Part 13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'Great dog, that, of yours.'

"I turned around and sized him up.

"'Pretty fair mutt,' said I.

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

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

WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The consumptive only smiled a wan smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER.

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

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