggle of the evening had come, and the three who had dropped out were not less excited than the two players. To all appearance they were far more so, for the Colonel looked as calm as if on parade, and the Lawyer’s only sign of agitation was his heightened color. None of them thought much of that, for he was of plethoric habit and flushed easily.

The Colonel raised it a hundred. The Lawyer fumbled in his pocketbook for a moment, and, drawing out a fresh roll of bills, raised it two hundred. The Colonel raised it five hundred. The Lawyer came back at him with five hundred more. The Colonel raised it a thousand. The Lawyer flipped up the ends of the bills he was holding in his hand, and, counting them rapidly, found a little over two thousand dollars. Separating the odd money, he extended his hand with the twenty centuries in it, and was in the act of speaking, when he checked himself as suddenly as if he had been shot.

“I raise--” he began, and then was stricken dumb. The bills were still in his grasp, and, instead of laying them down, he sat for a moment as rigid as a statue, while his face grew white.

The silence was intense. The Colonel was the only one in the party who showed no excitement, but the Lawyer, who had watched him up to that moment with the most acute scrutiny, no longer looked at him at all. Instead, he slowly withdrew his hand, picked up his cards, which he had laid, face down, before him, and looked them over again.

“What is that for?” thought the Editor. “He is not looking to see what he holds. He knows perfectly well. And he hasn’t been bluffing. What stopped him, I wonder?”

No one spoke, however, as the Lawyer laid his cards down again and looked once more into his pocketbook.

“Aha!” thought the Editor. “It’s the amount that staggers him. That’s queer, too. I’ve seen him play higher than this at the tables.”

It seemed to be the amount, however; for the Lawyer, finding no more money in his pocketbook, counted out a thousand dollars from the roll in his hand and, laying that on the pile in the middle of the table, said:

“I call you.”

His hand shook perceptibly, and for the first time the Colonel’s face relaxed. He smiled grimly as he laid down four aces.

The Lawyer’s face had been pale, but it grew almost ghastly as he showed his hand. He had caught the jack of hearts in the draw and had won the pot.

The Doctor watched him curiously, even more so than the others, though the entire party was surprised. To his professional eye it looked as if the excitement would culminate in a fainting fit. That for a moment was indeed imminent; then the magnificent nerve which had made the Lawyer famous stood him in good stead, and he rallied by a supreme effort. Once more his hand was as steady as clockwork as he reached out and drew the great pile of chips and gold and bank bills toward him.

It was not, however, until after he had done a strange thing that he could command himself sufficiently to speak. And while he was doing it the others looked on in silence. They had seen four aces beaten by a straight flush, but even the excitement of that was in abeyance. Some strange climax was coming, and none could even guess what it would be.

First he counted out from the pile twenty one-hundred-dollar bills, and, folding them together with the money he had held back on the last bet, he placed the roll in his pocketbook, and, closing that carefully, put it into his inside pocket and drew a long breath--almost a gasp--as if of relief. Next he counted out two thousand more and pushed it over toward the Colonel, who looked at it and at him in wonder. The remainder of the pot--a goodly sum--lay in a confused heap in front of him, and before speaking he looked at it steadily for a space wherein one might count fifty. At length he said, raising his hand, as if registering an oath:

“I am done with poker. I have nothing to say against the game. You all know how well I love to play. To my mind there is no other sport that equals it. None, I believe, so shows the skill and the mettle of a man as this does. Yet, loving the game as well and admiring it as much as I do, I give it up from this moment, forever. I have stepped across the border line of dishonor to-night. The money I have just put back in my pocket was given to me last evening by a client to be paid out this morning, and if I had lost I could not immediately have replaced it. I had it in my possession simply because I had not had the opportunity to deposit it, and in the excitement of the game I forgot that it was not my own. The fascination that could make me do a thing like that is one that I dare not risk again. Then, as the last two thousand I bet was not my own, I cannot touch the money I won with it. I have returned it to the Colonel, and, as you, sir, would never have betted against dishonest money, it is as if it had never been at stake, and consequently it is yours.”

The Colonel bowed and picked up the bills.

“As to the rest of this,” continued the Lawyer, pointing to the pile which he had not yet disturbed, “I am in doubt. I certainly won it, but I am embarrassed at quitting a friendly game with such heavy winnings. It is not a question of right, but of delicacy, and I prefer to put it to you, as to a jury, whether I owe you satisfaction in any way.”

He paused, and still no other man spoke. It was as if each one was waiting for the others. So the Lawyer spoke again.

“What am I to do?” he said. “I am in the hands of my friends.”

They all looked at the Colonel. He was the oldest in the party.

“I am no man’s censor,” said he, seeing that he was expected to speak. “Neither do I care to consider the morals of the question, but I have seen a man blow his brains out over a card table after he had done what you have done, and lost, as you, fortunately, did not. I said then that he did well, and I say now that you have done well. Having won with money that was not your own, even though you did it inadvertently, you could not touch your winnings. But as to that which you won with your own money--Are you very sure that you will never play again?”

“Absolutely,” said the Lawyer.

“Then pocket your money. We have played together, we five, for more than a year now, and I doubt if you are much ahead of the game, even counting your winnings to-night.”

He extended his hand, and the Lawyer grasped it nervously. One after another, the three others shook hands with him also, and the game was over.

Freeze-out for a Life

_AN OLD GAME UNDER NEW CIRCUMSTANCES_

“No, I don’t play poker any more,” said a big Westerner, who came into an up-town club-house the other night with some friends who had been showing him the town. He spoke rather seriously, although he had been chatting and laughing in a loud, breezy way until the very moment when somebody suggested a little game of draw as an appropriate wind-up of the night’s diversion.

“Why, how is that?” exclaimed one of his friends. “You used to play a stiff game. You haven’t sworn off, have you?”

“N-no,” said the Westerner, still serious. “I have not sworn off, but there is no excitement in the game for me now. The last game I played was too exciting.

“It was a dozen years ago, when I was a tenderfoot, with the usual allowance of freshness and ignorance of frontier perils. We used to call it brashness, and I was certainly brash. I roamed around the country for the better part of a year, with a more or less vague purpose of settling somewhere, but not caring much where. I had money enough to start with, whenever I should find an opening to suit me, but I was not in a hurry, and was enjoying the freedom and adventurous life of the plains as only a youngster can who is not obliged to put up with the hardships, but looks on them as mere incidents.

“I was well down toward New Mexico when there was a rumor of Indian troubles, and I heard that a company of United States troops were on the march toward one of the principal villages, where the redskins were particularly sullen. I had been out hunting for a week with a couple of fellows I had met in one of the towns, when we got the news from a stranger who came into our camp late at night and asked for supper. He admitted when we questioned him--not too closely, for inquisitiveness is at a large discount on the plains, but casually--that he was a scout in the government employ, and was on his way to join this company.

“‘There’s likely to be some pretty warm work,’ he said when we asked a little more, ‘for if the red devils are not on the warpath now they will be in a day or two, and you fellows will do a smart trick if you turn back.’

“Turning back, however, didn’t seem very attractive to me when there was so much excitement ahead. I promptly remarked that I thought I would go on with the scout and offer my services to the Captain in command. I told you I was pretty brash at the time, and I had no knowledge of military affairs. My notion was that the Captain would be glad of a recruit, or, at least, that he would make no objection to my going with him.

“I noticed that the scout looked at me a little curiously, but he evidently thought it was not his business to educate tenderfeet, and he only grunted. My two companions were as fresh as I was, and we told the scout we would go along if he had no objection.

“‘It’s a free country, and I reckon you can travel wherever you like,’ he said with a grin that I understood better afterward.

“We started before dawn, and had some thirty odd miles to go to strike the trail where the company was expected to camp that night. There were still some ten miles to go when, as we were rounding a small hill, the scout suddenly leaped from his horse and called to us to do the same.

“He had seen Indians, and, to cut it short, we camped that night in a place where the scout said that four men could hold out for a while, even against the hundred or so in the party that had surrounded us. It was a certainty, though, that we would all lose our scalps unless help came, for there was no water to be had, and the Indians knew it and made themselves comfortable just out of range of our rifles. The scout didn’t say much for a long time, but we could see that he was thinking as hard as any of us, and we were all pretty busy at it. There didn’t seem to be anything to suggest, or at least there was nothing that I could think of excepting to make a dash and try to break through. Nobody said anything in reply when I spoke of that, and the scout gave me a look of disgust that made me angry enough, but shut me up all the same. Finally he said:

“‘It’s just this way. These devils have caught us, and they know it. They won’t make a rush, for they know we will shoot, and an Indian will never risk being shot if he can get his man without. We can’t fight our way out. There’s too many of ’em. And we can’t stay here any longer than we can live without water.’

“I asked him if the Captain wouldn’t make a search for him, and he said the Captain didn’t know he was coming. ‘He’s on his way south,’ he said, ‘and the trail he is on is ten miles to the east of us. There’s only one thing that I see, and that means certain death for somebody, I reckon. It’s certain death for all of us, though, if something ain’t done.’ We asked him what it was, and he said:

“‘If one man can make his way south-east far enough, so that the noise of the firing will reach the company, the Captain will send a searching party. It all depends on how far the man gets before he is killed. If we all ride out, we will all be killed. If one man goes, the others may stand a chance.’

“We all looked at one another in silence for a good while. My blood ran cold at the idea of riding out alone into that pack of fiends, but I realized that our only chance was for somebody to go, and I knew life was as sweet to the others as it was to me. Instinctively we began first talking about the way the man who should go should manœuvre to best advantage, before raising the question who should be the man. It took only a few minutes, though, for the scout to give his advice, which was for one to ride out, waving a white handkerchief. He was to keep to the eastward and ride as far as he dared toward the Indians, looking sharply for the weakest point in their line toward his right. He should then make a dash and ride as hard as possible until it was all over, firing as often as he could. Then we had to decide who should go, and I supposed, of course, that we would draw lots, but one of the men spoke up unexpectedly:

“‘Whoever goes,’ he said, ‘doesn’t want to start for some hours. The scout says just after daybreak is the best time. What is the matter with settling this thing with poker? We can play freeze-out, and three games will settle it, the winner dropping out each time.’

“The proposition caught me. You know I used to pride myself on my poker. After a little hesitation the others agreed. The man who proposed it had the cards, and we counted out six hundred coffee beans for chips and began playing on a blanket folded and laid on the ground. You would think the details of a game like that would fix themselves in the memory, so that I would be able to tell you every hand I held and every bet I made, wouldn’t you? Well, I can’t. In fact, I can’t tell anything about the first game excepting that I was the first man to lose all his chips. I had played often enough for what I thought were high stakes, but the thought that I was playing for my life rattled me completely, and I really believe I bet at random. Whatever I did I lost, and the man who had proposed the game won out. He was shot in a gambling house three months later--had an extra ace in his sleeve, I believe, or something like that.

“The next freeze-out, between three of us, was a comparatively short one. It did not take more than twenty minutes for the scout to gather in all the chips, but short as it was, I managed to get myself together a little, though I was still full of the thought of the value of the stakes--a thing which, I have noticed, always interferes with my play. When I consider the value of a chip it always influences my betting one way or the other, even though I try not to allow it to do so, and in this case I said to myself that each bean represented the one hundred and fiftieth part of my life. In other words, I was gambling away months and years instead of money.

“When the third game began, however, I pulled myself together with a most tremendous effort, and really became as cool as I ever had been before at a game of cards. The man I played against this time was a young Englishman whom I had grown to esteem highly in the short time I had known him. He was a gentleman clear through, and as cheery and companionable a man as I ever met. His people at home never heard this story, and I hope they never will. They know he was killed by the Indians and that he was on a hunting trip, but they never heard of his last game of cards, nor of the way he rode to his death. We had each three hundred beans, and half a dozen hands were dealt before either of us got cards to bet on. Then on my deal I caught three deuces and made it fifty to play. He looked at his cards and raised me fifty, which I covered. He drew one card and let it lie without looking at it, while he watched me. I saw him looking, of course, and I am more glad than I am of almost anything else I ever did in an almost useless life to think that I made the worst play I ever saw made. I liked the man well, as I said, and some impulse that I couldn’t understand then, and can’t explain now, told me to leave the thing to chance, and to give him a little the better chance. I had played with him before, and I was certain that he had not come back at me the way he did on two pair. He was drawing to a flush, and somehow I felt that he had filled it. Of course I should have drawn to the strength of my hand, but I didn’t. I drew one card only, holding up an eight spot to my deuces, and I shoved all my beans into the pot without looking at my draw.

“He gave me one look, in which I read a perfect appreciation of what I had done, and without a word and without lifting his fifth card he pushed his chips forward. Then my nerve gave out. I grew as white as death, I know, though no one ever told me so, and I actually could not lift my cards. His nerve never shook, though, apparently, and he turned his fifth card over as he laid the other four on the blanket. They were all clubs. He looked at me, and I swear I saw regret in his eyes. I tell you, he was a man. Then I managed to control myself to turn my hand over. I had drawn the other eight.”

The Westerner stopped. He drained his glass and then said: