Part 7

“Naturally the players all looked up in surprise, and one or two attempted a remonstrance, but, noticing the Captain’s expression, thought better of it. He was smiling pleasantly, but you could tell by his face that he was in earnest.

“The youngster himself was vehement and vociferous, but the Captain only smiled at him still more pleasantly, and said again that the game must be closed for the night. It was easy enough to manage such a case as his, but after the young fellow had pleaded and sputtered and even tried feebly to bluster without any success, another man, much older, of dark visage and thin, sharp features, spoke up in ugly fashion:

“‘I call it a piece of impertinence and a gross assumption of authority for the Captain of a steamboat or anybody else to undertake to stop a party of gentlemen playing a friendly game.’

“A quick change came over the Captain’s face. The smile was gone, and the eyes contracted a little as they seemed to shoot fire, so keen and brilliant was the look in them:

“‘It is not necessary, Major, to consider what I might or might not do in case a party of gentlemen were playing a friendly game of poker here. The point is that this game is going to stop now. Gentlemen don’t ply boys with liquor and then win money from them, and, by the Almighty, nobody else is going to do it on my boat.’

“The Major was as angry now as the Captain. He glanced at the other players, but they all had sufficient grace to be ashamed, or, at least, to appear so, and with a contemptuous smile, he said: ‘I understand you perfectly, Captain, and I suppose you will give me satisfaction. Nobody else seems inclined to demand it, but I am not in the habit of allowing anybody to lie about me without calling him to account.’

“No law on earth could have prevented those two men from fighting after that, and there was nobody present to put the machinery of the law in operation, even if it had been of any avail. The Captain bowed. ‘I will make a landing on the Arkansas side in twenty minutes,’ he said, ‘and we can step ashore alone, unless you prefer to take a friend with you.’

“‘No,’ said the Major, ‘I would rather prefer going alone.’

“The two saluted and the Captain strode out of the cabin. The Major, without deigning a look or a word to any of us, walked over to his stateroom, entered it, and closed the door.

“There was a good deal of quiet conversation going on for a little while, but nobody seemed to feel called on--I know I did not--to interfere, and there was considerable speculation as to which would kill the other. That one of them would be killed seemed certain, and, it was my own notion that the Major would be the one. It was true that I did not know him, but I did know Captain Foss.

“I was right. When the boat slackened speed and then slid her nose into the mud, stopping with that queer, slow suddenness with which a boat does stop on a bank, we all went outside to see the two men off. I was surprised to see that it was daylight, for I had not thought it was so late. But, looking around, I saw the pilot had chosen an excellent spot for the purpose in hand. He had run so close to a wooded knoll in the forest that it was easy to put a gangplank out to reach the firm ground.

“As he stepped toward this gangplank Captain Foss paused, and, addressing the mate, said, so that we could all understand him, ‘Do not allow any one to go ashore for half an hour after I do. If neither I nor Major Nevins should return in that time, take four men and come after us.’ Then he turned to Major Nevins, who was close beside him, and said something to him which no one else could hear. The Major nodded, and the two stepped ashore together.

“Walking side by side, they disappeared among the trees. Almost breathlessly, it seemed to me, we all listened for a long time. I don’t know how long, though I noticed the mate kept his watch in his hand. Suddenly we heard two shots, almost together. Then there was a pause, then another shot, then another, then silence.

“Three or four minutes after this we saw Captain Foss walking back alone toward the boat. Coming on board, he stopped beside the mate and gave him some orders in an undertone, then passed on to his own room. The mate saluted, and, calling two men to him, went somewhere aft, presently returning with a folded cloth in his hand which looked like a sheet. The two men brought a cot with them, and, following the mate with two more men, to whom he called, they went ashore and disappeared in the woods.

“When they returned, some quarter of an hour later, there was a burden on the cot, which all four men were carrying, and over this burden the sheet was spread, decently and smoothly. It was carried to Major Nevins’s room and deposited inside. Then the door was locked and the key taken to the Captain’s room.

“The boat moved on, and when we reached Helena, which was the next stopping-place, Captain Foss went ashore alone. In an hour’s time he returned to the boat with the Coroner of the town, the local undertaker, and two or three of his assistants. The burden on the cot was taken ashore, and after a little time the boat went on down the river.

“If there was ever any prosecution I didn’t hear of it. All I know is that it was then the custom in Arkansas to allow the survivor to go on his own recognizance in any case in which the Coroner was satisfied that there had been a fair fight.”

He Played for His Wife

_A FREEZE-OUT GAME BETWEEN A HUSBAND AND HIS RIVAL_

“For my sins, I suppose it must have been, I lived once in Egypt,” said the gray-haired young-looking man in the club smoking-room, “and if Egypt on the other side of the world is anything like the southern part of Illinois, I can readily understand how the children of Israel found the wilderness preferable. As I remember the story, though, in Pharaoh’s realm they had only one plague at a time, whereas in southern Illinois--however, there may be a better condition of things there now, so there’s nothing to gain by recalling our experiences. I sincerely hope things are better, but I scarcely think I have curiosity enough to go back and find out.

“In our village--for I was a part of it, and a part of it was mine--about the same conditions obtained as in all the other small settlements within a hundred miles. We had a railroad station and two trains a day. We had a post-office and one mail a day. We had a general store and a blacksmith’s shop and a tavern, and we had a few private residences. If there was anything else of importance, excepting the farmers’ wagons, that came in with loads that were too heavy for the horses, and too often went back with loads that burdened the farmers, the details have escaped my mind. It was a typical southern Illinois village.

“Small as it was, there were two social sets in town. The married men lived in their own houses, and their wives visited one another and had their small festivities from time to time in the most serene indifference to the fact that there were other human beings around. And these others--that is, the unmarried men--lived at the tavern, or hotel, as we preferred to call it, equally indifferent to the occurrence of social functions to which we were not bidden. If, as occasionally happened, one of the married men broke loose for a night or two, and spent his spare time and money at the hotel, he was tolerated, but no more. We felt sorry for him when we thought of his return home, but we had no yearnings toward reciprocity in his effort to break down the barriers.

“In our set there was, it is true, one married woman, but she did not count. At least we thought so till the trouble came. She was the landlord’s wife. Old Stein, as we called him, though he was not over forty, was a placid, easy-going German, who kept the hotel fairly up to the standard of the country, and I think a trifle above it, but he hadn’t energy enough, apparently, to make any strenuous effort to improve things. What was good enough for his boarders was good enough for him, and we were demoralized enough by the climate, or whatever it is that tends to the deterioration of mankind thereabout, to make no demand for unusual luxury. As far as we ever noticed, he had no remarkable affection for his wife, but seemed rather too indifferent to her very pronounced hunger for admiration.

“She was a born flirt, but though she carried her flirtations with anybody who would flirt with her, much nearer to the danger line than would be tolerated in a more strait-laced community, it was the general opinion among the boarders that there was no real evil in her, and, moreover, that she was fully capable of taking care of herself in almost any emergency. So, though she would not have been recognized as respectable by any other married woman in town, a fact that troubled her not, she was considered all right by our set, and we looked upon her as a good fellow rather than as a woman bound by the ordinary rules of propriety. She was a German by descent, and Stein was German by birth, but Lena was perhaps too thoroughly Americanized in a poor school.

“Naturally trouble came of it. We were accustomed, as the people in most small Western towns were accustomed some years ago, to receiving occasionally a visit from what we used to call a ‘cross-roads gambler.’ These worthies are perhaps the least useful and most ‘ornery’ specimens of humanity to be found in North America. They are professionals without the skill or nerve they need to enable them to hold their own among other professionals. Knowing just enough to cheat, but not enough to cheat deftly, they travel about the country, usually alone, but sometimes in pairs, stopping in the smallest settlements for a day or a week at a time, looking for victims. No game is too small for them, though they will play heavily at times, but they manage to live on their little skill by worming their way into friendly games of poker, such as are played all over the country, but perhaps more openly in the West than in the East.

“When Dick Bradley happened along our way and stopped over at our town, we had, though we did not realize it immediately, all the elements of a drama right at hand. It was not long before the drama was enacted, and perhaps it was just as well that we were not a little farther West, for there might have been considerable shooting in the last act. As it was we had a duel, but that was fought with the pasteboards instead of revolvers, and the difference was supposed to be settled by a freeze-out in the great American game.

“Bradley was an ordinary cross-roads gambler, and nothing more. He was a little handsomer than the usual run of men, and he dressed rather better than custom demanded in that part of the country. Moreover, he had a free-and-easy way with him--it was a part of his stock in trade--that was attractive to anybody, and I suppose especially so to a woman like Lena. At all events he hadn’t been with us twenty-four hours before there was a violent flirtation going on between the two. We all considered that natural enough, and supposing we knew the woman thoroughly well, we thought no harm of it at first. Stein took no notice of it apparently, and as it was a matter that concerned no one else so closely as it did him, none of us felt called on to say anything.

“Somewhat to our surprise, however, Bradley stayed on for more than a week. It wasn’t his regular business that kept him, for though we played poker every night, as a matter of course, in the back room of the hotel, and though he got into the game, equally as a matter of course, he didn’t make enough out of it to make it an object to stay. There were some of us who understood the game and the ordinary tricks of crooked players as well as he did, and he was not long in finding out that he had to play square if he played at all. So, as we never played for big money, the prospect was a poor one for him. Still he stayed. After a few days we all, excepting Stein, began to see that he was staying entirely on Lena’s account. He was a bit cautious at first; more so than she was, but seeing that Stein made no objection to anything she did, but gave her a perfectly free foot, the gambler grew bolder and bolder, until there was no longer any possibility of remaining blind to the fact that a scandal impended. Some of us talked it over very quietly and carefully, but it was agreed that no one ought to interfere, since Stein did not see fit to do so.

“We had begun to think that Stein was absolutely indifferent and to regard him with considerable contempt, when one evening he undeceived us, and gave us a great surprise by his manner of doing it. It was early in the evening, and, though we had gathered--perhaps a dozen of us--in the card-room, we had not yet begun playing when Stein came in, and, after fidgeting around for a minute or two in a manner quite unlike his usual phlegmatic way, spoke suddenly to Bradley.

“‘Look here, Bradley,’ he said in his broken English, ‘I must settle things with you. I have talked things with my wife, Lena, already, and she says she will go away with you. If she goes this world is no good to me any more, and you and I must settle if she goes or if she stays. I would kill you, but it would be foolishness to try that, for I am not a fighting man and you always carry your gun. Now, what shall we do? Will you go away and leave me my Lena, or will she go with you?’

“The poor Dutchman seemed not to understand in the least what an amazing sort of a speech this was. His voice trembled with his strong emotion, and there were tears in his eyes. The rest of us were struck dumb. I don’t know what the other fellows thought, but I know that there came to me a sort of hungry longing to organize a tar-and-feather party, with Dick Bradley as the principal guest. And, despite my contemptuous pity for the husband who showed so little manhood, I made up my mind that there was going to be fair play, anyhow.

“Bradley was fairly staggered. He flushed and stammered, and, I think, was for a moment about to say that he would go; but he pulled himself together, and seemed to remember that as a bad man he had a reputation to sustain. At length he said:

“‘It’s pretty hard to tell what to do, Stein. I’d be willing to fight you for the woman if you wanted to do that, but, as you don’t, I suppose she’d better settle it herself.’

“‘No,’ said the landlord. ‘She is foolish with you now, and she would have no sense about it. You and I will settle it now. And what will you do? Will you go away and leave us?’

“Bradley looked around, as if to see what the crowd thought about it, and perceiving at a glance that our sympathies were all with the other man, he replied:

“‘Well, if you won’t fight, supposing we settle it with the cards. I’ll play you a freeze-out, $1,000 against your wife. What do you say?’

“‘I say no,’ said Stein again, and we began almost to respect him. ‘I will not play my wife against your money, but I will play you a freeze-out for $1,000, my money against yours, and if you lose, you will go away. And if I lose, I will go away, and she may do what she likes. Only you will play a square game.’

“‘You bet, by ----, it’ll be a square game,’ said Jack Peters, the biggest man and the best card player in the party. ‘I don’t like your proposition, but that’s your business and not mine. But if you’re going to play, Stein, you may be perfectly sure that Bradley won’t try any cross-roads tricks in this freeze-out.’

“Bradley seated himself at the card table and said: ‘Get out your cards.’ At the same time he pulled out his wad and counted off the thousand. Stein got the cards and chips, and each man taking chips to represent his pile, the money was laid at one side. It did not seem like an even contest, for Stein was not a good player. I was delighted to notice, however, after they were fairly well going, that Stein was the cooler of the two. Bradley, I suppose, was a bit rattled by the consciousness that we were watching his play suspiciously.

“Bradley tried at first to force the play, and once or twice caught Stein for considerable money, but the game went on for perhaps twenty minutes without anything like a decisive result. Suddenly, as Stein was about to cut the cards, Jack Peters exclaimed:

“‘Shuffle ’em, Stein!’

“‘Can’t Stein play his own game?’ asked Bradley.

“‘I reckon he can,’ said Peters, ‘but in case the cards should happen to be stacked against him, and I found it out, there’d be a lynching right here in this town to-night. I don’t want that to happen, so I thought I’d make sure.’

“It was an unfair trick, for Bradley had not stacked the cards. He hadn’t dared to. But Peters told me afterward that he did it to ‘throw a scare’ into Bradley if he could. He succeeded, for the gambler lost his nerve when he looked around once more, while Stein remained as cool as before. He nodded and shuffled the cards and the game went on.

“The end came suddenly. It was a flush against a full, and Stein held the full and swept the board. There was a moment’s silence, and then Bradley said with a short laugh:

“‘Well, I’ve lost, and I’ll leave town on the morning train. That’ll do, I suppose, won’t it?’

“‘Yes, that’ll do,’ said Stein, gravely. He had won in the outrageous contest, and I expected to see him greatly elated, but instead he seemed curiously depressed. And as the situation was decidedly embarrassing for all hands we went to bed uncommonly early that night, so that everybody was up in time next morning to see Bradley go on the early train as he had agreed to do.”

“Well, yes,” said the gray-haired young-looking man, in answer to a question, “that is the end of the story, as far as the poker part of it goes. Of course there was this sequel. It was inevitable, I suppose. Lena followed Bradley a day or two afterward, and Stein drank himself to death.”

The Club’s Last Game

_IT TAUGHT AN INTERESTING MORAL ABOUT RAISING THE LIMIT_

“It is sometimes hard to draw the line between a professional gambler and another,” said the gray-haired young-looking man in the club smoking-room. “And even if you do succeed in making the distinction clear, the comparison isn’t always to the detriment of the professional. I remember an instance in a poker club to which I once belonged, which was interesting enough, though it pointed no particular moral that I know of, unless it was by renewing the old doubt whether the devil is always as black as he is painted.

“Our club was rather a curious one in some respects, though we did not realize it at the time. It began with a little game in one of the New England cities where you have to keep very quiet about your card playing unless you don’t give a rap for your standing in the business community, to say nothing of your social position. I don’t know that people are so very much better in such communities than they are elsewhere, but there is a sort of general bluff made by common consent that shuts out open and flagrant offenders from companionship with those who have more regard for ‘the speech of people.’

“There were six of us in the party that used to meet every Saturday night at one another’s rooms, and it was as pleasant and harmonious a circle as I ever joined. We were all young business men, unmarried and prosperous, and all of excellent standing at that time. There was never a quarrel among us, in all our play, and for a long time the play was never heavy enough to hurt even the worst loser. It was almost always a fifty-cent limit, though we would often disregard the limit in the single round of consolation jack-pots with which we concluded every evening’s play.

“One of the number, whom I will call George, for I can’t give surnames in this story, because it is a true one, was transferred by the railroad company for which he worked to another city, forty odd miles away. Then Harry had an offer of a situation in a large wholesale house in another direction, and sold out his business to accept it. Eli married a rich girl in still another place, and he moved away, leaving only three of us in the same town, yet the Saturday evening games went on almost without interruption. Eli was, naturally enough, oftenest absent, but George and Harry would come in by rail, so that we always had four and almost always five at the table. Of course, as the old friendship was as warm as ever, we enjoyed the reunions even more keenly than we had. After a time the play grew harder. The limit was usually $2, and occasionally as high as $5, while it was lifted off altogether in the consolation pots, so that it was not unusual for one or two of us to be several hundred dollars ahead or behind at the end of the evening.

“Things went on this way for perhaps a couple of years before the smash came, and while some of us were not specially harmed by it, there is no doubt that our club did work serious mischief to at least two of the party. We didn’t know about it until afterward, but it was true that Harry had become so infatuated with cards that he had neglected his business and had lost his situation in the wholesale house, and then, instead of trying to get employment elsewhere, had devoted himself entirely to gambling, and had become a full-fledged professional. None of us had happened to learn of his discharge, and as he said nothing to us about it, we never suspected the truth till we learned it very strangely. He continued meeting with us, as usual, and in our company, at least, he never played anything but a straight game.

“As for George, we did know that he was playing a great deal, aside from his games with us, for he told us about it and we knew to our sorrow that he was particularly unlucky. He had some means, outside of his very good salary, so we didn’t suspect that he was financially involved. We did know, however, that he played in the heaviest games he could get into, and on more than one occasion he traveled two or three hundred miles in order to sit in at some game that he would hear of, where the stakes were likely to be unusually large. The railroad company kept him on the go a good part of the time, so he was able to manage this without really neglecting his work, and if the officials of the road had learned of his gambling habits they either underestimated the importance of them or they valued George’s services very highly, for he was promoted, not once, but two or three times. We therefore had a professional among us without knowing it, and another man who was playing further beyond his limit than we dreamed of, and still our little game went on, as pleasantly and serenely as if we were not drifting into a tragedy.

“One particular summer night we had a full table. Each one of the six was there, and all seemed unusually gay. The game was a good one, too, for the cards ran high and the luck ran from one to the other most delightfully. We started with the usual two-dollar limit, but it was broken two or three times without any remonstrance, so that after a couple of hours we were playing without any limit. Bets of $10 and even $20 were made frequently, and several times there was $100 in a jack-pot before cards were drawn.

“Eli had to go home by a train that went through about 1:30 o’clock, so the consolation pots were played a little before one. We had been playing about four hours then, and the luck had been running against George for half an hour. It was affecting him, too, and instead of waiting for a turn he had been trying to force it, so that he was considerably dipped, and I for one was hoping that he would recoup in one or two pots in the last round. He didn’t, though. On the contrary, he came into each of the first five, standing all the raises before the draw, and drawing to one card, on the chance of getting an accidental hand. It was wretchedly poor play, of course, but he was trying desperately to force the luck.