Part 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This was precisely what Cuthbert wanted.

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

"Lescolette looked up at Cuthbert suddenly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Lescolette nodded gravely.

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

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

"Lescolette nodded.

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

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

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

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

GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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