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diff --git a/37477-0.txt b/37477-0.txt index c0f7c69..0558a2e 100644 --- a/37477-0.txt +++ b/37477-0.txt @@ -1,25 +1,4 @@ - TAKING CHANCES - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Title: Taking Chances - -Author: Clarence L. Cullen - -Release Date: September 19, 2011 [EBook #37477] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 37477 *** Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. @@ -8312,375 +8291,4 @@ Transcriber’s Notes: Both "booky" and "bookie" used throughout text. - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37477 - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission -and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Title: Taking Chances - -Author: Clarence L. Cullen - -Release Date: September 19, 2011 [EBook #37477] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES *** - - - - -Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. - - BY - CLARENCE L. CULLEN - - AUTHOR OF - "Tales OF THE EX-TANKS." - - G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - NEW YORK - - _Copyright, 1898-1899-1900, By_ - THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. - - _Copyright, 1900, By_ - G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY. - - ---- - - - - -CONTENTS - - - INTRODUCTORY NOTE. - THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND. - "WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE. - JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY. - THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT. - HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER. - STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION. - "RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK. - AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP. - THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS." - EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER. - THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS. - A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH. - HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES." - A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT. - A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES. - THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB." - STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND. - GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME. - CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS. - THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER. - WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER. - QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER. - THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET." - CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER. - FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN. - THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER. - THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN. - THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS. - THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE. - - ---- - - - - -INTRODUCTORY NOTE. - - -To the man who, at any period of his days, has been bitten by that -ferocious and fever-producing insect colloquially known as the "horse -bug," and likewise to the man whose nervous system has been racked by -the depredations of the "poker microbe," these tales of the turf and of -the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The thoroughbred running -horse is a peculiar animal. While he is often beaten, the very wisest -veterans of the turf have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The -ponies can't be beat"--meaning the thoroughbred racers; which sounds -paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying affair, in that all men -who play it appear, from their own statements, to lose at it -persistently and perennially. There is surely something weird and -uncanny about a game that numbers only losers among its devotees. -However, poker-players are addicted to persiflage. The genuine, -dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle pokerist rarely acknowledges that -he is ahead of the game--until the day after. - -These stories, which were originally printed in the columns of the New -York _Sun_, belong largely to the eminent domain of strict truthfulness. -If they do not serve to show that the "horse bug" and the "poker -microbe" are good things to steer clear of, they will by no means have -failed of their purpose; for the writer had nothing didactic in view in -setting them down as he heard them. - - _Clarence Louis Cullen_. - -_New York_, _Sept. 1, 1900._ - - - - -THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND. - - - _And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation._ - -"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago to get a young fellow -who was pretty badly wanted in my town for a two-months' campaign of -highly successful check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective -who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I got him all right, and -he's now doing his three years. I found him to be a pretty decent sort -of a young geezer, although a born crook. I don't remember ever having -had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the trip up from -New Orleans. Before we started I asked him if he was going to be good or -if it would be necessary for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an -on-the-level look and said: - -"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you. I don't want to -throw you. All I ask is, don't give me too much of a chance if you keep -the irons off of me. I wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping -stunt, but don't give me a show to make either one of the car doors. If -you do I may have to give you a run for it.' - -"Well, I could see that he would be all right without the cuffs, and so -I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with me in the sleeper all the way -from New Orleans to Pittsburg--I let him do the sleeping, though, of -course--and he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when I -did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any the wiser. He was a -clinking good talker and he told me a lot of interesting stories of -queer propositions that he had been up against. For instance, when we -were running through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he turned to me -and asked me where the blue grass was. I told him that the term blue -grass was largely ornamental, and that, while the grass down there was -no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought -it was mostly green, like the grass the world over. - -"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he replied. 'It proves -that I'm not color blind on the whole gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd -said there really was blue grass in these fields we're running through, -I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing -colors. But as long as the grass is green like other grass--well, -there's some hope for me.' - -"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him. - -"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I never knew it, -though, until last spring, and it cost me $15,000 to find it out.' - -"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?' - -"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time we get to -Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling around one of the big -towns--one of the biggest towns on this side of the Mississippi--last -spring, when I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me -interested. They were the real kind--not fake tappers who rope fellows -into giving up coin just by showing 'em phony instruments in shady -rooms, but professionals, who really knew how to tap the wires and pull -down the money. They had been working together for some time, and when I -happened to meet them they had just pulled off a swell hog-killing up in -Toronto and had two or three thousand each in their clothes. They had -only recently struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there -before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither did I, -although I was doing a bit of business in the check line occasionally, -and was about a thousand to the good when I met them. We hitched up -together, the three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me -that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into their game, -they thought I was good enough to be admitted to a good thing that they -were about to pull off. - -"'One of the largest and best patronized of the poolrooms of the town -was 'way on the outskirts of the city. The duck that runs it is worth -close on to a million, and the ticket writers have instructions never to -turn any man's money down, no matter how big the sum or how lead-pipey -the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of $20,000 and $30,000 have -frequently been taken out of that poolroom on single tickets, and it's -one of the few poolrooms where track odds are given. - -"'My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when I met them they -already had things fixed to pull down a few comfortable wads. They had -rented a vacant frame cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot -from the poolroom, and, by a little night work--they were both practical -wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers--had got the wire into a room on -the second floor of the house all right. It was prairie land all around -and slimly frequented territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up -the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a picket fence to -the porch of the cottage, and thence upstairs. They had the thing all -tested, and every dot and dash that reached the poolroom registered also -in the second floor of that cottage. - -"'One of the fellows had formerly worked in a poolroom himself and he -had the race code down as pat as butter. They took me out to have a look -at the layout, not because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were -on velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind o' shine -to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or three afternoons in the -second floor front room where the layout was fixed, and the chap who was -expert with the racing code broke the report direct from the track a -dozen times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the operator's -style at the track end of the line, and the poolroom operator was never -a bit the wiser. It was good, all right, that layout, and when they were -all ready to begin work I was in on the play. - -"'We decided to make the first killing on the day the Belmont Stakes -were to be run for at Morris Park. I was against their starting it off -on such a big stake event, especially as the race looked to be such a -moral for Hamburg, but they said stake events were as good as selling -races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal and stood by. -My end of the job was to happen in the poolroom. I was to locate there -by a dust-covered window that looked out of the poolroom across the big -vacant lot to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and wait -for the signal. The signal was to be made by means of a handkerchief -waved in the air by one of the fellows from the window. The color of the -handkerchief was to tell the name of the winner. For instance, if -Hamburg won a white handkerchief was to show at the second-story window; -if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a yellow handkerchief was to be the -signal, and so on. When I got the signal I was to put the money down on -the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the pool operator for -five minutes to give me time to get the money down, and then I was just -to wait for the poolroom operator to announce the race. It was the -easiest thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush, not -only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones later on, if I -hadn't been color blind. - -"'I was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that we were to do -business and I put a few dollars down on the first races at Morris Park, -just for the sake of getting the ticket writers used to my face and to -avert suspicion. I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then -and I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply on form. The -fourth race on the card was for the Belmont Stakes, and after the third -race had been confirmed and the first line of betting came in on the -stake race I lounged over to the dust-colored window and looked -uninterested. But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame -cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my pals' money in my -clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was a bit nervous, but I knew that I had -a pipe, and I also knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show -to get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a $5,000 or even -larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in that poolroom as to scare -'em or cause 'em to become suspicious. - -"'Well, the second line of betting came in, with Hamburg the natural -favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting, Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and -the rest at write-your-own-ticket figures. The poolroom took in -thousands of dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the big crowd that -surged about the poolroom could figure any other horse in the race to -have a chance. I myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg, but I -wasn't playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just stood at that window -and waited for the signal. I was, I suppose, somewhat excited internally -when I thought of the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The -poolroom operator announced, 'They're at the post at Morris Park,' and -then I knew that 'ud be the last direct communication he'd have with -Morris Park until after the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned -there on that window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably, -waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the vacant lot. -The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of the frame cottage was in -plain view, and I didn't figure it as among the possibilities that I -could make a mistake. - -"'Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had become sort o' mute -with expectancy and the betting at the desk was almost over, I got the -signal. It was the quickest flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as -I was perfectly positive, nervously waved three times from the -second-story window of the frame cottage. I didn't see my pal waving the -handkerchief--only the flutter of the white handkerchief which announced -that Hamburg had won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the -laziest kind of a way in the world, I just yawned, stretched my arms, -and remarked to a few fellows standing nearby: - -"'"What's the use of doping over the race. It's a pipe for Hamburg. I'm -going up and put a couple of thousand on Hamburg." - -"'So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills and said -"Hamburg." The ticket writer took the money without any visible emotion -and wrote me a ticket. Then I walked out among the crowd to hear the -calling off of the race, which I knew would happen within three or four -minutes. - -"'"They're off for the Belmont," the operator shouted in about three -minutes, and then said I to myself, "What an exercise gallop for -Hamburg! What a dead easy way of picking up large pieces of money!" - -"'I wasn't worried even a little bit when Bowling Brook was 'way in the -lead in the stretch. - -"'Hamburg's just laying in a soft spot right there, third, and when it -comes to a drive, how cheap, he'll make a crab like Bowling Brook look! - -"'Then the operator, after the ten seconds' delay following the -announcement of the horses' positions in the stretch, called out: - -"'"Bowling Brook wins!" - -"'Say, I'm not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead easy to keel over, -but, on the level, my head went 'round and I had to grip hold of a chair -top when I heard that announcement. I couldn't make it out. It seemed -out of the question. I knew that my two pals hadn't dumped me, because -hadn't I played $2,000 of their money? At first I thought the operator -made a mistake, and I waited with a spark of hope for the confirmation -of the race. The confirmation came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and -Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten. - -"'An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They greeted me with grins, -and held out their hands for the thousands. - -"'"Thing didn't go through, did it?" I said to them. "Where was the -mistake, anyhow? What was the white handkerchief--Hamburg's -signal--waved for?" - -"'They looked at me savagely. They were positive that I had tricked -them--that I had really played Bowling Brook with the money and was -holding it out on them. - -"'"White handkerchief be blowed!" said the man that had given the -signal, pulling a light yellow handkerchief from his pocket. "What color -do you call this?" - -"'Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made, and that I had made -it. In the brilliant sunshine I had mistaken the light yellow -handkerchief for a white one, and it was up to me. They didn't give me a -chance to get in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I -suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped me at once. I had -to put up the fight of my life, but I downed them both finally with the -aid of a chair and a spittoon, and got away. That's how I lost -$15,000--counting the winnings we'd have made had I played Bowling Brook -that time--by being color blind.'" - - - - -"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE. - - - _A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That Often Works - Profitably._ - -"I see they hollered an old skate home and got him under the wire first -by three lengths out at the Newport merry-go-round the other day," said -an old-time trainer out at the Gravesend paddock. "Don't catch the -meaning of hollering a horse home? Well, it's scaring a sulker pretty -near out of his hide and hair and making him run by sheer force of -whoops let out altogether. This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered -home at Newport a few days ago, is a sulker from the foot-hills. He was -sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at the beginning of this season -he prances in and wins nine or ten straight races right off the reel at -the Western tracks, hopping over the best they've got out there. Then he -goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out. They yank him -into training again awhile back, put him up against the best a-running -on the other side of the Alleghanies, and he makes 'em look like -bull-pups one day and the next he can't beat a fat man. He comes near -getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and then, a couple -of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes out and chews up the track -record, and gets within a second of the world's record for the mile and -three-eighths, I believe it was. - -"Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a sixteenth, with a real -nippy field, as Western horses go. The right people, knowing full well -the old Springbok gelding's propensities, shove their big coin in on him -anyway, and take a chance on him being unable to keep up with a steam -roller after his swell race a while before, and the whole crowd fall -into line and bet on Kringle until the books give them the cold-storage -countenance and say, 'Nix, no more.' Then they get up into the stand and -around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss, who's a rank -favorite, begin like a land crab, when he usually goes out from the jump -and spread-eagles his bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see -the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field of five, and -they look into each other's mugs and chew about being on a dead one. -Turning into the stretch, the old skate is a poor third, and stopping -every minute, a plain case of sulks, like he's put up so many times -before. The two in front of him have got it right between them, when -Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third by a little bit, -and then the gang let out in one whoop and holler that could be heard -four miles. It's 'Wowee! come on here, ye danged old buck-jumper!' and -'Whoop-la! you Kringle!' from nearly every one of the thousand leather -lungs in the stand and up against the rail, and the surly old rogue pins -his ears forward and hears the yelp. Then it's all off. The old $25 -cast-off jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The -nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits him and the -bigger he strides; and he collars the two in front of him as if they -were munching carrots in their stalls, and romps under the string three -lengths to the good. That's what hollering a horse home means. It's a -game that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares the sulker -into running, whereas it's liable to make a good-dispositioned horse -stop as if sand-bagged. - -"I've seen the holler-'em-in gag worked often at both the legitimate and -the outlaw tracks, and for big money. One of the biggest -hog-slaughterings that was ever made at the game was when an Iroquois -nag, a six-year-old gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick -at Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what was going to -happen that time surely did buy it by the basketful for a long time -afterward. McKeever was worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a -whole lot more at any stage of the game, according to my way of sizing -'em. As a five and six-year-old, he couldn't even make the doped outlaws -think they were in a race, but his people kept him plugging away on the -chance that some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of his -sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and rubbing, anyhow. When -he was brought to Alexander Island in the spring of '95, and tried out -it was seen that he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning, after -he'd been beaten a number of times by several Philadelphia blocks, when -at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his owner had him out for a bit of a -canter around the ring, with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of -stable boys and rail birds were scattered all around the infield, -assembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing grass and -watching the horses at their morning work. This old McKeever starts -around the course as if he's doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives -him the goad and the bat, but it's no good. McKeever sticks to his -caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail with a watch in -his mitt and mumbles unholy things about the skate. There's a laugh -among the stable boys and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing -around. Then a stable lad that's got a bit of Indian in him leans over -the rail just as McKeever's coming down, and lets out a whoop that can -be heard across the Potomac. McKeever gives a jump, and away he goes -like the wind. It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that -they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster at every shout. -He gets to going like a real, sure-enough race horse by the time he has -made the circuit once, and he keeps right on. The owner gets next to it -that it's the shouting that's keeping the old plug on the go, and he -waves his arms and passes the word along for the boys to keep it up. -McKeever does six furlongs in 1:14 with the assistance of the hollering, -and the owner takes him off the track, gives him a look-over and some -extra attention, and smiles to himself. - -"Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong race on the -following day. He stations about twenty or twenty-five rail birds, all -of 'em stable boys out of a job, in the infield, and hands them out -their yelling instructions. McKeever is up against one of the best -fields of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 to 1 and -sticks at that. His owner puts a large number of his pals next to what's -going to happen, and not a man of them plays the good thing at the -track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles to the poolrooms all -over the country. McKeever gets out in front, and he hasn't made more -than a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail throws a whoop -that makes the people in the stand put their hands to their ears. -McKeever gives a swerve and a side step, and away he goes like the -Empire State express. A hundred feet further, when he's four lengths in -the lead, and the others, including the even money shot, nowhere, a -couple more rail birds shoot out another double-jointed yell, and -McKeever jumps out again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every -100 feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances on his -stopping, although after the first furlong he is six lengths to the -good, and the result is that McKeever simply buck-jumps in, pulled -double, with eight lengths of open daylight between him and the even -money shot. The owner looks sad, like a man who hasn't put a dollar -down, and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse is being led -to his stable. When he gets him inside his stall, though, the hugs and -loaf sugar that fall McKeever's way are a heap. The old-time poolroom -people will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good many of -'em, the day that McKeever was hollered home at old Alexander Island. - -"And, talking about Alexander Island, there were some funny ones yanked -off over there, sure enough, some of them almost as funny as a few that -happened over in New York at the legit tracks this passing season. -Without hurling out any names, I'll just tell you of how a plunger who -has been a good deal talked about this year, on account of his big -winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch at the hands of a -poor-but-honest-not owner at Alexander Island in the same year of 1895. -This plunger wasn't such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now, -but he was some few, and he generally had enough up his sleeve in order -to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts; which is to say that he had a -winning way about him, and access to everything that was doing at that -outlaw track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their figure -with a slight scaling down, according to his own idea of what was coming -to them for being kind to him. He was wise and he was haughty, and -toward the wind-up of that Alexander Island season he fell into the -notion, apparently, that things had to be done his way or the kickers -fade out of the game. - -"This poor owner that I'm talking about went on to Alexander Island with -an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all except one filly, that was real -good, but a bit high in flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could -as a matter of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on edge, -and she had the additional advantage of not being known all about. The -poor owner has his own boy along with him, and he's pretty hard up. He -sticks this filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going -after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He knows that the filly -isn't right, but he dopes it that she can beat the lot pitted against -her, anyhow, and he really means her to win. He tells his boy to take -her right out in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case -her flesh stops her the rest'll never be able to get near her. That's -the arrangement right up until post time. The filly--well, suppose we -call her Juliet--is not very well known at Alexander Island, and she has -5 to 1 against her. - -"Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about Juliet being, as I -say, a pretty fast proposition, but he doesn't think she can win in her -condition, and, anyhow, he has something doing on another one in the -race; he has so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of -'em, except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. The -plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him: - -"'My son, your baby won't do to-day.' - -"'She'll make a stab, though,' said the owner. 'I need the cush, being -several shy of paying my feed bills. The game has been throwing me -lately. She's going to try.' - -"'You need the purse, hey?' said the plunger. 'That's not much money. -Only $200, ain't it? How'd $500 do?' - -"'Spot coin?' asks the impecunious owner. - -"'Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.' - -"'You're on,' says the poor-but-honest-not owner. 'I'm not any more -phony than my neighbors, but it's a case of real dig with me just now. -Juliet'll finish in the ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you've got -turning the trick?' - -"'It's like getting money in a letter,' says the plunger. - -"'All right,' says the poor owner, 'you can walk around to my stall and -push me the five centuries after they're in.' - -"The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet's head was yanked off, with the -boy's toes tickling her ears. She could have won in a walk, short of -work as she was, but the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that -the plunger's good thing went through all right. - -"After the race the plunger, who had made a great big thing out of it, -hunted up the poor owner and beefed about the $500. He said that he -hadn't been able to get as much money on his good one as he had expected -and asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The plunger's poor -mouth doesn't tickle the poor owner a little bit, but he is a pretty -foxy piece of work himself, and he takes the three hundred without -letting on a particle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes -away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for good, and the poor -owner makes sundry and divers resolutions within himself, to the general -effect that the next time he does business with that plunger he'll know -it. - -"Well, the poor owner doesn't race his good filly again for a couple of -weeks, and all the time she's getting good. He gives her her work at -about 3 o'clock every morning, in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets -onto it just how good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks -after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He knows that she's -going to win, and with his other skates he has picked up nearly a -thousand wherewith to play the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the -race the plunger comes to him again. - -"'I see you've got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,' he -says. 'How good is she?' - -"'She's got a show for the big end of it,' says the poor owner. - -"'Um,' says the plunger. 'Well, she'll only be at 5 to 1, whereas I've -got a cinch in that that'll be as good as 15 to 1. Do you think we can -do a little business?' - -"'On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,' says the poor owner, chewing -a straw. 'Maybe I'll be able to see my way to delivering the goods for a -thousand down. Otherwise I win.' - -"The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness, oiliness, -bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor owner. - -"'Why,' he says, 'I can buy all the Juliets from here to Kentucky and -back for a thousand.' - -"'Yes,' says the poor owner, 'but you can't shove a 15 to 1 shot through -every day, either. Let's not talk about it any more. You've got my -terms. Thousand down, right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand, -Juliet walks, and I'll get the coin anyhow by betting on her.' - -"He got the thousand two hours before the race was run. The poor owner -looked Juliet over, and called his boy into a dark corner of the stable. - -"'Take her out in front, son,' he said, 'and tow-rope them. Don't let -'em get within a block of you. I'll send your mother a couple o' hundred -after you fetch her home.' - -"'She'd win with a dummy on her,' says the kid. - -"Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand he already has in -his kick, and the thousand the beefing plunger has given him, and -spraddles it all over the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1. - -"Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, with his mouth -twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. All he gets is a line of chile -con carne conversation, and, finally, a puck in the eye. - -"'Do others or they'll do you' isn't the way they used to teach it when -I went to Sunday-school," concluded the old-time trainer, "but there are -occasions when the rule just has to be twisted that way." - - - - -JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY. - - - _A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago Tracks._ - -"The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race," said a horse owner -and trainer at an uptown caf the other night, "was on a horse that -stood at 100 to 1 in the betting. It was also the first race I ever saw -run by thoroughbreds. I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery store -for $8 a week at the time, and I didn't know a race-horse from a ton of -coal. I got a couple of my fingers crushed between two salt fish boxes -one morning, and I had to lay off from work. I didn't want to hang -around my room, and didn't know what to do with myself, and so when a -no-account young fellow I knew suggested that I go over with him to -Monmouth Park and have a look at the races, I fell in with the -proposition. Besides the remains of my previous week's pay, about $3, I -had $20 saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note in my -inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip tickets for my friend -and myself, and for two tickets of admission to the race grounds, I was -practically broke with the exception of a few cents, for I didn't count -the $20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that unbroken. -Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted of me was to have me pay -his way on the train and into the grounds, for he promptly lost me as -soon as we got by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not -that I wanted his help, for I hadn't the least idea of doing any betting -with my savings, but I didn't cotton to the notion of being played for a -good thing and then thrown that way. - -"I walked around among the crowd with my hands in my pockets, wondering -a good deal over the dope talk of the ducks that knew all about the -horses and their preferred weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was -all Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled into the -betting ring. It wasn't long before I began to rubberneck at the prices -laid against the horses on the bookies' blackboards. Although I didn't -know anything about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had -made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that this race I -made my first bet on was composed of a cheap mess of fourteen selling -platers. They were at all kinds of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1 -against. The latter price was laid about three of 'em. I didn't exactly -understand what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow standing -near by to explain it. He looked me over out of the slants of his lamps, -thinking, probably, that I was stringing him. When he saw that I was a -green one he told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won -that I had put a dollar on I'd be $100 ahead of the game. This looked -pretty good to me. I didn't know anything about horse form or horse -quality then, and I thought that one of 'em had just as much chance as -another to win. So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked -best and elbowed my way up to a booky's stand to put a dollar down on -it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my hand. I passed the twenty -up to the bookmaker--he went broke, and has been a dead 'un for a good -many years now--and said: - -"'Give me a dollar's worth of that fourth horse from the top--that one -with the 100 to 1 chalked before his name.' - -"The booky looked down at me contemptuously, without accepting the -twenty I proffered him, and said: - -"'I don't want no dollar bets.' - -"Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all of the ducks -back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties and hundreds gave me the -laugh. I didn't like to be shown up in that public way. I was just as -sore at that time about being made to look like thirty cents as I am -to-day. So I did a bit of lightning thinking. 'Twenty's a big bunch to -me,' I thought, 'and I've had to hop out of bed at half past 3 in the -morning to go to meat market a good many times to get it together; but -I'll be hanged if I'm going to let this fellow get away with his idea of -making me look small, even if I haven't got a show on earth.' So I -passed the bill up to him again, saying: - -"'All right, there, billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth of that fourth -horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked before his name.' - -"I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn't help me a little -bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted, 'Two thousand dollars to $20 -on the fourth one from the top,' and the chap that wrote me the ticket -grinned back at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the hoarse -hoot, loud and long continued. I'll bet I was blushing on the bottom of -my feet when I snatched the ticket and hurried away from that booky's -stall, with the chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears. -Well, my horse walked in. - -"When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky sized me up, with -all kinds of wrath in his eyes. - -"'A good make-up you've got for a Rube,' he said to me. 'You're good. -That's the most scientific commissioner act I've seen pulled off up to -date, and I've been at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a -two-year-old.' - -"I didn't know what he was talking about. The word commissioner was -particularly mysterious to me, but I wasn't going to let him put it on -me again, and I like to have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave -him. He chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked backward -with it in my hands and grinning at him. He was the maddest-looking man -I ever saw, before or since. I didn't go back to my grocery job, nor did -I hop in and slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn't know anything -about. I didn't play another horse that year, but went in and made a -study of the game, going to the tracks every day to see 'em run and to -think the whole institution over. It has taken me all of the years that -have passed since to find out that the study of horse racing don't -amount to a row of spuds, that study doesn't beat the game. I simply had -a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew all there was to -be learned about horse racing, and those plays put me on the velvet I've -had to a greater or less extent ever since. I don't often play them -now--I've got a fairly nifty string, and I run 'em and let the other -fellows do the guessing. - -"What set me to thinking about this first play of mine was a letter I -received the other day from an owner, who's racing his string down at -New Orleans, about the win of that plug Covington, Ky., the other day. -The price laid against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the -rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post time, -throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when the plater romped in, -after being practically left at the post. My friend says in his letter -that a big bookmaker declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise -rail birds on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow got -chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver, found $2 in -quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to the bookie on Covington, Ky., -to win. The layer took the money and it cost him $450. The bookie, my -friend writes me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his -fellow-layers ever since. - -"I don't often pay any attention to good things," continued the turfman, -"and it's rarer still that I am compelled to regret my indifference to -the bottled-up cinches, but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I -overlooked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me several -minutes' hard thinking. I didn't lose any money over it, but it's hard -to think of the inside chance I neglected on that occasion to make an -old-fashioned hog killing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out -at Lakeside and was pulling a purse down with 'em once in a while, and -depending on the purses to keep me even with the game and strong for hay -money. I wasn't doing any betting; I took my confirmed indifference to -good things along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back at -the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, for if there's -any place in the country outside of the outlaw tracks where good things -do have a habit of going through right often, then that place is -Chicago. I didn't profit by any of 'em that were made to stick last -fall, however, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 20 to 1 -to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping with all the money. A -lot of men I knew out at Lakeside--fellows with small strings, none of -which ever won or got in the money--were on all kinds of velvet by -giving ear to the inside good things, but they didn't make me jealous a -little bit. I'm in the game for keeps, and that's more than can be said -for the good-thing players. - -"Anyhow, for all that, I'm still regretting that I overlooked this -chance I'm speaking of. I was in a Dearborn street hang-out for racing -men one night, along toward the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy -came inside and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. I -went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for me. He was employed -as a general stable roustabout by the owner of a California string, and -I had befriended the man in the paddock a few days before when he was -engaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was getting the -worst of the scrap when I stepped in and pulled his antagonist off of -him. It didn't amount to anything, this, but the tank stable hand that -was waiting for me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain -seemed to feel grateful to me for it. - -"'Hello, Bill,' said I to him, 'what's up?' - -"'Got fired this afternoon,' he replied. - -"'Broke?' I asked him. - -"'I didn't hunt you up to touch you, boss,' he said. 'I got a good thing -I want to give to you. You've been square to me. The good thing's to -come off to-morrow, and nobody's on. I'm preaching on it because I've -been dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and because I -want to put you next, that's been on the level with me.' - -"'You can pass me up,' I told the man. 'I don't play the sure ones, you -know.' - -"'But this is ripe, and it's going to happen,' persisted the man. 'It's -a baby. It's a looloo. It's a cachuca. It's that filly Mazie V. in the -two-year-old race to-morrow. You know who's stable she belongs in. I -heard the chaw about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they -didn't get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.'s going to walk in -to-morrow. No dope, but she's fit. She worked three-quarters in .15 flat -early yesterday morning when nobody was looking, and she's on edge. -They're going to burn up the books with it. I know that nobody can tout -you, and I'm not trying to tout you. But here's a chance, and I came -down to let you know.' - -"Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn't help but grin at -him at that. - -"'How long have you been rubbing 'em down?' I asked him. - -"'I've been around the horses since I was ten years old,' he replied. - -"'And still so easy?' I couldn't help but say. 'Well, I won't say -anything of what you've told me so as to queer the price, if there's any -play on Mazie V., but, of course, as for myself, I pass it up; thanks -all the same to you. Need any money?' - -"No, he didn't want any money, he said. He had simply hunted me up to -put me on to one of the best things of the meeting, and he shambled off. - -"When the books opened for that two-year-old race the next day, Mazie -V., a clean-limbed filly that had never shown a particle of class, -opened up the rank outsider in a big field, which included some very -fairish two-year-olds. I looked the books over, not because I was -betting, but just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was -being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot. - -"'If they're going to burn the bookies out on Mazie V., I thought, -amusedly, 'it's a wonder the stable connections don't take some of this -good 150 to 1.' - -"As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who had hunted me up with -the Mazie V. good thing the night before plucked me by the sleeve. He -was several times as drunk as an owl, and I didn't care to talk with -him. - -"'Are you down?' he asked me, lurching. 'Because 'f you ain't, you're -campin' out, an' that's all there is to it.' - -"'Go and take a sleep,' I told him, and passed on. But he didn't want -any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted a box that he found in the -betting ring, and started to make an address to the hustling bettors. - -"'Hey!' he shouted, 'if you mugs want to git aboard for the barbecue, -play Mazie V. She's going to be cut loose. She's a 1 to 10 chance. She's -going through. It's a cinch.' - -"The crowd guyed him. - -"'It's so good,' shouted the poor devil, 'that I just put the last $8 I -got on earth on her to win--not to show, but to win. Hey! I'm not -touting. I'm trying to give you all a win-out chance. You needn't think -because I ain't togged out that I'm a dead one on this. Even if I have -got a load along, why'---- - -"Just then somebody, probably an interested party, kicked the box from -under the man and he went sprawling. That closed him up. The crowd -roared, but not a man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie -V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a thing the -stable hand's drunken recommendation of the filly switched them off. -Just before the horses went to the post the $5 bills of people that -weren't pikers, but stable connections, went into the ring in such -quantities on Mazie V. that she closed at 100 to 1 in a few of the -books, and at much smaller figures in most of the others. - -"Well, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over her field was -something ridiculous. The race was something easy for her. There was -nothing to it but Mazie V. She got away from the post almost dead last, -and then picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy going, -and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with daylight between -her and the favorite. It was one of the killings of the Chicago racing -season, and the books were soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets. - -"'That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least,' I heard poor -Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took 1 to 15 on Hanover, putting -down $45,000 to win $3,000, and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten -by Laggard. And that's what I think about that Mazie V. good thing--hard -money not to have won." - - - - -THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT. - - - _But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers - Were Damaged._ - -An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of yearlings and keeping -up a lot of old campaigners out at the old Ivy City track near -Washington, was chewing wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking -aloud. - -"One of the things that I can't exactly figure out," said he, "is -whether I'm a ringer-worker or on the level. That proposition has been -bothering me a heap in the middle of nights right along since the fall -of '87. I got into the center of a game then that has kept me -apologizing to myself ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn't a -sure-enough proper ringer. And I didn't put him over the plate, either. -My end of it was only to cop out a few, and all I had to do was to---- - -"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky for the man I -was training for in 1885. There were some Fonso bull-pups to be -auctioned off, and the boss wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso, -don't you? He's the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the blue -ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three for being still the -finest specimen of a thoroughbred in Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple -of Fonsos and I went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one I -got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore hoofs. He was out of a -good mare, but he upset all the calculations of breeding. He was the -worst seed in looks that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I've been -fooling with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an angular -swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and as fast as a -caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn't expect ever to make anything out -of him, but I was pretty flush then, and I didn't want to see a Fonso -pulling a dray if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything -out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave him the hoot when -he was led into the auction ring, and I couldn't hold down a grin myself -when I sized up the poor mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great -sire that ever crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang -jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn't blame 'em. But I -led the colt out, put him in a stall, and then went back to the sale. I -got two high-grade Fonsos for my boss, and they won themselves out for -him twenty times over in the next three years. But they don't figure in -this story. - -"I went at my freak Fonso right away to see if anything could be done -with him. I devoted more time to that one than I did to any of my -two-year-olds or three-year-olds in training, hoping that he might have -something up his sleeve and that it could be dug out of him with careful -handling. It was no go. I couldn't get him to do a quarter in better -than 35 seconds. Bat or steel had no effect on him. He had a hide like a -rhinoceros, and he made the exercise boys weary. Here was a colt born a -Fonso, out of a mare that had been of stake class when in training, that -was no better than a truck-horse, and at the end of two weeks I gave him -up. A circus came along to Lexington, where I had my string, and with -the circus, in charge of the performing horses, was an old trainer -friend of mine from the St. Louis track who had been chased into the -show business by a long run of hard luck. I took him out to look over my -bunch, and when he came to the Fonso colt he laughed. - -"'Where did you get that world-beater?' he asked me. - -"'Oh, that's a Fonso colt that I picked up down the line at a sale a -while back,' I told him. - -"He didn't exactly call me a liar, but he looked as if he wanted to. -Then I told him all about the colt. Like most trainers, he had the blood -and breeding bug pretty bad under his bonnet, and he tried to throw it -into me that I wasn't giving the colt a fair shake. Told me a lot of -stuff that I already knew about some great racehorses that couldn't get -out of their own way as yearlings, and tried to convince me that this -Fonso thing of mine was liable to fool me up a whole lot as a -two-year-old. - -"'Well, he doesn't get oats at my expense until he's ready to race,' -said I. 'If you think his chances at next year's stakes are so devilish -big, he's yours for a quarter of a hundred.' - -"'I've got you,' said my friend with the show. 'I'll take him along, -anyhow. It's worth that much to a man to be able to say to himself as he -smokes his pipe after his work's done that he's got a Fonso colt of his -own. And I'll bet you an even $100 that I get one race out of that -swayback, anyhow, before he's two years older.' - -"I didn't take him. I was disgusted with my hundred dollars' worth of -Fonso, and I was glad to get the $25 that my friend in the show business -gave me for him. He took the mutt away with the show, and I forgot all -about that sentimental purchase of mine for a couple of years. - -"I hadn't any killing luck during those two years. In fact, the game -went against me pretty strong. Most of the string that I had in training -went wrong or showed themselves platers, and when the boss decided to -quit racing I was up against it completely. I had two or three platers -of my own that made their oats money and a little more, and these I -raced on the St. Louis track, pulling down a purse once in a while, and -getting second money often enough to keep me in coffee and sinkers. When -the St. Louis game closed down at the end of September, a number of us -that had small strings struck out for the bush-meetings in nearby -States. I shipped my three to a metropolis on the banks of the Missouri -River where a State fair was about to be held and where $200 purses were -offered for running races. I figured my three lobsters to be as good as -any for the bush-meetings, and I calculated on getting one or two of the -purses at this State Fair. - -"I got into the town--they call it a city out there--with my horses -three days before the State Fair was to begin. On the day that I got -there a circus that had been exhibiting in the town for two days wound -up its season and started East for its winter quarters. I saw the -boarded-up wagons passing through the streets on their way to the -freight depot. I was watching the dead procession when my circus friend, -the man on whom I had worked off my no-account Fonso colt, picked me out -of the crowd and came up to me. The circus moving out was the one he had -been attached to when last I saw him and sold him the colt. - -"'Hello,' said I, 'how many stakes have you pulled down with that one up -to date?' - -"He dug his hands into his pockets and grinned but made no reply. - -"'Have you still got that colt?' I asked him. - -"'Yep,' said he. - -"'Going to take him along with you to the show's winter headquarters?' I -inquired. - -"'Sh-sh-sh!' said he. 'I'm not going along with the show. I quit 'em -here. Season's over. I've got some business here next week, anyhow. I'm -going to race that Fonso on the Uncle Tom circuit, beginning with the -State Fair here.' - -"Of course, I couldn't do anything else but prod him, and I did. - -"'Fact,' said he, seriously. 'Got him entered in the first race on the -card--mile.' - -"'I've got one in that myself,' I told him. 'Shall we fix it up between -us?' I added, just for fun. - -"'You might do worse, at that,' said he, sizing me up out of the tail of -his eye. 'I'm going to win in a walk.' - -"Then I hooted him a good deal more, of course. He let me get through, -and he then took me off into a corner and told me some things. - -"'That plug like to have broken my heart ever since I got him,' he said. -'I've had him in four or five times already at the bush meetings, but he -was never one, two, three, until the last time, when he took it into his -head to run when they got into the stretch and was only beaten a nose by -a pretty fair bush plug. This was two months ago. The trouble with this -Fonso colt you sawed off on me is that he's a sulker. He's got the speed -in his crazy-shaped bones, but he won't let it out. Well, between you -and me--and I put you next because I know you want a dollar or so as bad -as I do--I'm confident that with a douse out of a pail and a bit of a -punch with a needle just before post time, he can beat anything out this -way. He's out at the Fair grounds now, and I worked him a mile in .48 -this morning. He roars like a blast furnace, but his wind is all right, -nevertheless. He's still as ugly as ever, if not uglier. I put you next, -because it might be a good thing for you to scratch your nag out of that -first race and cotton to your cast-off. There'll be a big price on -account of his wheezing and his ragged looks.' - -"'How did you enter him?' I asked. 'As a Fonso?' - -"'Not on your natural,' said he. 'Any old thing's eligible, and I simply -told 'em I didn't know the mutt's breeding, that I had him along with me -in the show, and just had an idea he might run a little.' - -"Well, son, the winter was beginning to loom up, and I wasn't ulstered -and swaddled out for it. I went out to the Fair grounds with my friend -and looked over the Fonso freak. My friend called him Star Boarder, -because he'd been eating circus oats and hay for two years without ever -doing a lick of work to pay for his fodder. The colt had, of course, -filled out and lengthened, but he was still as homely a beast ever I -clapped an eye on. We had him led out on the six-furlong track, and an -exercise boy who weighed about 145 pounds took him over the course at -top speed. The nag did it in 1.21, and the performance tickled me. The -colt had a crazy, jerky, uneven stride, and seemed to go sideways, but -he certainly got over the ground lively with that weight up. I saw the -chance, and I needed the coin. - -"'Can he keep that gait up for the mile?' I asked his owner. - -"'He wants four miles,' he replied. 'His roaring is a bluff.' - -"'Count me in, then,' said I. 'He'll walk in that race. I'll scratch -mine out.' - -"We went along the line and looked over the other horses, especially the -twelve that were entered for that first race, and, although there were -some good-lookers in the bunch, they had been campaigned heavily for -months, and were a jaded lot. I scratched my pretty fair horse out of -that first race. Then I sold the poorest nag of my three platers to a -banker in town for a stylish saddle horse. Got $400 for him. I wanted -the money for betting purposes. - -"There was a big crowd out at the Fair grounds on the day the racing -began. Four books were on, all of them run by representatives of big -gambling houses in town. My friend had the Fonso colt taken out of his -stall and slowly trotted around the track about three-quarters of an -hour before the first race, that in which the horse was entered. The -gathering crowd in the stand laughed over the horse's awkward, climbing -gait and clumsy appearance. That's what we wanted 'em to do. We wanted -the price, or the horse would have been kept in his stall. - -"Only seven of the field originally entered for the race went to the -post. Now, I didn't have anything to do with conditioning Star Boarder, -and I never belonged to the syringe gang, anyhow; I kept strictly away -from the paddock and the barns before the race, because I didn't want to -see anything. But the way that Fonso colt, with all his clumsiness, held -his head up and pranced around as he was going to the post, with a -pretty fair boy that I brought along with me from St. Louis on his back, -by the way, was certainly great. Dope makes a horse about as perky as -three drinks of whisky makes a man who's been off the booze for a long -while. The trouble is that the dope doesn't last so long in a horse as -it does in a man, and I was pretty anxious for a prompt start, so that -the dope in this homely cast-off of mine wouldn't die out. - -"The betting on Star Boarder opened at 15, 6, and 3. There was an -even-money favorite, a horse that had pulled down a number of mile -purses at St. Louis, a 2 to 1 shot, and the others slid up to the nag my -friend and I wanted to have win; Star Boarder being the rank outsider at -15 to 1. I put my $400 down on him with the four booked all three ways, -$200 to win, $100 for the place, and $100 to show. In the morning my -friend handed me $200 of his savings from the circus business to bet. I -played his coin $100 to win and $100 a place. I had hardly got the money -down before I heard a big whoop of laughter from the stand, and I rushed -out to see what was the matter. Star Boarder was running away. There had -been a false break, and the fool plug had kept right on going. He had a -mouth like forged steel, and the boy couldn't do anything with him. I -stood and damned Fonso and all his tribe to the last generation, and I -could see my friend in the paddock shaking his fist and grinding his -teeth. - -"'Oh, well,' said I to myself, 'it's all off, and it serves you bully -good and right for not racing your own plugs and letting these con and -dope grafts go to the devil.' - -"The horse went the full length of the course before he was pulled up, -and then he was roaring and wheezing like a sea-lion. The crowd laughed, -and the books gave the post-time bettors all the 60 to 1 against Star -Boarder that they wanted--which, of course, was none. - -"I went back to the paddock then, while the horses were gyrating at the -post, and found the brute's owner. I laid him open. - -"'To blazes with casting up!' he said. 'Isn't the last of my cush on the -skate, too?' - -"I felt like ten cents' worth of dog's meat when I slunk back to the -stand to see 'em get off. After fifteen minutes' delay at the post--the -starter was a farmer--and Star Boarder blowing like a sand-blast and the -foam standing all over him from that little six-furlong sprint, away -they went in a line, Star Boarder in the lead! Star Boarder at the -quarter by a length! Star Boarder at the half by a length! Star Boarder -at the three-quarters by two lengths! Star Boarder in the stretch by -three lengths! And if that dog-goned, knock-kneed, bone-spavined, -no-account maiden Fonso colt didn't just buck-jump under the wire by six -clear lengths of open daylight, you can feed me hay and carrots until -the next spring meeting and I'll only say thank you kindly, sir! - -"I can't, as I say, make out whether that was a case of ringing or not. -Anyhow, it was up to the State fair people to make the holler if any was -coming, wasn't it? They didn't. The Rube bookmakers did, but they -weren't sustained, and they had to dive into their satchels. Star -Boarder is over in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to-day, pulling an old -lady around in a phaeton, and still holding down the distinction of -being the homeliest son of one of the handsomest sires in the history of -the American stud." - - - - -HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER. - - - _He Salts a 100 to 1 Shot Away for a Good Thing and Is Steered Off._ - -"Washington, as I remember it, was a pretty nice old jogger of a town," -said an old-time trainer who got in at Bennings, the race-track near -Washington, a few days ago with a well-known string of horses in -preparation for the spring meeting there. "I'd like to have a look at it -again by daylight. Got in this time after dark and came right out here -before sunrise. First time I'd hit Washington for five years--since the -fall meeting at St. Asaph in 1894. I surely would like to have another -look around Washington. But I guess I'll have to pass it up. I'm not -hunting for bother nowadays." - -The paddock in which he stood is only a few minutes' run by train from -Washington. It seemed odd, therefore, that he did not step on a train -and run over to Washington, since, as he said, he hankered for another -sight of it. He was asked about this: - -"Well," he replied, "I'm waiting for five fellows that I used to know -over in Washington to die. When they've all cashed in, maybe I'll have a -chance to look around Washington again. But I understand that they're -all alive and on edge now, and I don't exactly feel like running into -them. I know that I'd never be able to square myself for a thing that -happened down at St. Asaph during that fall meeting in 1894, so what's -the use of stacking up against the bunch and wasting wind? - -"I had a small string of dead ones at that St. Asaph meeting. I didn't -get oats money out of them. That year was the frost of my life, anyhow. -I started in around the New York tracks in the spring with a bundle of -three thousand or so that I had hauled down by backing 'em out on the -coast during the winter meeting, and I began to melt before the leaves -commenced to show up on the trees. There was nothing doing for me. I -couldn't get down right. Nearly a dozen good things that pals of mine -with strings had got into the pink of it to send over the plate at long -prices wound up among the also rans and the crimp those things took in -my wad was something ridiculous. I only handled a few horses during the -summer meetings that year on the metropolitan tracks. They were all -crabs and did no good. So I had to plug along by shying a ten or twenty -into the ring when I heard of something that looked nice. I couldn't -even make this clubbing game go through. The books got two out of three -of my slips of the green, and I got to wondering how it would feel to -drive a truck. They certainly had me down that year. - -"When the fall meeting at Morris Park wound up I had $200 and a -headache. I was figuring on how I could take this down to the winter -meetings in the South and run it up to something worth while, when the -owner of the bunch of dead ones I spoke of came along and asked me to -take 'em down to St. Asaph and try to get a race or two out of them. I -knew they were lobsters, all of these horses, and I was ugly enough to -tell the owner that when I wanted a job handling cattle I'd go down to -West street and get one, with a sea voyage to Glasgow or London thrown -in. There wasn't a horse in the lot that could beat my old aunt in -Ireland over the plate for money or marbles; but I decided to take them -down to St. Asaph anyhow, just for the sake of keeping on the inside of -the game and finding out if there was anything going on that would -enable me to run that small shoestring of mine into a tannery. So I took -them down to that Virginia clay course across the Potomac and fixed them -up the best I knew how. They wouldn't do. St. Asaph was getting some -good horses straight from the Eastern tracks then and my platers were -never in the hunt--never one, two, six, in fact. Worse than that, the -books began taking my little $2 and $5 bets away from me right from the -getaway, and I could see a winter ahead in New York with all the -trimmings cut out. I met a dozen or so of pretty square chaps in -Washington, business men that liked to see 'em run and that used to ask -me occasionally what I thought. I landed most of them right on several -dead good things without ever getting a dollar on myself from want of -nerve, my pile was so low, and they made good, all right, when these -things went through. But I was bunking up with such a hoodoo that I -sloughed off even this rake-off, and when the thing happened that I am -going to tell you about I only had $70 left out of the cozy cush I had -started in the season with. - -"Now, I've been at this game, on both sides of the fence, for more than -twenty years, and, if any man is, I'm dead next to the fact that the -horse game is hard and craggy. I never yet was guilty of looking upon -the running game as something easy. Yet I'm bound to admit that I often -get what you can call, if you want to, a hunch on a horse. Something -that a plug does in his running, even if he doesn't get near the money, -takes my eye, and from thinking about it I get a hunch on him. I don't -get a hunch like this every day, or every week or month, for that -matter, but I've noticed that these hunches of mine have gone through -nine times out of ten during the past twenty years or so. Well, there -was a horse called Jodan that had run in two or three six-furlong -sprints at Morris Park that fall, and I had liked his work. He was out -of the money in both of those races, but I liked the way he went at his -work. That horse Jodan looked to me like he had it in him. These two -Morris Park races had been captured, one, two, three by good ones, and I -could see when I had a chance to look Jodan over in his stall that he -was short of work. The string to which the horse belonged had a poor -trainer, and I knew that a good trainer could get some six furlong races -out of Jodan. I had a hunch on Jodan, and I fixed it in my head that if -ever the horse got into the hands of a good trainer and was brought -around right for the six-furlong distance, he'd get a piece of my money, -no matter what company he was up against. - -"Well, along toward the close of the St. Asaph meeting Jodan turned up -at the track with another trainer handling him--a man who had as good a -knack of conditioning horses as ever I met up with, and an old chum of -mine. I rubbed up with him before he had been on the track fifteen -minutes, and asked him what he was going to do with Jodan. - -"'I am going to try him out in the first three-quarter event I can -squeeze him into,' he told me, 'and I wouldn't be surprised to see him -get a piece of it. His right fore-leg is a bit bum, but if it holds -together I don't see why the fellows I know shouldn't get a bite off a -real good thing in Jodan. He's got a turn of speed, and I've got him -dead right. The only thing that worries me is that swollen knee, and I'm -doing my best at patching that up.' - -"I told him of the hunch I'd had at Morris Park on Jodan, and he told me -to stay with it, and he'd attend to his end of it to help me out. - -"'There'll be all kinds of a price on him when I send him to the pump,' -he said, 'and I'll let you know in time just how he is.' - -"Well, that hunch just grew and grew on me. The Washington chaps that I -had met and pushed along with the good things that I didn't have the sap -to play myself heard from me on the Jodan question. I told them that I -had him up my sleeve and to stand by. They had never heard of the horse -and they almost side-stepped when I told 'em he was as good as any of -them over a three-quarter route--that he had never been got right. There -were a lot of six-furlongers down at St. Asaph then that could negotiate -the distance in .15 flat, and they couldn't see where a horse that they -had never heard of had a look-in with that kind. I held my ground, -however, and they said that when it was to come off they'd throw a -little bit of a bet at the bird, just because I said so. - -"A couple of days later Jodan's name showed up among the entries for a -six-furlong sprint, and I had another chaw with his trainer. - -"'He's good,' he told me. 'Stay with your hunch. He ought to do.' - -"The race was to be run on a Saturday. I looked up my Washington friends -and told them confidently what Jodan was going to do with a bunch of the -best three-quarter runners in training. Four or five of them couldn't -help but give me the hoot on the proposition, and they said they weren't -going over to the track, anyhow--too busy closing up the week's -business, and so on. They couldn't see where Jodan figured with the lot -he was to meet. I went around to the rest of these Washington fellows on -the Friday evening before the race and told them again about Jodan. -They, too, were all going to be too busy with the Saturday wind-up of -business to take in the races that day, but five of them gave me $10 -each to put on Jodan for them. None of them had any confidence in the -thing, though. - -"The Jodan race was the first on the card. There were fourteen entries, -and not a horse was scratched. The track was deep in dust, and I knew -then Jodan liked that sort of going. It looked like a cinch. I knew that -the bookies would be dead to Jodan, but I didn't think they'd take the -liberties they did with him. The favorite opened up at 2 to 1, and he -was played down to 6 to 5 in no time. Then there were four or five shots -in it ranging from 3 to 1 to 15 to 1, when the rank outsiders were -written in all the way up to 150 to 1. Jodan, my mutt, stowed away for a -good thing, opened up at 100 to 1 and stuck there. I went out to the -stable where Jodan was quartered to find his trainer, but I couldn't dig -him up. He was mixed up with the bunch in the paddock or in the stand. -So I decided that it wasn't necessary for me to see him, anyhow, before -putting my money on Jodan. I had seen him the night before, when he -whispered to me that Jodan was gorgeous, and that he was going to play -him to win, no matter if the books laid 1000 to 1 against the horse. - -"So I traipsed around to the ring to put down my money and that of my -friends on Jodan. As I say, Jodan's price all over the ring was 100 to -1, and no takers. I had the five tens the Washington chaps had given me -and the last fifty spot I had on earth in my mitt, ready to shoot around -and plant it in $10 gobs on Jodan before the price could be rubbed, thus -standing to win $5000 for myself and $5000 for the Washington fellows, -with my share out of their winnings for putting them next. I was the -very next man in line to plant my first ten with one of the books, when -I felt a hard pinch on my right arm, and I wheeled around suddenly to -swat the duck that had given it to me. It was my friend, the trainer of -Jodan. He nodded me over to the little vacant space. - -"'You were just going to take some Jodan, weren't you?' he asked me. - -"'That's what,' said I. 'He'll turn the trick, won't he?' - -"'No,' he replied shortly. 'I've been trying to find you for the last -hour to tell you. The mutt's got another twist during the night somehow -or another, and now it's about twice its right size. Stay off. He can't -do it. He's not limping much, but I can't see how he'll go a quarter -with such a leg. It'll be a miracle if that hard-luck skate finishes at -all.' - -"This was a hard fall for me, I'm telling you that. I had been building -on it for one of my cinch hunch things, and to hear that it had gone -rank took the nerve out of me. Of course, in a dismal kind of way, I was -glad my friend the trainer had put me next to the state of things in -time to keep me off the dead one for my whole fifty and the fifty of my -friends in Washington, but that wasn't much salve for the hurt I got -when he told me that Jodan couldn't possibly do it. With Jodan out of it -I felt certain that the 6 to 5 favorite would come in all alone, and so -I put the whole bundle down that way $120 to $100. It made me glum to -think of the difference between that and $10,000 to $100. - -"Then I went up to the stand to see the lot file past on their way to -the post. My horse, the favorite, was just a-prancing and looked to me -like a 1 to 10 thing with Jodan out. But my trainer chum had put me on -right. Jodan's knee was as big as your hat, and he had his limp along -with him. One of the stewards noticed this and made a bit of talk about -not allowing Jodan to race, but when he was told that Jodan always went -to the post with a bum knee, even after his warming up, he closed up and -Jodan went around to the pump with his field. - -"They got off the first break. The people in the stand were down on the -favorite almost to a man, and the yelp they let out when he shot to the -lead from the first jump was a heap noisy. My poor old Jodan plug was -almost left at the post, but his boy got him going all right, and I was -rather surprised to see him quickly join the rear bunch. By this time, -at the half, the favorite was just buck-jumping five lengths out in -front of the first division. Then the hind ones began to move up, and I -stood by to see Jodan get shuffled out of it. But he didn't shuffle. He -passed right by the rear gang and nearing the three-quarters he was at -the saddle-girths of the front division and going like a cup defender in -half a gale. - -"'You'll chuck that in a minute, my boy,' I thought, with my mind on -Jodan. 'Three-legged races look all right on paper, but they don't go -through.' - -"I lost the colors when they turned into the stretch, but I saw that the -favorite was still a good two lengths in front. The track was so deep in -dust that I couldn't make out the others until they were well into the -stretch for the lope to the wire. Then when they were all settled down -to their barrels in the flying yellow dust, I saw one of the front -divisionites behind the leader shoot out around on the outside and bend -down to it. Say, I closed my lamps down tight. That horse coming on the -outside like a black devil, with his bit almost crunched into flinders, -was Jodan. I opened up my eyes when they were about sixty yards from the -wire. In the middle of the whirlwind of dust I saw the favorite -faltering, with Jodan a neck away and going like as if his distance was -only a quarter of a mile and he a-covering it there in the stretch. Then -I pulled my glasses away from my head, sat down, shut my eyes again and -shook hands with death for a few seconds while the Indians all around me -were howling 'Jodan!' 'Jodan!' - -"'Jodan wins!' they yelled when the horses got under the wire, and I -opened up my eyes just in time to see Jodan with open daylight between -him and the favorite. That was a three-legged miracle, all right. I was -in a daze, but I had a picture in my head of five fellows in Washington -that had treated me right waiting for the race train to get in so that I -could hand them each a thousand. I couldn't stand for that, and I had -too many different kinds of heartbreak warping me out under my vest to -feel like trying to explain the thing to them. So I walked over to -Alexandria and caught the afternoon train for Richmond, after leaving my -bum string in the hands of another trainer. From Richmond I went on down -to New Orleans, where I had some luck--never enough luck, though, to -square the game up with me for that win of Jodan's, which made me feel -old and tired for a long time afterward. - -"If I outlive those five Washington fellows, or they take it into their -lids to go to the Klondike together, maybe I'll have another look around -under the shadow of that big dome yonder. But I don't want to meet them. -Explaining's too hard work, and the circumstances of that St. Asaph -happening, which occurred as I've spieled it, were 'agin' me!" - - - - -STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION. - - - _It Paid $2,000 to $2, and Looked Like a Winner Until the Last Jump, - But----_ - -There was a period of prolonged, nerve-racking excitement one afternoon -last week in a demure and retiring Harlem poolroom that doesn't draw any -color line. A colored sport was threatening to tear the place loose from -its foundations and to fire a volley over the ruins--in a purely -figurative sense, that is to say. Literally he didn't commit any breach -of the peace at all. But he had a combination ticket in his clothes for -a couple of hours that practically made all the rest of the people in -the place forget what they were there for. He was as black as that -overworked one-spot of spades. He was known to his envied intimates only -as Mose, and the very large checked suit of plaid that he wore had a -certain cake-walk suggestiveness, as did his huge red necktie, his -patent leathers with blue polka-dotted uppers, and his three large -yellow diamonds, two of them on his fingers and the other screwed in the -middle of his shirt bosom with crimson horizontal bars. He was a "spote" -all right. - -He entered the poolroom alone, looked up at the board, and then dug a -bit of paper, obviously a telegram, out of his Oxford cloth Newmarket -overcoat. A man who was rude enough to look over his shoulders saw that -the telegram was a night message and that it bore the New Orleans date. -It contained the names of five horses, with the initials of the sender. - -"He's a po'tuh on uh Pullman," vouchsafed the sport to the privileged -character who had looked over his shoulder at the despatch. "An' he's uh -babe, yo' heah me! He knows 'em lak he knows uh blackin' brush. Ah's uh -gwine tuh mek uh combinashun on de hull five. De ticket 'll win in uh -walk." - -After sizing up the house betting on the New Orleans races for a few -minutes, he walked up to the counter where the combination tickets -exuded from the lightning calculator. Just at that moment there was -nothing doing at the combination counter. The sport produced his -telegram, cleared his throat, and began. - -"Ah's got de hull five babies," he said with a grin to the ticket -writer. "An' ah's uh gwine tuh tek 'em all tuh win. Doan' want none o' -'em fo' place or show. Dey's all got tuh come in all alone." - -"Shoot 'em out," said the ticket writer. - -The sport named the five horses that he knew were going to win the New -Orleans races. They were, in the order of the races, Mint Sauce, Russell -R., Deyo, Benneville and Donna Rita. - -The ticket writer executed his bit of lightning head work, with frequent -glances at the board to get the prices on the runners, and then he -looked up at the sport with a grin. - -"Huntin' for a hog killin', ain't you?" he asked. "Goin' to put us out -o' business? It figures a thousand to one. How much do you want on it?" - -"Two dolluhs," replied the sport and he passed up the money. The ticket -writer pencilled the names of the horses down on the ticket, placed the -figures "$2,000 to $2" at the bottom of it, and handed the bit of -pasteboard to the sport with the remark: - -"You're a good thing. Come again." - -"Yo' all kin do yo' hollern' w'en de hosses run," was the sport's -good-natured reply, and then he went to the extreme outer row of seats -in the pool room and sat down to wait for $2,000 to accrue to him on an -investment of $2. - -Along toward 3 o'clock the betting came in on the first race at New -Orleans. The horse Mint Sauce that the sport had in his combination -ticket was the odds-on favorite, although he had been at a good price in -the house betting. The queer crowd of players surged up to the counters -to put their money down on things they liked, that figured all right in -the dope books; but the sport kept his seat. His speculation for the day -was over. He was simply waiting for his $2 to grow to $2,002. - -Then they were off at New Orleans, as the telegrapher announced with a -bored air, electrifying the crowd into silence. It was a six-furlong -race, and there was nothing to it but Mint Sauce all the way. At the -three-quarters, when the telegrapher announced that Mint Sauce was third -and just galloping, the sport leaned back in his seat with an -it's-all-over expression, snapped his fingers a couple of times for -luck, and said: - -"It's uh cake-walk fo' dat baby. Ah'm on right so far." - -"Mint Sauce wins by two lengths," announced the operator, and the -announcement was received with silence. Poolroom crowds don't play -favorites as a rule. - -"Mah nex' is this heah Russell R.," said the sport, gazing at his ticket -again, "an' Russell R. he's dun got tuh win. Ah feels uh leetle -squeenchy uhbout he all, but Russell R. he'll buck-jump in." - -The betting came in on the race a few moments later, and Russell R. was -at a long price. Several horses in the race were at much shorter prices. -The sport didn't look worried a little bit over this. - -"Russell R. he's dun got tuh win," he said, and that was all there was -about it. - -"Off at New Orleans," announced the weary looking operator again, and -then he began to call off the way the race was being run. It looked bad -for the sport's ticket until the telegrapher had carried the nags along -to the three-quarter post and then Russell R., who hadn't been anywhere, -got his first call, joining the bunch as third at that stage of the -journey. - -"Sadie Burnham in the stretch by a length!" announced the telegrapher. -"Lomond second by a length, Russell R. third," and then the sport began -to root for his horse. He swayed back and forth in his wicker rocking -chair, moaning, "Come, yo' Russell hoss! Yo' heah me uh-talkin', -hoss--come, yo' Russell--or yo' doan' git no oats--ketch him, yo' baby, -an' yo' pa'll treat yo' right"---- - -"Russell R. wins, by a head!" announced the telegrapher. - -"Oh, yo' wahm thing, yo' Russell!" suppressedly exclaimed the sport, his -finger-snapping suddenly stopping and an upturned crescent grin -spreading over the whole area of his chocolate countenance. - -It seemed that some of the less important sports must have been "riding" -Russell R. too, for their exultant "Uh-huhs!" rang around the room. The -colored sport dearly loves a long shot. - -"De nex' on mah piece o' pas'e-boa'd," said the sport, ransacking -through his pockets again for his ticket, "is dain'jus. Ah doan' lak dis -heah hoss Deyo, but Ah ain't uh-playin' whut Ah laks, but whut's dun -sent tuh me. So Deyo she's dun got tuh win, too." - -It was after 4 o'clock by this time, and the poolroom was filling up -with young fellows turned loose from the down-town offices. Many of -these late arrivals had straight tips in the form of telegrams on the -third race at New Orleans and they almost overwhelmed the ticket -writers. When the betting came in on that race Deyo was at a long price, -much longer than the house betting had quoted the nag, and the sport -looked a bit anxious over this. His worried look disappeared, however, -when the second line of betting came in, showing that Deyo was being -backed down some on the New Orleans track. - -"Dey's sumthin' uh-doin' on that mule," he said, and the telegrapher -began to call off the race. It was something easy for Deyo, who beat the -favorite by three lengths. The sport didn't have to snap his fingers or -sway in his chair at all. Deyo was in front all the way. Three-fifths of -the $2,000 to $2 ticket was won. - -By this time the sport was the cynosure of a good many pairs of eyes. -The possibilities of the ticket he had in his pocket were whispered -about, and a number of the real things in the sport line edged over and -asked to have a look at the ticket. - -"It's a alimpey-boolera," they said, and they rubbed the back of it for -luck. Then a lot of them went up to the combination desk and got -combination tickets for the remaining two horses that appeared on the -colored sport's ticket. By the time the betting came in on the fourth -race it was known all over the room that the sport had a $2,000 to $2 -ticket with three of the horses already over the plate. The sport -enjoyed it all with becoming modesty. - -"Dis heah hoss, Benneville, will now step out an' run seben fuhlongs fo' -me," he said, referring to his ticket again. "Ah doan' know mahse'f jes' -how good dis heah Benneville is jes' now, but dis is his day tuh win by -uh block." - -Benneville came in an odds-on favorite, and won by three open lengths. -The sport again was relieved of the necessity of rooting. - -"Ah'n dun rode dat one mahse'f," he said grinning, and he found himself -in the middle of a crowd of sports of his own color. - -"Look uh-heah, nigguh, doan' yo' all remembuh me?" a lot of them -inquired of him as they crowded around him. - -"Remembuh nothin'," said he impartially. "Ah doan' mek it mah bizness -tuh remembuh nobody." - -"Hey, what does your ticket call for in the next?" was a question that -fifty men threw at him as he sat in state in his wicker rocker. - -"De nex' skate on de list," he replied, spelling out the letters on his -ticket, which was being rubbed a good deal for luck by all hands within -rubbing distance, "is de maiuh Donna Rita. Ah wouldn't give $2 fo' Donna -Rita mahse'f, de way she's bin un-runnin', but Donna Rita's dun got tuh -walk in all by huhse'f dis time," whereupon he returned the ticket to -his pocket as if it already represented $2,002. - -The sport had got down Donna Rita into his combination at a long price -in the house betting. When the first line of betting came in from New -Orleans, however, Donna Rita was seen to be the favorite for the race, -with a big field to beat. - -"Donna Rita's lak gettin' money in uh lettuh," said the sport, and every -man in the room that heard these words of wisdom from the lips of the -man with the magical combination ticket in his pocket, played Donna Rita -to win. So here was the sport, enthroned like any monarch of Dahomey, -with the crowd surging around him. One of the white sports, waving a -roll as big as his fist, elbowed his way through the crowd surrounding -the colored sport and flatly offered him $500 for his ticket, after -looking at it and seeing that Donna Rita, much the best horse in the -next race, had her name inscribed there. It was a temptation, but the -sport was game, and stood pat. - -"Dis heah ticket ain't fo' sale," he said. "De two thousan's good enough -fo' this coon." - -Another man offered him $800 for his $2 ticket. The offer was declined. -There wasn't a man in the crowd that wasn't rooting for the sport's -ticket to wind up all right, and to make their rooting more effective -they played Donna Rita to win the last race almost to a man. The less -important sports were keeping close to their brother in hue. They wanted -to be in at the finish--perhaps to help the sport to celebrate. At post -time there was hardly a man at the betting counters. They were all -hovering near the sport for luck. - -"Off at New Orleans!" shouted the telegrapher, who knew about the -sport's ticket by this time, and there was a note of unusual excitement -in his voice as he called off the race. "Donna Rita in the lead!" - -"Oh, yo' babe, Donna!" shouted all the "spotes" in unison, and "stay -right theah, yo' nigguh!" shouted the one particular sport. - -"Donna Rita at the quarter by five lengths!" called out the telegrapher, -and the poolroom might have been taken for an Emancipation Day festival. -"Donna Rita at the half by five lengths!" - -"Ef yo' lubs yo' man, come uhlong!" moaned the sport in ecstasy. - -"Donna Rita at the three-quarters by three lengths, Kisme second, Virgie -O. third," droaned the operator. "Donna Rita in the stretch by a head!" - -The sport rocked to and fro and groaned. - -"Virgie O. wins by a nose!" announced the telegrapher. - -That settled the combination. The sport's followers fell away from him -like autumn leaves from wind-tortured trees. - -"They ain't nothin' in this horse-racin' game, is they?" the frequenters -of the poolroom said to one another as they slouched out, and the -grating tones of the cashiers counting bills soon echoed through the -deserted room. - - - - -"RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK. - - -_He "Runs a Shoestring into a Tannery," and Then Gets the Cold Shoulder - from the Lady Fortune._ - -A party of turfmen in Washington for the Benning meeting were talking -the other evening of the remarkable streak of luck which has enabled -Billy Barrick to run a borrowed shoestring of $200 up to an amount which -is now said to approximate $100,000 in the last six weeks. - -"Barrick's double-ended luck, both at faro bank and horses," said one of -the bookmakers in the party, "is a whole lot out of the common. Luck is -a full-bred sort of an affair, and it does not often run along hybrid -lines. What I mean to say is that the man who has a huge run of luck at -one game almost invariably falls into the doldrums and goes all to -pieces when he switches to another game. The luckiest men I ever knew on -the turf, for example, were the unluckiest card players, and most of -them stubbornly spent a good many thousands of their pony winnings -before they found this out. Barrick seems to be an exception. He has got -into the current, and he could probably get away with the money at -fan-tan or Cingalese pool while he's in his present shape. I'm a bit -afraid of him just now myself, and when I see his commissioners bearing -down on my book I'm sorely tempted to rub the whole slate until I get a -chance to rubberneck and find out what they're after. If I were dealing -faro bank, so weird has his luck at tiger-bucking been lately, too, that -I believe I'd make it a thirty-cent limit when I saw him coming. But -he's an exception, as I say. It's the man who sticks to the one game -that drives the swaggerest dog-cart and wears the whitest gig-lamps in -the long run. - -"I remember a chap out in St. Louis who ran a shoestring of five cents -up to pretty close to six figures in the summer of 1895. He bucked more -games in doing it, too, than Barrick has thus far, but he couldn't go a -route, and they ate him up when the whisky got into his head in such -quantities that he saw treble without having a focus on anything. His -name was Red Donnelly, and he had charge of the bookmakers' -paraphernalia in the betting ring of the St. Louis fair grounds when the -Lady Fortune beamed upon that nickel of his and invited him to bask for -a time in her domain. He was a loose-jointed spraddle-shaped sort of a -young chap of 25 or so who had been hanging around the St. Louis tracks -from his early boyhood. He learned so much about the horses that he -could never win anything on them when he played in the ten-cent books -made by the railbirds. He handicapped them down to the sixteenth of a -pound, and the horse that he put his dime on consequently got beaten, as -a rule, by a tongue. He had been holding down the job of a dog-robber -for the bookmakers for two seasons before he struck his lead on that -nickel. He came out to the track one day, early in June, 1895, with the -solitary nickel reposing in the depths of his trousers' pockets, salted -there to pay his fare back to the city. He got to pulling the five-cent -piece out of his clothes and looking at it longingly by the time the -first race was due. He wanted to get down on a race, but there were no -five-cent books. The bottom sum accepted by the railbird books was a -dime. Red strolled out to the barns and got to pitching nickels with a -pack of idle stable boys. The luck was with him from the jump, and when -he accumulated a dollar in nickels he exhibited symptoms of a man -suffering from chilblains. His reason for getting cold feet was that he -had a good thing in the fourth race, and by the time he had acquired the -dollar the betting had begun on the fourth race. - -"Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and saw that the -price offered against his good thing, the old nag Hush, was 60 to 1. -Donnelly needed a bundle of cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly, -but he was game when it came to sticking to his good things, and he -slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a bookmaker he knew. He -took good-naturedly the mocking hoot which the booky gave him for -handing in twenty pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself -out to the rail just as the horses went away from the post. The race was -really something silly for Hush, in the unwieldy field of nineteen -horses. Hush led all the way, and pranced under the wire first in a big -gallop, pulled double. The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way. - -"Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The bookmaker knew him -well, knew of his taste for rum, and knew also that few of Red's rare -dollars ever found their way to the humble shack of the man's infirm old -Irish mother. - -"'I believe I'll just pinch this out on you, Red,' said the booky to -him, 'and pass it along to the old lady when I go in to-night. It won't -do you any good.' - -"'Come to taw,' replied Red. 'I want to put thirty or forty cents down -on the next race. I got another good thing in it.' - -"The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61. Red carefully folded -the dollar bill and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he -invested the $60, in $10 clips, with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the -next race, at 15 to 1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked -the bookmakers silly--they all knew him well from his working around the -place--by socking it to six of them for $150 each. A committee of safety -was immediately formed around Donnelly, but he couldn't be held down. He -tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, purchased a package of -cigarettes made in Turkey for forty cents, and looked over his dope-book -carefully. Then he strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in -the last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something ridiculous -for her. She won on the bit, and Red was $3,660 to the good on that -nickel that he had salted away in his homespuns for the return trip to -town. - -"When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber--he's a big-hearted -Barney--had him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Barney announced -to all of us that he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney -said went with us, for we all knew Red's propensities. Donnelly put up a -weak growl, but he knew 'way down deep in him that Schreiber could and -would take care of the cash better than he could or would. Barney -pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate compartment of his -wallet, and handed Red $150. - -"'I'll just let you have a little change, Red, said he, 'and if you -think you can run that up into a tan-yard, go ahead. But I'm a-going to -handle this for you the right way. You're not tied enough in your ways -to have such a vast sum on your person all at one and the same time.' - -"Donnelly didn't demur much. The $150 was a huge sum itself for him, and -he, of course, knew that Schreiber would do the right thing with the -main bunch. As a matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day -to the credit of Donnelly's old mother, and Schreiber and the old woman -were the only people who knew anything about that end of it for a long -time afterward. - -"We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium-tremens finish we -foresaw for him, and when he didn't turn up at the track at all on the -following day, necessitating the turning of his dog-robbing work over to -another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremendous barrel-house -toot Red must have gone on down the levee way. That's where we were -camping out. When we picked up the papers on turning out the following -morning we found a scare-head story in one of them relating in great -detail and elaborate diction how one Mr. John S. Donnelly, a gentleman -well known on the Western turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin's faro bank, -over in East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily without -meals from 7 o'clock on the evening of Monday until 11 o'clock on -Wednesday night, when Ed turned the box on him and announced that it was -all off for the present. We all shouted 'fake!' when we saw that, but a -couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed over to McGuckin's place to -see if there was anything in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it. -We found Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark things -about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout and running shoe tongues -up into leather factories. We expressed our sympathies with Ed, for -which we came perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to St. -Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel-house route with a -fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly. Then we decided to drive out to his -mother's little old shack. Our route from the levee out there took us -through the down-town district, and we both saw Red on the street at -once. We drew up alongside the curb, and called him. He was cold sober, -and he had $16,210 in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him -where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of the swellest -tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We went along with him, and it was -one lovely sight to observe the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to -ornament his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and then we -went with him to the haberdasher's. He was all for green and yellow -neckties, pink-striped shirts, and that sort, and we let him have his -way. Then he became sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that -big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally consented to come -along to a bank with us and deposit $14,000 of it in his name. We tried -to hold out for having it put in his mother's name, but he wouldn't -stand for that. After leaving the bank Red's eagle eye caught sight of -the shiny things in a jeweler's window, and he decided then and there -that he couldn't go to sleep without having the third finger of his left -hand made conspicuous by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he -coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his clothes, and we -dragged him then into the cab and drove out to his mother's little old -shanty. The old lady had her little talk with Barney Schreiber about the -$3500 by that time, and the to-do she made over her 'bye Johnnie' was -worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other bunch that Red -had copped and that we had plunked it into the bank for him, the -quantities of corned beef and cabbage which she threw into the pot for -the dinner which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her -phenomenal son were amazing. - -"Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of weeks by his -extraordinary conduct. He would ride out to the track in a hack, with a -gilt-stamped cigarette in his face, attend to his job as usual around -the betting-ring--that is, he'd supervise, for he quickly accumulated a -staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on--and then he'd go up into the -grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk clothes and look at the races. He -didn't put a bet down on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober -all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals he had suddenly -got, but he only passed along with the remark: 'I'm letting 'em run for -O'Flaherty. Nothin' doin'.' - -"We waited for the crash, but it didn't seem to come on schedule time. -One afternoon he called me aside and showed me his bank-book. It showed -an additional deposit of $5000, making the total $19,000. - -"'When did you pick up that new roll?' I asked him. - -"'Went up against the wheel at Terhune's last night, and yanked it out -in three hours,' he said. - -"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked him. - -"'Last night,' he replied. - -"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up at the track one -afternoon with a light in his eye. He went out into the paddock and -spent three-quarters of an hour looking at a horse and by that time the -third race was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 around on -Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old race, but Madeira -romped in two lengths to the good. That night Red, still moderately -sober and level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We began -to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's game and to consider -the possibility of his becoming a real fixture. A lot of owners with bum -skates tried to work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only -passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an additional line of -thinks with regard to what we thought was his increasing shrewdness. -Besides, you see, Red began to be right good to us. He told us all very -soberly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that he didn't want -to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his money to the out-of-town -poolrooms. The good thing was David, who won the last race in a walk at -15 to 1, and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that. - -"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people got at Donnelly -and tried to induce him to either invest a part of his money--he had -almost $50,000 then--in a string of useful horses, to be put into the -hands of a competent trainer--or to have the whole bundle properly -invested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, when Red's -streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have to go back to buying -cigarettes by the cent's worth. The man was too bull-headed, though, to -listen to anything like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine -house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff black silk -dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore in which to go to mass. - -"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of games around town every -night, and it honestly appeared as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud -poker, draw, wheel, red and black, mustang, bank--all seemed to be right -in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up where he was bucking -things every night, and, following his play, we always got the good end -of it. He didn't know much about any of the games, and the idiotic -things we had often to do in order to consistently follow his play made -us gag, but nine times out of ten them came out right. One man in our -party, a bookmaker, who determined to copper all of Red's play at the -different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck had to turn some -time or another, almost went broke before he came into the fold and quit -coppering. - -"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling at the red stuff. By -the time his great luck was a month old, however, the booze had nailed -him, and he got to throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man -can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or judgment. Red -came into the ring palpably drunk one afternoon and spread around -$20,000 on Strathmeath at even money. None of us wanted to take the -money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that horse was -Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and a bit ugly, and we accommodated -him. Strathmeath ran third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly -dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't go to bed for five nights, -and at the end of that time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck -drop away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. For instance, he was -whacking at a bank one night, stupefied with hooters of half rye and -half absinthe, and he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed -it on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a clip, and lost -it twelve straight times. The frowns of the Lady Fortune got his nerve, -and he began to play favorites at the track. The favorites went down to -inglorious defeat, one after another, for days. - -"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, got hold of Red -when he had only the $6000 left, landed him in a fix-up ward, and -sobered him up. When he came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in -an express business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside of the -express office more than half dozen times, except to draw what was -coming to him. He was at the track all the time the races lasted, and -when the season closed he put in his time down on the levee. He never -had a day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his death, -somewhat less than a year after they came his way with a whoop and a -rush. - -"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to stroke her hair, chuck -her under the chin and be good to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice -to a man who treats her favors wantonly." - - - - -AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP. - - -_Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap Won by Kinley Mack._ - -"We'll get Red Beak Jim to hike us down in his caloosh," said the main -guy of the four. The four were job holders in one of the New York city -departments, and they were talking about ways and means of reaching the -Sheepshead track for the Suburban. - -"Good thing," said the three others. "Go on and ask Jimmy for a figure, -down and back, for the bunch. Hey, and don't let him dicker you out o' -your gilt teeth. Jimmy's a robber." - -So the main guy of the four sprinted after Red Beak Jim. He found him -with the major portion of his countenance immersed in the collarette of -an open-faced malt magnum. - -"Hey, Jim," said the main guy, "hitch 'em up and bring 'em around about -noon. Down to the Bay and back. There's four of us. What d'ye say to the -note for $10 for the job?" - -Red Beak Jim removed the mammoth piece of glassware from his face long -enough to remark: - -"Nothin' doin'." - -"Ain't, hey?" said the main guy. "The old caloosh's fallen apart at -last, hey?" - -Red Beak Jim sat the beer-glass down and wiped off his mouth with the -back of his coat-sleeve. - -"It'll be jugglin' around when you're yelling for ice at any old price a -hunnered," said he. "Nope, I'm 'ngaged f'r th' Bay." - -"Say, you've got your fingers crossed or your suspenders," said the main -guy. "Give you fifteen for the job." - -"Goin' t' take three down," said Red Beak Jim. "Ten a head. Sorry I -didn't ask 'em fifteen. Trucks is chargin' ten a head." - -"Ten a head," said the main guy, sarcastically. "What in, zinc money? -Hey, pull around, Jim, or you'll lose a wheel. Ten a head? Get away with -that hasheesh. Give us a figure." - -"You've got it," replied Red Beak Jim. "Ten per, round trip. I'm a good -thing at that. But I'm 'ngaged." - -"So's me little sister," said the main guy. "All right, work your edge. -What's ten a head to us, at that? Hey, we got the baby to-day, Jim, and -you want to put some braces under that old caloosh. We'll have two ton -o' money coming back. Bring 'er around, then, at noon. Say, you ought to -get a pair o' knucks and a sandbag. You're too good on the clutch to -push a caloosh around. Have 'er there prompt at noon, now, Jim." - -"Sure," said Red Beak Jim, and he was there at noon, all right, with the -hack all varnished up and dusted off, and the pair looking fit to reel -off a mile in five minutes, on the bit. The four were inside, stirring -their pieces of ice around with the spoons, when Red Beak Jim pulled up. -He jumped off the seat and stuck his head in the door. - -"At the pump, gents," said he. - -They yanked him in to have one before the start, and they all got him -over into the dark corner. Then the main guy addressed him. - -"Jim," said the main guy, "we're handing this to you because you're all -right--from the heels down. On the level, though, Jim, we pass this -along to you because it's right. It's prepared. It's a nightingale in -the woods, and it'll be singing when all the rest of 'em are still -trying to find out where the wire is. Horse of the century? Nix. Not for -these little Willies. The black, let 'er sleep wonder? Not. We stay out -there. The Whitney thing with the Frenchy name? Hoot, mon. Pass this -squad by. Nope. We got it right, Jimmy. And we're handing you the forty -bucks now so's you can plant it right. Here's the forty--and say, you -want to remember that you're paid, see? Well, you get over the fence -somehow--let a kid take care o' your two goats and the caloosh--and you -put the whole forty on Kinley Mack. See? Got that chalked? You put the -forty on Kinley Mack, and part o' the two ton o' gilt we'll have on the -come-back 'll belong to you. Kinley Mack's going to stand 'em all on -their heads and twist 'em round. Don't say we didn't put you next. -Uneeda win. Well, you win. Nothing to it. Kinley Mack. Ain't that right, -you ducks?" - -"That's right, all right," said the other three, all together. - -Red Beak Jim emptied the flagon thoughtfully. - -"I got mine at that game," said he finally. "They made a bum o' me -before you people was through playin' jacks. They can run f'r Hogan. -These"--salting away the two twenties the main guy had handed him--"will -do f'r me. I don't want t' git rich fast, nohow. I'd booze meself -foolish. Much 'bliged, gents, but I can't see no Kinley Macks or Billy -Bryans, f'r that matter, wit' a spy-glass." - -"All right," said the main guy, disgustedly. "But when the ring's around -Kinley Mack, and they're paying off the wise people on him, you want to -muffle the bleats you'll have coming, see? Don't say we never dished you -up a hot one. You're a sport, Jimmy, and so's a tadpole. You'll never -butt in among the first six. All right. Come on, you people." - -They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their glasses once -more, and then they climbed into the hack and were away in a row, to a -good start. - -At each of the seven places at which they stopped for ice, with -trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they announced to friends that -they met that it was only going to be a one horse race. - -"Run on a fast track, hey?" said the main guy to everybody he knew at -the stops. "Say, that's his graft. That's his main plant. A race-horse -can run on any old kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse -of the century business and you smoke stogies for a few months. -Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say, d'je ever happen to hear -of Salvator and Tenny and Hanover and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre -and Sir Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two-dollar mutts -like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt in? Say, Hamburg could've -run backward as fast as this horse of the century that you people have -all got the bug about. Kinley Mack! Kinley Mack! Hey, fellers?" - -"Thash ri'," said the other three, and then they climbed into the hack -again. - -When they got down to the track entrance and alighted the main guy of -the four, still mindful of his duty toward struggling fellow men, made a -final appeal to Red Beak Jim. - -"Jim," said he, "how about taking our steer, hey? This is the good thing -o' the year. It's going to be a long summer. Going to put that forty on -Kinley Mack?" - -"I'm goin' t' take a nap after I have a smoke," replied Red Beak Jim, -filling his pipe. - -The four walked away with an air of disgust, while Red Beak Jim grinned -after them. - -Each of the four had a one-hundred-dollar note wherewith to back Kinley -Mack off the boards. The temptations of the first three races, however, -collared them, and when the slate went up for the Suburban they each had -a fifty-dollar note wherewith to play Kinley Mack, the good thing. When -the horses were at the post for the third race, the main guy, who -happened to be standing close to the fence that separates the -grand-stand crowd from the people in the cheap field, saw Red Beak Jim, -with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, leaning against -the rail. He called the hackman, and Red Beak Jim approached the fence -with a grin. - -"Thought you'd get on, anyhow, hey?" said the main guy. - -"Naw, I jes' crep in t' see 'em run an' hear th' hard losers tell how it -was they lost," said Red Beak Jim. "Nothin' doin' wit' me." - -"Ain't going to put those forty on Kinley Mack, hey?" asked the main -guy. - -"Not if I'm awake," said Red Beak Jim, and the main guy walked away from -the fence with an expression of commiseration on his face. - -The horses were still at the post for the third race when the main guy -was approached by a horseman he knew. The horseman was chewing a straw. -He looked very wise. - -"Cashed yet on Imp?" the horseman asked the main guy. - -"Hey?" asked the latter, bending his ear. - -"Only a canter for that one," said the horseman, in a low tone, -temporarily removing the straw from his face. "Just a little exercise -gallop for the black filly." - -"Say, is that right?" inquired the main guy. "Is she so good as all that -to-day?" - -"Surest thing you know," said the horseman. "She'll give 'em all a -fifty-pound beating or I don't know a hoof from a currycomb. I'm only -spinning this along to the people I've got some use for. That's the -reason I dip it up for you." - -"But say," whispered the main guy of the four, "I got it straight as a -ramrod on Kinley Mack." - -The horseman smiled benignly. - -"On this track?" said he. "That one wouldn't beat a fat man on this -track. He wants slop and slush. I'm only telling you, that's all. You -splurge on Imp, and it'll be all yours." - -"I always was stuck on that darned old mare, anyhow," mused the main guy -of the four, as he walked off in search of the other three. "She sure -can rip the air when she's ripe. Got a thunder of a notion to switch to -her at that. That fellow ought to know. He's been handling 'em long -enough. Kinley Mack only a mudder, hey? Had kind of a hunch that way -myself, but I didn't want to own up. Last week, before I got this Kinley -Mack thing, I was sure going to play Imp, and I'd feel like a nickel's -worth of lard if she'd go out and spread-eagle 'em now that I've got -this Kinley Mack thing." - -He stood still for a moment with his hands in his pockets, oblivious of -the jostling crowd, and then he slapped his thigh. - -"I've got the hunch--it's Imp!" he muttered. "Lemme find the fellers and -put 'em next." - -He found the other three. They were putty when the main guy told them -what the horseman had said. They'd always liked Imp, anyhow. - -Their four fifty-dollar notes went on Imp straight, when the slates went -up. They all stood together and rooted for the black mare when the -horses got off. When Kinley Mack romped in, an easy winner, they didn't -say anything at all. They didn't even look at one another. They avoided -one another's gaze, thrust their hands deep into their pockets and -studied the jockeys as they dismounted. When the first numbness had -passed the main guy of the four led them to the bar and they drank the -longest one of the day in silence. They looked up into their glasses as -they twiddled their spoons, but they didn't look at one another. - -There was $17 still left among the four--not enough for any sort of -celebration or doings when they got back to town. So the main guy -gathered up the $17 in silence and put it all on a horse at 10 to 1 in -the fifth race, with the idea of running the shoestring into a tannery. -The 10 to 1 shot was never in the hunt at any stage of it, and they were -all out. Silently they wended their way out of the gate. - -Red Beak Jim was sitting on the seat of the hack, with his legs crossed, -smoking a pipe. He looked interested when the four came along. - -"Youse people must have all kinds," said he. - -They climbed into the hack without a word. - -"D'je play that one?" inquired Red Beak Jim, picking up the lines. - -"Ask me aunt," growled the main guy. - -Red Beak Jim clucked at the horses, and they moved off in good style. - -The hackman pulled the horses up alongside the step in front of the -first roadhouse. - -"Hey, don't get too glad all of a sudden," growled the main guy to Red -Beak Jim. "Who told you to do that?" - -Red Beak Jim disposed of the lines and stepped down without making any -reply, while the four watched him gloomily. Then he grinned, hoisted up -the right-hand front flap of his livery coat, dug into his right-hand -trousers pocket and pulled out a wad about the size of a healthy -cantaloupe. - -"I'll ask youse gents to split a couple o' quarts on me," said Red Beak -Jim. "I got 8 to 1 f'r me forty." - -They gazed at him and his wad with their jaws dropping. - -"Did you play Kinley Mack?" they gurgled in unison. - -"That's the one youse people said, ain't it?" inquired Red Beak Jim. "I -t'ought I'd take a little flyer on him, jes' f'r luck." - - - - -THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS." - - -_And How He Got a Horseman Without Much of a Conscience into Hot Water._ - -"No Man alive can afford to lose the friendship even of a yaller dog. -Not even an ornery yaller dog can you afford to have agin' you at any -stage of the game. The dog'll get back at you one time or another, -sooner or later, and take a mouthful or two out of you, if you haven't -had sense enough to keep him on your staff of friends." - -The man who used to make a business of putting ringers over the plates -at the outlaw race-tracks had passed from the reflective to the -confidential mood. Perhaps the rings which he made on the cherry table -with the bottom of his glass suggested circular race-tracks to him. -Perhaps the prancing of the fox-terrier pup in the back room made him -think of horses kicking up at the post. But, whatever the cause of it, -his burst of confidence was unusual, and the other men at the table -listened to him attentively. - -"My yellow dog was a yellow man--that is, the one I'm thinking about -just now," he went on. "He took a hunk out of me down at Alexander -Island, Va., near Washington, about five years ago. He had me out. All -he had to do was to count ten on me and take the pot, and he knew it. He -worked the edge. I didn't blame him a bit then, and I don't now. But it -was hard money to lose. When I get hold of the right end of a bulge on a -man that I've got it in for, I don't hesitate to work it myself--but I -always feel a bit sorry for a man that I get up into a corner, all the -same. This yellow man felt sorry for me. He showed it. He was about as -sympathetic a yellow man as ever I saw on the occasion I'm going to tell -you about. But he wouldn't let go, for all that. He needed the money, of -course, but then he wanted to get back at me, too. - -"'I'se dun got de aige on yo' all, boss,' he told me, 'an I'm sure -a-gwine t' wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.' - -"You see, I had employed this yellow man as a stable hand when I first -got my string of ringers together and took them out. He was all right -for the first few months of the winter campaign, but then he began to -get jagged on me with a heap of regularity. He got mixed up with that -gin that they keep on hand in Maryland for the Afro-American trade, and -it spoiled him for me. He was no use whatever after the gin took hold of -him. I warned him a lot, but it did no good. I was a little bit afraid -of the job, for he knew a good deal about my string, but I finally -decided that I'd have to take a chance and fire him. I turned up at the -track stable one morning--this wasn't more'n a million miles from -Baltimore--and I found my yellow man Lem sulky and ugly drunk, and the -string chewing on their stalls. I gave him a boot and a hist out of the -stable and told him not to come back. - -"'This yellow man'll probably queer me,' I thought at the time, 'but I -can't go along playing 1000 to 1 shots like him for favorites. If he -peaches--well, there are other States besides Maryland.' - -"I was rather surprised that he didn't come back when he got sober. But, -nope, he didn't come back at all. I got another stableman and during the -following week, the last of the meeting, I pulled off three good painted -things with as good as 15 to 1 around two of 'em, without yellow Lem -turning up to pester me at all. I thought of him a good deal. Every time -I got one of my plugs at the post I stood by to see the yellow man walk -into the judges' stand and give me away. I'll bet I lost ten pounds -worrying about that darkey and what he might do during that last week in -Maryland. I felt as light as a snowball when I got my string out of that -State and over at the Alexander Island track, near Washington. When I -got 'em all safe over there, says I to myself, 'This yellow ex-man o' -mine is probably back in Thompson street, with his carcass full of gin -by this time. So I'll just cut out the worry about him.' - -"Well, I started in at the preliminary work of pulling off a real swell -thing at Alexander Island. It was about as easy to enter a horse down -there as it is to go broke up here, and I put the best one of my lot in -the overnight races for a week. I entered him as a half-breed from a -Warrenton farm--a maiden six-year-old. It went through easy, the -overnight entering did, and I began to lay my horse up for a price. The -horse had done a mile in 1.40-1/2 and he had the whole bunch down at -Alexander Island outclassed by 212 pounds. The plug had belonged to the -best of the Western selling-plater division as a three- and -four-year-old and he had been in a few stakes at that. I got him as a -five-year-old and he surely was a meal-ticket for me. He wasn't painted -a bit--you didn't have to dye 'em at Alexander Island. If Hanover had -been an outlaw you could have stuck him into any old race down there and -they'd never have got next. - -"I had a boy along with the string who'd been chased off the Western -licensed tracks for funny work, and what that boy didn't know about -riding like as if his life depended on his winning, and forty wraps on -his mount all the time, wasn't worth knowing. Say, he had six separate -and distinct bridle welts on both of his forearms that he got in pulling -horses. He was invaluable, that boy. When we were out to win he never -made anything but a nose finish of it even if our horse was up against -the worst set of outlaw dray-plugs in training. Oh, that boy knew his -gait all right! I did the best I could to keep him from going to Joliet -for pocketpicking in Chicago a couple o' years ago, but it was no use. -He's still doing his bit. - -"Well, I had him sail this good nag of mine over the course in seven -races the first ten days of the meeting. The horse was a bit too likely -looking, and there was only 5 to 1 against him in the first race. He -finished fourth. The boys in the ring quoted 8 to 1 around him in No. 2 -race, and he finished sixth in a field of seven. And so on. He was in -the ruck in most of the races, and he finished the last two of the seven -a rank last. By that time you could have written your own ticket if you -wanted to play him, which is what I was waiting for. My boy complained -that during the last three races he had all colors of trouble in holding -the horse in. - -"'You'd better open the watermelon quick,' said he to me after the -seventh race, 'or I'm liable to lose him and win the next time out.' - -"And so I had the pie counter all spread out for his next time out. It -was a six-furlong race, which was my horse's distance. Two of the cracks -of the outlaw brigade were in the race, and they both opened up at even -money. Then one of 'em was played down to 1 to 2 on. It was a -twelve-horse race, and my nag opened up the rank outsider with any -amount of 100 to 1 quoted around him. I didn't want to be too chesty and -spoil my dough, and so I only took $50 worth of it, scattering it around -in $10 gobs. I reckoned that $5000 would be a good-enough pulldown on -the race, and I didn't want to take any chances on being shut out of the -game down at Alexander Island. I put a few of the boys I knew next to -what was going to happen, told 'em not to go it too strong or they'd -queer me, and they mixed up $5 all over the ring on my 100 to 1 horse, -that should have gone to the post at 1 to 100. They broke the price down -to 30 to 1, but that didn't make any difference to me, for I had picked -up all I wanted of the 100 to 1. - -"When they went to the post I picked out a spot on the rail some -distance away from the grand stand to watch the race. I felt pretty -good. I knew it was going through. My horse had worked the six furlongs -in 1:16 flat the afternoon before, and I knew that he was easy money. -The only thing I was afraid of was that he would get away from the boy -and beat the bunch by eight blocks, thus bringing me into the judges' -stand on suspicion. I was thinking of all these things when I heard a -voice behind me. - -"'Aftuhnoon, Cap,' said the voice. 'How's yo' all tuh-day?' - -"I looked around. The voice belonged to Lem, my fired yellow stable man. -Lem was sober, and got up as if for a cake-walk. He had business in his -eye, too. - -"'Hello, there,' says I, kind of coddingly. 'How're you cutting it?' - -"'Oh, tol'able, boss--tol'able,' he replied. - -"'Where are you working?' I asked him. - -"He smiled blandly in my teeth. - -"'I'se a-wukkin' yo' all dis aftuhnoon, boss,' said he. 'But I ain't no -hog. Jes' half o' de rake-down'll do me. Mus' hev dat much, fo' sure. -Jes' nachully need dat much.' - -"'What the devil are you talking about?' I asked him, but I knew he had -me where he wanted me. - -"'Well, yo' see, boss, it's jes' dis-a-way,' he replied. 'I'se a-gwine -tuh quit rubbin' dem down an' take tuh speculashunin' m'sef. I'se -a-gwine tuh staht fo' San Francisco tuh see whut all I kin do with de -bookies out da-a-way, an' jes' nachully needs de coin tuh go on out an' -begin wuk on 'em. Dis yeah's uh good one yo' all's pullin' down tuh-day, -an' I was trailin' yo' w'en yo' all put yo' bets down. Yo' stan's tuh -win $5,000 on de ole hoss, an' yo'll win it. I'll take ha'f o' dat, -boss, an' go on out tuh de coast tracks with it.' - -"I think I must have been looking pretty hard at that yellow man when he -slung me this spiel. Oh, he had me all right. It was my looking at him -so hard that made him get off the rest of the speech: - -"'I'se dun got de aidge on yo' all, boss, an' I'm sure a-gwine tuh wuk -it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.' - -"As I say, I knew he had me, but just out of curiosity I shot this one -at him: - -"'S'pose, you yellow devil, that I don't cough up a red of it? What -then?' - -"He grinned and rolled his eyes over toward the judges' stand. - -"'I'd jes' nachully be obleeged tuh do de bes' I could fo' de -proteckshun o' de spoht o' racin,' he replied. - -"The horses were still making false breaks at the post and it was too -late for me to hop into the ring and lay enough down to win $2,500 for -the yellow man and still have $5,000 to the good myself. It was a sore -game, that, but I had to stand for it. - -"'All right,' I said to the darkey, 'you've turned this trick and you'll -get the $2,500. But you want to go West with it, as you say you are, or -I'll get a night doctor or two on your trail. Chop away from here and -I'll see you after the race.' - -"'I knows yo' will, boss,' said the yellow man, giving me that -triumphant grin of his, and he turned and went down the rail to take in -the race. Race, did I say? Oh, it wasn't a race. My horse got away from -the post three lengths to the bad, and he trailed after the bunch -dismally all the way around to the stretch turn, but I never had a -quake. I could see, if nobody else could, that my boy was ripsawing the -horse's mouth, and I knew it was all right. At the stretch turn the boy -let out a couple of links and the nag joined the front bunch. The boy -drew it fine, as I had instructed him, and won by a short head, and it -was funny to see the wise guys from Washington who had scattered all -kinds of Government-earned money all over the ring turning mental -flipflaps of despair. I watched to see if there'd be any holler about -anything when the boy weighed in, but there wasn't, and the race was -confirmed all right. I went around and did my own collecting, and -several of the poor devils of bookies had to go out of business after -the rest of the boys that I had put on to the thing came along and -cashed their tickets. I found my yellow man waiting for me on the -outside of the ring, and when I got him into the shadow I gave up the -$2,500. I saw that he got a ticket and started for San Francisco the -next day. I felt so sad when I heard a few months later that in an -attempt to learn how to smoke hop out there, to add to his jag -rpertoire, he had died in a Chinese joint after hitting up thirty-six -pills. I felt so sad." - -The ex-ringer operator was plunged in meditation for a while, the others -remaining sympathetically silent, and then he resumed in another strain. - -"Next to the worst jolt I ever got--and the worst was the time down in -Maryland when one of my plugs with two whitewashed barrel spots and a -whitewashed forehead star got rained on at the post, practically out of -a clear sky, and the spots got washed out, and I had to get out of the -State of Maryland over fences--next to that jolt, the way one of my boys -threw it into me at a county fair meeting in West Virginia was pretty -bad. I had tongue-hammered that kid pretty hard two or three times at -that meeting for winning when his mounts weren't due to win and I didn't -want 'em to win, and he got sulky. I tried to coddle him up a bit, for I -had a real good one to pull off on the last day of the fair, and I -thought I had him all right on my staff again. The real good thing was a -horse of mine that I had entered in the final race, which the jays down -there called a mile race for the 1:55 running class.' 1:55! I had a -skate with me down there that could just common canter a mile in 1:45, -and he could have done it in three seconds better if pinched at any -time. I had had the plug lose three or four races during the fair -meeting, and he wasn't as good as Chinese money in the estimation of the -West Virginians by the time the race that he was going to win came -around. My boy was to have the mount, and our mutual confidence seemed -to be restored by the time the good thing was booked to happen. But he -had an ice-pick up his sleeve for me all the time." - -"'Didn't try with the horse, and lost, eh?' asked one of the ex-ringer -worker's listeners. - -"'Oh, no, it wasn't that,' was the reply. The horse won by a tongue, and -the boy gave him a beautiful tight ride to keep him from winning further -off. But he put every grafter that he knew, and he knew 'em all at the -fair meeting next to what was going to happen, and made split terms with -all of them. That is, he put 'em on, on condition that he was to get -half of each man's winnings on the race. Now, I had figured on picking -up $8,000 or $10,000 easy on that good thing, and I had lain awake -nights making plans to meet possible hitches. It certainly wasn't -treating me right, the way that boy did. I thought I'd get as good as 25 -to 1, anyhow, at the first betting. I intended to take a mess o' that -and then wait for the betting to go up, for I confidently expected, and -had a right to expect, that the nag's price, in view of what the farmers -down there thought of him, would go up to 50 or 100. - -"When the betting on the race opened I was on hand with my wad. Say, I -couldn't get within twenty feet of a one of the twelve bookies doing -business. I never saw such a scramble, even in the 50-cent field at -Sheepshead. Of course, I thought they were all getting aboard of the -favorite, and so I drew back, knowing that if they were playing the -favorite my plug would be going up in price all the time. Then I noticed -a lot of the educated money, the coin of the grafters that I knew around -the grounds, going in, and I wondered if they were Rubes enough to play -a favorite in the last race on get-away day. So I drew close to the -bookies' stands--as close as I could get--and then I found that they -were all writing my horse's name. Nothing but my horse. Not a horse in -the race but my horse. It was a staggerer, that was. Of course, I -thought of my miffed jockey right away, and I knew he had done it. When -I finally was able to get up to the bookies, I found that my plug's -price had been played down from 20 to 1 to 9 to 10 on, and I was so -disgusted that I stayed off altogether, although I knew my horse was -going to win. He did win. The boy couldn't peach because his rake-down -had been too big, but he showed me $3,500 in bills an hour after the -race, got off twenty feet and told me all about it, and then bolted. I -haven't seen him since." - - - - -EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER. - - -_Wherein It Is Shown That, When There Is "Something Doing," a Bank-roll - Is Liable to Be Wrecked._ - -"I heard somewhere the other day," said one of a party of turfmen who -were dining together after the McGovern-Erne fight, "that Billy -Thompson, the ex-Duke of Gloucester, is trying to cook up some scheme -whereby the legal authorities of New Jersey 'll relent and permit him to -start the old Gloucester merry-go-round again. I don't think he'll make -it stick, if the story is true, but if Gloucester ever is started again -I know a man who'd be very liable to burn the barns down some dark -night. I don't think he'd let the Gloucester mud-lark and snow bird -race-track operate while he lives. - -"In 1880 this man I'm talking about--he had passed up a good grocery -business to play the races a year before--had nursed together a wad of -about six thousand dollars, and this gave him a bad case of the Sandow -vest. He was so chesty over having all that money that he concluded he'd -try a whirl on the block. There was only winter racing going on when he -got that smoky notion into his hat, and that was at Gloucester. As you -fellows know, they used to run 'em there in snow up to the saddle -pommels, and the plug that could make out the best without going over -the fence, or that didn't become crazy from snow blindness, always -yanked down the money at Gloucester--that is, if he was meant to win. - -"This ex-sugar-and-tea guy was a dead verdant one at the bookmaking game -when he went on the block at Gloucester, but he kept his ears open and -his mouth shut, and he had quite a streak of luck, besides, from the -go-off, so that at the end of his first week at laying odds he found -that he'd averaged a clean-up of about $200 a day. You couldn't see him -then without sending up your card, he was so vast and heap-much. He was -thinking of going down Dixieway to make a bid on the Belle Meade farm, -and, by the end of his third week on the block, when he had run his -$6000 into a bit more than $10,000, he was probably the haughtiest -gazabo on this side of the Rocky Mountains. - -"One day--it was at the beginning of his fourth week at bookmaking--a -duck who had a string of good ones--of their kind--chasing the -Gloucester will-o'-the-wisp for the poolroom purses, invited himself to -take dinner with the ex-grocer with the streak of luck. After they had -stored the feed away at the high-riding bookmaker's Philadelphia hotel, -the man with the string leaned back in his chair and sprung what he had -in mind. He mentioned the star sprinter of his string. - -"'You know, of course,' said he confidentially, to the ex-grocer, 'that -that nag can eat up any horse down here at three-quarters of a mile. -He'd never be beaten at that distance if we let him out every time he -went to the post to race. But, of course, if I'd let him win every time -out, there would never be any price on him. He'd be a 1 to 20 shot every -time he got a lead-pad on, and I'm not going down the line on that kind -of prices. Neither am I running my string over at Gloucester for -hygienic reasons. Perceive?' - -"The new bookie perceived. - -"'Well,' this oily geezer went on, 'that horse is entered in a -six-furlong sprint to-morrow, as you know. He'll probably be an -even-money favorite. He'll lose.' - -"'He will, hey?' said the new man on the block, suspicious like. 'That's -darned good of you to tell me. But you're not telling me that for your -health, either. He's going to lose, eh?' - -"'Yep, he'll lose,' repeated the smooth owner. 'Now, you're a pretty -nice young fellow, ain't you? I like you. Understand?' - -"'Um,' said the ex-grocer. 'What's your graft, anyhow?' - -"'Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose,' said the -confidential owner once more. 'Now, you see this thousand-dollar -William, don't you? Well, I want you to take a thousand-dollars' worth -of my horse to win for my account, see, when you make your book on that -race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he's going to lose anyhow. You -see, I just want to pick up an honest dollar or so. You take this $1,000 -of the suckers' money for me on your book, and your reward 'll be in -knowing what's going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see? Is it a -go?' - -"Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the groceryman. It looked -like taking candy from a child. If that owner's horse wasn't going to -lose, it looked like a cinch that he wasn't going to risk any -thousand-dollar bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that -he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding he was going to -give the talent the next day. He chuckled to himself when the other -books only laid even money against the sprinter when the betting on the -race began the next afternoon. - -"'They wouldn't do a thing but fall over themselves to lay a long price -if they knew, like I do, that the favorite is going to kerflop,' mused -the ex-groceryman--he wailed me the whole spiel afterward--and he laid 2 -to 1 against the sprinter's chances on his slate. The other bookies over -his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he only exulted -whole lots inside of him. - -"'You are wise people,' he thought, 'but this is where I get the big end -of it.' - -"Within three minutes after he had started his slate he had taken in the -horse owner's $1,000 worth of his horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just -battled to get at his book at their figures. Said he to himself, 'I'll -just tap myself on this watermelon,' and by the time the horses went to -the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public money at 2 to 1 on that -horse that was going to lose, and he knew that he'd be just $5,000 to -the good. - -"Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got away the skate that -the ex-grocer had laid his whole $1,000 against walked in on the bit, -fifteen lengths to the good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps -all the way from the flag-fall. - -"The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay pipe and an -eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went out of business, and he's -been out of business ever since. It took him about a week to get -contiguous to the fact that the men who collected his $10,000 were the -smooth owner's commissioners, but when he went gunning the owner had -removed his string from Gloucester, and was taking a little winter -cruise in a felucca in the gean Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up -again, and there's a conflagration, I'll know how it started." - -"There's another chap that I know of who's been smoking unfragrant -tobacco in a pipe for a good many years on account of an outlaw track -deal," said one of the other turfmen at the table, "but he wasn't a new -man at the game. He was an old-timer--so much of an old-timer that it -was up to him to know that, once having made a tool of a man or a boy in -the racing business, it is never the part of wisdom to throw him -overboard on the presumption that he's a dead one. Turf followers, as -you fellows all know, have a habit of resurrecting themselves at -inopportune moments when it seems that they are so deeply buried that -they'll never struggle to the top of the ground again, and when they do -run a shoe-tongue into a tan-yard they are more than liable to get hunk -with former pals who have cast them aside in the hour of adversity. Now, -it is a particularly dangerous thing for any man connected with racing -to do business with a jockey. I never heard of a bit of jockey-tampering -that didn't get out sooner or later, to the disadvantage of the man that -did the corrupting. I guess we all know of cases in which jockeys, after -being ruled off for crooked work, have become exacting pensioners on the -hands of the men responsible for their downfall for long stretches of -years. The story I have in mind is of a jockey who, while he wasn't set -down through following the directions of the bookmaker he did business -with, was treated with characteristic meanness by the latter when he was -up against it owing to an accident; and the way this jock got even with -his former tamperer was unique. - -"You all remember the boy Kelley? He wasn't exactly a boy at the time -this thing happened--he was a man of twenty-two or so, which probably -accounted for the fact that when he was riding at Guttenberg he had most -of the other jockeys faded; give me a rider with a man's hand on his -shoulders every time for my horse. Now, the morale of Guttenberg wasn't -like unto that pervading a theological institution, but Kelley the jock -wasn't any worse than his neighbors. He was like all the rest of the -people mixed up with the weird game at the Gut. It was a poor jock at -the Gut who didn't have a bookmaker on his staff, and Kelley wasn't a -poor jock by fifty good pounds under the saddle. It used to be an off -day with Kelley when he didn't put up a ride in accordance with this -bookmaker's orders. All of the jocks at the Gut did similar things, and -they were stood for. The hectic flush of humiliation didn't mantle the -alabaster countenances of the Gut stewards to any huge extent when the 1 -to 5 shot was beaten a furlong. Kelley was enabled to throw big money -into his bookie's satchel, because, being such a top-notch rider of -outlaws, most of his mounts went to the post favorites; so that when he -snatched a horse it meant the good of the books, and of his bookmaker in -particular, for the latter would of course lay the longest price in -their judgment against one that he knew was going to run like a mackerel -along a dusty road. Kelley profited fairly well at the hands of this -bookmaker, and on his side he was absolutely loyal in his crookedness. -He invariably delivered the goods. He had the knack of making it appear -to the people with the field glasses that he was riding like a fiend, -when in reality he had his horse pulled double, and when he was -following orders he could permit the favorite under him to be beaten out -by a tongue on the wire in a way that would raise the hair of the folks -in the stand. - -"Well, one day Kelley was dumped from a horse he was riding when the -track was slippery and broke his leg. He had been improvident and -extravagant, like most of the jocks of that day, so that when the -accident put him on the flat of his back he found himself broke. What -was more natural than that he should send to the bookmaker whose orders -he had been following for a long time for assistance? He wrote to the -bookie and asked for the loan of $100. The bookmaker ignored the -request. Then the laid-up jockey sent a friend to the bookmaker. The -latter made some remark about not coughing up for the oats and keep of -dead ones--figuring, you see, that Kelley's injuries were such that he -wouldn't be able to get back to the riding game until the close of the -meeting. So the jockey had to stave off doctors' and other bills as best -he could, and I guess that he set his teeth down pretty hard and did -some robust thinking while his leg was healing. - -"A couple of months after this accident Kelley, somewhat pale, turned up -in the paddock at the Gut one morning and announced that he was fit to -ride again. His services were immediately in demand, and Mike Daly got -him to ride his horse Gloster in the first race on the card. Gloster was -the best horse in the race and was certain to be favorite. The bookie, -who had used Kelley before his accident and afterward turned him down, -got to Kelley by the underground process, through an agent, with the -inquiry as to whether a little business couldn't be done on Gloster. -Kelley, with all the good nature in life, sent word that there could, -certainly; that he could get Gloster beaten by an eyelash. - -"The betting opened and Gloster was the favorite all over the ring at -odds of 1 to 2 on. Then Kelley's bookmaker began to shoot the price -up--first to 3 to 5 on, then to 4 to 5 on, then to even money, and then -right up to 6 to 5 and even 7 to 5 against. The way that bookie hauled -in the money on Gloster was a caution. It seemed that every plunger and -casual bettor in the inclosure wanted a piece of Gloster at Kelley's -bookmaker's odds--all the rest of the pencillers still held Gloster at 1 -to 2 on--and the bookmaker took in thousands of dollars on the horse. -When they were still whacking him with Gloster bets he became somewhat -nervous and sent his agent to Kelley again for reassurance. Kelley told -the agent again that Gloster wasn't going to win. - -"'He's taking in billions on Gloster,' said the agent to Kelley. - -"'Let him handle the whole mint on the nag,' replied Kelley. 'Gloster -will just about get the place--maybe.' - -"In the meantime the judges, who occasionally made a bluff at getting -haughty and virtuous, got next to the big odds that one -bookmaker--Kelley's bookmaker--was offering against Gloster, and, -naturally enough, they became suspicious. Five minutes before the horses -were due to go to the post, therefore, they called Kelley into the stand -and asked him squarely if there was anything doing by which Gloster was -going to get beat. - -"'If Gloster doesn't win this race,' replied Kelley, 'you can rule me -off for life.' - -"Kelley had put every man, woman, child and dog that he knew at the -track on to the fact that he was going to win by a Philadelphia block on -Gloster, and the bookmaker who had turned him down when he was on the -flat of his back with a broken stilt in the middle of winter got the -play of all of them. Dollar bets and $1,000 bets all looked alike to the -bookmaker. He took all the money that came along without rubbing. He -thought he had a corked-up good thing. - -"When the bugle sounded and the horses emerged from the paddock, the -bookmaker, with his glasses in his hand, was leaning against the rail, -and he looked up with a grin to catch Kelley's eye as the jockey rode by -on Gloster. He caught Kelley's eye, but there was no responsive grin. -There was, instead, a dirty sneer on Kelley's drawn, pale mug, and, as -he caught sight of the leering bookie he drew Gloster up for just an -instant and spat viciously in the direction of the man who had treated -him with such ingratitude. - -"The bookmaker saw in that instant that he was ditched. His face went -white, and he clutched the rail, and he was still digging his -fingernails into the rail when, a few minutes later, the victorious -Gloster, who had won by about half a furlong, was led into the paddock, -with Kelley walking alongside of him. When that bookie got through -paying off the Gloster bets he had taken in he was out of business, and -when the story of how it all came about leaked out, there wasn't a man -in the game that didn't say that the bookie got all that was coming to -him." - - - - -THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS. - - -_And the Evaporation of His Resolution to Have Nothing to Do With Them._ - -"Touts," said Busyday, oracularly, to his companion on a train bound for -the Bay on Suburban day, "are the derned nuisances of the racing game. -You want to watch out for them. If by chance you should get separated -from me in the crowd, don't you let any of the sharp-eyed, soft-voiced -ducks talk you into playing this or that one. Just you stick to those -selections I wrote out for you on that piece of paper. They're the -logical winners. A friend of mine, whose brother is a bookmaker, -handicapped 'em for me, and I'm going to play every one of 'em myself. -That's the only way to win; stick to your selections, and don't let -yourself be touted. The man who listens to touts smokes a pipe. -Understand?" - -"Uh, huh," replied Busyday's friend, who was from Busyday's native town -out West. He had never seen a horse race in his life, whereas Busyday -was an old-timer and learned at the game, having seen three Handicaps -and two Suburbans ran. - -"They make kind of a lukewarm effort to keep the touts off the tracks," -went on Busyday, disparagingly; "but the touts are too smooth for 'em, -and they're always around, looking for good things like you, old man. -All you've got to do is just to flout 'em from the jump, as soon as they -edge up to you, and they'll shoo-fly instantly, rather than take chances -on being spotted by the Pinkerton people. Tell 'em to go to the devil, -that's all." - -"Uh, huh," answered Busyday's friend and guest, once more. - -It came to pass that Busyday and his visiting townsman were separated -before they had got off the train. The car was jammed, and in the -confusion of getting off they made their exits by different doors. -Busyday frantically yelled out his friend's name as soon as he found -himself alone on the platform, but, of course, he got no reply. His -friend was engulfed in the crowd. - -"I s'pose I ought to have held hold of his hand, like a fellow does when -he takes his sister's kids out for a walk," he reflected. "This is -blasted mean luck from the go-off. The touts'll get hold of him now, -sure as shootin', and they'll strip him. Good thing he's got his ticket -back to the little old slab of a town where we used to play shinny -together." - -Busyday roamed around the grand-stand and the betting ring for ten -minutes before the slates went up for the first race, trying to catch -sight of his friend, but it was no use. His townsman wasn't visible -anywhere. Then a sudden swirling and eddying in the betting ring told -him that the prices were up for the first race. - -"I'll have to pass the old boy up until I get this bet down," said -Busyday to himself, pulling out of his pocket the slip of paper that the -handicapper had given him the evening before. "Let's see, what one of -'em have I got to win this? Oh, yes; Peaceful--good name, but it doesn't -sound as if a horse with a name like that could run much. I'd rather -have a horse called Lightning Express, or Cyclone, or Helen Blazes, or -something like that, run for my money. S'pose, though, this handicapping -chap knows what he is doing, and so I'll just put my first ten on -Peaceful to win. Hey? How's that?" - -There was a soft, persuasive buzz right in Busyday's ear. - -"D'ye notice all the suckers breakin' their necks t' land on that -Peaceful dead one?" were the words that formed the buzz. - -Busyday jerked his head around suddenly, and he found within four inches -of his ear the countenance of a young-old man with red hair, a freckled -skin, and a pale-blue, shifty eye. - -"Dead one?" echoed Busyday, the red-haired, young-old man smiling -amiably in his face. - -"Libster," said he of the pale-blue, shifty eye, looking entirely -disinterested. "Out-and-out libster. Crab. Run about a dozen sprints, -and still a merry maiden. And look at the chancts th' mutt's had to win! -Leads th' percession into th' stretch every whirl, and then chucks it. A -proper dog, Cap. That's on the dead. Worst quitter on th' grounds." - -"Um," said Busyday, stroking his chin and wondering why his handicapper -had picked Peaceful. - -"I got th' baby," buzzed the freckle-faced, young-old man, after a -silence. - -"Hey?" asked Busyday. - -"For a pipe," said the shifty-eyed one. "Say, I don't git out o' me -Waldorf bunk at 3 o'clock every mornin' for me health." - -"Is that so?" inquired Busyday, just for the sake of saying something. - -"Not on yer dinner pail," said the aged youth with the shifty eye. "I -light out fer th' tracks t' watch 'em at their early mornin' works. I'm -a railbird, all right, but I know where th' dough is. I seen this baby -that I'm tellin' you about do the five-eighths in a minute flat th' -other mornin', an' if he ain't a moral fer this, here's my lid an' you -can eat it," whereupon the shifty-eyed one removed his 50-cent straw hat -and offered it to Busyday. - -"What's the name of this wonder?" inquired Busyday, trying to work up a -superior smile. - -The aged youth bent over, placed his mouth within a quarter of an inch -of Busyday's ear, and whispered: - -"Stuart. He'll walk." - -"Oh, well, then, I'll waste a ten-spot on Stuart," said Busyday, trying -to say it languidly, as if he didn't take much stock in himself or -anybody else. Then he plunged into the vortex around one of the -bookmakers' elevated chairs, got his feet trod upon, his hat jammed down -over his eyes, and his ribs treated to an all-hands elbow massage, and -finally succeeded in passing up his ten-dollar bill on Stuart to win. - -"Stuart, thirty-five to ten," droned the bookmaker to the sheet-writer, -and then Busyday found himself beaten to the outskirts of the crowd. - -"You on?" he heard in his ear, and, turning, he saw the freckle-faced -one smiling up at him. - -"Yep--dropped ten on it," replied Busyday. "Kind o' liked Stuart myself -when I saw him entered." - -Then Busyday steered for the lawn to see the finish of the race. He was -trying to get some sense out of the list of owners' colors on his -program, so as to be able to distinguish his horse as they raced under -the wire, when a calm man next to him, with a pair of field-glasses to -his eyes, mumbled: - -"They're off!" - -There was a big shout all around. - -"Lady Uncas out in front," said the calm man coolly. "She'll curl up. -She seems to be staying, though, at that. Nope, she's collared. Stuart's -nailed her. He walks," and the calm man put down his glasses as the -horses galloped past the sixteenth pole. - -Stuart came in all alone, and Peaceful was back in the ruck. - -"I had my suspicions about that Stuart horse right along," said Busyday -to himself. He had never seen the horse's name until the evening before. -"Don't know why, but I kind o' liked him. Probably because the Stuart -were a pretty swift bunch," and he chuckled to himself over his humor as -he made his way to the bookmaker's line to cash. - -"Somethin' easy--like findin' it, hey?" he heard buzzed into his ear as -soon as he put his foot into the betting ring, and there was the -old-faced young man, grinning complaisantly up at him. - -Busyday handed to the shifty-eyed one, who stuck to him right up to the -paying-off line, buzzing learnedly all the time about the race just ran, -a $10 bill out of his $35 winning. - -"Th' next," said the red-haired wiseacre of the rail when Busyday had -fought himself away from the cashing crowd, "is what you might call a -one-hoss race. A one-hoss race, right." - -"Lambent, of course?" said Busyday, looking at his piece of paper with -the selections on it. Lambent was his handicapper's selection. - -The freckle-faced screwed the whole left side of his face up into one -prodigious wink. - -"Not this cage," said he. "Try the next. Lambent?" and he put one large, -white, freckled hand over his face, as if to hide his confusion, and -grinned through his fingers. - -"Well, Lambent figures to win, doesn't she?" asked Busyday weakly. - -"Who, Lambent?" and the shifty-eyed smiled some more. "I'm goin' t' -match her in a sweepstakes against me old aunt, and back me aunt off th' -boards fer a hog-killin'. There's on'y one in this. Skinch. You can tap -on it." - -"Which one?" asked Busyday in a wabbly tone. - -Again the aged youth bent over until his mouth was within a quarter of -an inch of Busyday's ear. - -"Swiftmas," he replied. "Been saved up for a good thing, right. If he -don't buck-jump in, here's me lid," and once more he extended his -half-dollar straw hat for Busyday's mastication. - -"Well," said Busyday to himself between his teeth as he made his way -through the jostling crowd to one of the bookmakers' stands, "I guess -I'm a weak and erring brother, all right, but danged if I don't play -that redhead once more, anyhow," and he got $40 for his $20 on Swiftmas -to win. Swiftmas won by a head. - -"They were too foxy t' win too far off," Busyday was informed by means -of a buzz in his ear, by this time well known, as he was elbowing his -way again to the cashing line. "Boy drew it fine so's not t' spoil th' -price next time out." - -The freckle-faced old youth got $15 out of Busyday's $40 winning, and -then he looked Busyday over carefully and inquired: - -"How about me?" - -"You'll do," replied Busyday, candidly. "Name the next." - -"His Nibs, the Prince of Melbourne," whispered the freckle-faced, and -Busyday glanced at his handicapper's selections. It was the Prince of -Melbourne there, too. - -"He can't lose," said the shifty-eyed. "Just a pleasant airing fer him. -Nothin' to it. W'en you put yer coin down, you might as well stay right -here so's t' be foist in line. Put a bunch on." - -"I've got some of their money," mused Busyday, "and I won't pass it all -back to 'em in a lump." - -He got $75 to $30 on Prince of Melbourne to win, bought three cigars for -a dollar and a pint of wine, and then suddenly wondered where his -townsman was. - -"No use trying to look him up, though," he reflected, "in this jam of -Indians. Poor old chap, I s'pose he's smashed flatter'n a pancake by -this time, without the price of a bottle of pop," and he reproached -himself a good deal for not having hung on to his guest when they left -the train. He was aroused from his reflections by the yowl, "They're -off!" and by the time he got out to the lawn the horses were coming down -the stretch. - -"His Princelets, with his mouth wide open," he heard the crowd yell, and -then his chest expanded, and he muttered to himself: "I always did have -a soft spot for that derned old plug!" For the moment he forgot that the -Prince of Melbourne happened to be a two-year-old. - -"Oh, w'en I pick up a good one as I go along I like t' put me fren's -on," buzzed the freckle-faced in his ear, as he made for the paying-off -line. Notwithstanding the fact that the Prince of Melbourne's name -appeared on his handicapper's list of selections, Busyday very -cheerfully gave up one-third, or $25 of his winnings, on the -two-year-old to the red-haired youth. The latter soaked the bills away -in his white-and-brown-striped trousers, and then he remarked, in an -offhand sort of way: - -"Well, this is where you pass me up, ain'd it, so?" - -"Well," said Busyday, "I came down to play Banastar, and I think I'll -have to stay with that hunch, if you're agreeable." - -"Cert'nly," said the shifty-eyed, with an expression more of sorrow than -of anger on his lined face. "Go ahead. Help yourself. Have all th' fun -that's comin' t' you." - -"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Busyday. "Ain't Banastar the play?" - -"And he looks like a duck with a purty good top-knot on him, at that," -said the freckle-faced, dreamily, paying no attention to Busyday's -question, and apparently addressing empty air. - -"What's the matter with Banastar?" repeated Busyday. - -"I'm not queerin' yer fun, Cap," went on the shifty-eyed. "You come down -wit' th' Banastar bug in yer nut, like all the rest, and I'm not -a-switchin' you." - -"Look a-here," said Busyday, "what the dickens are you giving us, -anyhow? Don't you think Banastar'll win the Suburban?" - -"Cap," said the aged youth, spitting dryly and for the first time -looking Busyday squarely in the eye, "there's a mare in this bunch -that'll run things around all the Banastars from here to Hoboken an' -back. She kin fall down, an' win. She kin take naps between poles an' -walk. She's a piperino, if ever one was pushed up fer geezers to nibble -at. But I'm not a-switchin' you, un'stand?" - -"Mare, hey?" said Busyday, looking over his program. "You mean that -Imp?" - -"Ain't it?" said the freckle-faced. "Well, I guess yah. She win th' last -time out with' 126 up, eatin' peanuts down th' stretch, from a bunch -purty near as good as this. Banastar? Cap, I ain't no hog, an' you've -passed along what coin was a-comin' to me. I'll lay you 2 t' 1 Banastar -won't git one, two, t'ree." - -"Dog-goned if I know what to do," mused Busyday. "Here I've been -shouting Banastar ever since the Handicap, and I promised my wife -faithfully that I'd play Banastar. Say," addressing the freckle-faced, -who stood by sorrowfully regarding him, "is this Imp fast enough, that's -what I want to know? Won't Banastar beat her on speed?" - -The aged youth held up one thumb vertically and indicated with the -forefinger of his other hand. - -"De Empire State Express," said he. - -Then he held up his other thumb. - -"Steam roller," said he. "Take yer pick." - -Busyday made a sudden dive for a bookmaker's line. - -"Which I may remark, in strict confidence," he said to himself as he -tugged at his wad and counted out five twenty-dollar bills, "that there -may be softer marks between here and High Bridge than myself; but, -confound that freckle-faced tout's red head, I'm just a-going to slide -along with him and play Imp at that, Banastar or no Banastar!" and ten -seconds later the bookmaker was taking Busyday's five twenties and -droning out, "Six hundred to $100 on Imp to win." - -Busyday was lighting the last of his three-for-fifty cigars over in a -corner of the betting ring when the well-known buzz reached his ears -again. - -"On?" inquired the buzz. "Good and hard?" - -"Yep," said Busyday. "Hundred." - -Imp's win is turf history. As Busyday handed the tout two crisp $100 -bills the freckle-faced remarked: - -"An' you ain't th' on'y collect I make on this, Cap. I got a hayseed on -th' mare fer $300, an' I had him on all th' rest o' them good things, at -that." - -"Well, so long, Red," said Busyday. "I'm getting back to town to dinner. -Next time I come down I'll give you my trade if I see you around." - -Then Busyday went up into the stand to take a final look around for his -townsman. He didn't see him, and he started for the gate. Just as he got -outside the gate he saw his fellow townsman and guest stepping into a -hack. His fellow townsman and guest looked pretty jaunty, but Busyday -didn't notice it. - -"Hey, there, old man," he called after his friend, and the latter looked -around. - -"Oh, here you are," said Busyday's friend, with an expensive cigar stuck -at an angle of forty-five degrees in one corner of his mouth. "Trimmed?" - -"Nope," said Busyday. "I landed on a few little good things that -occurred to me after I got to looking at the program, and I win 'bout a -thousand. Poor old jay, I suppose they put you out o' business, eh?" - -"Not by a long sight!" said his friend. "I ran into a freckle-faced, -red-headed duck as soon as I got in the grounds. I lost that piece o' -paper you gave me with the whadyoucallem--selections--on it, and so I -played what this red-headed chap told me to. Copped out 'bout $2800, -altogether. Had $300 on Imp to win the big race." - -Then Busyday knew to whom the freckle-faced had referred when he spoke -of a hayseed. - - - - -A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH. - - -_Narrative of the Red-Haired, Freckle-Faced Tout Who Had a Good Thing up - His Sleeve._ - -When the first line of betting on the fifth race at Gravesend was -chalked up shortly after 4 o'clock in the Harlem street poolroom on -Wednesday afternoon last, the red-haired, freckle-faced tout gave one -swift glance at the figures, clutched his armful of "dope" books and -sped over to a corner of the room where two flashy, well-fed looking -chaps sat tilted back in chairs, smoking and unconcernedly waiting for -the running of a race at Latonia in which they had a good thing. - -"Here's the soft spot o' your life," said the red-haired, freckle-faced -tout, pulling a chair up alongside the two unconcerned-looking chaps. -"This'll be like pullin' th' milk teeth out o' a fox terrier's face. -This is a real dill pickle. Are you two comin' out into th' garden, -Maud, or are you goin' t' let this one get away from you." - -"Back t' your dray," said one of the unconcerned-looking chaps. "Another -stiff, hey? T' your dray!" - -The red-haired, freckle-faced tout pulled his chair closer to them. - -"But this is th' hand-made, copper-coiled mash," said he, earnestly. -"It's on'y onct in a while that you get them people that lays th' -figures out o' line like they are on this one. This is th' mellow goods. -Just send a few aces along on it, that's all. It's 100 to 1." - -"Now you stawp, Red!" said the other unconcerned-looking man. "You -stawp, you rude thing!" - -"He'll come home on th' bit," said "Red." "Lemme show you where he's -been landin', an' you can see if he's any 100 t' 1 toss. Lemme pass you -th' line, an' if you don't take none o' it, then I'm on a cattle boat by -way o' Glasgow," and the red-haired, freckle-faced tout opened up one of -his dope books and started to show the pair of flashy looking chaps -where Rolling Boer had finished in his previous races. - -"Go take a sail with yourself, Red," put in one of the easy-looking -chaps. "Nothin' doin'. Rolling Boer, hey? Not with Fenian bonds, good -when Ireland's free. Rolling Boer, you say, Red? When did they get that -one out o' the cavalry? Rolling Boer, 'll still be jogging down the -stretch when you're in bed, Reddy. Say, it's a wonder you don't dig up a -live one 'casionally. Stop trekkin. Winter'll be coming on soon, and -you'll be nix the price of a doss. Rolling Boer! To the woods!" - -The red-haired tout mopped his face with a frayed blue polka-dotted -handkerchief. - -"Sey, what's half a ten spot to you people?" he said in a tone of -entreaty. "The one you're waitin' f'r'll be 'bout 1 to 4 on, an' this is -sunshine money, at 100 to 1. You people know how they stan' them 1 to 4 -things on their heads out in Latonia. Say, take me spiel on this, won't -you, f'r a fi'muth? Look where he got off th' last time out, an' where -he finished! If you can't see him t' win, take th' 20 to 1 third. It'll -be a shame t' spen' t' money--but take it won't you?" - -The two complaisant-looking chaps turned away from the red-haired tout -and began a conversation between themselves. The tout looked very warm, -and an expression of despair crossed his weazened features. He mopped -his face again with his blue polka-dotted handkerchief and slunk away. -He sided up to one of the board-markers and said, out of the corner of -his mouth: - -"Say, get an ace down on Rolling Boer f'r me, will you? It's a skinch." - -The board-marker grinned. - -"I'm all out, Red," he replied. "Pushed me last ace up on the last -whizz, an' didn't get a whistle f'r it." - -"This super's good f'r a deuce in any hock shop--I've had it in f'r -three," went on the red-haired tout, appealingly, pulling out an old -silver time-piece and trying to pass it to the board-marker. "Lemme have -a buck on it, an' I'll pass you back five f'r it after th' ring's around -Rolling Boer. How's that?" - -"I'm all t' th' gruel, didn't I tell you?" replied the man with the -chalk, with some asperity. "I got a ticker o' me own. You're puffin' -secon's, Red. Rolling Boer couldn't beat me little sister skippin' -rope." - -The red-haired tout walked away with an expression of deep misery on his -face. - -"They think they are wise t' th' ponies, hey?" he muttered. "It's bean -bag they ought t' be playin'!" - -He dug a quarter, two dimes and a nickel out of his change pocket and -looked at the coins dismally. - -"It's me feed coin," he mumbled, "but maybe I can get some piker t' go -along with f'r another four bits." - -He walked over to a shabby-looking chap who was slouching around with -his hands in his pockets. - -"Say, you got a bundle on you?" the red-haired tout inquired of the -shabby-looking man. - -The shabby-looking man dug a fifty-cent piece out of his left-hand -waistcoat pocket. - -"That's all I was huntin' f'r," said the tout, displaying his coins. -"Let's put th' two pieces t'gether an' nail 'em f'r $50 each." - -"On what?" inquired the shabby-looking man without any apparent interest -whatsoever. - -"On a pipe," said the red-haired tout. "Rolling Boer. He'll make 'em -dizzy and stroll in with his head a-swingin' an' his tail a-swishin'. Do -you come in with me f'r the half?" - -The shabby-looking man put his fifty-cent piece back in his left-hand -waistcoat pocket. - -"You'll be fallin' out o' bed in a minute, Red," said the shabby-looking -man. "Not for me. I need the beers--ten of 'em." - -"Yes, you're a sport right, I think nix," said the red-haired tout, -walking gloomily away. "You're a dead game, with the copper on." - -His eagle eye caught sight of a fat man with some three parts of a jag -sitting at the "dope" table, alternately puffing at a ravelled cigar and -nodding sleepily. This jagged man had on one side of his head a straw -hat that looked as if it had been rained on and then sat on. The -red-haired tout went over to him. - -"Say, your lid's on the pork all right, ain't it?" he said amiably to -the jagged man. "Been scrappin' with a cable-car?" - -"Fade away--fade away," said the jagged man, sleepily. "Do a -disappearing stunt." - -"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," said the red-haired tout, edging -over confidentially to the jagged man. "I'll pass you this cage o' -mine--on'y bought it three days ago, and coughed a two-spot f'r it--f'r -that one o' yours an' half a buck t' boot," and the red-haired tout -removed the pretty fair-looking straw hat he was wearing and pushed it -over to the jagged man. The jagged man took his ravelled cigar from his -mouth and grinned broadly. - -"Say," he said to the red-haired tout, "you gimme th' -tizzy-wizzy--hones' yo do. Me wear a No. 2 lid? Say, do your fadin' -stunt--fade away." - -The tout picked up his hat, put it on, and walked away. - -"Now they've hammered Rolling Boer down to 80 to 1, hey?" he said, -looking up at the second line of betting. "B'jee, I'd climb a porch t' -yank out a couple t' put on that one." - -He was disconsolately biting his nails and looking around to see if -there was any way out for him before the bunch of two-year-olds at -Gravesend went to the post. - -"They're at the pump at Gravesend!" announced the board-marker. - -Just as the announcement was made, a little man with a straw-colored -mustache and a red, white and blue band around his straw hat mounted the -stairs, passed the spotter sitting at the door with a nod, lit a fresh -cigarette, and walked up behind the red-haired tout. - -"Thay, Red," he said, "what'th good in thith?" - -The red-haired tout wheeled like a man who's been touched on the -shoulder by a deputy sheriff. - -"You haven't got a minute!" he said, rapidly, to the little man with the -straw-colored mustache. "It's th' baby o' th' year! Gimme three -aces--two f'r you, an' one f'r me, an' in four minutes from date you'll -be lookin' over th' sides of a balloon, chucking off ballast made out o' -money." - -The lisping little man with the straw-colored mustache smiled -indulgently and pulled out a roll, from which he stripped a five-dollar -note. - -"That'th the thmalletht I've got, Red," he said, handing over the note -to the tout. "Thay"---- - -He chopped off the question, however, for the tout made two bounds for -the money-taker's window. - -"Three on Rolling Boer, T. L. M.!" he shouted, giving the initials of -the little man with the straw-colored mustache. "Th' other two on th' -same, just plain R-e-d, Red, and both bets straight." - -The man behind the desk grinned. - -"High-ball mazuma for the house, Red," he said, twisting his mustache. -"That one ain't got a look-in." - -The tout was back at the side of the little man with the straw-colored -mustache who believed in him just as the operator sung out: "Off at -Gravesend!" - -"Thay, Red," said the tout's little man, "which one of 'em did you put -thothe five"---- - -"Rolling Boer at the quarter by a head!" sang out the operator. - -"On that one!" said the red-haired tout, giving his thigh a whack with -his bundle of "dope" books. "It's a pleasant outing for that one! -He'll"---- - -"Rolling Boer in the stretch by a nose!" called out the operator. - -"Thay, he'll curl up, won't he, Red?" said the little man at the tout's -side, nervously. "Did you play him straight or one, two, three"---- - -"Rolling Boer wins by a nose!" shouted the operator. - -It was a bit too much for the red-haired tout. He didn't have any words -handy. So he slammed his "dope" books down on a chair, pitched forward, -turned a cart wheel, and then walked around the room on his hands with -his coat hanging over his head, and a grin of indescribable happiness -all over his freckled features. The little man with the straw-colored -mustache who had believed in Red followed the tout about the room. - -"Thay, what do we win, Red?" he asked. "What prithe wath that horth?" - -"You yank out $240, an' mine's $160," said the red-haired tout, getting -on his feet again. - -"Thay, Red, you're all right," said the red-haired tout's benefactor, -pumping him by both hands. - -The two flashy-looking chaps who had first been tackled by the tout on -the Rolling Boer proposition now walked up behind him with long faces. - -"Say, Red, why didn't you pitch that at us a little stronger, hey?" - -"Get t'ell away from me, you pikers!" was the red-haired tout's reply. - - - - -HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES." - - - _Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is Liable to - Occasionally Slip a Cog._ - -"Yes, siree," said the man with the ravelled cigar and the granulated -eyelids who swung precariously from a strap in a car of a returning -Sheepshead Bay train the other evening, "it certainly is funny about -these here hunches that women have, ain't it?" - -"No," said the two seated men he was addressing. - -"Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into their heads," went -on the man with the ravelled cigar, ignoring the lack of encouragement -extended to him. "And when it comes to picking out good things on a -race-track, picking 'em out just on hunch, ain't they wonders, hey?" - -"Nope," said the two men at whom he was directing his conversation. - -"It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band how they can stick a -pin in a program with their eyes shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that -wins a-blinking," continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing -two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar. "Their system -beats the dope and the handicapping all to shucks, don't it?" - -"Nix," replied the two men in the seat. - -"Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch as I did out at -Morris Park 'bout six or seven years ago," went on the man with the -eccentric cigar. "Told my wife one night during the fall meeting at the -park that I was going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I -knew had told me about a good thing that was going to happen--he'd got -it from a trainer to whom he'd sold a pair of shoes--and I was going -after some of it. - -"'Theophilus Nextdoor,' says she to me, 'how dare you deliberately tell -me that you are going to gamble your money away, when I haven't a rag to -my back and the coal not yet put in!' - -"'Can't help it, Clarissa,' says I, 'I've just naturally got to invest -$50 on this good thing. I know it ain't right, but I've got to do it, -anyhow.' - -"Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I tried to square it up -with her the next morning, and at the breakfast table I read her the -names of the horses that were going to run in the race in which I had -the good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came to the name of a -horse called Jodan, she dropped her coffee cup with a clatter and stared -at me. - -"'Jodan,' said she. Isn't that short for Joseph Daniel?' - -"'Yes'm, I guess so,' I said, not knowing whether it was or not, but -anxious to stroke her the right way. - -"'Is that the horse you are going to invest your money on?' she asked -me, breathlessly. - -"'No, it's another one,' said I. - -"'Well, you might just as well stay home, then,' said she, positively. -'You'll lose your money. Jodan will win. I dreamt all night last night -of my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a -little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph Daniel, as it -must be, then Jodan will win.' - -"'But that's plain superstition, and races ain't won that way,' I said -to her. - -"'I don't care one bit, so I don't,' she said to me. 'You will simply be -throwing your money away, and I need so many things, if you invest it on -any other horse than Jodan.' - -"I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told me that her lost -Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had once won a full-rigged ship race from -Shanghai to Boston, and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than -one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy -couldn't lose. I told her that, while I didn't know anything about this -Jodan horse, I didn't think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk -friend had given me, but she wouldn't listen to me. The last thing she -said to me before I left the house was: - -"'If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, disgraceful gambler, you -play Jodan. You'll be sorry if you don't.' - -"Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads, women, ain't they?" - -"No," said the two men in the seat near the strap-clutching man with the -ravelled cigar. - -"Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife's queer hunch on that -Jodan horse on my way out to the track, and the more I thought about it -the weaker I became on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given -me. - -"'Women have got something away ahead of sense or reason,' says I to -myself on the train on the way out, 'and I sure would feel almighty -cheap and no-account if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle -Joseph Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would. I've got a -good mind to put a little money on that Jodan horse anyhow, derned if I -haven't.' - -"I was still undecided about it when I got out to the track. That's the -edge the bookmakers have got, ain't it--the people that have real good -things and then wabble when it comes to sticking to them?" - -"Nope," said the two men in the seat. - -"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that race in which I had -the good thing, blamed if Jodan wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good -thing horse was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking at -the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, and I had the -dingedest time making up my mind what I was going to do that you ever -heard of in your life. - -"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that Jodan horse wins at -100 to 1 without my playing him, I'll never hear the last of it as -long's I'm on top of the ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and -night, that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I didn't have -enough gumption to take it. And if the good thing my shoe-clerk friend -gave me wins at 5 to 1, I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a -chance to pick up $250 if I don't play it.' - -"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more room to make up my -mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly and dived into the betting ring. - -"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little gamble myself, -and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm going to play that good thing my -shoe-clerk friend gave me, and nothing else.' - -"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a $250 to $50 ticket on -my good thing." - -Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily and looked -genuinely distressed. - -"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause, "how these -things happen?" - -The two men in the seat to whom he had been addressing his conversation -exhibited a certain suppressed interest as to the outcome. - -"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to 1?" said one of them -finally, with a grin that clearly indicated his belief that he had the -result discounted. - -The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit the same for the -eighteenth time. - -"Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in!" he said, puffing away -without removing his eyes from the match. "My good thing spread-eagled -'em from the jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was last. -It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain't it?" - -"Blamed if it ain't," said one of the men in the seat. - -"I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife that night and told -her it was a fair replica of her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and -she told me that she just wouldn't believe that Jodan hadn't won until -she saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She caved, though, -when I uncovered the $250 and told her that she couldn't get that -cerise-silk-lined tailor-made dress quick enough to suit me, and she -said that she might have known that no horse named after her Uncle -Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck than to go and get -himself lost at sea, could win anything. - -"Well, a month or so after that I went down to Washington on a little -matter of business, and took my wife along with me. There was horse -racing going on near Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph, -across the Potomac in Virginia. - -"'Clarissa,' said I to my wife one morning, after I'd got all through -with my business in Washington and was ready to come back to New York, -'I think we'd better stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph. -A man that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave me a good -thing last night, and I think I ought to see to it. It's going to come -off to-day.' - -"Of course she told me again that I was going to rack and ruin, and -never would make anything of myself, but I told her that I just -naturally had to go over to St. Asaph that day and play Jodan. - -"'Jodan!' she almost screamed at me. 'Theophilus Nextdoor, how can you -have the hardihood to stand there and tell me that you are going to -waste your money on that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in -need of new fall outfits?' - -"I told her that I'd see to the fall outfits, but that I sure couldn't -get away from that Jodan good thing. - -"'Why,' I said, don't you remember how wild you were about this same -Jodan horse only a little more than a month ago?' - -"'I just don't care one bit if I was,' she replied. 'I know and you know -that any horse named after my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't -have any more luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win, -and I should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand there and -tell me to my face,' etc., etc. - -"Well, she wouldn't go along with me to the track over at St. Asaph -across the Potomac, and so I went alone. The man I had met in the -shooting gallery had told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I -couldn't fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found that my -wife was so opposed to Jodan's chances was more than ever determined to -play him, for I'd learned something about the nature of the feminine -hunch, don't you see? - -"It like to've carried me off my feet when I saw the price on the -blackboards against Jodan. Jodan was quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite -was at 3 to 5 on, and all of 'em, the whole fourteen in the race, were -at shorter prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had intended -playing on Jodan, thinking that he'd be about 10 to 1 or something like -that, and I just thought and thought and thought over the thing. - -"'By jimminy!' said I finally, after standing over in a corner alone for -a while, thinking, 'my wife may be right about Jodan, and all that, but -I came over here to play Jodan, and I'm going to play him or just bust, -win or lose!' - -"Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to $10 ticket on Jodan to -win. 'Take that hay out of your hair, pal,' the bookmaker said to me -when I passed my money over--and went up to the stand to see the race, -thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take a chance on -playing against the feminine hunch. - -"Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out of the clouds -in the stretch, and won the derned old race on the wire by a nose from -the favorite, and when I hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my -wife the way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was sure a -caution. - -"The feminine hunch," concluded the man with the ravelled cigar and the -granulated eyelids, "is all right when you copper it, but it won't do to -play it open. Am I right?" - -"No," said the two men in the seat, and then the rush to get off the -train began. - - - - -A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT. - - -_He Was Thought to Be a No-Account Cripple, but He Proved Himself to Be - "All Horse" When Called Upon._ - -"A friend of mine who came here from Chicago for the Bennings meeting -was telling me about that Jim McCleevy mule," said an old-time owner of -thoroughbreds who is wintering a string of jumpers and breaking a bunch -of yearlings out at the Bennings track. "That makes a queer story, and -there are some strange things connected with the thoroughbred game, at -that. This McCleevy horse wasn't worth a bag of moist peanuts at the -beginning of the present racing season. He couldn't beat a fat man. He -had never been in the money. He was a legitimate thousand-to-one shot in -any company. He was the candidate for the shafts of a brick cart, when -by some odd chance he passed into the possession of a nice young woman -who was going to school somewhere in the State of Iowa. The girl's uncle -was mixed up some way or another with the turf, and he bought the -McCleevy plug for a joke, paying a few dollars for him. In a spirit of -fun he wrote to his niece that he had bought Jim McCleevy in her name, -and that the horse belonged to her and would be run in her interest. The -young woman didn't know the difference between a race-horse and a -chatelaine bag. She was an orphan, and struggling to get an education -for herself. Her ambition was to take a course at a woman's college, -but, up to the time of this incident, which lasted throughout the spring -and summer, her hope of putting this ambition over the plate was pretty -shadowy, and it looked like it was up to her to get a job teaching a -country school in order to support herself. But she wrote to her uncle -that she accepted the gift of the no-account racer with gratitude, and -inquired if the horse could not trot right fast, for, if so, she might -be able to dispose of him to some well-to-do farmer in her neighborhood. - -"Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good trainer, who saw at -once that the horse had been underestimated, that he had been badly -handled, and that it would be worth the effort to try to make something -of him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the skate and fixing -him up, and then he sent him out one morning with a lummux of a stable -boy on his back and put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in -1:44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days later he was -slapped into a selling race at a mile and a sixteenth, with light -weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and all kinds of a price, for there -were some good ones in the race, which was at the Harlem track, in -Chicago. The girl's uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring on the -mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home on the bit. That was the -beginning of McCleevy. He was put into a couple of races a week at a -mile and more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the entire -racing season at Chicago, and he won race after race, no matter how they -piled the weight penalties up on him. When he didn't win he broke into -the money, and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that -almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses that seemed to -outclass him, the uncle of the girl who owned him got some of the money -every time. He parleyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim -McCleevy's first race, and he got it back and a bunch besides every -time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread around Chicago, and a Chicago -newspaper man went down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned -the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she abhorred -gambling--well, she certainly did enjoy the prospect of being enabled to -complete her education. Her uncle deposited between $8000 and $9000 in -her name, the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on Jim -McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and the horse, which -developed quite a bit of real class, still belongs to her. - -"Odd, isn't it, that an underestimated race-horse should hop out and not -only give a nice girl that had never so much as has stroked his sleek -neck a chance to fulfil her ambition for an education, but win her a -start in life that'll probably make her one of the eligible girls in the -State of Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that--how a cast-off crab -suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off a mortgage on a -church. - -"That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was racing a few of my -own out there at the time, and saw the affair from the beginning to the -wind-up. I'll have to duck giving the names, for the good man who -profited by the sudden development of the nag he accidentally became -possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates in a pretty -little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Catholic church on the outskirts -of Cincinnati. - -"There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia barns at that time -who was in hard luck from a whole lot of different points of view. I'd -known him on the metropolitan tracks years before, and he had been, in -his day of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever one -chewed a straw. When his health went back on him, however, six or seven -years ago, and he couldn't personally attend to his work--he ran an open -training stable--it was all off with him. The strings that he had been -handling were taken away from him by the owners and put in other hands, -and he went up against the day of adversity with a rattle. He had a few -horses of his own, but these proved worthless, and most of them were -finally taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he -developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the Latonia barns, -four years ago, he could barely move around. How he contrived to exist I -don't know, but I guess the boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in -a while for the old man. The only horse that he had left when I reached -Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year-old gelding that was a -joke. Well, call him Caspar. The mention of Caspar's name made even the -stable-boy grin. Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse -that's pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He was all out of -shape, with a pair of knees on him each as big as your hat; of all the -bunged up, soured, chalky old skates that ever I looked over, this -Caspar gelding was the limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old -and a more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as a -two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was campaigned and -drummed a heap, and when the old man shot him as a four-year-old Caspar -could just walk, and that's all. He was a cripple from every point of -the compass. He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as vicious and -ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never got anywhere near the -money as a four and five-year-old, and he hadn't been raced at all as a -six-year-old, when I first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape. -But the old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn't stand -the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care of as a baby to some -truck driver to be overworked and abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed -him, nursed him and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug -was making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a standing gag -around the Latonia stables. - -"'Wait'll I joggle Caspar under the string by four lengths in the -Kentucky Derby!' a monkey-faced apprentice jockey would say solemnly to -the other kids, and then they'd all holler. - -"Well, about a month after I struck Latonia--it was then getting on -toward midsummer--the old trainer in hard luck who owned Caspar took to -his bunk, not to get up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days -before he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had known for a -number of years. The priest was the pastor of that little brick and -stone church on the outskirts of Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old -trainer had been a good Catholic all his life, and he received the last -offices of his faith. Then he said to the priest: - -"'Father, there's a crabbed, battered-up old dog of mine over at Latonia -that I'll make you a present of. He's worth about one dollar and eighty -cents, but he was a good racing tool when he was young, and I've never -felt like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He's crippled up -some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that he could haul -your buggy around. I wish you'd take him and see that he doesn't get the -worst of it. Caspar was pretty good to me a few times when I was up -against it.' - -"When the old man turns up his toes and dies the kindly priest came over -to the barns to see if he could get any assistance in the way of putting -our old hard-luck pal under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough -for a tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father thought -he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh that had been -presented to him by the old man. So one of the trainers escorted him to -Caspar's stall. - -"'Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?' the priest asked -the trainer, who smiled. - -"'He'd kick a piano-mover's truck into matchwood the first clatter out -of the box,' replied the trainer. - -"'I'll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide what to do -with him,' said the priest, and he went back to Cincinnati and buried -the old trainer. - -"Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy who had just got a -job in one of the barns put a bridle and saddle on old Caspar and took -him for a breeze around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, -and a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work of the -horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the rail where I was standing -that the old devil looked mighty skittish, and was doing a lot of -prancing for a hammered-to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of -other complaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along the -rail. - -"'Get next to that old Caspar!' a lot of the trainers shouted. I looked -over toward the back-stretch, and there was the old skate with his head -down, eating up the ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our -watches just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them on him. -It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn and come a-tearing down -the stretch. If he didn't do that five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of -our watches told the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When -he passed the judges' stand Caspar wanted to go right ahead and work -himself out, but we all hollered at the boy to pull him up. The kid -stopped the old gelding with difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he -had a mouth on him as hard as nails. - -"We got together and talked about Caspar. We were dumbfounded, and -didn't know what to make of that exhibition of speed. Then a trainer who -was, and still is, noted throughout the country as the most skilful -horse-patcher that ever got into the game spoke up. - -"'The old devil's just come back to himself, that's all there is about -it,' he said. 'There are a lot of sprints in his old carcass yet. All he -needs is some patching. If he'll run like this work he's just done in -five-furlong dashes, there's a chance for a slaughter with him. I'm -going to ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can't be -oiled up.' - -"The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning and saw the -priest. - -"'Father,' said he, 'I don't want to get a man of your cloth mixed up -with the racing game, but I think I can do something with that old -racing tool, the old man bequeathed to you.' Then he told the priest -about Caspar's phenomenal work that morning. - -"'Bless me!' said the good man, 'I fear it would not be seemly for me -to'---- - -"'Oh, that end of it'll be all right, father,' said the trainer. 'If I -find I can do anything with the old rogue I'll shoot him into a dash -under my own colors, and you won't be entangled with the thing a little -bit. It won't cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find -that he'll do I'll get my end of it by putting down--er--uh--well. I -won't lose anything anyhow.' - -"Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had the permission to -see what could be done with old Caspar. "'Let me know how you progress,' -the priest had asked him. - -"The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing--and we all vowed -ourselves to secrecy about the matter--went to old Caspar. He was a -nag-patcher, as I say, from the foot-hills, and the way he applied -himself to the reduction of Caspar's inflammations, and to the tonicking -up in general of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And it -came about that early morning's work of Caspar's that had surprised us -so was no flash in the pan at all. The old 'possum had somehow or -another recovered his speed all of a sudden, in addition to a -willingness to run, in spite of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks -Caspar, as fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The -trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so. - -"'Well,' inquired the priest. - -"'He's going to run in a five-furlong dash day after to-morrow,' said -the trainer. 'And he'll walk. It is a copper-riveted cinch--er-uh--I -mean, that is, Caspar will win, you see. It'll be write your own ticket, -too. Any price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the entries, -they'll think it's a joke.' - -"'My son,' said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking in the corner -of his eye, 'gaming is a demoralizing passion. Nevertheless, if this -animal, that came into my possession by such odd chance, possesses -sufficient speed to--er'---- - -"'Oh, that's all right, father,' said the trainer and he bolted for it. - -"As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an all-around chuckle -the following afternoon when the entry sheets were distributed and it -was seen that Caspar was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a -wonder, not a word had got out about the patching job that had been in -progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable work. The stable -lads and railbirds who were on kept their heads closed and saved their -nickels for the day of Caspar's victory. - -"Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently expected -Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling good sprinters--one of them -was so good that his price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was -the rank outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the bookies -giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of them wise enough to rub -when they suspected that there was something doing. The trainers', -railbirds', and stable-boys' money that went in forced the old skate's -price down to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks of -100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati--wired our commissions over. The -old horse favored his left forefoot a trifle in walking around to the -starting pole, and that worried us a bit, for he'd been all right on his -pin the night before. We didn't do any hedging, however, but stood by to -see what was going to happen. All of us, of course, had enough down on -him to finish third to pull us out in case he couldn't get the big end -of the money. - -"It was a romp for Caspar. If I'd tell you the real name of the horse -you'd remember the race well. Caspar, with a perfect incompetent of a -jockey on his back, jumped off in the lead, and was never headed, -winning, pulled double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made -all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn't go. They had to -cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch of Latonia trainers, -including myself, had ever made, and there wasn't a stable boy on the -grounds that didn't have money to cremate for months afterward. - -"After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar up for the -hogslaughtering--he was close on to $15,000 to the good, and he didn't -have me skinned any, at that--hustled over to the priest's house. - -"'Father, the plug made monkeys of 'em,' is the way he announced -Caspar's victory. - -"'Truly?' said the priest. - -"'Monkeys,' repeated the trainer, and then he pulled out a huge new -wallet that he had bought on the way to the priest's residence. He -handed the wallet to the father. 'When I was here, a couple o' days -ago,' said the trainer, looking interestedly out of the window, 'I had -along with me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that -morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed among the poor of -the parish--used to be an acolyte and serve mass myself, a good many -years ago, when I was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you -see, and so I invested it in--er-uh--a little matter of speculation, to -your account, so that it amounts to--er-uh--well, I understood there's a -bit of a mortgage on your church, you know." - -"The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven one thousands, one -five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. The trainer had put the $50 down -on Caspar for the priest--without the father's sanction or countenance, -of course--at 150 to 1. - -"'Well,' went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to save any -questions as to the nature of his speculation, 'it certainly would have -done your heart good if you could have seen that old nag cantering down -the stretch'---- - -"'It did,' said the father, with a smile. 'It is no sin, I conceive, for -even a man of my cloth to watch noble beasts battling for the supremacy, -there being, I take it, nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.' - -"Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to the paddock as sore as -a boil, all of his old infirmities breaking out with renewed strength, -and he was turned out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he -could have known, it might have cheered his declining days to realize -that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice little brick and stone -edifice of worship on the outskirts of Cincinnati." - - - - -A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES. - - - _How the Incredulity of a Lot of Bookmakers Was Turned Into Gasping - Astonishment._ - -A mixed party of turf followers in Washington for the Bennings meeting, -and Washington men about town, had a caf talk the other night about -some things that have happened in former years on running tracks, -legitimate and outlaw, in this neighborhood. - -"When the outlaw track over at Alexander Island, across the Potomac, was -running a few years back," said a New York player, "I came down here -from the wind-up meeting in New York one fall to see if there was -anything in the game in these parts. Then, as now, I was playing, and -not laying. So this Alexander Island happening that I'm going to tell -you about didn't bother me any, bad as it knocked a lot of the books. - -"I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A couple of days before -the game was to be on, while I was in the Pennsylvania avenue -refreshment headquarters of the boys who came here from New York and -other tracks to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as -if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum pipe in the game -of life for a long time previously, walked in and edged around to the -back room where the bookies were figuring on the amount of fresh money -they were about to begin taking out of the national capital. The -tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell about him, and as -soon as I saw him I knew that he followed 'em in some kind of a -hanger-on capacity. He walked over to a table where a number of the -bookmakers were seated. - -"'Say,' said he, leaning his hands on the table and addressing the party -in general, 'you people are sports, ain't you?' - -"The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man were intended to -convey to him the idea that they weren't publicly posing as hot tamales, -anyhow. The man got no reply. - -"'You're going to make books across the way, ain't you?' the -up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an inquiring look all around. - -"'Well, what if we are?' asked one of the bookies, just for the -good-natured sake of breaking the silence. - -"'Well,' said the down-at-the-heel sport, 'I've got a couple o' nags -that have been running for the past six weeks over at the Maryland -outlaw. They haven't been one, two, six in any race over there, and I've -gone broke paying entrance fees for 'em. Maybe they'll be able to do -better over across the way at Alexander. I want to chuck 'em in a couple -over there, anyhow, for luck. But I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland -outlaw people, and I can't get my plugs away from there until the -thirty's paid. Now, you people are sports, and so'm I. What I want to -know is, will you people cough up the thirty for me as a loan, so's I -can get that pair o' mine down here?' - -"The bookies listened to the man with gradually increasing smiles, and -when he finished they gave him the laugh in chorus. - -"'Stop your kidding,' said one of them. 'I can get all the outlaw -racehorses I want for $2 a head.' - -"They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-looking sport, who -appeared to be rather a guileless sort of chap for a man with a short -stable of racers. - -"'They're a good pair, all right, and one of 'em's on edge, too,' he -persisted. 'He worked six furlongs in 1:21 flat a couple of days ago.' - -"The bookies all looked at the man as if he were demented. - -"'One twenty-one flat for a six-furlong route!' exclaimed one of them. -'Why, look here, my friend, you're not smoking hard enough to suppose -you can win down here with a skate that does well when he works six -furlongs in that time, are you? Don't you know that there's a whole -bunch over there now that can go that route in 1:16 or better?' - -"'Well, they've got a chance, anyhow,' said the shabby man. 'Do I get -the $30 to get 'em out o' hock?' - -"The bookies all turned their faces the other way, then, and when the -man with the pair of hocked nags saw that it wasn't any use he dug his -hands into his pockets disconsolately and shambled out. - -"On the day that the meeting opened I saw the shabby man in the betting -ring. I was behind him when he handed one of the bookies a $5 bet on one -of the horses entered in the second race of the day. The bookmaker had -belonged to the party that gave the laugh to the shabby man when he -asked for the $30. - -"'Playing 'em, eh' said the bookie, smiling at the run-down-looking man. -'Couldn't get your pair away from the Maryland outlaw, I suppose.' - -"'Yes, I dug up and got 'em out,' said the man. 'They're here now. The -one you just gave me a ticket on at $100 to $5 belongs to me.' - -"'Oh, is that so?' asked the bookmaker. 'Well, I hope you win. But -you've got a couple of 3 to 5 shots to beat, you know.' - -"'I got a chance,' was all the man said, walking away. - -"I took a look at his horse, the rank outsider in the race, when he went -to the post with the others. He was a six-year-old gelding, and he -looked rank and broken down. A boy that the shabby man had brought along -from the Maryland outlaw was on the horse. It was a mile race, and the -horse was twelfth in a field of twelve. I saw the gloomy-looking, shabby -man in the paddock after the race superintending the rubbing down of his -nag. He seemed to be a whole lot in the dumps. - -"The same horse was entered in the fourth race on the next day's card. -It was a field of crack outlaw performers, and his horse was again the -extreme outsider at 40 to 1. I saw the shabby man walk around putting -down $2 bets here and there on his plug, and I felt sorry for him. The -bookies simply smiled commiseratingly at him. The hard-looking man's -horse finished ninth in a field of nine. - -"'Why don't you cut it out?' asked one of the bookmakers of the man with -the tough appearance. 'You're wasting your stake.' - -"'I got a chance,' was the reply. - -"The man got out his other horse on the following day. He got 50 to 1 on -him for the six-furlong race, and his plug, another rank and no-account -looker, finished last. This was the horse that could work six furlongs -in 1:21. The seedy man's confidence in his pair of skates seemed rather -pathetic to me. - -"After each of his horses had been in about half a dozen races each, -always finishing last, the both of them, and the seedy man putting twos -and fives down on them right along until the bookies felt like not -taking his money, I thought he'd take a tumble and quit the game. But on -the eleventh day of the meeting his 'mile racer,' the six-year-old -gelding, was entered again. He went to the post with a field composed of -the cracks among the outlaws. I happened to be close to the seedy man -when he went around according to his custom, putting down small bets on -his horse. He seemed to be rather better fixed than usual that day, for -he had quite a bundle of fives with him. - -"'What do I get on my horse?' he asked the first bookie he struck. - -"The layer grinned, for he knew there were eight or ten good ones in the -race, three or four of them quoted around even money. - -"'I've got 75 to 1 hung up about him, and all you want of it,' said the -bookie. 'You can write your own ticket, in fact.' - -"'Hundred to 1?' asked the seedy man. - -"'Why, sure,' replied the bookmaker. And he took $5 of the 'owner's' -money at 100 to 1. Just out of curiosity I followed the seedy man in his -tour of the books and I saw him put down $70 in $5 bets on his horse to -win at 100 to 1. It struck me then that there was to be something done -on the seedy man's horse. But I wasn't capping the bookies' game, and -I've got a fad for minding my own business, anyhow, and so I kept off -the race and went into the stand to watch it. I had a hunch to play the -seedy man's horse for a good wad, but I reflected that if I got on and -the good thing went through the bookies 'ud be suspicious about such a -well-known player as I was being in on it, and in the investigation the -seedy man might be cut out, and I didn't want to knock him. But I surely -was a whole lot interested in the way that race was to come out. - -"I took a good look at the seedy man's horse as they filed past the -stand to the post. He looked much better and pretty nippy at that for -such a rancid outsider. The same boy that had ridden the horse in his -first race at Alexander Island and landed him nowhere was up. It was a -mile race. - -"The favorite, a horse called Walcott--4 to 5 on in the betting--got off -on the right foot with a jump and started to tiptoe the field. At the -quarter he led by three lengths, with the second choice, a good outlaw -named Halcyon, beginning to set sail for him. The rest of the field of -thirteen were all strung out, the seedy man's horse 'way in the ruck. -But I kept my glasses on that horse all the way, and I could see that at -the half he was under the devil's own pull. The boy had half a dozen -wraps on him and I felt then, even if the favorite was still a good four -lengths in the lead, and going easily, that there was but one horse in -the race, and that horse the seedy man's. It was a watermelon just -opening, but I suppose I was the only man at the track that happened to -have got next to the game. The judges didn't observe, of course, that -the seedy owner's horse was under twenty wraps, for they looked upon him -as a dead one and paid no attention to his running. - -"At the far turn Walcott, the favorite, was still three or four lengths -in front, Halcyon, the No. 2 choice, having fallen back, beaten out. -They were all in a bunch behind the leader, and all going mighty well at -the head of the stretch. All the time I had my glass focused on the -horse belonging to the shabby man. Walcott seemed to be just galloping, -as I say, at the head of the stretch, when I saw the jockey suddenly sit -down on the shabby man's horse and start to ride a-horseback. It was -pretty, I tell you, to see that old six-year-old hop out after the -galloping favorite and chase him down the stretch. The old horse, -without a bit of whipping or spurring--the boy had simply given him his -head--pumped up like an express engine, and the favorite was taken out -of his gallop and extended, under whip and spur, before they were half -way down the stretch. Passing the stand, Walcott and the seedy man's -horse were nose and nose, the latter gaining at every jump. Walcott was -beaten a head on the wire by the rank outsider in a pretty finish. - -"The stewards had the seedy man in the stand immediately and then called -the boy up. It was an astonishing reversal of form, and action seemed to -be called for. The seedy man's story was straight, however. He had given -his horse a half pint of whisky before the race and he supposed that was -responsible for the win. Doping horses was all right at Alexander, and -so the stewards couldn't kick about that. The stewards touched upon the -ringer question, but the seedy man was such a simple kind of duck, and -his story was so connected about past owners of his two horses and their -life-long careers on the outlaw tracks, that the stewards finally -declared the race all hunk and the bets stood. - -"I saw the shabby man cash his $70 worth of 100 to 1 tickets. He didn't -gloat any over the bookies who had grinned in his teeth before the -race--just collected his money quietly, saying: 'Well, I had a chance, -didn't I?' The bookies were confident that the seedy man had a mighty -valuable pair of ringers on his staff, and that one of them had just won -the mile race in the beautiful, finely-drawn nose finish, but they -couldn't welch on their bets. With his $7000 the seedy man took his -string of two away the next day. - -"I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair Grounds' racing. He -was no longer a seedy man. He was covered with gig lamps, and he had it -in every pocket. Said I to him: - -"'D'ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled off in Washington a -few years ago? There was some quality in that old outlaw of yours that -got the money.' - -"He looked at me with a broad grin. - -"'Outlaw be damned,' said he. 'That horse was one of the cracks out of -the West, on licensed tracks. He was a bit of paint. He had done a mile -in 1:39-1/2 twice--round miles--and he was as game as a wild turkey egg. -Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so, running him as a ringer all -over the country. I was going to open my six-furlonger in Washington -that time, but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack from -Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1:14 was a common canter for -him. The Willie Wises back in the East are not so many at that, are -they?'" - - - - -THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB." - - - _It Referred to Nothing Calculated to Disturb Domesticity, but It Came - Near Wrecking a Happy Home._ - -When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm of patent attorneys -reached the firm's office in West Broadway on Monday morning last his -eye caught sight of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the -latter's desk. As the junior partner was in Washington and wasn't due -back in New York until 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the senior -partner opened the telegram. It was a night message from St. Louis, and -it read as follows: - -"Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don't let anything scare you -out. He's easy. Bub." - -The senior partner scratched his head over this. - -"Conway--Jim Conway," he muttered to himself. "Now, who the dickens can -Jim Conway be, I'd like to know? We've got no client named Jim Conway, -and we're not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr. Conway is -the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this is." - -The senior partner turned the message upside down and every which way, -but the longer he looked at it from various points of view the more -puzzled he became. - -"Mighty belligerent sort of an affair, too," he mused. "Now, what has -this Jim Conway done to my partner that he needs to be punched for it? -And who's this Bub? Bub! That's a deuce of an undignified name for a man -to put on paper. Great Scott! I wonder if my junior partner has gone in -for prize fighting at that Jersey athletic club he belongs to? Perhaps -he's been matched to box some fellow member named Jim Conway, and this -Bub chap down at St. Louis is wiring him encouragement. Nope, that can't -be right, either. My junior partner has been taking on fat at an -alarming rate lately, so that he can't be training for a boxing -contest." - -He took a few turns up and down the office, holding the telegram out at -arm's length. - -"I hope the boy don't get into a serious mix-up with this Jim Conway -fellow, whoever he is," he muttered nervously. "I don't believe the lad -has done anything that he'd be ashamed to have me know about, and yet -it's blamed queer that he should be getting telegraphic despatches from -people by the name of Bub, urging him to employ physical force for the -subjugation of a chap with such a Boweryesque sort of name as Jim -Conway. The question is, what's the boy done to Conway, or Conway to -him, that it should be necessary for one or both of them to resort to -fisticuffs? Now, if the boy were to get mixed up in a brawl with this -Conway there'd be the deuce to pay. It 'ud get into the papers, and it -might have a serious effect upon our tidy and growing practice. I wish -that junior partner of mine were a bit more level-headed. He's too -clever and industrious and promising to have anything whatsoever to do -with folks who travel under such names as Conway and Bub, and I'm going -to give him a mild little personally conducted talking to when he gets -back from Washington this afternoon. Why, I wouldn't have him get into a -street fight, or a fight anywhere else for that matter, for big -money--not only for the sake of the firm, but for his own sake. He's -pretty handy with his maulies, and all that, but this fighting business -is not the thing for gentlemen, not by a long shot. I just wish I could -find out who this Conway duffer is, anyhow." - -The young woman who manipulates the typewriter for the firm came in just -then. - -"By the way, Miss Bringlunch," the senior partner said to her, "have we -any person of the name of Jim Conway on our list of correspondents?" - -"No, sir," she promptly replied. "We've got a Conners, Coleman, Coulter, -Conneff, Curran--lots and lots of C's--but no Conway." - -"So I thought," said the senior partner. "Er--by the way, did you ever -happen to hear Mr. Barlock refer to a person by the name of--er--Bub?" - -The young woman smiled as she tied her black sateen apron in the back. - -"I've heard him call the newsboys who come into the office with papers -Bub," she replied. - -"Er--yes, yes," murmured the senior partner, "so have I. But this is a -St. Louis Bub. Well, no matter." - -The senior partner dived into the mass of papers on his desk, but he -couldn't get the bloodthirsty telegram to his junior partner out of his -mind. He was puzzling over it still radiant when his junior partner's -young wife came along toward 11 o'clock in the morning. She wanted to -find out the exact hour her husband was due back from Washington. - -"He'll be here a little after 4, I guess," said the senior partner. -"Er--by the way, Mrs. Barlock, does Jack number among his friends or -acquaintances anybody by the name of Jim Conway?" - -"Jim Conway?" repeated the junior partner's wife, with a finger at her -lip. "Why, no, not that I know of. I never heard him say anything about -a Mr. Conway. Why?" - -"Oh, nothing," said the senior partner, in a constrained sort of tone, -putting away the message from St. Louis for the fiftieth time. - -The wife of the junior partner suddenly looked alarmed. - -"That telegram!" she gasped, noticing the senior partner's furtive -manner of slipping the despatch into his pocket--"is anything wrong with -Jack? Has the train been wrecked? Has the"---- - -And she started to her feet in great agitation. - -"Calm yourself, calm yourself," said the senior partner, also rising and -smiling reassuringly. "There's nothing the matter. Train wrecked? Why, -the idea! How did you ever get such a notion"---- - -"But that telegram that you handle so mysteriously," said the junior -partner's wife, not yet over her alarm. - -"What telegram--this?" said the senior partner, taking the night message -from St. Louis from his pocket. "Why, this is an ordinary--er--business -telegram addressed to Jack from St. Louis, and it's"---- - -"Let me see it, please, if it's for Jack," said the junior partner's -wife, holding out her neatly gloved hand, and the senior partner could -do nothing else but pass it over. - -"'Hammer--Jim--Conway. Punch--him--your--limit. -Don't--let--anything--scare--you--out. He's easy. _Bub_.'" the junior -partner's wife read, slowly and distinctly, her eyes widening at each -sentence. "This, then, is the Mr. Conway that you spoke of. Mr. Topknot, -what is the meaning of this? What in the world is the"---- - -"You can search me," said the senior partner desperately. "Er--that is, -it's all as mysterious to me as it apparently is to you. I've been -bothering my head about it all the morning. I wouldn't have worried you -by showing it to you, but as long as you asked to see it, why, of -course"---- - -And the senior partner coughed behind his hand and looked dismal. - -The junior partner's wife paced up and down the office with the telegram -in her hand. - -"Why, it looks as if Jack had an enemy named Jim Conway, and that he -intended to fight him, doesn't it?" she exclaimed beseechingly to the -senior partner. "I'd just like to know who this horrid, nasty ruffian -who signs himself Bub is, that's all. My Jack fighting a man with such -an awful, 'longshoremanish name as Jim Conway! Why, that name sounds -like the names of the roustabouts we read of in the papers who attack -their poor wives with cotton hooks and throw burning lamps at them. And -goodness gracious sakes alive! the very idea of Jack Barlock ever -dreaming of lowering himself by getting into difficulties with such--oh, -I don't know what to think of it all; indeed I don't!" - -And she strode up and down the office again in great agitation. - -"Now, now, now," put in the senior partner comfortingly. "We don't know -anything about the contents of the message, and it may be that this Mr. -Conway is--er--why, the fact is, come to think of it, it may be a -message in code. Jack's got a code of his own, you know, and maybe -he"---- - -The wife of the junior partner was looking at him so suspiciously, -however, that he couldn't go on. An expression just a trifle harder than -was exactly becoming gradually stole into her face, and she walked over -close to where the senior partner sat in his revolving chair. - -"Ah," she said in a hard tone, "I begin to see. You are trying to cover -up something--you men always stick together in these affairs. It may be -that this Mr. Conway is married, and that Jack--great heavens! if I only -thought it! If I even dreamed that such a thing could be--after all the -sacrifices I've made for Jack--living away from mama all this -time--and"---- - -Then she reduced her handkerchief to a wad about half an inch in -diameter and began to dab at the corners of her eyes. - -"My dear girl," said the senior partner, "I give you my solemn word that -I know no more about that message, nor about Mr. Conway, than you do. I -never heard of Mr. Conway in my life before I opened that telegram. My -dear Mrs. Barlock, I am sure you are exaggerating the importance of this -despatch. There is no reasonable ground whatsoever upon which you can -base any--er--accusation against the boy, and, as I say, it is -possible--in fact, it's more than probable--that this message is in -Jack's private code, and that"---- - -"I--don't--believe--any--such--boo-hoo"----And the lovely young matron -began to rock herself to and fro and to dab at her eyes unremittingly. -"It's just as plain as day that Jack has done some wrong to this poor -Mr. Conway, and this friend of Jack's in St. Louis, named Bub, has heard -that Mr. Conway is looking for Jack, and he has sent him this telegram -to warn him to be on his guard--and--boo-hoo--who would ever dream that -my Jack would get himself involved in such an awful"---- - -Her feelings overcame her again at this point, and she was unable to -proceed. - -"Mrs. Barlock," said her husband's senior partner, severely, rising and -confronting her, "I am surprised at you--I am, indeed. I was certainly -of the opinion that in a matter of this sort you would at least give -your husband--a most considerate husband--the benefit of the doubt; that -you would at any rate give him an opportunity to explain himself. How do -we know what he is to Conway or Conway to him?" And the senior partner, -growing eloquent, declaimed as if he were speaking of Hecuba instead of -the mysterious Conway. "Is it not more than likely that you are doing -him a grievous wrong by even so much as imagining for a moment that this -extraordinary telegraphic communication from--er--this Bub--person has -any reference whatsoever to--er--uh--domestic or family affairs? Wait -until Jack returns, my dear Mrs. Barlock, and I've not the least doubt -that he will explain everything to your entire satisfaction, and"---- - -"Oh, yes, explanations--explanations!" exclaimed the junior partner's -wife, giving her eyes a final dab and rising. "You'll telegraph him on -the train to have some sort of an explanation ready, and then he'll come -in here with a deeply aggrieved countenance--just as if he had had no -part at all in endeavoring to break up this poor Mr. Conway's home and -tell me hypocritically that I've wronged him and all that. I know you -horrid men and the way you stand by each other through thick and thin, -no matter how wicked you know each other to be. I shall be back here at -4 o'clock, when Jack is due, Mr. Topknot, and notwithstanding the way he -is treating me, if there is any possible way I can prevent him from -meeting this Mr. Conway and having a disgraceful altercation with him, I -shall do it. And I promise you that I shall be able to detect very -easily whether he is telling me the truth or not when I demand him to -explain this terrible business." - -Saying which, the junior partner's wife pulled her veil down and swept -out of the office with the general air of a deceived wife in a play. - -"Huh! it'd naturally be thought I'd know enough not to make such an -egregious ass of myself as to show her that telegram!" growled the -senior partner to himself. "There'll be all kinds of a bobbery around -here this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter proves to be -something that Barlock wouldn't want his wife to know about--and I've no -doubt now that it will prove just that way, the young idiot!--why, he'll -be sulky with me, and there'll be little or no work done on those new -cases, and--oh, it's a devil of a mess all around, that's what it is!" - -For all of which, however, the senior partner had his work to do, and he -pitched in and was up to his ears in it until about half-past 3, when -the junior partner's wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of -ominous calm, arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome, -haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great mass of white -pompadour hair and an expression of unyielding austerity. The junior -partner's wife and her mother replied to the senior partner's courteous -greetings with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint belief -that he was in league with the absent junior partner in his nefarious -doings, or that he was at any rate attempting to shield the young man. - -"Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam?" the senior partner politely -asked the junior partner's wife's mother. - -"I am quite cool enough, thank you," said the junior partner's wife's -mother, snappily. - -"Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water?" he asked the junior partner's -wife. - -"You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty," she replied in a -tone which seemed to convey the idea as plainly as words that she feared -he might put something in the water that wouldn't do her any good. - -The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three sat in unbroken -silence for fully fifteen minutes, when the sound of a blustery, -cheerful voice was heard in the office boy's anteroom, and a few seconds -later a tall, broad-shouldered, frank-faced young man entered the -office. When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms extended. - -"Why, hello, there, Patsy!" he said. "I didn't know you'd be waiting for -me, or I'd have come a-running--why, what's the matter here, anyhow?" - -The junior partner's wife had shaken herself loose and averted her face -when her husband had attempted to fold her in his arms. He stared at her -for a moment, and then he stared at his mother-in-law. - -"What's up, mom?" he asked his wife's mother. "What have I been and gone -and done now, I'd like to know? Did I leave the water running in the -bathroom before starting for Washington, or have you lost my bull-pup -again, that you all look so queer--or what the deuce is it all about?" - -Neither of the women vouchsafed him any reply, and he turned to his -senior partner. - -"I say, Topknot, look here; are you in on this?" he said to his senior -partner, who was twiddling his thumbs and looking very much confused. -"Did I rob a bank in my sleep last week, or have the papers come out and -accused me of being a member of the Ice Trust, or"---- - -"My boy," the senior partner interrupted, judiciously rising and taking -the mysterious telegram from the inside pocket of his frock coat, "the -telegraphic message which I have in my hand, and which, I regret to say, -I opened this morning, knowing that you would not be back in New York -until late in the afternoon, has been the occasion, owing to its -somewhat mysterious contents, of the seeming"---- - -"Let's see it, Topknot," said the junior partner, reaching for the -telegram. - -He spread it out and glanced over its two lines. By the time he got -through reading it he was in a frenzy of excitement. He jerked his watch -out and looked at it. - -"I've just got time," he muttered to himself, hastily. "I'll just about -be able to make it. Patsy, you stay here with your mother until I get -back. I'll be back in twenty minutes or half an hour. Tell you all about -it when I get back," and he was out of the office door and down the -steps like a boy breaking out of a little red schoolhouse for recess. - -A vacant cab happened to be passing just as he got outside, and he -hailed the driver and darted into the vehicle. - -"Drive like the devil to ----'s!" he shouted to the driver, and in -something under three minutes he had rushed into the upstairs poolroom -about four blocks from his office. - -The second line of betting was in on the second race at St. Louis, and -the horse Jim Conway was the rank outsider at 60 to 1. The junior -partner crowded his way up to the counter and laid down a ten-dollar -note. - -"Gimme Jim Conway," he said to the man behind the counter. - -"Conway, $600 to $10," said the money taker, and he had no sooner -finished the words than the instrument began to click. - -"They're off at St. Loo!" sang out the operator. "Rushfields in the -lead, Cathedral second." Pause. "Cathedral at the quarter by two -lengths, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the half by three -lengths, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the three-quarters by -a length, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral in the stretch by a -neck, Rushfields second by a neck." Longer pause. "Jim Conway wins, -easy, by three lengths!" - -"Whoopee-wow!" The yell went up from the long-shot players in the room -who had taken a chance on Jim Conway. - -The junior partner stood around with a broad grin on his face while he -waited for the race to be confirmed. Then he collected, bounded -downstairs, hailed another cab, and in exactly seventeen minutes from -the time he had left his office he was back there again. He was greeted -with the same frigidity as characterized his original welcome. He still -wore his broad grin, and he walked over to his desk, raised the lid, and -began to dig into his pockets. He produced first one fat roll of bills -and then another, and he slammed each roll down on his desk as if it -were so much shavings. His wife and his wife's mother and his senior -partner watched his performance with open mouths, as did the office boy -who stood in the doorway. When the junior partner had made a pyramid of -bills on his desk about as big as a fair-sized derby hat, he turned to -his wife and asked her, still grinning: - -"Did you read this telegram, my dear?" holding the message out in his -hand. - -"I certainly did," she replied, "and you would oblige me greatly if you -would"---- - -"And who do you think this Jim Conway was, Patsy?" he interrupted. - -"I hadn't the least idea in life," she replied, without any sign of -relenting, "nor have I at the present moment. I intend, however, to find -out who Mr. Conway is at the earliest possible mo"---- - -The junior partner fell into a revolving chair, stuck his legs out in -front of him as far as they would reach, and roared so that he must have -been heard all over the building. He roared so loud and long that the -performance was infectious, and his wife and his wife's mother and his -senior partner, notwithstanding the fact had begun to dawn upon them -that they were in a foolish position, had to smile in spite of -themselves. When the junior partner was able to splutter he managed to -gasp his explanation in short sentences. Bub was a friend of his in St. -Louis who followed the races out there, and who had promised to tip him -off on the first good thing at a long price that was to be put over the -plate at the St. Louis meeting. Bub had kept his promise, and the junior -partner was $600 to the good. That was all. - -"And if you don't go out and corner the foulard dress goods market -to-morrow, Patsy," the junior partner concluded, addressing his wife, -"on the strength of what our four-footed pal, Jim Conway, has done for -us, why"---- - -When they had gone, the office boy, in sweeping out the office, picked -up the telegram, that had slipped to the floor while the junior partner -was laughing. - -"Now, w'y couldn't I ha' got a piece o' dat!" said the office boy, -disgustedly as he read the telegram. "I bin pickin' dat skate ev'ry day -f'r de las' two weeks, and I knowed dis mornin' w'en I seen de St. Loo -entries dat he'd win in buck-jump." - - - - -STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND. - - -_A Game in New Orleans That Makes Modern "Big" Poker Games Seem Tiny by - Comparison._ - -"The shrinkage in the value of poker winnings that get talked about -nowadays," said the New Orleans turfman at the beach dinner, "is -mournful, that's what it is. A few days ago a man told me that -So-and-so, a gilded youth from up the State somewhere, had recently -swooped down upon a gentleman's poker club in New York, and had removed -himself from the scene of play, after a five-hour sance, with $8500 in -winnings. The man who told me this leaned back, after he had sprung the -$8500 climax, and waited for my eyes to protrude. He looked a bit miffed -and sulky when they didn't protrude. - -"'Why, durn it all,' said he, 'I believe you affect your cold-blooded -way of taking things. To see you twiddle your thumbs a man 'ud suppose -that you had no more sense than to imagine that an $8500 winning at a -short poker sitting was the most ordinary thing in the'---- - -"'Easy, easy,' I had to put in, for he was heating himself unduly. Then, -to bring him around to good nature again and to convince him that I -wasn't attitudinizing, I was compelled to spend a half hour or so in -unwinding a bit of a reel of the days when there were poker giants in -this country. He wasn't quite willing, at the finish, to acknowledge -that the winner at draw of $8500 was a poker pigmy, but when I happened -to mention the occasion when Phil Cuthbert of St. James's parish -dropped, in a two-handed game at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans, a -little bundle of $400,000"---- - -"He told you, of course, that you were smoking," interrupted the New -York man. - -"No, he didn't. He asked me if it got into the New Orleans papers. I -told him that in 1868 the New Orleans papers were too busy roasting the -carpet-baggers to devote any space to such a minor matter as a $400,000 -poker game at the St. Charles Hotel, where draw games approximating that -in size were generally going on at any old hour of the day or night. -There was some rhetoric, I admit, in that 'approximating' statement, but -I wanted to set this New York man right. As a matter of fact, a $50,000 -game of draw was not at all uncommon in the St. Charles's private poker -parlors. After Phil Cuthbert had dropped that mound of $400,000 on one -hand, the New Orleans papers did announce that Mr. Philip Cuthbert, the -well-known planter of St. James's parish, was about to start on a -gold-prospecting tour in the mountains of Honduras; but they were -generous enough not to mention, if they knew it, that, with four aces in -his hand, he had lost $400,000 to Mr. Joseph Lescolette, shipper, of -Havre, Pernambuco, and New Orleans." - -"Lost $400,000 on a hand consisting of four aces, am I to understand you -said?" asked the New York man. - -"The statement was to that general effect," replied the New Orleans -turfman. - -"Suppose you just lead up to that gradually by telling the story." - -"Well, in order to do that, I've got to plead guilty to having been a -table arranger and sweep-out boy at the St. Charles at the time the -thing happened," said the horseman from New Orleans. "However, having -achieved greatness since, I see no reason why I shouldn't be willing to -acknowledge that. Besides being table arranger and sweep-out boy, it was -one of the functions of my job at the St. Charles to sort o' stand by, -as sailor-men say, when games were on in the private parlors, and run -errands for the gentlemen playing. There was plenty of high poker play -to be had at any of the first-rate New Orleans clubs at that time--too -much of it, in fact, for the club games became so open, owing to the too -generous distribution of visitors' cards by the club members that many -of the high-playing men of the town abandoned club poker playing -altogether. When they felt the hunch to get into a game of draw they -adjourned to the St. Charles, where, in the seclusion of a private -parlor, they enjoyed freedom from the neck-craning gaze of onlookers, -and freedom also from that bane of the genuine lover of a game of draw, -the chap who stands behind one's chair and keeps up a running commentary -of approval or disapproval. - -"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 caf 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. - -"I had the buck when it came my turn to deal again, and so it was a -jackpot. I was wishing myself well out of it, and had cold feet, if ever -a man did, though I was afraid to say so with so much of my opponents' -money in my clothes. My hands probably trembled a little as I dealt that -round, and even this fact probably caused them to suspect that I was -monkeying with the deck and to watch me narrowly. The man on my left -opened the pot for the size of it, and all stayed. When I picked up my -hand and saw that I had given myself a clean, pat flush, ace on top, it -made me pretty nervous, and before I stayed I did a heap of considering. - -"'The best thing you can do, young fellow,' said I to myself, 'is to -stay out of this jack altogether, or else throw that straight of yours -face up in the center of the table, proving your squareness to these -cutthroats, and let them play the jack out among themselves. If you -don't do one of these things, you're going to get hurt in just about -three minutes.' - -"Then I considered some more. Here I had a fine and probably winning -hand that I had come by perfectly on the level, and it would be rank -cowardice to throw it away, and mighty poor poker, besides. - -"'I'll be damned if I do any such thing just to convince these chaps -that I'm not a thief,' was my final conclusion; and with that I made it -twice the size of the pot to draw cards. They all glowered I tell you -what, but they all stayed, every one of 'em. They not only stayed, but -they bet and raised each other like the devil, and forced me to -out-raise all of their raises every time it came around to me. - -"Jim Cathcart, whose beady eyes had been blazing ever since I doubled -the value of the pot to draw cards, was as bad-looking a man as I want -to see when, finally, the man at my left called my last big raise. There -had probably been some signals in knee-rubbing under the table, for the -other two cowboys followed the lead of the first and called me in turn. -When it got around to Cathcart he slammed his bundle of greenbacks into -the pile with an oath. - -"'Podner,' said he, looking hard at me with his little red eyes, 'some -o' your work here to-night has been so cut-an'-dried lookin' as to -excite a whole lot of doubt about your bein' on the level; an' if you -happen to have anythin' in that fist o' your'n this time that'll top -these here three aces o' mine, then, by hell, you havin' dealt this mess -yourself, there won't be no manner o' question but that you're a damned -proper crook.' - -"Was I scared? Well, the hand just fell out of my paw, face up on the -table, I was so scared! I was so paralyzed with fear that I simply -couldn't move or say a word, and, what's more, I'm not a particle -ashamed to own up to it. When the cards fell out of my hand Cathcart -reached over and spread them out with his left hand. - -"'Well, by hell, you are a crook, ain't you?' he snapped when he saw the -value of the hand that beat his own good one, and as he spoke he whipped -out the big gun on the right side of his belt. I was blind with terror, -and when I heard the loud report of a gun I gave it all up and figured -that I was already three-quarters of the way over the Big Divide. - -"When I opened my eyes a second later I saw Cathcart staring at the -door, his right arm hanging limp at his side. His gun had fallen on the -table without being discharged, and his left arm was in the air. So were -the six arms of the other three men, and they also had their eyes glued -on the door. I wheeled around to look that way myself. Standing quietly -under the lintel of the door, with his two big guns covering the five of -us, was the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man I had noticed eyeing -us before we started the game of poker. The man was Wild Bill, Abilene's -celebrated Marshal. The shot I had heard when I had given the whole -thing up was from one of Wild Bill's unerring guns. It had pinked -Cathcart in the right shoulder just in the nick of time, causing the gun -with which he had intended to shoot me to fall from his hand. - -"'Slope for your camp, son,' said Wild Bill to me quietly, still -covering the four men. Well, for all I know, he might be covering them -yet. I do know, though, that I was out of that room like a cat out of a -bag, and the way I cut for our camp, over the newly-laid ties, eight -miles away, was a warning to grasshoppers. - -"It was while I was making this little journey, hitting a high place -only once in a while, that I came to the determination that for a man -who could not fight shy of bull-head luck any better than I could, the -game of draw poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for -health and peace of mind; and I haven't departed from that determination -down to the present moment of time." - - - - -CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS. - - -_Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Professional Sharpers Who - "Work the Liners."_ - -An Englishman who travels a good deal was generalizing at one of the -clubs last night on the subject of the card sharpers who devote -themselves exclusively to the ocean steamers. - -"It's a marvel to me," he said, "that the American steamship people, or -the police, or somebody, can't drive these sharpers off the American -steamers. It's nothing short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong -somewhere. Can't be collusion, I don't suppose, or"---- - -"Oh, come now, stow that, mate," said an American who does a bit of -traveling himself. "If they're not worse, and more of them, on the -English transatlantic steamers, I'll turn British subject, take the -Queen's shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks from -Dahomey to"---- - -"Humbug! We don't fight naked blacks. We only subdue them, that's all. -Punitive expeditions, you know. But about these card sharpers on the -American ships. Why, it's simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to -mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of it is, the cads get -themselves up like gentlemen, so how's a man to know"---- - -"Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man," put in the -American. - -The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen will when compelled -to admit that the universe is not entirely an open book to them. - -"Well, yes, I did," he admitted gamely. "Not very hard, though. I think -twenty guineas would about cover it. But it wasn't the money so much. It -was the way the thing was done--positively beastly, I say. Man was -introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an American I know -well. Good fellow, too. Man had been introduced to him by somebody else, -and so on, so that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he -came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst of it was, I myself -presented the chap to any number of fellows I knew on the ship, and all -of 'em got bit more or less, and all of 'em looked at me reproachfully -when it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper, just as I -looked reproachfully at the man who"---- - -"Sort of endless chain, wasn't it?" put in the American. - -"Well, if you want to put it that way," said the Englishman. "And worse -still, the man got my guineas at my own game. If it had been poker, now, -I wouldn't have minded so much, for I never could master that queer -game, and I don't believe there's anything in it, anyhow. But nap! Chap -beat me clean at nap, that I've been playing ever since I was at Harrow. -Odd, too, that I beat him easily at first and had all the luck, and was -probably fifty guineas ahead of him. Then suddenly the luck changed, you -see"---- - -The American smiled. - -"What the deuce are you grinning at? The luck changed, as I say, and, by -Jove, the fellow positively couldn't lose. If my daughter hadn't become -ill on the fourth day out, I dare say I might have lost quite a bit of -money, and"---- - -"Unquestionably you would have," put in the American. "So that in one -respect your daughter's illness--which I trust was not serious--was -really a blessing to you. It's queer to me that no Englishman I have -ever met in ocean voyaging is able to perceive that when he is playing -at cards with a stranger who permits him to win easily and heavily at -first, it is time for him to make his devoirs, more or less respectful, -to the stranger, and proceed to take a constitutional on the main deck, -henceforth abjuring cards with said stranger. Now, an American is able -to see into that game right away. If he is playing with a friend, and -the friend is a winner from the go-off, as we say over here, all well -and good. The American voyager who is up to snuff puts his friend's -initial winnings down to the chances of the game. But when he gets into -a game with a stranger, and the stranger simply shoves money from the -outset over to his side of the table--well, do you know what the -American of to-day does under those circumstances? He simply awaits the -moment when the luck begins to change, and then he has an imperative -appointment with his wife in the cabin. He thus picks up quite a bit of -cigar money from a man who he instinctively knows is a sharper." - -"Fancy now," said the Englishman. "If I had only known that"---- - -"But you didn't know, and, as I say, I never came across the Englishman -who did. Why, the ocean voyaging card sharpers have become so well aware -of this little shrewd habit of American passengers with whom they sit -down to a game that of late years they have altogether abandoned that -old, old trick of permitting their victims to win with ease at the -outset. They only work that trick nowadays on Englishmen. Fact is, I -think there ought to be a rule on all transatlantic steamships, English -and American, absolutely prohibiting British subjects from playing cards -at all aboard ship." - -"Tommyrot!" said the Englishman. - -"Not so much so as you might imagine," said the American. "Of course, I -don't mean that literally, and yet I don't know but what, after all, it -might be a good thing. I have watched the wake of a steamer on the trip -across the Atlantic fifty-two times--that is, I have made twenty-six -round voyages--and I suppose that on these voyages I have seen as many -as a thousand men plucked at cards. I will venture to assert that 80 per -cent. of them were Englishmen. So you will perceive there is some -justification for what I said about your countrymen playing cards aboard -ship. - -"I've seen some clever men of your country badly done by the ocean-going -card sharpers, too. At the time your Lord Lonsdale came to the United -States--Violet Cameron incident, you know--he was a pretty young man, -even if he did at that period of his life stand in urgent need of a -guardian with a heavy club. Well, amid the newspaper uproar over his -landing in this country with the Cameron, the fact did not come out that -Lonsdale was plucked of $12,000 on the trip over by Ned Turner, one of -the most notable of the older clique of steamship sharpers. But it's a -fact, all the same. I was not only a board the steamer at the time, but -I was one of a number of men who endeavored to pound some sense into -young Lonsdale's head while the plucking was going on. But he was a -stubborn chap and would listen to no one, and even when he was quite -convinced that Turner was a sharper, at the end of the voyage he stood -for his big loss like a little man, and became genuinely angry at some -of his English friends aboard who recommended him to stop payment on the -checks he had given Turner to cover the greater portion of the plucking. - -"I think Turner had it in mind to do Lonsdale when he got aboard at -Liverpool. Turner had been working the ships for fifteen years, in spite -of the efforts of the steamship companies to keep him off their vessels, -and at this time he was a man of 40 or thereabouts. Lonsdale was pretty -liberal in the use of wine at this time, and it was at the buffet that -Turner, who was a fine-looking insinuating and accomplished man, found -young Lonsdale on sailing day. The two men struck up a friendship from -the very first day of the voyage, and it was Lonsdale himself who first -suggested, as he afterward acknowledged--for he was a manly fellow--the -poker game. Lonsdale had only recently learned the hands in poker--which -is about all any man ever learns about it, if the truth were told--and -he had the poker initiate's enthusiasm for the game to an exaggerated -extent. Before going any further, I ought to say that Turner always -maintained afterward that in his play with Lonsdale he was perfectly on -the level. - -"'The young fellow insisted on playing,' said Turner, 'and he couldn't -play any more than my aunt in Connecticut. I played with him, because -that's my business. But I didn't have to play crooked--and I don't admit -that I ever did play crooked, understand--to get his $12,000.' - -"Well, at any rate young Lonsdale and Turner started the game on the -first day out, and kept it going almost until the steamer passed Fire -Island. Of course Turner beat him right along. He made no effort to let -Lonsdale win from him at first. He simply played poker and raked in the -young man's money and checks. A lot of us aboard knew Turner, and those -of us who had met Lonsdale in England got him aside on the second day -out and diplomatically put it to him that he was engaged in a pretty -difficult encounter--that, in brief, Turner was a professional player of -cards. For our pains we were told that we were too confoundedly -officious, that he was more than 7 years of age and knew what he was -about, and all the rest--you know the talk of a boy; and this boy was -flushed, too, you understand. - -"At any rate, when the steamer was drawing near this shore Lonsdale -decided that he had had enough--not that he would not have gone on -playing for another seven days, had the voyage been protracted to that -extent, but he had to get ready to land. Several of us were in the -card-room when the last hand was played. Turner won the hand and -Lonsdale scribbled a check on his American banker for the amount the -hand represented. Then he looked up at Turner for a minute and said: - -"'Some of my friends here estimate you a little unkindly, Mr. Turner.' - -"'How's that?' inquired Turner, looking not a whit surprised. - -"'Well,' said Lonsdale, 'they maintain that your skill at cards affords -you something better than a livelihood.' - -"'I never denied that,' said Turner coolly. - -"'In playing with me on this voyage you have employed skill alone?' - -"'At your suggestion, I have played draw poker with you for seven days. -I understand draw poker, and I have $12,000 of your money. Do you want -it back?' - -"You see, that was a magnificent bluff on Turner's part. The young chap, -he knew, would not welch. - -"'Oh, if you choose to be insulting'----said Lonsdale, flushing hotly, -and he rose from the card-table and left the room. - -"Well, a couple of elderly Englishmen aboard who knew Lonsdale and his -father before him went to him then and told him that it would be -perfectly proper and right for him to stop payment on the checks he had -given to Turner, who, they told him in so many words, was nothing short -of a swindler. - -"'Mind your own damned business,' said Lonsdale. 'I'll do nothing of the -sort,' and that was the end of it. It must be confessed that you folks -over there have a wonderfully game fashion of sticking to a bad -proposition; but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was kept -off the ships of all the lines after that, and I don't know what became -of him. - -"How they contrived to keep Turner off the ships unless he really wished -to remain off is something that I can't explain, for it is simply a -plain statement of fact to say that the steamship companies have always -found, and probably always will find, it impossible to prevent the card -sharpers from running on their boats. They have often tried it. They -tried it on one notable occasion, as I remember, with George McGarrahan, -in 1881. McGarrahan was the Nestor of the steamship card sharpers, and -all the steamship companies knew him. The president of one of the most -prominent transatlantic lines sent for McGarrahan--who, by the way, has -since died in New York--and told him that he would not be permitted to -travel henceforth on the vessels of the line. - -"'The deuce you say!' replied McGarrahan. 'How are you going to stop -me?' - -"'Refuse to give you passage,' answered the president. - -"'You will, will you?' said McGarrahan. 'Well, if you do that, I'll get -enough damages out of your line to make it unnecessary for me ever to -touch a card again as long as I live.' - -"His position was correct in law, as the president of this line found -out upon investigation. The steamship company, you understand, is not -the regulator of the habits of its steamers' passengers. If the -passengers don't know any better than to play cards with sharpers, that -is their own lookout. And a steamship company cannot decline to sell -passage to a man because it claims he is a short-card player. It -devolves upon the company to prove that the man is a card sharper, and -the steamship people know that this is practically impossible, for no -man who is done at cards by one of these men on an ocean steamship is -going to rise in his seat and make announcement of the fact to the -world. - -"Observation tells me that there are not nearly so many of these men on -the ships now as formerly. The short-card players who make a business of -traveling have found the trains much more profitable, since the officers -of the steamers got into the habit of going quietly among the voyagers -of a card-playing turn and warning them of the danger of getting into -games with such and such men. That was the system, and a pretty -effectual one, too, adopted by the steamship companies to squelch the -ocean card sharpers. The result has been that the sharper can now only -make a general campaign of all the big steamers--and the big steamers -are the only steamers they consider worth working--before the officers -know them, and then their game is dead practically. So that they find it -more profitable to take to the swell trains on the swell runs, making -the same trip rarely, and thus preventing their countenances from -getting too familiar to the railroad people." - -"How the deuce do you know all this?" inquired the Englishman. - -"Well," replied the American, "you may be pretty certain that I haven't -dreamed it. Besides, I figured it that you required some consolation for -the loss of your twenty guineas. Didn't you?" - - - - -THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER. - - - _That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner - Ought to Know._ - -"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a whole lot," said one -of the men in the back room of an uptown caf. - -The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in the lap of his master -and wagging his stump of a tail foolishly. His master was a squat, -thin-faced man of the all-aged class; that is, he might have been -anywhere from 30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners of -his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up he looked like -ready money. He lapped the dog's clipped ears one over the other and -looked reminiscent. - -"Well," said he, replying to the other man's remark, "I can't say that -he does look dead wise and smooth to the naked eye. He's not one of -these here fresh sooner dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows -the first clatter out o' the box. He's no trick mutt, anyhow. I raised -him from a pup, and I never taught him any of the jay tricks that these -pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts go through. What he don't know about -standing up in a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub -and waltzing on his front feet and playing 'possum, and all that kind o' -dinky work, would fill a big book. But if any of you people think you -can give him any points on the value of hands in a game of poker, then -you need a new dope cook, and that's which." - -"Poker?" said another of the party, incredulously. "Say, shoot it in -light. Your yen-hok's overworked." - -"That's what I said--poker," replied the fox terrier's owner, firmly. -"I'm putting you next now, because I don't make it a business to do pals -in a poker game. He's the best poker dog on the American continent, that -mutt. Can't begin to figure on how many times he's won me out, and for -how much. He's sulked on me two or three times at critical junctures in -games of draw, and given me the wrong tips, just to get square with me -for something or other, but that was when he was young and sassy and -disposed to work his edge on me. He's been tipping me off right now for -seven straight years, and--well, I've got a dollar or two scattered -around," and the owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a -25-cent cigar. - -"Didn't have a bit o' trouble teaching him the game, I suppose?" asked -one of the men at the table. - -"Well," replied the fox terrier's owner, striking a match on his -diamond-incrusted match safe, "I can't say that teaching him the hands -was altogether a snap. At first he used to get the kings and jacks mixed -once in a while, and then he had a habit, when he was learning the game, -of getting the eights and tens twisted, too. But I broke him of those -defects after a while. It wasn't so much trouble teaching him the value -of the hands in poker as it was to fix up a sign manual by which he -could express himself and tip me off on the hands held by the other -fellows. But patience was my long suit in teaching that dog the game of -poker, and in less than a year after I showed him the first pack of -cards he ever saw, he was able to put me onto the worth of every hand -around a table without any of the marks falling to the scheme. His -method of communicating such information to me during the progress of a -game is a bit involved and intricate, and we've got a lot of little code -signs that would require too much elaboration in the explaining, but -I'll just give you a little idea of the way the thing works. - -"Suppose I'm sitting in a four-handed game. The dog is nosing around the -room, not in any ostentatious kind of way and not getting himself -noticed at all by the other three in the game. A hand is dished out. The -dog noiselessly rubbernecks behind the chair of the first player on his -route. The first player, we'll say, has got a pair of sevens, and I've -got my eye on the dog. The dog quietly gapes twice, to indicate that -player No. 1 has a pair, and then blinks both of his eyes seven times in -rapid succession. See? Of course I know then that No. 1 has only got a -pair of bum sevens. I pretend to scan my hand, while the dog quietly -gets behind the chair of player No. 2. We'll say No. 2 has three queens. -The dog passes his right paw over his right eye three times. If it's -three kings, left paw over his left eye three times. If it's three -bullets he puts his left paw at his nose and holds it there for a -second, and, if three jacks, his right paw at his nose. Savvy? And so -on. He's got the whole manual and code worked out to a stretch finish. -If No. 3 has got a pat flush he closes his left eye and keeps it closed -until he sees I'm noticing him. If No. 3 has got a pat full house he -shuts up his right eye in the same way. - -"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. - -"The game they dub poker out there isn't poker at all, in my opinion. -It's a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy moves that must have been -chucked into the original game by early California vaqueros with such a -taste for embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their -pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. Whatever they call -it, it's not American draw poker by a darned sight. The kind of poker -that I was raised on--the real thing, the article of draw that we play -on this side of the Alleghanies--doesn't take any more account of the -joker, for instance, than it does of the card case; but out in -California they think a man's plumb blind crazy if he registers a kick -over having the joker in the deck. I'd as lief play old maid or grab for -corn-silk cigarettes as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it; -but out there I had to take the game as it was served up, and, as -between poker with a joker and no poker at all, I, of course, accepted -the lesser of the two evils and played. But I got dumped on the game for -about 2,000 miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn't -have to count themselves because they were so many at the game. The -trouble was that I played the game of draw that I was brought up on and -they played their crossbred game, and the result was just about as queer -as it would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby football to -a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his hands. - -"I'll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker idea. This was my -first visit to the slope, you know and, although I'd often heard vaguely -that young 'uns, playing draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while -shoved the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of course, -never dreamed that rational adult human beings in any quarter of the -earth could have the nerve to inflict such a dismal outrage upon the -noble game of draw as to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found -out different the very first game of draw that I sat into out in San -Francisco. - -"It was a four-handed game, and I was the only Eastern man in the bunch. -The other three fellows were business men who belong to the Native Sons' -organization, which accounts for the weird brand of poker they played. -They played what was taught 'em in their youth out there; didn't know -any better, and thought, and no doubt still think, that their game is -right. - -"I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was 25 cents ante and $5 -limit. I gave myself two rattling good pairs, kings up on tens. All of -the other fellows stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of -dollars more to draw cards. This let two of 'em out of it, but I thought -my two pairs were good enough for a $2 raise, and so I played with the -raiser. He drew one card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and -he came at me on the double with the limit. I'd caught another king, and -had as neat-looking a full house as a man needs to have in any kind of a -game. - -"'Five more'n you,' said I, and we shuttled the limit back and forth -until we each had about $50 in the pot. Said I to myself, 'I've got you -beat, my boy, for the percentage of the game is 'way against your -holding fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter out -of the box, and, even if you've filled those two pairs of yours--which -you probably haven't, for the percentage is plumb against you--you -certainly haven't got aces on top.' Now, that was good poker reasoning, -the kind of reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money ahead of -the game anyway for twenty years or so, and I gave him the raise-back -just as often as he threw it at me. - -"'Finally,' said he, 'we are getting out of our depth and beyond the -breaker line, ain't we? I've got you man-handled, but you junipers from -the East never can feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I'll skate -in my little five and call you.' - -"We each had about $80 in the pot then. - -"I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the pair of tens, and was -just about to make some good-natured crack about getting a hoe to scoop -in my winnings on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and raked -in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a pair of aces up on a -pair of sixes and the joker. - -"'What the dickens are you doing there?' I asked him when he raked in -the pot. 'Can't you see it's a misdeal? I forgot to take the joker out -of the deck.' - -"'Misdeal nothing,' he said, still smiling. 'You had a good hand all -right, but aces beat kings, you know, anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.' - -"'Yes,' said I, 'but you've only got aces up, and I've got a full hand, -kings up, and it's a misdeal, anyhow'---- - -"Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought to be in a -lunatic asylum. - -"'Misdeal?' said my friend who had swiped the pot. 'What the deuce are -you giving us, anyhow? I caught the joker on the draw, and it just -filled my hand--three aces and a pair of sixes. Don't an ace-full beat a -king-full in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from?' - -"'You mean you call the joker an ace?' said I, the thing beginning to -dawn upon me. - -"The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying to find out if I -was drunk or not. - -"'Why, do you mean to say,' said the man I had played with, 'that you -don't know that in poker the joker is any old thing you choose to make -it--that, when you get it either on the deal or on the draw, you can -call it anything you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full -house or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need sleep. You've -been working too hard. Turn in and have a long night of it.' - -"I couldn't help but laugh. - -"'Well,' said I, 'you people may call this joker-jiggling poker, but -somehow or another it suggests tag and I-spy and little girls singing -"London Bridge is falling down" to me. Why in the devil don't you play -poker with a pinochle deck and be done with it? Come on, and we'll build -card houses, or what's the matter with playing casino for chalk or -pin-wheels?' - -"'Why, don't you benighted people back East use the joker?' - -"'Yes,' said I, 'we do. We always give the joker in a new deck to babies -in arms to cut their teeth on.' - -"Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is that straights don't -go. I've been catching occasional pat straights and drawing to 'em all -my life, and I think the straight is one of the prettiest plays in -poker. In playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one -card, you've got the fun of trying to figure out whether he's drawing to -a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight or a flush, and it's -interesting work. If he stands pat, it's up to you to determine by the -mind-reading process whether he's simply bluffing or actually has a pat -straight or full hand or flush in his paws. - -"Well, out on the coast they've heard occasional rumors of such things -as straights being played somewhere or another in the game of draw, but -you won't meet one coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the -straight consists of and what the chances are of a man's getting a pat -straight or of filling a one-ended or double-ended straight. As for -playing straights, they've never even dreamed of such an absurdity. I -found that out in the second game of draw I got into out there. - -"It was in Portland, and another four-handed game, the other three -fellows being business men also. We played along for a while without my -running into any snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on -the deal four cards that had in them the making of a corking good -straight, capable of being filled at either end, from nine up to queen, -so that either an eight or a king on the draw would have fixed me all -right. I decided to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the -fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw. When I caught my -king I was glad I had decided to draw to my straight. A king-high -straight is a pretty good mess of cards in any man's game of draw as we -know draw back in these parts. - -"There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of course, with that -clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn't going to let any of 'em put it -on me. I met every raise and stuck so persistently and confidently that -the whole three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far as -that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me. The last time I -raised it they kind o' exchanged looks, and the man at my left called -me. The other two men followed suit, and there was a general laying down -of hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow next to him -aces up on treys, and the man at my right three sixes. I projected my -right arm to sweep in the good-sized pot after spreading out my -king-high straight. - -"'Hold up, there!' they all yelled at me at once. 'What's all this? What -are you trying to do--hypnotize us?' And the man who had laid down his -three eights made a reach for the pot. - -"It was now my turn to think the whole three of 'em looney. - -"'Is there so much smoke in here,' said I, 'that you three people can't -perceive that I've got a king-high straight?' - -"'Straight?' said the man with the three eights. 'Straight be damned! -You've got one king up on nothing. How old are you, anyhow--seven? -Straight? Listen to him!' And the three of 'em gave the hoarse hoot in -chorus. I asked 'em to get around me and pinch me, because I wanted to -find out if I was dreaming or not, but they were too busy leaning back -in their chairs and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay -any attention to me. That's what I got for not inquiring beforehand into -the kind of draw I stacked up against in Portland. - -"The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Barbara. I got into a game -of draw with three hotel clerks, all good fellows, but all addicted to -the nursery poker they play out there, and again I forgot to nail 'em up -against the wall and make 'em exude information about the kind of game -they purposed playing. We got along all right for an hour or so, and at -the end of the time I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o' -tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw three or four times -and beat 'em out on their own game-- which is a silly game, and about as -brainy as bean-bag, all the same. I also kept away from my inclination -to draw to straights, and, having made this much progress, I really -didn't think I was in for any more rude and costly surprises in the -game. That's where I did the leap-year figuring. - -"I gave myself a neat mess of clubs--four of them--with the ace for a -capstone. I have always been lucky in bobbing to flushes, and this -looked good. Two of the other fellows drew two cards each, and the other -man asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to look gloomy -and depressed. An ace-high flush has always been good enough for me on -this side of the continent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three -hotel clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too, and, -although there was nothing frantic about the betting, it was nice and -smooth and even, and the pot grew in a way that suited me down to the -ground. When it got so large on five-dollar raises as we thought it -ought to be there was a general suggestion for a call and a show-down. -Two of my fellow players had threes, small ones, and the other two pairs -that we wouldn't stay with very long back in this neck of the woods. -Well, I flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just about -to say something about easy money when the man with the best threes -scooped in the pot. - -"'Must have left your specs at home, my boy,' said I, thinking he was -only fooling. 'Pass that pile over.' - -"'For why?' said he. - -"Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious. - -"'For why?' I repeated. 'Well, the instructors at whose feet I sat to -learn what is learnable about the game of draw poker always taught me to -believe that a flush is better than threes.' - -"'Yes,' said he, 'but didn't you draw a card?' - -"'What the devil difference does that make?' I inquired. - -"'Oh,' said he patronizingly, 'I see you're a bit new at the game. You -see, you can't draw to flushes. You've got to hold 'em pat.' - -"Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I had to stand for -it, on the 'do-as-the-Romans-do' principle. - -"In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows who were so warm that -they wouldn't play anything but jack-pots. At the start-off of the -game--the first hand--none of the four of us could open it. It went -around three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of queens. -Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught another queen, and played the -hand for all it was worth. When I was called I showed down my hand, and -had 'em both beat. - -"'Foul hand,' said they. 'You didn't have openers,' and they looked at -me suspiciously. - -"'The dickens you say!' said I. 'I went in with a pair of queens and -caught another one--there they are.' - -"'But you needed aces,' said they, all at once. 'It went around four -times, and jack-pots are progressive, of course. D'ye mean to say you -didn't know that? Sorry, old man, that we'll have to split the pot.' - -"'Are they always progressive out here?' I asked. - -"'Always,' they answered, and that settled it. The pot was split." - - - - -THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET." - - -_Few Gamblers Perceive "the Psychological Moment" For Quitting Play and - Retiring Rich._ - -An old man whose mind is still alert, and the movements of whose tall, -somewhat stooped body are as free and spry as those of many a man fifty -years his junior, is Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in -this country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the statesmen with -a penchant for gaming who lived in Washington fifty, forty, and thirty -years ago, when it was deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land -to try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above board. Martin -is now verging upon 80 years of age, and even to the present generation -of Washingtonians his white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His -age does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is about as wide -now, he says, as it was back in the fifties. He had a great deal of -money at one time in his career, but most of it went by the board. He -had the caution to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years -ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. He has passed most of his life -in Washington, but before and after the war of the rebellion he had -adventures in many parts of the United States where gaming was at its -highest. He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about the -statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the national life of the -country before the war, and the local newspaper have published many of -his reminiscences of this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets -into his stride and the company is congenial he talks well and -entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of the well-known -young American turf plunger who, after having beaten the English racing -game to the tune of $150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly -that, only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad. - -"Another example of the chance taker who has not mastered the fine -science of quitting," was his way of summing it up. "That seems to be -the most difficult point in the gambling business--to know just the -right time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself. I wish I -had. Any fool can go on playing when he is away ahead of his game, but -it takes a man of unusual strength of character, perception and -foresight to knock off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that -it begins to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a 'psychological -moment.' I don't know of any business in life in which the psychological -moment plays a greater part than it does in gambling. Most of this -country's old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or, -worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of one of them -leaving not enough money behind to have his body put into the ground -that I don't recall the time when he had tens or hundreds of thousands. -The gambler by profession has many a psychological moment in the course -of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of them. He goes on -dabbling at a percentage that his common-sense tells him is against him, -and that he has only temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds -himself broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn't break off -when he was on top of the wave. I have known a few professional gamblers -who knew just when to quit. Some of them are still alive, old men like -myself, and they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left good -sums of money behind them. - -"I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best known of the New Orleans -gamblers before the war, win $60,000 in an afternoon's play at faro. -This was in Memphis. He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he -returned with all of the money and he began to buck the king. He played -it open every time and the king lost eight straight times in two deals. -That cost Plantagenet $20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken -off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the eighth straight -losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He was frank enough to admit that he -had cold feet. - -"'While freely acknowledging that I am more or less of a d--d fool,' he -said coolly, 'I strive for the reputation of knowing when I've got -enough, even of a good thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If -the box were only depleting me gradually but surely I don't doubt that -I'd go until I was all up. But I can see legible handwriting on the wall -from as considerable a distance as my neighbors, and when I'm on top, as -I am now, well and comfortably, and eight straight kings range -themselves against me on the left hand side of the layout, that's the -kind of a signal I'm waiting for, and I pass. I'll bet any man on the -side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that the next king out of the box wins, -but no more faro. - -"Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was standing by when -Plantagenet made this little talk. - -"'You are wise in your generation, George,' said he. 'Now, it is about a -10 to 1 shot against the king losing again. Consequently you can afford -to give me at least 2 to 1 on that proposition. I'll bet you $2,500 to -$5,000 that the king does lose the next time out.' - -"'Taken,' said Plantagenet, covering Wooton's money, and the crowd -gathered round to watch the dealer riffle the cards. The box was fully -half out before a king showed, and it showed on the losing side--nine -straight. Wooton pulled down the side bet. - -"'Which I may remark,' said Plantagenet with the greatest coolness, -'that this ninth consecutive lose of the king simply confirms and makes -good the hunch I had to quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go -a bit further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper and -sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck your bank now with -dummy chips representing all of my winnings and the roll I originally -started with, and that, although I shall play as carefully and as -cautiously and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really -represent money, I shall lose every stack within two hours.' - -"Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the latter knew that -Plantagenet would try to win with the dummy chips even though he would -be $1,000 loser if he did. - -"'Go ahead and prove your case,' said Wooton, and a dealer who was off -duty was called upon to deal. Plantagenet kept cases himself and played -his own particular system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton -stood by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular game. -Plantagenet's luck had deserted him, and he lost two bets out of every -three. It seemed impossible for him to get down right, and he lost -steadily. He had played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes -and Wooton hand him the $1,000. - -"'That's the way it would have been had I been playing with money,' said -Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed with him. Plantagenet was one of the men -who knew when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren around -him, in the early seventies, he left more than $500,000 to be -distributed among his heirs. - -"Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a professional gambler, but who -outdid most of the famous professional gamblers of the South in the late -fifties in the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning humor, -was another man who knew when to quit. I saw him win $32,000 in one -night at bank in the rooms of the old Crescent City Club. Then he curled -up all of a sudden and cashed in. He wasn't a quitter in the ungenerous -sense, but he used to say that the little angel, supposed by the sailors -to sit aloft and watch out for Jack Tar, had a habit of informing him, -when he was bucking another man's game, just the proper time to pass it -up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him. On this occasion -Joe Randolph, a heavy player from Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not -pressing his luck--for quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets -out of five. - -"'All right, Randolph,' said Baker after he had cashed in. 'I'll let you -make five $10 bets in my behalf on the deal now running and I'll bet you -an even $2,000 that I (or you) lose four out of the five; this, just to -show you that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is good.' - -"Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with more than an even -chance in his favor, and he lost, for every one of the five bets lost. -Baker would quit when he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he -was away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in a four-handed -poker game with friends in one of the parlors of the old St. Charles -Hotel between the hours of 6 and 9 o'clock one evening. He had -practically an unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering -the size of the game--$200 limit--but he yawned and pushed his chair -back with the simple statement that it wasn't his night. The next night -he lost $2,000 more to the same three friends, and again he resumed his -seat. On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four hours' play, -but he gave no sign of quitting. - -"'Isn't it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms and forsake us -again, Baker?' asked one of his friends in the game, jokingly. - -"'No,' said Baker, 'I'm going to stay along to-night. I'll begin to win -soon, and then you can all stand by.' - -"He began to win on the very next deal and at 2 o'clock in the morning -he had not only retrieved his losses on the week's play, but he had all -the money in the crowd. Baker was possessed of a species of intuition -that was something extraordinary. I don't know what else to call it but -intuition. I never saw him take a daring chance that he did not win out -on it--chances that no professional gambler would dream of taking, and -diametrically opposed to all of the rules of percentage in games of -hazard. One night he walked into 'Don' Haskell's Madrid Club in St. -Louis--this was in the fall of '59--and stood and watched a few deals -out of the box at the $500-limit faro table. Then he reached over and -bought five yellow--$100--chips from the dealer. He put them all on the -ace and coppered the card. The ace lost, and the dealer put five yellow -chips on the top of the original five on the ace, and waited for Baker -to haul them down. Baker absent-mindedly made no move, to take the chips -until the dealer reminded him of them. - -"'Let them stand, with the ace coppered,' said Baker. - -"'But it's $500 limit, Mr. Baker,' said the dealer. - -"'Let it stand, Jack,' said 'Don' Haskell, coming up behind Jack and -addressing the dealer. 'Let it stand as long as Mr. Baker wants to make -play with the ace coppered, and we'll see if we can't commit assault and -battery on his "intuition."' - -"Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then waited for the turns on -the ace. The ace was only half a dozen cards below, and it lost. The -dealer ranged ten more yellows beside Baker's pile. - -"'Let them stand, ace coppered,' said Baker, scanning the cases for a -few deals back carelessly. - -"'Don' Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer and the other -players at the table neglected to put any bets down in their interest in -Baker's peculiar play. There was only one more ace left in the box and -it came out a loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside -Baker's pile--$4000--and he and the proprietor waited for Baker to haul -them down. Baker leaned back and lit a cigar, leaving the $4000 in -yellows to stand. - -"'I'll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you're willing, -"Don,"' he said quietly to Haskell. - -"'The longer the better,' said Haskell, and the dealer began to slip -them out. The first ace was way down in the center of the box, and -Haskell looked a bit chagrined when it came out a loser. - -"'Eight thousand, eh?' he said, looking over the stack of yellows on the -coppered ace. 'One more whirl at it, Baker--that'll be about all I can -stand to-night if you take it down.' - -"The ace came out on the losing side again--a thing that no professional -gambler would have bet on had he been offered 5 to 1 on the -proposition--and Baker cashed in $16,000. He would have let it run again -had Haskell been able to stand it, but the 'Don' had enough. Baker stood -by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again and then he put $500 -on it to win. It won and he took the boat for New Orleans with $16,500 -of Haskell's money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned Ripley -and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans trio of tiger buckers, broke -the Madrid Club's bank roll wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker -was the man who started Haskell in business again. - -"When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often to have a sudden -feeling that it was time for some strong bucker on the other side of the -table to cash in and quit, but of course it was no part of my business -to make any such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Washington, -in the winter of '66, when the outcast son of a rich tobacco man of -Richmond came along and whacked my box for $12,000 in a single night's -play at $200 limit. I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that -since his father had run him out of Richmond he had had more than his -share of hard luck. In fact, he had often been hungry, and I had often -given him a $5 or $10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had -started in on my box with a shoestring--where he got it I don't -know--and, as I say, he got me to the tune of $12,000 before I turned -the box on him for the night. The man in whose interest I was dealing -was very wealthy and a generous man. He knew the young chap's father. He -came to me after the young man had left with his winnings and said: - -"'You'd better hunt up that boy and tell him that he'd better not play -any more. He's had his run of luck, and he's got enough to give himself -a start. I don't want the money back. If he handles it right it'll do -him more good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense into -the lads' head.' - -"That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat of a man whose -bank had been raided. I hunted the young fellow up that morning and told -him about it. He was full of hifalutin' talk about wanting to give the -proprietor of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing. - -"'He can take care of himself,' said I to the boy. 'He knows your -father, and I dare say he's clipped your father's bank roll for a good -deal more than $12,000 on occasions when your dad has visited Washington -and gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple and fine -linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor in Richmond with a high -head and a proper countenance. That'll be better than walking into -Richmond in need of a Russian bath.' - -"The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn't keep his promise to -me to stop. He came in that night, and in half an hour's play he ran his -$12,000 up to $15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of -final warning. He paid no attention to me, though. Then he began to -lose, and in three hours he was flat broke. He went out with a wild -light in his eye, and the next morning he was found dead in his little -boarding-house room, with a bullet in his brain. - -"It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence hates a quitter, -but that doesn't apply to gambling. The knowledge of when to get cold -feet, and the gentle art of doing the same, are valuable assets for any -man who tries to buck another man's game." - - - - -CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER. - - - _And They Got Him the Whole Length of the Missouri, Until He Went - Against Another Game and Won Out._ - -"A man hunting for poker trouble could get a-plenty of it on the Big -Muddy stern-wheelers around the latter sixties and the early seventies," -said Joe Reilly of Sioux City. "There weren't many regular poker sharks -working the Missouri River boats in those days like there were on the -Mississippi steamers, but just the same the men that traveled on those -weather-boarded, lop-sided old sand-bar wagons on the Big Muddy all knew -how to play poker some, I'm a-telling you. Cato Bullman found this out -when he went up against a whole lot of different men's games on the old -'Gen. W. T. Sherman' in 1872. - -"Bullman was pardners with Nate Stillwater in running a big general -store in Yankton, and both of 'em were making a mint of money at the -time I'm going to tell you about. They'd ha' made more, I guess, if -Stillwater hadn't drank too much whisky and Bullman hadn't played too -much poker. Now, all in all, Stillwater handled his whisky pretty well, -and at such times as he found it was getting a half-Nelson on him he'd -leave it off for a spell and attend to business, so that his end of the -dissipation of the firm of Stillwater & Bullman wasn't half as bad as -Cato's. Cato loved to play poker so much that he'd knock right off in -the middle of selling a bill of goods to a gang of freighters to go off -somewheres and sit in a game. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, even -if it was darned poor business policy, if Cato ever won. But he never -did. He had no license ever to touch a pack of cards. In the first -place, he was a yap at cards, and any American kid that knew how to play -old maid could have hopped out of the back of a prairie schooner and -beaten Cato out of his boots at the game for money, marbles or chalk. In -the second place, Cato was a natural born hoodoo. If he was drawing to -three aces, and the other fellow was taking five cards, the other -fellow'd beat Cato out and have plenty to space. So that it was just -about up to Cato to holler murder and take to the brush whenever anybody -flashed a pack of the pasteboards on him. But he didn't see it this way. -He went right on playing poker and getting soaked for his share of the -profits of the firm. Cato appeared to be just stone-blind to the fact -that the foxy people that didn't do much of anything else around Yankton -except to play cards were in a fair way to fix themselves with meal -tickets for life at his expense, and as he was pretty near seven foot -high and built in proportion, none of us felt like trying to kick any -sense into his fool head. - -"Anyhow, in the summer of '72 Bullman started down the river on the old -'Gen. W. T. Sherman' for St. Louis to buy goods. He had $10,000 in -greenbacks along with him. Before he went aboard the boat Stillwater, -who wasn't much more'n five foot high, ranged himself alongside Cato's -big carcass, and says he: - -"'Cato, this here v'yage you're about to embark on is a business trip -and nothin' else. It ain't no jamboree and it ain't no poker picnic. -There's some smooth people gits aboard these here mud ploughs down below -at the landings, and in their hands you'd be nothin' but a great big -moon-eyed jayhawker, which you are. So throughout this here journey -you'd best git 'way up on top o' the boat and sit on a pile o' planks -just abaft the pilot-house and smoke your pipe. You're not to play no -poker at all, you hear me? When you git stuck on a sand-bar you can fish -over the side for bullhead catfish, but you don't play no poker. If, -when you git back here, I hear that you've been playing poker, I'll -mangle you up a heap; now you hear me a-talkin'.' - -"Cato reached down, picked up his partner by the scruff of the neck, and -held him out at arm's length. - -"'I ain't a-goin' to play no poker, old man,' says he to Stillwater. -'Won't touch no cards at all till I git back. Kind o' lost my knack at -the cards lately, anyhow,' as if he ever had any knack at 'em. 'And you -want to let the red-eye alone while I'm gone, too,' Cato finished, and -then set his little partner down. Then Cato went aboard the boat. As I -was going along down to St. Louis myself, Stillwater calls me aside and -says to me: - -"'Jest keep an eye on that big galoot on the way down, and if he gits -restless and shows an inclination to get tangled up with a poker deck, -jest bat him over the head with a capstan bar.' - -"But I wasn't making any rash promises like that. Well, Cato was all -right the first day out, and he followed his pardner's instructions and -sat around on deck smoking his corn-cob pipe and feeling his big wallet -occasionally. He kept as far away as possible from the little deck-house -where a game was started going before the boat pushed out into the -stream, but the rattle of the chips was bound to reach his ears -occasionally. On the second day some stockmen got aboard that Cato knew, -and Cato took a few drinks with 'em. Then they invited Cato into a -little game. Cato looked at me kind o' guilty like, and then shook -himself together like a man does that says to himself, 'It's nobody's -danged business but my own.' So he sits into the game with the stockmen. -They were only going down a few landings, and when they got off they had -$2000 of Cato's money. I never in my life before or since saw such -hoodoo luck as Cato had in that game with those stockmen. He didn't get -a pair more'n once in a hundred hands, and if he did get a pair and -happened to better it in the draw he'd give a hoot that 'ud wake up the -owls ashore and then bet like an Ogallala Sioux with four aces and a -dirk knife. It was just simply painful to watch Cato in that game, and -no mistake. When the stockmen got off some of them actually looked so -sorry for Cato that I kind o' thought they'd offer to give him his money -back. But they didn't. - -"'I'm kind o' out o' luck lately,' says Cato to me after the stockmen -had got off with his $2000, 'and I b'lieve I'll just draw in now and -wait for a hunch. No good buckin' agin' a streak o' bad luck, is there?' - -"Well, I told him that if my 10-year-old boy down in Sioux City wasn't -able to play poker any better than he, Cato, could before he put on long -trousers and suspenders I'd send him up to a lumber camp until he became -of age. But Cato didn't pay any attention to me, and when an awkward, -overworked-looking man, dressed like a farmer, got aboard a couple of -landings below he struck up an acquaintance with him. This farmer-like -looking man had a pretty keen pair of eyes in his head, as I noticed, -and he had besides that yokelly way of finding out about other people's -business. So it didn't take him long to dig it out of Cato that Cato was -going down to St. Louis to buy a stock of goods. The three of us were -sitting on the hind rail, whittling, when this farmer-like looking man -turns to Cato and asks him: - -"'Ever play key-ards?' - -"Cato looked at me again and hesitated. - -"'Oh, wunct in a while,' says he, finally, and in a pair of minutes they -were in the middle of a poker game. The stranger asked me to sit in, of -course, but I could see that he wasn't over-anxious to have me in the -game, and I never played poker on steamboats, stern-wheel or side-wheel, -anyhow. - -"Cato's hoodoo luck followed him right along in his game with the -overworked-looking man, who seemed to me to have considerable of a job -covering up a natural sort of deftness he had in handling a pack. The -two played for three or four hours, the stranger announcing occasionally -that he was going to get off at the next landing, so's to screen himself -from the inference that he was getting cold feet, probably. He was about -$1000 ahead of Cato's game when the boat was nearing his landing. - -"'Hev to make it a jackpot naow,' said he, when the old stern-wheeler -began to wheeze and snort a little preparatory to stopping at the -landing. - -"He dealt the jackpot hand himself and each man had $100 in the center -of the table. It was to be sweetened for $100 each time the deal passed. -But it didn't pass. Cato opened the pot for $100 and his Reuben-looking -opponent stayed. The betting swayed back and forth until each man had -$1000 up, and then the farmer-like looking man called Cato. Cato had -three eights. The other man had three tens. The other man stuffed the -bills from the center of the table into his overalls, shook Cato quite -effusively by the hand, and went ashore. - -"'Got enough?' says I to Cato when the old sandbar-bucker was once again -under way. - -"'Say,' says he to me, 'ye can't never jedge a man by his looks, can ye? -That man knows a hull heap more'n you'd think, don't he?' - -"'Got enough, Cato?' I repeats, for I wanted to pin him to the question -in hand. - -"'Well, I shorely am out o' luck, and no mistake,' was as far as he -would commit himself. - -"The next day a man who looked like members of Congress out my way used -to look got aboard. He was dress in a long black broadcloth coat and -wore a big black slouch hat, and he carried himself like a man that -amounted to a good deal. He was amiable in his manners, though, and he -hadn't been aboard more'n half an hour before he happened to fall into -talk with Cato. Cato was a little sore about the loss of his $4,000, but -this legislator-like looking man was so entertaining and sprung so a lot -of good stories over the jug of good stuff which Cato brought out of his -stateroom that Cato appeared to forget his troubles for the time. - -"'Monotonous work, this steamboat traveling, isn't it?' says the -statesmanlike-looking man to Cato after a while. 'I've only four hours -traveling to do, and yet I've been dreading it for a week. What do you -say to a little game of dime-ante. You play, of course?' - -"Cato scratched his chin. - -"'Durned if b'lieve I can any more," said he ruefully, and then, like -the innocent big dogan that he was, he tells his new friend how he has -already lost $4,000 on the trip down, and that he feels like hanging on -to his remaining $6,000. - -"'Oh, but only a little dime-ante game, you know,' says the man who -looked like a member of Congress, and his eyes opened up a bit, I -noticed, at the mention of the $6,000. - -"'O. K.,' says Cato. 'Jest to pass the time,' and down they sat. I was -asked in, but I told the statesmanlike-looking man that I had left my -specs up in Yankton and therefore couldn't see the hands well enough to -play. Well, the dime-ante and the dollar limit that they started in at -lasted just until Cato got a whopping big hand, which happened to be -given to him by the man that looked like an M. C. - -"'Say,' says Cato then, looking a heap excited, 's'posin' we jest take -the limit off'n this here game, anyhow, fur a little while?' - -"'Why, certainly,' says his opponent genially, and Cato walks right in -and wins $500 clean on that hand of his. He gives me a look out o' the -tail of his eye that says, 'Well, what do you think of me now,' and the -game goes on. - -"Well, the M. C.-looking man begins to win quite a good deal then, and -he, like the farmer-looking man, brought the game to a jackpot finish as -the boat approached his getting-off place. - -"'Fur how much?' inquired Cato, who was about $1,000 out already. - -"'Oh, about $50 and $50 sweeteners,' said the man across the table. - -"'No, we won't, either,' says Cato. 'We'll each put in $1,000, an' no -sweeteners. That's jest as good fur you as 'tis fur me.' - -"'Exactly,' says the distinguished looking man playing with him, and -Cato dealt the hands. Neither man had openers. Then the other man dealt -'em. Cato opened it on jacks up on treys, and caught another jack in the -draw. The boat snorted and wheezed preparatory to being made fast. Cato -bet a flat $1,000 on his jack full, and the M. C.-looking man, looking -kind o' impatient to get ashore, win or lose, calls him. Cato lays down -his jack full with a grin at me--and says his friends across the table: - -"'You do indeed, my friend, appear to labor under a blanket of -ill-fortune,' and he spreads out his four nines and gathers in the pot. -Then he hurries ashore, after shaking the crestfallen Cato warmly by the -hand. - -"'Got $3,000 left now, haven't you, Cato?' says I then, for it began to -look to me as if word had been passed down the whole length of the -Missouri River that Cato Bullman was traveling on one of its steamboats -with money. 'Better let me keep that $3,000 for you.' - -"'No, I'm durned if I do,' says Cato. 'Might as well lose it all now, -devil take it,' and he gnawed on his fingernails, thinking about what -kind of a story he'd put up to his partner, I guess, when he got back to -Yankton broke. - -"Well, Cato did lose it all, or close on to all of it. He foregathered -with a man that got aboard at Omaha, and said he was a civil engineer -for the Union Pacific Railroad. The civil engineer got $1,800 of Cato's -greenbacks, and then got off. Twenty miles below Omaha, at a little -handing, a gappy looking hog raiser that Cato had met before climbed -over the rail, and Cato thought he saw a chance to recoup his drooping -fortunes. The hog raiser relieved Cato of $1,000, and had an important -engagement to look at some fancy hogs at the next stop. This left Cato -with $200. - -"'Convinced that you're a damphool yet, Cato?' says I. - -"'Dang'd if I don't begin b'lieve I am,' he owns up. - -"'How about those goods you were going to buy in St. Louis?' I asked -him. - -"'I dunno,' he said, mournful like. - -"Well, when we got to Leavenworth, Kan., the wheezy old Sherman tied up -for twenty-four hours for repairs to the machinery. Cato was pretty -gloomy. We went ashore and put up at the old Planters' House. On the -night we struck Leavenworth I walked Cato around to sort o' relieve his -mind. We were strolling down Shawnee street when we both saw a pretty -much lighted up place into which a lot of well-gotten up men were going. -When we came up to the place we heard the rattle of the chips and click -of the marble and the choppy talk of the keno men, and then we saw that -it was Col. Jennison's famous Bon Ton gambling joint, running wide open -and full blast. Cato made for the door. I grabbed him by the sleeve. - -"'Come out o' that,' says I. 'You've only got $200, which won't more'n -get you back to Yankton. Haven't you been enough of an idiot already?' - -"'I got a hunch,' says Cato, releasing himself from me and starting -again for the door. - -"'Hunch!' says I, but he was already inside. - -"Well, Cato goes up to the faro table where the big men of the town seem -to be playing bank, and says I to myself, 'Joe, you'll have to dig up to -send this crazy man back to his pardner in Yankton.' - -"Cato bought $200 worth of chips, tapping himself, and began. Gentlemen, -he couldn't lose. He scattered his chips over every card on the table, -and he couldn't lose. He won eight bets out of ten. He let his money lie -on cards four times over, and won every time. He didn't use a copper, -but played every card wide open. There didn't seem to be a split in the -box for Cato. In less than twenty minutes he had won over $3,000. There -was a $500 limit on the game. Cato asked to have it removed. When the -limit was taken off, Cato made three $1,000 bets running, and won every -one of them. Then he came off his perch and got down to $200 bets again, -playing 'em like a veteran, and just simply unable to lose, gentlemen. -The rest of the men at the table quit playing just to watch Cato. Once -in a while Cato'd play the high card, just to see if his luck was -holding. The high card came out every time he did it. They switched the -dealer three times. They switched the lookout half a dozen times. They -tried different boxes. They changed tables. They did everything. But, -gentlemen, Cato Bullman was playing faro, and he couldn't lose. I was -proud of the big duffer. In an hour he was $18,000 ahead of Col. -Jennison's bank. They sent across the way to get Col. Jennison who was -playing a quiet little game of poker in the Star of the West saloon. -Col. Jennison came over to the Bon Ton and sat down to handle the box -for Cato himself. Cato soaked Col. Jennison every bit as hard as he had -soaked all of Col. Jennison's dealers. Col. Jennison was game, but, when -at the end of three hours, Cato was still going right ahead winning like -a cyclone, he turned the box over with this little remark: - -"'Gentlemen, the game is closed for the night.' - -"When Cato cashed in he had just $35,200. I took him by the arm and -walked him down to the hotel and got him into his room. Cato went to the -basin to wash his hands. When he turned around to me again he looked -into the barrels of both my guns. - -"'Cato,' says I, 'I'm sorry, but I'll just trouble you to hand over -every cent of that $35,200 you've got, right away now, darned quick, or -I'll blow the whole top of your head off.' - -"Cato didn't demur a little bit. He plunked the money down--most of it -was in $1,000 and $500 bills--on the table. - -"'I don't suppose I've got enough sense to pack it around, fur a fac',' -said he. - -"When we got to St. Louis I handed Cato $10,000 to buy his goods with, -and expressed the $23,200 to his address in Yankton. - -"'Well,' said his little pardner, Stillwater, when Cato got back to -Yankton, 's'long as you won, you big clod-hopper, I don't s'pose I need -to mangle you up none. But if you had lost!'" - - - - -FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN. - - -_He Was Too Handy with the Pasteboards, Wherefore He Arrived Prematurely - in the "Happy Hunting Grounds."_ - -"It happens more or less frequently," said a traveling Inspector of -Indian Agencies, "that an educated buck Indian degenerates in the long -run into a bad proposition. I'm thinking particularly of an educated -Oregon Indian, about a three-quarter blood, who got the big-head so bad -after he had been polished off mentally back this way that he never -mixed up with his people when he returned from the East. He was a -Umatilla. He was first sent to Carlisle, and when he had finished there -he was passed on to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, to take the law course -there. It was in view that he was to become the attorney for his tribe -upon the conclusion of his Blackstone-thumbing. He squeezed through the -law at Johns Hopkins, and then he was told of the nice fat thing that -awaited him out among his own people. He turned the proposition down -cold. He said flatly that he had no intention whatever of mixing up with -his own bunch at all any more. He likewise remarked that he knew his -gait, and that he intended to follow it. - -"A couple of months after he quit Baltimore he turned up at The Dalles -in Western Oregon and settled down to the career of a short poker -player. Where he had picked up the game it would be hard to say; but he -certainly was a daisy at it. There wasn't a kink in the game that he -didn't have the hang of. Now, The Dalles isn't any bad man's camp; it is -a very beautiful health resort in the Cascade Mountains, on the south -bank of the Columbia River; there wasn't a hard character in the place -until this educated buck established his headquarters there; and it -suited his game to a T. He made it his business to nail young tourists -who didn't have any more sense than to sit into a poker game with a -stranger, much less an Indian, and an educated Indian at that; and he -just stripped them in sets of fours for several years. He was a -splendid-looking buck and he dressed as men dress who've got the money -to tog themselves out right back this way. When he was engaged in the -act of getting a new victim he knew how to throw much cordiality and -some grace into his manners; but ordinarily he was a sulky, morose, bad -Indian. 'Way down in the deeps of him he was a rank coward, for he never -tried to twist his tentacles about a man who he thought would make a -stand, much less a scrap, upon discovering that he was being done; he -always picked out palpable lily-livers who looked, to his shrewd eye, as -if they would stand for anything rather than mix it up with him. - -"It did not take the square people of The Dalles long to get next to the -fact that this educated Indian, who had coolly taken up his abode among -them, was a cheat and a swindler, and that his sole occupation consisted -in fleecing pulp-headed young tourists. They talked a great deal of -giving him the razzle-dazzle and chasing him out, but somehow or other -this suggestion never came to a head. The men at The Dalles who had the -interest of the place at heart would point the swellerino buck out to -young strangers who looked as if they might be likely victims of the -Indian short-card fleecer, and tell the young goslings just where and -how the buck stood. It may sound incredible, but even after being warned -in this fashion a whole lot of the young addlepates fell into the buck's -mesh and got themselves done to a proper turn by him. They were able to -take care of themselves, they would reply chestily to their warners, -and, just to prove it, they'd take a hack at the Indian's game. When -they got through they'd be smoking punk tobacco in pipes while the -Indian would be blowing the smoke of perfectos in their faces, and -they'd stand for their craggy end of it without a whistle. The buck was -6 feet 3 inches high and weighed 235 pounds, and he looked like a -macerator from the high ridges. So he was never called by any of his -Dalles victims, even when they knew the details of how they'd been -plucked. One poor little devil of a rich man's son from Omaha whimpered -one night when the Indian had removed about $800 from him by dealing -from both ends and the middle of the deck, and he said to the buck -piteously: - -"'I just hope you've played fair, that's all.' - -"The Indian reached over and struck the pollywog with all of his force -on both sides of the face with his two open palms, leaving the blood-red -welt marks of his fingers on the lamb's fair cheeks. The whining victim -drilled for his life up the hotel stairs to his room, and the Indian -looked after him sardonically. There wasn't a man about that didn't know -that the Indian had scandalously cheated the lad, but not a one of them -said a word. There was a keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired -man, a stranger, standing at the hotel desk reading a just-arrived -letter, when the thing happened. His face flushed angrily when he saw -the burly Indian slap the undersized fool of a boy, and he turned to the -hotel clerk and remarked: - -"'Is this the real thing here? Does the gang stand for that kind of work -on the part of a mud-hided raw-meater?' There was plenty of contempt in -the way the stranger spoke. - -"The clerk shrugged his shoulders. 'We can't undertake to cut in on any -of the plays of our guests,' he replied. 'We just board and lodge 'em, -that's all. If they're jays enough to mix up with grafters, it's their -game, and we're not asking for any rake-off, one way or the other.' - -"The stranger muttered something about a chicken-livered population, and -strolled out. He took his train an hour or so later. - -"At certain seasons of the year, when there wasn't must doing in his -line at The Dalles, owing to periodical scarcities of pluckable -tourists, the Indian would hit up Baker City, Pendleton, and other -Oregon towns in search of good things, and a couple of times a year he -included Olympia and Walla Walla in his itinerary. He sung somewhat -smaller in those places than he did at The Dalles, but by keeping his -eye skinned for men liable to call the turn on him and working quietly -he generally succeeded in pulling apart at least one jelly-fish in each -of the towns he took in on these off-season tours. - -"About three months after he had left the marks of his fingers on the -lamb's face at The Dalles--this was in the fall of '92--he turned up one -day at Walla Walla. He strolled around the hotel corridors with an eye -to business, and along toward night he met with a young fellow named -Hellen, whose father, a wealthy Chicago man, had recently foreclosed a -mortgage on a big ranch about sixty miles from Walla Walla. The son, a -rather raw young chap, had come out to look the ranch over, and the -Indian got next to him as soon as he struck the town. The buck was an -expert billiard player, and he suggested a game of pin billiards to the -young Hellen chap. He played off on the youth, and soon got him to -betting on shots. After losing about a dozen $5 bets on shots, the -Indian socked it to the young man from Chicago by betting $300 that he -could execute a certain difficult shot. It looked like board and lodging -to the young man that the Indian's $300 would spin into his clothes, so -he put up $300. The Indian made the shot with consummate ease and took -down the pot. - -"'Fluke!' said young Hellen. 'I'll go you another $300.' - -"The buck got this bunch, too, without half trying. It would naturally -be thought that the tenderfoot would have smelt a rat by this time. But -he didn't. He had plenty of money, and probably he considered it piquant -to lose his coin to a swagger-looking, educated Indian. Anyhow, the two -were playing poker in the card-room of Walla Walla's stag hotel half an -hour later. - -"There were plenty of men in that card-room who knew that the Indian was -a short-carder, but men out that way aren't garrulous, and they pay a -heap of attention to the job of minding their own business. The youth -from Chicago was the merest mutt in the hands of the Indian, and he lost -from the jump. He would stand pat on a full house, and the buck, drawing -three cards, would still beat him after sky-scraping betting. A number -of onlookers at the game may have seen the little side-plays of the -Indian, but they only grinned at each other over the hopeless imbecility -of the young man from Chicago. - -"Finally the Indian, perhaps losing some of his dexterity from the -drinks he was steadily absorbing, over-stepped himself. He filled two -pairs from the discard and he did it clumsily. The young man with whom -he was playing saw the move. - -"'I say, there,' said he, 'what are you doing there, you know?' pointing -to the discard. 'Didn't you--er--didn't you make a mistake and take a -card out of that pile?' - -"The Indian, who was about $1,600 to the good, had cold feet, anyhow, -and so he threw his hand face downward on the table and glared at the -Chicago boy. The Chicago boy quailed. - -"'Er--well, maybe I made the mistake myself'--he started to say, when a -big voice cut in with: - -"'No, you didn't son. You didn't make any mistake at all. You're up -against the real thing in the way of a mud-skinned short-riffler, that's -all.' - -"A keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired man was the speaker. -As he spoke he reached down from behind the Indian's chair and got two -huge hands around the buck's neck. The onlookers formed a clearing. The -Chicago youth got himself on the outskirts of the bunch. - -"'About three months ago,' said the keen-eyed man, dragging the huge, -half-choked Indian to his feet, 'I saw you at The Dalles leave the -prints of your dirty fingers on the face of a little whiffet you had -just fleeced. I hankered then to confer a few personally conducted slaps -of my own make and manufacture on your coppery jowls, but for some -reason or other I passed the hanker up on that occasion. Well, the slaps -are coming to you now. It's better late than never, and I'm going to -slap you into jerked beef just for luck.' - -"The buck was finally up against the real thing, and he knew it. I'll -bet that his face was whiter than mine is now when the big-framed man, -who had the devil of anger lurking in his eyes, suddenly loosed his -right hand from around the Indian's neck, and, still clutching him by -the left, swept the loose arm back for the momentum and brought his -heavy palm smack against the buck's left cheek with a noise that sounded -like the explosion of a charge of blasting powder. The slap rattled the -Indian's teeth and made his big head joggle from side to side like the -head of an automaton. Clutching the Indian's throat again then with his -right hand, the big-framed man repeated the slapping performance on the -Indian's right cheek with his left hand, and left a welt there that -might have been made by a cat-o'-nine tails. The buck was too dazed, in -the first place, by the suddenness of it all, to make a move: in the -second place, he was too cowardly. The big-framed man--he was an expert -mining engineer from Nevada, and his name was Varus Pryor--slapped the -Indian's face, first with his right and then with his left, for three -minutes, with all his might, and then, getting behind the buck, -proceeded to slap him into the street. With first one hand and then the -other clutching the collar of the Indian's coat, he slapped him out to -the front door of the hotel. Then he gave the buck the knee in the small -of the back, and hoisted him across the pavement to the middle of the -street, where the Indian spun around and fell for a moment. - -"'I don't care what the Indian Bureau says about it,' said the keen-eyed -man, standing in the doorway of the hotel. 'God Almighty never intended -that white men should stand for such alligators as that copper-mugged -swindler, and'---- - -"'Stand clear, pard, he's going to plug you!' shouted a man from a -second-story window of the hotel. - -"The Indian, pretending to be hurt, and only half risen to his feet in -the obscurity of the middle of the street, had got his gun out, and the -yell from the second story reached Pryor just in time. As it was, the -buck planted a ball in the front door of the hotel, only two inches -above the big-framed man's head. By that time Pryor's gun was working, -and he drilled six holes forty-eight hundredths of an inch in diameter -plumb through the swindling Umatilla's chest. Forty-five minutes later -he was acquitted by a coroner's jury on the grounds of self-defense and -justifiable homicide--a two-in-one verdict. - -"This," concluded the traveling Inspector of Indian Agencies, "was the -finish of just one mentally-burnished buck Indian, and I know of several -others." - - - - -THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER. - - -_Story of a Sance at Stud Between Two Oregon Contractors and the Close - Finish Thereof._ - -"Somehow or another, I don't like the game of stud," said a Government -contractor from Portland, Ore. "It's too much of a strain to play stud. -There are too many heart-breaking and headache-producing possibilities -attached to the mysterious card the other fellow has got in the hole. -I'd rather take the chance of guessing what all of his five cards are -than to engage in the perspiring business of trying to figure out the -horrible possible value of the one blind card, especially if the four -cards he has exposed are capable of being amplified into a hand of the -topper kind by the addition of that bit of pasteboard in the pit. I -can't get away from the impression that it's like putting all of your -money in one bet to play stud. Now, there's a good deal to the game of -draw besides mere bluffing. In fact, bluffing is almost an obsolete -feature of the game among the experts at draw poker. The man that plays -his hand in draw will beat the bluffer every time in -year-in-and-year-out play. - -"The folks out my way had the stud-poker fad pretty badly about eight or -ten years ago, but now they've got back to their first love and stick -pretty generally to the game of California draw--which, by the way, is a -whole lot different game from the draw you people back here play. For -example, a man sprung a thing on me last night that he called a pat -straight. I had three aces, but he said his pat straight topped me, and -as he had his gang with him, I had to look pleasant and let him rake in -the money. If a man out on the Slope were to talk pat straight to a -party of aborigines, they'd conduct him to the Alcalde's calaboose and -have him locked up to await a commission's decision as to his -responsibility. - -"But to get back to the period when the stud-poker fad got hold of us -out in Oregon. I was a witness of a heart-disease finish of a game of -that kind a few years back that caused me to decide that ordinary draw -was good enough for my money right along. It was right after the big -fire that ate up the best part of The Dalles eight years ago. As soon as -the building contractors of Portland got word to the effect that The -Dalles was being licked up by the flames, they hopped aboard trains and -made for The Dalles with an eye to business. They knew that The Dalles, -which was chiefly a wooden layout before the fire, would be immediately -rebuilt in brick and stone, and that the contractors who got on the -scene of ruin first would scoop in the bulk of the business. Two of -these contractors were--well, I'll have to side-step on their names, for -they're two of the most prominent citizens out on the banks of the -Willamette, and both of 'em walk up the middle aisle on Sunday as if -they never heard of such a thing as stud poker. Both of them are -Irishmen, which is why neither of 'em could see that he was licked on -this occasion. - -"One of them, we'll say, was Dan Carmody, and the other was Tim Feeney. -Carmody got into The Dalles a few hours ahead of Feeney, and he made -those few hours count. He went around to the business men of The Dalles -who had been wiped out by the fire and asked them what they wanted with -him. They hadn't burned the wires up telegraphing for Carmody to come to -them, but Carmody about convinced them that they had done just this -thing, and he began making estimates for 'em with pencil and pad. He -corralled them in the one remaining hall of the town and told them to go -ahead and just let him know what they wanted of him. Carmody's cyclonic -nerve appealed to their fancy, and they found themselves juggling with -the figures Carmody was putting down on his pad. Three hours after -Carmody struck The Dalles from Portland he had in his inside coat pocket -rough drafts of contracts to build a new stone business block, including -a theater, and also to erect a large, ornate hotel, the cost of both -buildings to be not more than $350,000. Oh, Carmody was a hustler all -right. - -"He had an idea that his friend and business rival, Tom Feeney, would be -down on the next train from Portland, and he went to the station to -receive him. Sure enough, Feeney stepped off the next incoming train. -Carmody had his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and a big cigar -stuck aggravatingly in his teeth when Feeney ran into him. Feeney's jaw -fell. - -"'When did you get in, Dan?' he asked Carmody. - -"'Three hours ago,' replied Dan, with a grin. - -"Feeney made a funny motion, as if to jump aboard a train that was just -pulling out for Portland, but he came back to his cheerful rival and -asked him: - -"'Anything doing, Dan?' - -"Carmody executed two very shifty jig steps in token of his happiness, -and then reassumed his dignity. - -"'Well, I'll tell you how it is, Tim,' he said. 'These people here are -pretty badly chewed up, y' see. Now, maybe they'll be wanting to rebuild -a few chicken coops and outhouses--I don't know but what they will. Now, -there's a chance for you, Tim.' - -"Feeney didn't look very merry over this. Says he: 'Chicken coops, is -it? And who's going to throw up the new business building and the opera -house, and the hotel, and the like?' - -"Carmody was laying for that question. He drew the two rough contracts -out of his pocket. - -"' Looks as if I'm It over here, don't it, Tim?' he asked Feeney, as the -latter read over the two contracts with a gloomy countenance. 'Nice -work, hey? That's what you get for monkeying around in bed all the -morning, Tim. Why don't you be like me, now? I never go to bed,' etc. -Carmody couldn't refrain from working that nice edge of his, and strung -the dismal-faced Feeney for keeps. Feeney finally walked away, the -picture of dejection, to see if there were any crumbs to be picked up in -the way of rebuilding. He found, however, that all of the business men -that had not already been got by Carmody were disposed to wait awhile -for the disposition of insurance, and he didn't get a smell of the -rebuilding. He walked around the still-smoking Dalles for the remainder -of the day, figuring on how much Carmody was going to make out of his -two big contracts. Carmody himself started in to open wine by way of -celebration, so that by the time the night boat for Portland was ready -to leave her slip he was pretty comfortable. Both he and Feeney took the -night boat and I happened to be going down to Portland on the boat -myself that night. Feeney had taken the bowl himself a bit during the -day to assuage his depression over his lack of success, and he was -pretty mellow when the boat pulled out. Carmody, with about a dozen -quarts under his belt, dug Feeney up as soon as he got aboard, and the -two walked up and down the main deck, arm in arm, Carmody keeping up his -merciless stringing of his friend. Then Carmody heard the clatter of the -chips in a $10 limit game of stud that had already started in the -card-room, and suggested a two-handed game of stud to Feeney, with some -accommodating non-player to deal the cards. Feeney was agreeable, and -Carmody, seeing that I wasn't mixing up with the game in the card-room, -asked me if I wouldn't dish 'em out for an hour or so of stud between -himself and Feeney. It was to be $100 limit and $10 ante. The two men -didn't get up to the $100 limit at all until after they had played for -half an hour, and Carmody was $600 or $700 winner. Then Feeney found -himself with kings up on tens in front of him and a card that he either -liked or elected to bluff on in the hole, while Carmody had three aces -face up and a card in the hole that he appeared to think a heap of, -judging from the way he bet. - -"'These kings of mine,' said Feeney, with the transparent air of a man -making a win-out bluff, 'may not look very pretty alongside those three -bullets of yours, Carmody, but they suit me, at that. You can have a -peep at the blind for $100.' - -"'I wouldn't think of paying so little money for the privilege of gazing -at such a good card as you think you've got, Tim,' said Carmody. 'Now, -having already got you beat on the show-up, I guess I can afford to -charge you another $100 for a glimpse of the other one-spot that I've -got in the pit.' - -"This kind of talk went on for ten minutes, the two men raising each -other back at $100 a clip until there was $3800 in the pot. Feeney -talked and acted like a bluffer all the time, but nevertheless Carmody -began to suspect that, after all, Tim might have something in the hole -to beat him. So when Carmody called Feeney's last $100 raise the latter -knew that his friend with the contracts in his pocket didn't have any -four aces, and he just scooped in the pot before he showed up what he -had in the hole. It was the third king, completing a nice full hand, -that Feeney had in the hole, and the money was his. Carmody turned up a -deuce, that he had tried to make the bluff was another ace, and looked -properly crestfallen. - -"'For a Mulligan that knows so little about business as you, Tim,' said -Carmody, 'you've got a mighty crafty way about you of making it appear -that you're bluffing. We'll try it again, and from now on I'll know that -when you look and talk like you're bluffing you've got the hand.' - -"Both men had been ringing up the steward's boy a good deal, during the -progress of the game, and they were not, therefore, any more sober than -was necessary. On the very next hand Feeney took a big hunk out of his -rival. He had three deuces face up and Carmody had three jacks on top. -Feeney began to bet $100 with so much natty confidence that Carmody -decided that his compatriot was adopting new tactics in bluffing, and, -quite naturally, with his three nice-looking jacks plainly in sight, he -not only stood every raise but raised back the limit every time. - -"'I figure it this way,' said Carmody, abstractedly to himself, when -there was nigh onto $4000 in chips in the center of the baize. 'This -Harp from Connemara across the table can't turn two of these tricks one -right after the other. The percentage of the game is against such a -thing as that. And he's just perky and sassy because he thinks I'm on to -his first exhibited system of bluffing. Tim, another $100, if you want -to feast your Mulligan blue eyes on this other knave of mine in the -hole.' - -"'And $100,' said Feeney, with all the confidence in life. - -"Thus they went on for fully fifteen minutes, until the proportions of -the pot were really alarming, considering that neither of the men was a -millionaire or anything like it. There was $7200 in the middle of the -table when Carmody wilted. He attempted to put his wilt on philanthropic -grounds. - -"'With a drink or two in you, Tim,' he said, 'you're an incautious and -unwise citizen for a man humping along toward 60 years of age'--Feeney -wasn't more than 48, and didn't look that. 'And Mrs. Feeney's been -telling my wife for the past twelve years that she's aching to have a -look at the old sod, but that her man Tim considers himself too poor for -the journey. So I won't be the means of casting gloom around your -household, Tim. I see your $100, and what's the color of that cheap ten -or eight spot you've got in the hole?' - -"Feeney turned over his fourth deuce and hauled down the money. That -sort o' took Carmody's nerve and he had to have several big drinks of -the hard stuff to set him right again. While he was drinking Feeney took -up the end of the stringing that Carmody had abandoned. - -"'How much do you figure you'll pull down from those two contracts, -Dan?' he asked his rival in business. - -"'About $75,000,' answered Carmody quickly, 'which is just about $75,000 -more than The Dalles fire has been worth to you, eh, Tim?' - -"'What's the use of depleting the capital that you've already got in -bank?' asked Feeney, with a twinkle in his eye. 'Just play me stud for -those contracts. I'll say they're worth $60,000, and I'm good for that -if I'm good for a cent.' - -"Carmody studied for a moment. He was already out $11,000 in this poker -game, and he wanted that money back. The idea of playing his contracts -against Feeney's hard cash rather appealed to his imagination, which was -not less active on account of the huge quantity of stuff he had been -drinking. - -"'Well, I'll tell you what I'll do to give you a start in life, Tim,' -said Carmody finally. 'You've got my checks for $11,000. Supposing you -call those two contracts worth $70,000, return me those checks for -$11,000, and say that the two contracts I've got in my pocket are worth -$59,000 as they stand. Then I'll give you a chance to take as big a fall -out of the contracts as you think you can.' - -"That idea suited Feeney to a T, and I stood by to begin dealing again. -The two contracts were pushed into the center of the table by Carmody, -and it was an additional part of my business, besides dealing, to make -note of the changing value of the contracts as the game progressed. - -"Well, the game continued to go Feeney's way, and Carmody just looked at -his contracts as Feeney began to edge them nearer and nearer to his end -of the table. Carmody, while he figured that the contracts were so much -velvet, didn't look happy when Feeney picked $12,000 more out of them, -leaving their value to Dan only an approximate $47,000, but he played on -in the hope of better luck. Finally a queer hand came around. Carmody -caught two queens, an eight and a seven. So did Feeney. This thing made -Carmody mad. - -"'Of all the niggering out I ever saw,' he exclaimed, 'this is the -worst. But it's about time I had the best of it when it comes to pure -bull-head luck.' - -"So he bet the limit that he had a better card in the hole than Feeney. -Feeney came back at him every clip, and when I interposed a remonstrance -over the heftiness of the game, expressing the opinion that both of them -would probably be sorry they had gone into the thing so heavily when the -gray dawn came around, they said they knew they'd be sorry, and went -right ahead. - -"'This is surely the hottest case of a stand-off in a deal in stud that -I've seen yet,' said Feeney, 'and I shouldn't be surprised if we had to -split the pot when the show-down comes. But I'm as good as you, Carmody, -on the four that show, and I'm with you all night if you're going to -keep it up that long.' - -"When my tab of the shifting value of the contracts showed that -Carmody's interest therein was only an even $30,000, Carmody looked up -at the ceiling of the card-room and reflected. - -"'Here,' he said, 'is where I get my contracts back and break even, or -where I have to go into partnership with a slow-witted Irishman on those -buildings at The Dalles. Feeney, I call you.' - -"Feeney turned over a six spot. Carmody's card in the hole was a five. -Feeney was the possessor of a half interest in Carmody's fine contracts -at The Dalles, and that's how it happened that these two builders, who -had always gone it singly and alone, built up The Dalles in partnership. -They got along so well together at The Dalles work that three years -later they went into a general contracting partnership and they've been -getting rich ever since. But it was their stud game on The Dalles boat -that induced me to conclude that old-fashioned draw was good enough for -me." - - - - -THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN. - - - _With the Result That His Clothes Finally Went into a Pot, and Fortune - Scowled upon Him._ - -"When a man arrives at that pitch where he'll bet the clothes off his -back over a jackpot, it's about up to him to let the game of draw alone, -in my opinion," said a traveling special agent of the Treasury -Department. "I'm talking about a game of draw that happened last fall -down in the Territory, on the south bank of the Canadian River, in the -Chickasaw country, between four St. Louis men. They were on their annual -hunting trip down there. They were well-known business men of old St. -Loo, pals of a half a lifetime, and they had been after bear, deer, -feathered game, or any old thing shootable down in the Territory every -year together for more than a decade. They always played poker on these -outings, too, and the bank president always got all the money. The other -three couldn't do anything whatever with the bank president's brand of -poker. They'd been digging at him on these excursions for ten years, -trying every conceivable scheme to get his money, and even playing in -combination against him, but when it came time to strike camp he always -had all the money in the crowd, owned all the camp fixtures, and served -out smoking tobacco to his three chums in a lordly way only when he felt -generous. It made 'em hot, but they had to accept his alms if they -wanted to smoke. - -"The three of 'em determined when the party set out from St. Louis in -their special car last autumn that the bank president wasn't going to -come back from the hunting trip with all the money, even if they had to -leave his bones to bleach on the banks of the Canadian. They declared -together that the bank president's sassiness for the remainder of the -year after eating them up at poker down in the Territory was something -unbearable, and they didn't intend to stand for it any more. - -"They played a little poker in their car on the trip down from St. -Louis, and this gave one of the three conspirators a chance to get hold -of the bank president's two decks of cards. The conspirators carefully -marked these two decks of cards--marked 'em both just the same way--and -then, during the temporary absence of the bank president in another part -of the car, he elaborately explained to his two companions in infamy how -he had done it, the three going over the bank president's two decks in -detail, so as to master the markings. Then the two decks were returned -furtively to the bank president's grip, and the rest of the playing on -the trip down was done with ordinary packs. They never played big on -these journeys, anyhow, but reserved their stiff games for the -bad-weather days in camp. - -"When they got to their point of debarkation on the line, they left -their car on a siding and struck out for their regular camp, about -seventy-five miles from the railroad. They stuck to the bagging of pelts -and antlers for a week or so; then a threatening morning came along and -the bank president suggested poker. - -"'What's the use?' they all demurred, eying the bank president gloomily. -'You always get the whole works, and then you're insufferable for the -rest of the year. We don't think you're on the level, anyhow.' - -"'Oh, I'll give you all a chance this time,' said the bank president, -grinning. 'I won't be hard upon you. Then, you see, the more you fellows -play with me in the game, why, the more you learn about poker, and I'm -sure the instruction you get helps you a lot in your games with the dubs -up in St. Loo. I'm noted, anyhow, for my generosity in giving others the -benefit of my wisdom.' - -"'Well,' said the spokesman and arch-conspirator of the three, 'we'll -play a little game of table-stakes, but checks don't go; this thing of -the three of us writing you checks that keep your large family in -opulence for a year is'---- - -"'All right, let it be table stakes,' replied the bank president -amiably. 'I'm not a man to take bread out of the mouths of the -impoverished,' and with more of such badinage the game started. - -"An ordinary deck was used at first--a deck out of the satchel of the -real estate man, the infamous member of the conspiring trio who had -marked the bank president's cards. The bank president, as usual, had all -of the luck from the jump. He seemed to rake down every pot. The three -glared at him and made all sorts of insinuating remarks about the -phenomenal luck of the bank president that had continued for a dozen -years. The bank president regarded them indulgently, and told them -they'd learn the elementary principles of the game after they'd camped -with him for another ten years or so. - -"After an hour's play the bank president beat the real estate man--the -other two had dropped out--out of a stiff jackpot with a pair of better -threes, and the real estate man simulated great rage and tore the deck -of cards into many pieces. - -"'For heaven's sake, give us another deck!' he exclaimed, passionately, -with a furtive wink at his two companions in crime. - -"The bank president reached back of him, collared his grip, and produced -one of his decks with a bland smile. They surely were scientifically -marked, for this bank president had an eye in his head, and he didn't -get next. - -"'Well, we'll try one of my decks,' said the bank president. 'Of course, -it'll be a shame to plug you with a new musket--none of my decks has -been riffled yet--but maybe my unfamiliarity with the range of the fresh -gun'll give you all a show at me.' Oh, this bank president was arrogant -in victory, all right. - -"Well, he wasn't one, two, three, from then on, of course. It was done -mighty well, and not so as to excite the bank president's suspicions in -the least, but he found himself topped practically every time, and his -face grew long. He was quite heavily in the hole at the end of an hour's -play with his own deck. - -"'Oh, we've got on to your bluffing style of play, that's all,' said the -real estate man complaisantly. 'You just had us scared together for the -past ten years, but you're as clear a proposition now as a mountain -creek. I always thought you were more or less of a counterfeit and a -four-flusher, anyhow, didn't you, fellows?' - -"Of course the other two thought so, too, and the bank president's brow -clouded as, time after time, after he had bet hard on hands that looked -to him to be worth every dollar he ventured on them, he found himself -topped, niggered out. The real estate man increased the bank president's -worry by flashing a nine-high straight against the financier's -eight-high straight, and then the latter did a card-tearing stunt -himself. He ripped his deck into ribbons with a running commentary of -strong talk. - -"'It must be a rank deck that'll permit of a set of amateur skates like -you fellows putting it on me,' he said. Then he dug into his grip again -and produced the other 'phony deck, his three companions warning him -against letting his angry passions rise, and so on. - -"The three conspirators let the bank president pull down a couple of -sizable pots with this deck just for the sake of enjoying his renewed -impertinence, and then they went at him good and hard. At the end of an -hour they had the bank president's supply of ready cash--about -$500--badly wilted. He had only $100 left when it came around the real -estate man's turn to dish out a jackpot round. The bank president was -under the gun, as they say out there of the man who's to the left of the -dealer of a jackpot, and he cracked the pot open for the limit. The -other two stayed, and when it got up to the real estate man he raised it -the limit. This knocked his two confederates out of it--as a matter of -fact the arch-conspirator winked them out of it--but the limit was just -what the bank president wanted with his four bullets. - -"The bank president took one card with a crafty, -I'll-make-him-think-I'm-four-flushing expression of countenance. The -real estate man, with a queen-high sequence flush of hearts remarked -that the bunch he had was good enough for him. Then they got to betting, -and it was no time at all before the bank president had done the apology -act with the remains of his $500. He pulled out a check-book then and -was fumbling around for a fountain pen when the real estate man called -him down. - -"'Not on your life,' he said. 'Agreement was that checks don't go, -you'll remember.' - -"'But this hand'----the bank president started to say. - -"'Makes no difference about that hand,' interrupted the real estate man. -'Agreement was for table stakes.' - -"'But, great Csar, man,' pleaded the bank president. 'I want to get -some kind of a decent run for this hand. Why, I'd bet the clothes right -off my back on it.' - -"'Well,' said the real estate man calmly, 'we didn't make any -stipulation about clothes and personal possessions, and you can get the -clothes off your back if you want to. But no checks.' - -"'Well,' said the bank president, peeling off a big solitaire ring, -'this stone's worth $400, and I'll raise you that much.' - -"'I see you,' said the real estate man. 'What else have you got that I -can raise against?' - -"'Well,' replied the bank president, 'this watch is worth $300 and'---- - -"'Skate it in,' interrupted the real estate man. 'Raise you $300 then, -your valuation of the ticker.' - -"'Dog-gone the luck,' said the bank president, 'I don't want to call -you. I know I've got you beat. I'd be willing to bet my corduroys, shoes -and hat that I've got you soaked, for'---- - -"'Rush 'em to the center, then,' calmly replied the real estate man. -'Supposing I appraise the corduroys, shoes and hat at $50 for the -bundle. That satisfactory?' - -"'It's got to be,' replied the bank president mournfully. - -"'All right, then, put 'em in the pot and I'll consider that you've -called me,' said the real estate man. - -"The bank president stood up, peeled off his coat and waistcoat and -hunting breeches and dropped them on the blanket that served for a -table. Then he removed his pair of high hunting shoes and placed them on -top of the clothes, and tossed his fore-and-aft cap on the heap. Then he -sat down in his underclothes, picked up his four aces, and said: - -"'Now, dern you, put down your little straight or full and I'll show you -what you're up against.' - -"The wealthy depositors of the St. Louis bank of which he was the head -would have enjoyed seeing his face when the real estate man calmly laid -down his sequence flush and hauled down the pot, togs and all, without a -word. - -"'You're a good thing, ain't you?' said the other two, who had been -taking the play in with a positive knowledge of how it was going to come -out. - -"The bank president looked pretty forlorn as the three sat there and -guyed him. Finally he stood up. - -"'Well,' said he to the real estate man. 'I'll just write you a check -for the fifty you allowed on those togs of mine,' and he started to -reach for the clothes in order to dress himself. The real estate man -held the suit, shoes and hat out of the bank president's reach. - -"'These things ain't for sale,' he said. 'They'll all just about fit -me,' trying on the hat, 'and I guess I'll just hang on to them as a sort -of No. 2 outfit.' - -"'But, great Scott, man!' exclaimed the bank president, 'don't you know -that I haven't got another stitch in camp--that that rig-out's the only -one I brought from the car?' - -"'Too bad,' said the real estate man. 'You hadn't ought to've skated the -togs into the pot, then. Sorry, old man, but honest, I really couldn't -think of parting with these things for any amount of money. I've only -got one suit along with me, too, and only one hat and pair of shoes, and -if they get wet what am I going to do? Got to have a change, you know. I -really feel very deeply for you in your predicament, and so do the other -boys--don't you fellows?--but I need this outfit in my business.' - -"The other two men nodded their heads in grave endorsement of this stand -and the bank president frothed at the mouth. - -"'What the devil do you expect me to do, you blamed idiot?' he shouted -at the real estate man. 'Stand around the tent and shiver, or cut across -the trail in my underclothes for the car to get another set of togs?' - -"'I wish I could think of some plan to help you out, old man,' answered -the real estate man with commiseration in his countenance, 'but I really -couldn't think, under any consideration, of giving up these things,' and -he made the suit, the shoes and the hat up into a neat bundle as he -spoke. Just then one of the other men, who had been prowling outside, -came running into the tent breathless. - -"'Say, fellows,' he exclaimed, 'there's some fresh bear tracks right -over there in the clearing,' and he grabbed his gun. So did the other -two. The bank president made as if to pick up his rifle, too, when his -eye fell on his lack of raiment. By that time the real estate man was -fifty yards from the tent, at a lope with the other two. - -"'Hey, come back here, you confounded cut-throat!' the financier yelled -after the real estate man, who had the bank president's clothes, shoes -and hat slung in a neat bundle over his shoulder. But the three men were -out of voice range in a jiffy. - -"They came back, beaming, along toward nightfall, with the pelts of two -nice young black bears. They found the bank president moping around, -wrapped up in a blanket and sulphurizing the air when they reached the -tent. Then they sat around him in a circle and expressed their sincere -sympathy with him and told him his case was only one more instance of -the awful evil of gambling. After supper and a pipe they all turned in, -leaving the bank president still sulking and uttering terrible -maledictions under his breath. - -"The real estate man and the other two went out early the next -morning--the bank president's clothes along with them--and when they got -back they found the blanketed financier on the verge of apoplexy from -sheer wrath. The real estate man then made a great show of charity by -giving up the togs, and the bank president was in a state of good-nature -by the time camp was struck. The three conspirators united in a letter -of explanation, inclosing all of their winnings, to the bank president -when they got back to St. Louis, and when the bank president got the -letter and his disgorged losings he was most tickled to death and -instantly became as perky and impudent as ever. - -"'I knew you couldn't have done it if you'd played on the square,' said -he, the first time he met them. 'Wait till next year, that's all.'" - - - - -THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS. - - -_Wherein It Is Shown That It Is Easy Enough to Be Cool When Playing with - Another Man's Money._ - -"I happen to know that a considerable number of the most famous -professional gamblers in this country made their reputation with other -men's money," said a Rocky Mountain man of large experience. "These men -have had their names heralded far and wide as the stakers of thousands, -and even hundreds of thousands, upon the turn of a card, and innumerable -yarns have been spun as to their cool, John Oakhurst-like manner of -scooping in a table full of money upon the smashing of a bank, or of -calmly lighting their cigars and strolling out when fortune went against -them. So far as the stories themselves are concerned, some of them are -undoubtedly right; but all of them leave out the very essential fact -that the men were simply players of other men's money--'table touts,' we -call 'em out West. I suppose it is a reasonable proposition that it is a -whole lot easier to risk another man's money at the table than it is to -endanger your own. Of all the men I am telling you about hardly a one -had enough luck at the tables to keep himself warm when putting up his -own coin; perhaps it was owing to the extreme caution of their play -under these conditions and the far greater strain involved in the -hazarding of their own money. They could take another man's money--the -money of a man who probably did not know the difference between 00 and -33 in a wheel layout, but who could afford to venture almost an -unlimited amount of money on a game--and in at least eight cases out of -ten they could run the initial stake into a pile that would mean for -themselves a rake-off or percentage of thousands or tens of thousands; -but in venturing their own money I have seen few of them who were any -good in the matter of keeping their nerve under rein. - -"Back in the sixties Tom Naseby was generally considered the most -dangerous man at a faro table on the Pacific Slope. Bank after bank, -from Portland to San Diego, went to the wall under his system of -play--or lack of system, I ought to say--and at the end the San -Francisco banks shut him out altogether, so that he was compelled to -start a layout of his own. Among Naseby's smashes that were famous on -the coast was that of breaking Byron McGregor's Kearny street -institution to the tune of $150,000; of hitting up Tillottson's $10,000 -limit game in San Francisco for $100,000 and closing the doors, and of -banging Ned Jordan's bank in Portland for $125,000, all within the space -of three months. Yet Naseby told me himself that on none of these plays -was he venturing a _sou marqu_ of his own money--that it had all been -handed over to him, the initial stakes for each big play, that is, by -Ralston, the millionaire San Francisco banker, who committed suicide. -Out of each winning Naseby of course got a big cut of the money, for -Ralston went into the thing for the sport of it and was a very generous -man. Naseby, who belonged to the tribe of savers for a rainy day, hung -onto these rolls. Naseby played faro with just about as much skill as a -Zulu wields a war club, and he frankly confessed that his coups were -simply the result of unlimited confidence and unlimited backing allied -to bull-head luck. - -"Frank Burbridge, the most famous poker player that Portland has ever -brought out, was another man who made his reputation as a gambler upon -the strength of the vast winnings he hauled out upon stakes furnished by -wealthy men. Some of these rich backers of Burbridge remained behind the -screen and only received Frank's reports as to how he made out in the -games for which they staked him, but others came out into the open and -sat alongside Burbridge when he was playing with their money--not for -the purpose of watching him, for he was strictly on the level, but just -for the fun of watching the game. One of the big contractors for the -building of the Oregon Short Line, a man worth many millions of dollars, -was one of Burbridge's clients who liked to watch the expert poker -player play the hands. He was constantly staking Burbridge for big games -with dangerous opponents. If Frank won, all right; he got most of the -money himself. If he lost, all right, too; the contractor simply went -into the thing for the mental distraction it afforded him. - -"I was a witness of one of those big games in which Burbridge engaged -with a stake furnished by the contractor. It was played at the old -Willamette House in Portland, and it was a two-handed game. The other -player was a very wealthy Portland man who was said to have made a big -pot of money by simply making the suggestion that he intended to -parallel the Oregon Short Line. This rich man thought he knew how to -play poker until his friend, the contractor of the Short Line who was -Burbridge's staker, put him up against the latter--partly for the -interest of watching the game, and partly, perhaps, for other reasons. -Anyhow, the Portland man had a whole heap of an opinion of what he knew -about poker, and played the game incessantly for pastime. He had never -happened to sit in a game with Burbridge, and Burbridge's backer finally -suggested to the Portland man that he have a try at what he could do -with the man who was known to be the most expert player of poker in the -Northwest. - -"'Oh, he's a professional,' said the Portland man, 'and I don't play -cards with professionals in a contest of skill such as I see you want to -make this. I play with 'em once in a while just to study their games, -but not for big money. I wouldn't trust them under such circumstances.' - -"'Well, you trust me, I suppose, don't you?' said the contractor. - -"'Certainly,' was the reply. - -"'All right, my friend,' said the contractor, 'I'd just like to find out -to satisfy my own curiosity how good you can play poker. I don't amount -to much at it myself, and I don't think you're any better than I am. -Very well. You sit into a game with Burbridge, and I'll deal all the -hands myself, and sit by to see fair play--though Burbridge plays just -as fairly as I would myself under the same circumstances. Does that -proposition suit you?' - -"'Yes,' said the Portland man, 'I'd just like to give Burbridge a whirl -under those circumstances.' - -"So the game was arranged. Four or five of us were invited around to the -old Willamette House to look on while the game progressed. The two men -sat down to the game about 8 o'clock at night. The Portland man--I will -call him Tunwell, which is pretty close to his right name--had -occasionally met Burbridge, who was a very smooth, urbane sort of chap -of thirty, and so they nodded good-naturedly to each other when Tunwell -came into the room. The contractor was on hand with his check-book. The -conditions were simply that the contractor was to deal each of the -hands, and then retire from the table with the remainder of the deck -until the call for cards. Then he was to dish out what cards were called -for, and get away from the table again until the hand was played. The -rest of us were to sit around, with the privilege of having peeps at the -hands. Tunwell was to have the privilege of asking the advice of any of -us as to proper plays, as Burbridge was to be permitted to refer hands -that heavily involved the contractor's purse to the latter--not to seek -advice, but simply to inform him what he intended to do in the play. The -game was to be without limit, and the chips were worth $5, $25, and $50. - -"So the game began. Tunwell soon proved himself a pretty cool man. He -didn't put up a stingy game, but he simply had the proper sort of regard -for the worth of the cards the contractor dished out to him, and he -played them right, as we who were watching the game and had a chance of -seeing both hands soon discovered. Two or three times in the early part -of the game I, for one, thought he was a bit overcautious, but in -general his line of play was away above the average. Tunwell was a big, -gray-eyed man of the type that is jammed full of well-controlled nerve, -and he held himself on this night in additional check because he knew -that he was up against a hard proposition. The play at first didn't -amount to much--fifty or hundred-dollar bets occasionally--and both men -seemed to be sparring for information on the style of each other's play. -Tunwell finally decided upon a bluff. He had a nine high, and he went up -to $500 on it. Burbridge laid down. This was pretty good for Tunwell, -but he had the sense to show no exultation. Now, after making a thing -like that go through, most men would keep on bluffing until called when -on steep and craggy ground, but Tunwell didn't. He resumed the system of -playing for what his hands were worth. This he stuck to for half an hour -or so, when he was $800 ahead of the game and then he made another bluff -on a pair of queens. Burbridge, who had three aces, laid down, and -Tunwell's pile was amplified by $1,000. - -"'That was a cold bluff, Burbridge,' said Tunwell. - -"'Oh, I don't think so,' said Burbridge. 'There was too much confidence -in your eye for that.' Which shows that even a great poker player is as -likely as anybody to get mixed when it comes to studying eyes in a game. - -"After a while Burbridge caught a pat full house, and Tunwell filled a -still better full hand. It was Tunwell's bet, and he went $1,000 on it. -Burbridge laid down--wherein it was plain to be seen that he was a man -who possessed that indefinable thing, the poker player's 'hunch.' - -"Now, all these plays I'm telling you about were simply part of the -warming up. The two men were simply studying each other. They didn't -really begin to play poker until two hours after they sat down. - -"Then the contractor dealt Burbridge a promising set of threes, and gave -Tunwell a neat two pairs, with aces on top. Tunwell filled with another -ace, and Burbridge got nothing worth mentioning in the draw, so that his -three nines didn't look very big to us against an ace full. It was -Burbridge's bet. He was one of those men who lay their cards down on the -table and look up at the ceiling before making a bet. - -"'Five thousand dollars,' said he finally, still looking up at the -ceiling reflectively, and the contractor, who had seen Tunwell's draw, -winced a bit. - -"Tunwell looked at him pretty hard and scanned his hand. He raised him -$5,000. - -"'And $5,000,' said Burbridge, quietly. Now, the contractor was a pretty -game sort of man, but we could see that he felt badly over this. - -"Then Tunwell laid down. Burbridge's bluff worked. Of course, not until -after the game did we tell him what Tunwell held that time, and when we -did he said: - -"'I felt from the first, before I made a bet that he had me beat--but -the bigger a man's hand, the easier it is to bluff him out of the -money.' Queer remark, wasn't it? - -"Tunwell kept his nerve like a major after this heavy fall, and we -couldn't see the slightest sign of faltering in his style of play. The -game went back to the $100 basis, and was comparatively uninteresting -for an hour or so. In the course of the play during this time Tunwell -caught four queens pat--a very remarkable thing--and got 50 only out of -the hands. But unlike what most poker players would do under such -circumstances, he didn't throw down the hand face upward on the table -with an oath. He wasn't that kind of poker player. - -"Just about midnight both men simultaneously decided upon a bluff--and -it's not often that men happen to do this in a two-handed poker game; -when they do, something always drops. Both men stood pat. There wasn't a -pair in either hand. It was a choice experience to note the offhand way -with which Burbridge made the first bet on this pat hand of his. - -"'Ten thousand dollars,' said he, and his backer, the contractor, went -to the window, raised it, and poked his head out for air. - -"'Same, more than you,' said Tunwell, scanning his hand as if it was the -real thing. - -"Burbridge raised him another $10,000 and flicked a bit of ashes off his -collar. Now Tunwell felt that his man was bluffing. - -"'I call you,' said he. - -"'Ace high,' said Burbridge. - -"'Ace high here,' said Tunwell. - -"'Queen next.' - -"'Queen next here.' - -"'Nine next.' - -"'Nine next here.' - -"'Six next.' - -"Tunwell tossed his four that was next on to the table face upward -without the movement of an eyebrow. - -"'Six wins the $60,000,' said he, and the contractor strolled back from -the window. - -"'Better luck next time, Tunwell,' said he, smiling, while Burbridge -drank a glass of water. - -"'There isn't going to be any next time, my boy,' returned Tunwell. 'I'm -no hog.'" - - - - -THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE. - - -_And How a Whirl at It Came Near Decimating the Population of a Section - of the Indian Territory._ - -"I don't just recall the name of the cheerful worker who invented that -wise phrase, 'There's a sucker born every minute, and they never die,' -but whoever he was he had something inside his head besides mayonnaise -dressing," said a giant from the Indian Territory, when the talk among a -party of Westerners at a roadhouse the other night switched around to -sure-thing games and cinch propositions. "I don't suppose there ever was -yet a sure-thing game rigged up that didn't get its quota of nibblers, -and even its occasional easy marks, who'd go up against it with their -whole rolls. I'm not speaking so much now of brace games as I am of -layouts that might just as well have the words, 'You lose,' painted all -over 'em, they're such obvious air-tights for the dealers. I suppose -we've all been up against brace faro. That's something that a man can't -heel himself against; the most he can do when he gets next to it that -two of 'em are slipping out of the box at one and the same time is to -'stick up' the dealer at the business end of a .45--if he's quick -enough--accumulate all the money in sight, and back toward the door. - -"But a man who'll lay up alongside of a brace faro layout or a brace -wheel need not necessarily be sucker enough to hand his dust over to a -smooth duck who's dealing a game that has all the scars, moles, tattoo -marks and other perfectly visible Bertillons of a dead open and shut -sure-thing layout. Yet I've seen men who were wise in their own -business--horse-rustling, for instance--go broke against games that -you'd think a ten-year-old would size up correctly without the -assistance of an X-ray apparatus. - -"I'm thinking of the time that Jink McAtee, afterward one of the foxiest -horse-thieves who ever used an upside-down brand in the Southwest, got -interested in squeeze-spindle in Guthrie. It was in Guthrie, in May, -1889, just after Oklahoma had been opened up, that the two Reeves -brothers, Bill and Al, and Arthur Pendleton started an all-round layout -in what was the first two-story shack that had been thrown up in the -town. The two Reeves boys are still running the biggest layout in -Guthrie, but Pendleton is dead. The Reeves-Pendleton brand of faro, as -well as their keno, wheel, stud, and other legitimate games, was -perfectly on the level, but in addition they had a few games in -operation that was plain cases to most of the patrons of the layout of -the sure-thing. The Reeves and Pendleton people didn't club anybody into -stacking up against their sure-thing games. They just started 'em going, -hired a man named Gately to run 'em, and struck the attitude that if -among the sooners and boomers of Guthrie there was people imbecile -enough to want to hit up these sure-thing games, it wasn't their -funeral. - -"The most alluring among these sure-thing games was the outfit called -the squeeze-spindle. You used to run across a squeeze-spindle quite -often down in the Southwest, but so many of the dealers of that game got -shot up and slithered that it has sort o' passed out. It's a lottery -game ostensibly, where the player makes what the dealer calls -'conditional' winnings, and the dealer has to have the assistance of -'boosters' to throw confidence into the suckers. It took a good con man -to run a squeeze-spindle game. The sucker would put up a hundred to win -five hundred; he'd cop the coin 'conditionally'--that is to say, the -arrow that flew around in the middle of the box had to point to another -number of the sucker's selection before the money would be his to walk -away with, and in the event of the arrow pointing to the right number -the player would get twice the sum. - -"Of course the arrow never went the sucker's way twice hand-running, and -equally, of course, it was a game where the dealer got all of the money. -The reason it was called a squeeze-spindle was because the dealer had -only to squeeze a button beneath the table to stop the arrow at any old -point in its flight around the numbers that he wanted to. When a sucker -was up against the game, a 'booster' would prance in with a big roll of -the house's money, treble it on a couple of straight turns of the -spindle, squeezed just his way by the dealer, and then the sucker would -conclude that it was only his lack of capital that caused him to -lose--just as the pin-head who doubles on favorites at the races tries -to convince himself when's he's broke and smoking a punk pipe that he'd -have been able to put all the bookmakers out of business if he'd just -had the capital to keep on with his system. Once in a great while a -squeeze-spindle dealer would let one of his good things get away with a -bunch of money, if he felt reasonably sure that the sucker would come -back at it with the coin later on; and thus the ingenuous little fiction -'ud go around that So-and-So had pasted a squeeze-spindle dealer for his -whole roll, and this would make business. - -"Now, here was a game that you wouldn't think a man with the sense he -was born with would bet twenty cents worth of zinc money on. But this -man Gately, who ran the squeeze-spindle for the Reeves-Pendleton layout -on a salary and commission basis, was a pretty smooth gazzabo in his -generation, and he landed the good things with his layout right along, -and often for sizeable money. He was a quiet, red bearded chap, with a -mighty convincing, persuasive way about him, and a man who'd put up a -fight, too, in a corner. He had free rein in the running of the -squeeze-spindle and two or three other sure-thing devices that formed a -sort of side-show to the main Reeves-Pendleton layout, and the -proprietors pretended that his outfit was really independent of their -plant--that Gately was simply renting space from them and going it -alone. But all Guthrie knew differently. - -"Well, up against this squeeze-spindle plant goes this here Jink McAtee -that I started to tell you about. Jink wasn't then known as a -horse-thief. He had been a sooner--he got in long before the trumpet -call on a thoroughbred Kentucky horse that he was afterward found to -have pinched out of a barn--and he had made a pretty good thing out of -the Guthrie corner lot that he had staked off. He sold it three days -after the dash for $6000, and then he laid back on his liquor with a -whole lot of content. He was a low forehead in looks and manners. He was -the veriest duffer in his attempts to make the Reeves-Pendleton -combination put up their shutters by attacking their square games, and -he lost over $3000 of his corner-lot money at their faro tables. He blew -in another couple of thousand of the bunch at the honkatonks around town -before his little beady eyes fell on Gately's squeeze-spindle, and he -perceived a chance to get all of his money back in jig-time. Gately -pointed it out to him just how easy it was. - -"Before McAtee put a dollar down on the spindle Gately got Jink's eyes -to popping by roping in a booster who pulled $3200 out of the -squeeze-spindle in quicker time than a cayuse could make two jumps, and -when Gately looked chagrined and sorrowful McAtee bit. Gately knew his -man pretty well, and he permitted Jink to not only win $1600 -'conditionally,' right off the reel, but he actually passed $400 of -Jink's winnings over to him. Then he proceeded to wipe Jink out. When -McAtee was all trimmed up, Gately looked sad. - -"'You didn't have quite enough along with you, McAtee,' he said, shaking -his head real mournfully. 'If you'd had another $200 to cover that $1600 -that you'd won and left in the hole, why, you'd had me heading for the -Canadian River by this time.' - -"McAtee ate this spiel of Gately's up as if it was so much lunch on a -counter, and went away filled with the idea that there was riches in the -squeeze-spindle if it was hit right, and with enough money to back up -the plays. So he went to just eleven of his sooner friends and talked -squeeze-spindle to 'em. He put it to them just what a good thing the -squeeze-spindle was rightly hammered. He told 'em how near he'd been to -pulling out his losings, and more besides, through the medium of -Gately's squeeze-spindle at the Reeves-Pendleton layout. They took -Jink's word for it, and they all joined the pool that McAtee organized -to smash that spindle. They got together $2600, and on the afternoon -following Jink's play they walked down to the Reeves-Pendleton plant in -a body. Each man had a rifle along with him. There wasn't anything -remarkable about that. During the first year of Guthrie's existence -every man carried a long-iron over his arm. If twelve men, all with -rifles, were to line up in front of the Reeves-Pendleton layout in -Guthrie to-day there'd be good reason for the people inside to suppose -that they were going to be 'stuck up,' but there was no reason to -suppose anything of the kind when Jack McAtee brought along his eleven -subscribers to his squeeze-spindle-smashing pool that afternoon. Gately -wasn't worried a little bit. - -"'My friends is all got a interest in this, podner,' explained Jink to -Gately, 'and they come along jest t' see th' play.' - -"'Certainly,' said Gately, and then Jink and his bunch began to get -action on the spindle. It all went their way at first. Gately didn't -actually hand them any money out, but he let 'em make 'conditional' wins -until they had their whole $2600 on the layout. Another correct twist of -the arrow would enable Jink to double the money; on the other hand, if -the arrow didn't hit the right number, Jink and his bunch only stood to -lose, as Gately explained, $600 of their 'conditional' winnings. - -"Now, the situation was one calculated to rattle almost any man. Gately -didn't intend that Jink or his twelve stalkers with the long-irons -should get away with any of that money, and it shows that he was a man -of nerve in making up his mind to that idea. He intended to get the -$2600 after a long series of plays, and then take a chance on the Jink -McAtee gang roaring and opening up on him. That's what he intended to -do. But he was a bit rattled and stampeded over the intense way the gang -had of looking upon the plays, and that's how he happened to make a -mistake. He gave his button too short a squeeze, and blamed if the arrow -didn't stop at precisely the number that stood to win Jink and his gang -$2600 of the house's money, in addition to pulling down the $2600 they -had in! - -"Gately saw his mistake almost as soon as he had made it, but a booster -named Gilpin, who was watching the play, was the quicker thinker of the -two. He jumped off a stool upon which he had been standing looking over -the heads of Jink's crowd, and yelled out: - -"'Stand clear, there! Don't shoot!' - -"It was a ruse. Nobody had any idea of shooting. Jink and his gang were -simply flooded with joy over their winning. But when they heard Gilpin's -warning, they all jumped back, and that was Gately's chance to redeem -his bad break. He snatched up the $5200--the rule of the spindle game is -that the dealer must show the same amount of money the sucker has got in -play, and Gately had $2600 of the house's money spread out--and back he -jumped through the door, which led out into an alley. Jink and his crowd -were stupefied. They stood stock still. Gately had gone with their money -and the house's money, and they didn't think of taking after him. They -figured it that the house would make good, perhaps. Anyhow, by the time -they came to, Gately had mazed it through the wilderness of shacks of -which Guthrie was already composed, and Bill Reeves had appeared on the -scene. - -"I had been with Bill in the main layout in the next room, and we heard -the shout of Gilpin. That's what took us in there. Jink made his talk, -which was a pretty hot and threatening one, and he was backed up in it -pretty forcibly by all the rest of his gang. - -"'Well, Gately jumped, that's all,' said Reeves. 'What am I going to do -about it?' - -"'Hand over $5200, quick,' said McAtee and some others of his bunch. - -"'I haven't got anything like that much money in the place,' said -Reeves. 'But I'll give you a check for it on the bank down the way.' - -"They demurred over the check proposition for awhile, but they finally -took Bill Reeves's check for $5200. While they were demurring, Bill -Reeves had a chance to scribble a note to the cashier of the bank, -telling him not to cash the check when it would be presented--to make -some excuse about not having just that amount of money on hand, or -something of that sort. Now, I didn't want to be in that place at all -just then, but there was no way of my getting out. I had come into the -room with Bill Reeves, and I knew that if I tried to mosey away I'd be -called back; that they figured me to have some sort of connection with -the layout, which I didn't. - -"Jink took the check and went over to the bank to get the money. The -cashier turned the check down on the ground that he had just shipped -most of the bank's money to St. Louis. We knew that there was going to -be trouble and a whole lot of it when Jink got back from the bank with -that word, and I don't think any of us expected to last much longer. -Jink came a-loping back from the bank, and when he came into the room -and tore up the check with appropriate remarks his gang all lined up -together, and we figured it that the shooting was going to begin right -then. When the whole situation looked so squally that I had my eye on -the nearest window to drop out of, Arthur Pendleton popped into the -room. - -"'What's all this?' he yelled, for there was a lot of clicking going on -in the room. Jink and his gang thought they saw a final chance of -getting their money. So, smoldering, they told the story to Pendleton. -Pendleton was a shrewd man, a forceful talker, and a diplomat from away -back. - -"'All the money I've got, or that there is in the roll just now,' he -said, 'is $600,' pulling the roll out of his pocket. 'You are perfectly -welcome to that. When Gately comes back, or when you get him, as I wish -you would, you can have the rest that's coming to you out of the roll he -pinched.' - -"Well, the $600 looked like better than no bread to Jink and his bunch, -and they took it and went out after Gately. It was getting along toward -twilight. Reeves and Pendleton figured it that Gately, in pulling down -the roll, had been acting in the interest of the house. They hadn't the -slightest notion that Gately had eloped with the $5200. They thought -he'd plant the money, keep out of sight for a few days until the Jink -McAtee push could be compromised with, and then come back. - -"McAtee's gang beat up every shack in town thoroughly, but there was no -Gately. They whipped the prairie for miles around, but they didn't -spring Gately. Gately had gone. The gang came back to the -Reeves-Pendleton layout, all of 'em pretty ugly. Pendleton got them -bunched, made a speech to them to the effect that if Gately wasn't -corralled within a week he'd make good the whole amount coming to them -out of his own pocket, and soft-soaped them into accepting those terms. -They dispersed. - -"When Gately didn't come back the next day, or give any indication to -his employers where he was, they got worried. - -"'I think Gately has drilled,' Pendleton said to me that day. 'He's an -Iowan, and there's going to be a big conclave and tournament of firemen -in Council Bluffs next week. I'll bet Gately has made for Council -Bluffs. I'm going after him. Come along with me.' - -"I told Pendleton that I hadn't anything to do with the game, but I -wasn't overlooking business propositions, and when he offered me 50 per -cent. of all the money we might reclaim from Gately, I went with him. We -got onto Gately's trail in Council Bluffs, as Pendleton had shrewdly -guessed we might, but he had been tipped off that we were after him, and -he chased over to Omaha. We were right after him, and he jumped for a -town in Southwestern Iowa called Red Oak. We were hot on his trail, and -we met up with him squarely next day in Red Oak. - -"'Let's have the money, Gately,' said Pendleton. - -"'I'll pass you back the house bunch, $2600,' said Gately, 'but the rest -of it I keep,' and he looked as if he meant it, good and hard, at that. - -"'How do you make that out a square deal?' asked Pendleton. - -"'Because,' replied Gately, pretty convincingly, 'it was me that took -the chance. I made a mistake, and stood to lose the house's $2600. If I -hadn't taken a chance, they'd have got the coin. If I'd have won their -$2600, your shack would have been shot into a sieve, and me into the -bargain. It was a case of run. I had to do the running. I earned the -$2600, and I hang on to it.' - -"It struck me that this was pretty square talk, and I told Pendleton so, -and advised him to cut out any idea of getting all the money back from -Gately through the medium of a gun-play. Gately handed out $2600, and -then he told us how he had got away. He had struck across the prairie -for Mulhall, and some of the McAtee gang, in scouring the country -a-horseback, had not only been right behind him, but they had passed -him. He heard them coming from behind, and he thought they had -recognized him in the twilight. He didn't dare to look back, but he -stooped down as if to tie his shoe, and looked at them under his arm -while in that stooping posture. They didn't figure that the man they -were after would be taking things so leisurely as all that, and so they -passed right by him in the gathering gloom, a-hunting Gately. Gately got -to Mulhall, and took the first train up for Omaha. - -"Before we got back to Guthrie, Jink McAtee and several of his pals in -the pool to smash the Gately squeeze-spindle had been given the sudden -chase by the United States Deputy Marshals for some horse-rustling -operation of theirs that had just come to light, and when Jink McAtee -got shot full of slugs by a posse down in the Brazos bottoms, three -years later, the Reeves-Pendleton layout still stood indebted to him in -the sum of $4600 with accrued interest, the balance that Jink and his -push did not pull down in their attempt to stampede a squeeze-spindle -layout." - - ---- - - - -_Nine Splendid Novels by_ WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE - - - -THE PIRATE OF PANAMA - - -A tale of old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventure. The -scene is laid in San Francisco on board _The Argus_ and in Panama. A -romantic search for the lost pirate gold. An absorbing love-story runs -through the book. - -_12mo. Cloth, Jacket in Colors. Net $1.25._ - - - -THE VISION SPLENDID - - -A powerful story in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars -against graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates -the story. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Net $1.25._ - - - -CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT - - -A story of Arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter -feud between cattle-men and sheep-herders. The heroine is a most unusual -woman and her love-story reaches a culmination that is fittingly -characteristic of the great free West. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition 50 cents._ - - - -BRAND BLOTTERS - - -A story of the Cattle Range. This story brings out the turbid life of -the frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor with a charming love -interest running through its 320 pages. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Jacket in Colors. Popular Edition 50 cents._ - - - -"MAVERICKS" - - -A tale of the western frontier, where the "rustler," whose depredations -are so keenly resented by the early settlers of the range, abounds. One -of the sweetest love stories ever told. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -A TEXAS RANGER - - -How a member of the most dauntless border police force carried law into -the mesquit, saved the life of an innocent man after a series of -thrilling adventures, followed a fugitive to Wyoming, and then passed -through deadly peril to ultimate happiness. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -WYOMING - - -In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured the -breezy charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the -frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -RIDGWAY OF MONTANA - - -The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics and -mining industries are the religion of the country. The political -contest, the love scene, and the fine character drawing give this story -great strength and charm. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -BUCKY O'CONNOR - - -Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with -the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing -fascination of style and plot. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - ---- - - - -THREE SPLENDID BOOKS BY ALFRED HENRY LEWIS - - - -FARO NELL AND HER FRIENDS - - -A new story of "Wolfville" days--the best of all. It pictures the fine -comradeship, broad understanding and simple loyalty of Faro Nell to her -friends. Here we meet again Old Monte, Dave Tutt, Cynthiana, Pet-Named -Original Sin, Dead Shot Baker, Doc Peets, Old Man Enright, Dan Boggs, -Texas and Black Jack, the rough-actioned, good-hearted men and women who -helped to make this author famous as a teller of tales of Western -frontier life. - -_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_ - - - -THE APACHES OF NEW YORK - - -A truthful account of actual happenings in the underworld of vice and -crime in the metropolis, that gives an appalling insight into the life -of the New York criminal. It contains intimate, inside information -concerning the gang fights and the gang tyranny that has since startled -the entire world. The book embraces twelve stories of grim, dark facts -secured directly from the lips of the police and the gangsters -themselves. - -_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_ - - - -THE STORY OF PAUL JONES - - -A wonderful historical romance. A story of the boyhood and later life of -that daring and intrepid sailor whose remains are now in America. -Thousands and tens of thousands have read it and admired it. Many -consider it one of the best books Mr. Lewis has produced. - -_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_ - - ---- - - - -Books by Edward Marshall - - - -BAT--An Idyl of New York - - -"The heroine has all the charm of Thackeray's Marchioness in New York -surroundings."--_New York Sun._ "It would be hard to find a more -charming, cheerful story."--_New York Times._ "Altogether -delightful."--_Buffalo Express._ "The comedy is delicious."--_Sacramento -Union._ "It is as wholesome and fresh as the breath of -springtime."--_New Orleans Picayune._ 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. $1.00 -net. - - - -THE MIDDLE WALL - - -_The Albany Times-Union_ says of this story of the South African diamond -mines and adventures in London, on the sea and in America: "As a story -teller Mr. Marshall cannot be improved upon, and whether one is looking -for humor, philosophy, pathos, wit, excitement, adventure or love, he -will find what he seeks, aplenty, in this capital tale." 12mo, cloth. -Illustrated. 50 cents. - - ---- - - - -_BOOKS NOVELIZED FROM GREAT PLAYS_ - - - -THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE - - -From the successful play of EDGAR JAMES. Embodying a wonderful message -to both husbands and wives, it tells how a determined man, of dominating -personality and iron will, leaves a faithful wife for another woman. -12mo, cloth. Illustrated from scenes in the play. Net $1.25. - - - -THE WRITING ON THE WALL - - -_The Rocky Mountain News_: "This novelization of OLGA NETHERSOLE'S play -tells of Trinity Church and its tenements. It is a powerful, vital -novel." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - - -THE OLD FLUTE PLAYER - - -Based on CHARLES T. DAZEY'S play, this story won the friendship of the -country very quickly. _The Albany Times-Union_: "Charming enough to -become a classic." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - - -THE FAMILY - - -Of this book (founded on the play by ROBERT HOBART DAVIS), _The Portland -(Oregon) Journal_ said: "Nothing more powerful has recently been put -between the covers of a book." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - - -THE SPENDTHRIFT - - -_The Logansport (Ind.) Journal_: "A tense story, founded on PORTER -EMERSON BROWNE'S play, is full of tremendous situations, and preaches a -great sermon." 12mo, cloth bound, with six illustrations from scenes in -the play. 50 cents. - - - -IN OLD KENTUCKY - - -Based upon CHARLES T. DAZEY'S well-known play, which has been listened -to with thrilling interest by over seven million people. "A new and -powerful novel, fascinating in its rapid action. Its touching story is -told more elaborately and even more absorbingly than it was upon the -stage."--_Nashville American._ 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - ---- - - - -Transcriber's Notes: - - -Both "booky" and "bookie" used throughout text. - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37477 - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission -and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the -General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and -distributing Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works to protect the -Project Gutenberg(tm) concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the <a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#project-gutenberg-license">Project Gutenberg License</a> -included with this eBook or online at -<a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a>.</p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em"> -</div> -<div class="container" id="pg-machine-header"> -<p class="noindent pfirst">Title: Taking Chances</p> -<p class="noindent pnext">Author: Clarence L. Cullen</p> -<p class="noindent pnext">Release Date: September 19, 2011 [EBook #37477]</p> -<p class="noindent pnext">Language: English</p> -<p class="noindent pnext">Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em"> -</div> -<p class="noindent pnext" id="pg-start-line">*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES ***</p> </div> <div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> </div> @@ -9029,341 +9011,6 @@ Illustrated. 50 cents.</p> <p class="pfirst">Both "booky" and "bookie" used throughout text.</p> <div class="vspace" style="height: 5em"> </div> -<p class="pnext" id="pg-end-line">*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES ***</p> -<div class="backmatter"> -</div> -</div> -</div> -<div class="language-en level-2 pgfooter section" xml:lang="en" id="a-word-from-project-gutenberg"> -<span id="pg-footer"/><h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title">A Word from Project Gutenberg</h2> -<p class="pfirst">We will update this book if we find any errors.</p> -<p class="pnext">This book can be found under: <a class="reference external" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37477">http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37477</a></p> -<p class="pnext">Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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-
-.. meta::
- :PG.Id: 37477
- :PG.Title: Taking Chances
- :PG.Released: 2011-09-19
- :PG.Rights: Public Domain
- :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
- :PG.Producer: Mary Meehan
- :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
- :PG.Credits:
- :DC.Creator: Clarence L. Cullen
- :MARCREL.ill:
- :DC.Title: Taking Chances
- :DC.Language: en
- :DC.Created: 1898
-
-.. role:: small-caps
- :class: small-caps
-
-==============
-TAKING CHANCES
-==============
-
-.. _pg-header:
-
-.. container:: pgheader language-en
-
- .. style:: paragraph
- :class: noindent
-
- This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
- almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
- re-use it under the terms of the `Project Gutenberg License`_
- included with this eBook or online at
- http://www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-
-
- |
-
- .. _pg-machine-header:
-
- .. container::
-
- Title: Taking Chances
-
- Author: Clarence L. Cullen
-
- Release Date: September 19, 2011 [EBook #37477]
-
- Language: English
-
- Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
- |
-
- .. _pg-start-line:
-
- \*\*\* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES \*\*\*
-
- |
- |
- |
- |
-
- .. _pg-produced-by:
-
- .. container::
-
- Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
-
- |
-
-
-
-
-.. class:: center x-large
-
- | BY
- | CLARENCE L. CULLEN
-
-.. class:: center large
-
- | AUTHOR OF
- | "Tales OF THE EX-TANKS."
-
- | G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
- | PUBLISHERS
- | NEW YORK
-
- | :small-caps:`Copyright, 1898-1899-1900, By`
- | THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION.
-
- | :small-caps:`Copyright, 1900, By`
- | G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY.
-
-
-----
-
-.. contents:: CONTENTS
- :depth: 1
- :backlinks: entry
-
-
-----
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
-==================
-
-
-To the man who, at any period of his days, has been
-bitten by that ferocious and fever-producing insect colloquially
-known as the "horse bug," and likewise to the
-man whose nervous system has been racked by the depredations
-of the "poker microbe," these tales of the turf
-and of the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The
-thoroughbred running horse is a peculiar animal. While
-he is often beaten, the very wisest veterans of the turf
-have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The ponies
-can't be beat"—meaning the thoroughbred racers; which
-sounds paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying
-affair, in that all men who play it appear, from their own
-statements, to lose at it persistently and perennially.
-There is surely something weird and uncanny about a
-game that numbers only losers among its devotees. However,
-poker-players are addicted to persiflage. The
-genuine, dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle pokerist
-rarely acknowledges that he is ahead of the game—until
-the day after.
-
-These stories, which were originally printed in the columns
-of the New York *Sun*, belong largely to the eminent
-domain of strict truthfulness. If they do not serve to
-show that the "horse bug" and the "poker microbe"
-are good things to steer clear of, they will by no means
-have failed of their purpose; for the writer had nothing
-didactic in view in setting them down as he heard them.
-
-.. class:: right
-
-:small-caps:`Clarence Louis Cullen`.
-
-:small-caps:`New York`, *Sept. 1, 1900.*
-
-
-
-
-THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND.
-================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation.*
-
-
-"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago
-to get a young fellow who was pretty badly wanted in my
-town for a two-months' campaign of highly successful
-check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective
-who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I
-got him all right, and he's now doing his three years.
-I found him to be a pretty decent sort of a young geezer,
-although a born crook. I don't remember ever having
-had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the
-trip up from New Orleans. Before we started I asked
-him if he was going to be good or if it would be necessary
-for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an on-the-level
-look and said:
-
-"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you.
-I don't want to throw you. All I ask is, don't give me
-too much of a chance if you keep the irons off of me. I
-wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping stunt,
-but don't give me a show to make either one of the car
-doors. If you do I may have to give you a run for it.'
-
-"Well, I could see that he would be all right without
-the cuffs, and so I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with
-me in the sleeper all the way from New Orleans to Pittsburg—I
-let him do the sleeping, though, of course—and
-he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when
-I did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any
-the wiser. He was a clinking good talker and he told
-me a lot of interesting stories of queer propositions that
-he had been up against. For instance, when we were running
-through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he
-turned to me and asked me where the blue grass was.
-I told him that the term blue grass was largely ornamental,
-and that, while the grass down there was no
-doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds,
-I thought it was mostly green, like the grass the world
-over.
-
-"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he
-replied. 'It proves that I'm not color blind on the whole
-gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd said there really was
-blue grass in these fields we're running through, I'd have
-given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing
-colors. But as long as the grass is green like other
-grass—well, there's some hope for me.'
-
-"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him.
-
-"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I
-never knew it, though, until last spring, and it cost me
-$15,000 to find it out.'
-
-"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?'
-
-"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time
-we get to Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling
-around one of the big towns—one of the biggest
-towns on this side of the Mississippi—last spring, when
-I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me interested.
-They were the real kind—not fake tappers who
-rope fellows into giving up coin just by showing 'em
-phony instruments in shady rooms, but professionals, who
-really knew how to tap the wires and pull down the
-money. They had been working together for some time,
-and when I happened to meet them they had just pulled
-off a swell hog-killing up in Toronto and had two or three
-thousand each in their clothes. They had only recently
-struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there
-before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither
-did I, although I was doing a bit of business in the
-check line occasionally, and was about a thousand to the
-good when I met them. We hitched up together, the
-three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me
-that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into
-their game, they thought I was good enough to be admitted
-to a good thing that they were about to pull off.
-
-"'One of the largest and best patronized of the poolrooms
-of the town was 'way on the outskirts of the city.
-The duck that runs it is worth close on to a million, and
-the ticket writers have instructions never to turn any
-man's money down, no matter how big the sum or how
-lead-pipey the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of
-$20,000 and $30,000 have frequently been taken out of
-that poolroom on single tickets, and it's one of the few
-poolrooms where track odds are given.
-
-"'My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when
-I met them they already had things fixed to pull down a
-few comfortable wads. They had rented a vacant frame
-cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot from the
-poolroom, and, by a little night work—they were both
-practical wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers—had
-got the wire into a room on the second floor of the house
-all right. It was prairie land all around and slimly frequented
-territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up
-the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a
-picket fence to the porch of the cottage, and thence upstairs.
-They had the thing all tested, and every dot and
-dash that reached the poolroom registered also in the second
-floor of that cottage.
-
-"'One of the fellows had formerly worked in a poolroom
-himself and he had the race code down as pat as
-butter. They took me out to have a look at the layout, not
-because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were on
-velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind
-o' shine to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or
-three afternoons in the second floor front room where the
-layout was fixed, and the chap who was expert with the
-racing code broke the report direct from the track a dozen
-times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the
-operator's style at the track end of the line, and the poolroom
-operator was never a bit the wiser. It was good, all
-right, that layout, and when they were all ready to begin
-work I was in on the play.
-
-"'We decided to make the first killing on the day the
-Belmont Stakes were to be run for at Morris Park. I
-was against their starting it off on such a big stake event,
-especially as the race looked to be such a moral for Hamburg,
-but they said stake events were as good as selling
-races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal
-and stood by. My end of the job was to happen in the
-poolroom. I was to locate there by a dust-covered window
-that looked out of the poolroom across the big vacant lot
-to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and
-wait for the signal. The signal was to be made by means
-of a handkerchief waved in the air by one of the fellows
-from the window. The color of the handkerchief was to
-tell the name of the winner. For instance, if Hamburg
-won a white handkerchief was to show at the second-story
-window; if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a
-yellow handkerchief was to be the signal, and so on.
-When I got the signal I was to put the money down on
-the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the
-pool operator for five minutes to give me time to get the
-money down, and then I was just to wait for the poolroom
-operator to announce the race. It was the easiest
-thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush,
-not only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones
-later on, if I hadn't been color blind.
-
-"'I was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that
-we were to do business and I put a few dollars down on
-the first races at Morris Park, just for the sake of getting
-the ticket writers used to my face and to avert suspicion.
-I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then and
-I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply
-on form. The fourth race on the card was for the Belmont
-Stakes, and after the third race had been confirmed and
-the first line of betting came in on the stake race I lounged
-over to the dust-colored window and looked uninterested.
-But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame
-cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my
-pals' money in my clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was
-a bit nervous, but I knew that I had a pipe, and I also
-knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show to
-get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a
-$5,000 or even larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in
-that poolroom as to scare 'em or cause 'em to become suspicious.
-
-"'Well, the second line of betting came in, with Hamburg
-the natural favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting,
-Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and the rest at write-your-own-ticket
-figures. The poolroom took in thousands of
-dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the
-big crowd that surged about the poolroom could figure
-any other horse in the race to have a chance. I
-myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg,
-but I wasn't playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just
-stood at that window and waited for the signal. I was, I
-suppose, somewhat excited internally when I thought of
-the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The
-poolroom operator announced, 'They're at the post at
-Morris Park,' and then I knew that 'ud be the last direct
-communication he'd have with Morris Park until after
-the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned there on that
-window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably,
-waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the
-vacant lot. The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of
-the frame cottage was in plain view, and I didn't figure it
-as among the possibilities that I could make a mistake.
-
-"'Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had become
-sort o' mute with expectancy and the betting at the
-desk was almost over, I got the signal. It was the quickest
-flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as I was perfectly
-positive, nervously waved three times from the second-story
-window of the frame cottage. I didn't see my
-pal waving the handkerchief—only the flutter of the
-white handkerchief which announced that Hamburg had
-won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the
-laziest kind of a way in the world, I just yawned, stretched
-my arms, and remarked to a few fellows standing nearby:
-
-"'"What's the use of doping over the race. It's a pipe
-for Hamburg. I'm going up and put a couple of thousand
-on Hamburg."
-
-"'So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills
-and said "Hamburg." The ticket writer took the money
-without any visible emotion and wrote me a ticket. Then
-I walked out among the crowd to hear the calling off of
-the race, which I knew would happen within three or four
-minutes.
-
-"'"They're off for the Belmont," the operator shouted
-in about three minutes, and then said I to myself, "What
-an exercise gallop for Hamburg! What a dead easy way
-of picking up large pieces of money!"
-
-"'I wasn't worried even a little bit when Bowling
-Brook was 'way in the lead in the stretch.
-
-"'Hamburg's just laying in a soft spot right there,
-third, and when it comes to a drive, how cheap, he'll make
-a crab like Bowling Brook look!
-
-"'Then the operator, after the ten seconds' delay following
-the announcement of the horses' positions in the
-stretch, called out:
-
-"'"Bowling Brook wins!"
-
-"'Say, I'm not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead
-easy to keel over, but, on the level, my head went 'round
-and I had to grip hold of a chair top when I heard that
-announcement. I couldn't make it out. It seemed out of
-the question. I knew that my two pals hadn't dumped me,
-because hadn't I played $2,000 of their money? At first
-I thought the operator made a mistake, and I waited with
-a spark of hope for the confirmation of the race. The confirmation
-came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and
-Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten.
-
-"'An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They
-greeted me with grins, and held out their hands for the
-thousands.
-
-"'"Thing didn't go through, did it?" I said to them.
-"Where was the mistake, anyhow? What was the white
-handkerchief—Hamburg's signal—waved for?"
-
-"'They looked at me savagely. They were positive
-that I had tricked them—that I had really played Bowling
-Brook with the money and was holding it out on them.
-
-"'"White handkerchief be blowed!" said the man
-that had given the signal, pulling a light yellow handkerchief
-from his pocket. "What color do you call this?"
-
-"'Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made,
-and that I had made it. In the brilliant sunshine I had
-mistaken the light yellow handkerchief for a white one,
-and it was up to me. They didn't give me a chance to get
-in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I
-suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped
-me at once. I had to put up the fight of my life, but I
-downed them both finally with the aid of a chair and a
-spittoon, and got away. That's how I lost $15,000—counting
-the winnings we'd have made had I played
-Bowling Brook that time—by being color blind.'"
-
-
-
-
-"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE.
-=======================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That Often Works Profitably.*
-
-
-"I see they hollered an old skate home and got him
-under the wire first by three lengths out at the Newport
-merry-go-round the other day," said an old-time trainer
-out at the Gravesend paddock. "Don't catch the meaning
-of hollering a horse home? Well, it's scaring a
-sulker pretty near out of his hide and hair and making
-him run by sheer force of whoops let out altogether.
-This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered home at Newport
-a few days ago, is a sulker from the foot-hills. He
-was sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at the beginning
-of this season he prances in and wins nine or ten
-straight races right off the reel at the Western tracks,
-hopping over the best they've got out there. Then he
-goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out.
-They yank him into training again awhile back, put him
-up against the best a-running on the other side of the
-Alleghanies, and he makes 'em look like bull-pups one
-day and the next he can't beat a fat man. He comes near
-getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and
-then, a couple of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes
-out and chews up the track record, and gets within a second
-of the world's record for the mile and three-eighths,
-I believe it was.
-
-"Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a sixteenth,
-with a real nippy field, as Western horses go. The
-right people, knowing full well the old Springbok gelding's
-propensities, shove their big coin in on him anyway,
-and take a chance on him being unable to keep up
-with a steam roller after his swell race a while before, and
-the whole crowd fall into line and bet on Kringle until
-the books give them the cold-storage countenance and
-say, 'Nix, no more.' Then they get up into the stand
-and around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss,
-who's a rank favorite, begin like a land crab, when he
-usually goes out from the jump and spread-eagles his
-bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see
-the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field
-of five, and they look into each other's mugs and chew
-about being on a dead one. Turning into the stretch, the
-old skate is a poor third, and stopping every minute, a
-plain case of sulks, like he's put up so many times before.
-The two in front of him have got it right between them,
-when Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third
-by a little bit, and then the gang let out in one whoop
-and holler that could be heard four miles. It's 'Wowee!
-come on here, ye danged old buck-jumper!' and
-'Whoop-la! you Kringle!' from nearly every one of the
-thousand leather lungs in the stand and up against the
-rail, and the surly old rogue pins his ears forward and
-hears the yelp. Then it's all off. The old $25 cast-off
-jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The
-nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits him
-and the bigger he strides; and he collars the two in front
-of him as if they were munching carrots in their stalls,
-and romps under the string three lengths to the good.
-That's what hollering a horse home means. It's a game
-that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares
-the sulker into running, whereas it's liable to make a good-dispositioned
-horse stop as if sand-bagged.
-
-"I've seen the holler-'em-in gag worked often at both
-the legitimate and the outlaw tracks, and for big money.
-One of the biggest hog-slaughterings that was ever made
-at the game was when an Iroquois nag, a six-year-old
-gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick at
-Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what
-was going to happen that time surely did buy it by the
-basketful for a long time afterward. McKeever was
-worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a whole lot
-more at any stage of the game, according to my way of
-sizing 'em. As a five and six-year-old, he couldn't even
-make the doped outlaws think they were in a race, but
-his people kept him plugging away on the chance that
-some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of
-his sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and
-rubbing, anyhow. When he was brought to Alexander
-Island in the spring of '95, and tried out it was seen that
-he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning,
-after he'd been beaten a number of times by several Philadelphia
-blocks, when at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his
-owner had him out for a bit of a canter around the ring,
-with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of stable boys
-and rail birds were scattered all around the infield, assembled
-in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing
-grass and watching the horses at their morning work.
-This old McKeever starts around the course as if he's
-doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives him the
-goad and the bat, but it's no good. McKeever sticks to
-his caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail
-with a watch in his mitt and mumbles unholy things
-about the skate. There's a laugh among the stable boys
-and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing around.
-Then a stable lad that's got a bit of Indian in him leans
-over the rail just as McKeever's coming down, and lets
-out a whoop that can be heard across the Potomac. McKeever
-gives a jump, and away he goes like the wind.
-It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that
-they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster
-at every shout. He gets to going like a real, sure-enough
-race horse by the time he has made the circuit once, and
-he keeps right on. The owner gets next to it that it's
-the shouting that's keeping the old plug on the go, and
-he waves his arms and passes the word along for the
-boys to keep it up. McKeever does six furlongs in 1:14
-with the assistance of the hollering, and the owner takes
-him off the track, gives him a look-over and some extra
-attention, and smiles to himself.
-
-"Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong
-race on the following day. He stations about twenty
-or twenty-five rail birds, all of 'em stable boys out of
-a job, in the infield, and hands them out their yelling instructions.
-McKeever is up against one of the best fields
-of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30
-to 1 and sticks at that. His owner puts a large
-number of his pals next to what's going to happen,
-and not a man of them plays the good thing at the
-track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles
-to the poolrooms all over the country. McKeever
-gets out in front, and he hasn't made more than
-a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail
-throws a whoop that makes the people in the stand put
-their hands to their ears. McKeever gives a swerve and
-a side step, and away he goes like the Empire State express.
-A hundred feet further, when he's four
-lengths in the lead, and the others, including the even
-money shot, nowhere, a couple more rail birds shoot out
-another double-jointed yell, and McKeever jumps out
-again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every 100
-feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances
-on his stopping, although after the first furlong he is six
-lengths to the good, and the result is that McKeever simply
-buck-jumps in, pulled double, with eight lengths of
-open daylight between him and the even money shot. The
-owner looks sad, like a man who hasn't put a dollar down,
-and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse
-is being led to his stable. When he gets him inside his
-stall, though, the hugs and loaf sugar that fall McKeever's
-way are a heap. The old-time poolroom people
-will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good
-many of 'em, the day that McKeever was hollered home
-at old Alexander Island.
-
-"And, talking about Alexander Island, there were
-some funny ones yanked off over there, sure enough,
-some of them almost as funny as a few that happened over
-in New York at the legit tracks this passing season.
-Without hurling out any names, I'll just tell you of how
-a plunger who has been a good deal talked about this
-year, on account of his big winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch
-at the hands of a poor-but-honest-not owner at
-Alexander Island in the same year of 1895. This plunger
-wasn't such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now,
-but he was some few, and he generally had enough up
-his sleeve in order to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts;
-which is to say that he had a winning way about him,
-and access to everything that was doing at that outlaw
-track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their
-figure with a slight scaling down, according to his own
-idea of what was coming to them for being kind to him.
-He was wise and he was haughty, and toward the wind-up
-of that Alexander Island season he fell into the notion,
-apparently, that things had to be done his way or the
-kickers fade out of the game.
-
-"This poor owner that I'm talking about went on to
-Alexander Island with an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all
-except one filly, that was real good, but a bit high in
-flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could as a matter
-of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on
-edge, and she had the additional advantage of not being
-known all about. The poor owner has his own boy
-along with him, and he's pretty hard up. He sticks this
-filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going
-after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He
-knows that the filly isn't right, but he dopes it that she
-can beat the lot pitted against her, anyhow, and he really
-means her to win. He tells his boy to take her right out
-in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case
-her flesh stops her the rest'll never be able to get near
-her. That's the arrangement right up until post time.
-The filly—well, suppose we call her Juliet—is not very
-well known at Alexander Island, and she has 5 to 1
-against her.
-
-"Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about
-Juliet being, as I say, a pretty fast proposition, but he
-doesn't think she can win in her condition, and, anyhow,
-he has something doing on another one in the race; he has
-so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of 'em,
-except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play.
-The plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him:
-
-"'My son, your baby won't do to-day.'
-
-"'She'll make a stab, though,' said the owner. 'I need
-the cush, being several shy of paying my feed bills. The
-game has been throwing me lately. She's going to try.'
-
-"'You need the purse, hey?' said the plunger. 'That's
-not much money. Only $200, ain't it? How'd $500
-do?'
-
-"'Spot coin?' asks the impecunious owner.
-
-"'Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.'
-
-"'You're on,' says the poor-but-honest-not owner.
-'I'm not any more phony than my neighbors, but it's a
-case of real dig with me just now. Juliet'll finish in the
-ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you've got turning
-the trick?'
-
-"'It's like getting money in a letter,' says the plunger.
-
-"'All right,' says the poor owner, 'you can walk
-around to my stall and push me the five centuries after
-they're in.'
-
-"The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet's head was
-yanked off, with the boy's toes tickling her ears. She
-could have won in a walk, short of work as she was, but
-the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that the
-plunger's good thing went through all right.
-
-"After the race the plunger, who had made a great
-big thing out of it, hunted up the poor owner and beefed
-about the $500. He said that he hadn't been able to get
-as much money on his good one as he had expected and
-asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The
-plunger's poor mouth doesn't tickle the poor owner a
-little bit, but he is a pretty foxy piece of work himself,
-and he takes the three hundred without letting on a particle
-that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes
-away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for
-good, and the poor owner makes sundry and divers resolutions
-within himself, to the general effect that the next
-time he does business with that plunger he'll know it.
-
-"Well, the poor owner doesn't race his good filly again
-for a couple of weeks, and all the time she's getting good.
-He gives her her work at about 3 o'clock every morning,
-in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets onto it just how
-good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks
-after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He
-knows that she's going to win, and with his other skates
-he has picked up nearly a thousand wherewith to play
-the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the race the
-plunger comes to him again.
-
-"'I see you've got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,'
-he says. 'How good is she?'
-
-"'She's got a show for the big end of it,' says the poor
-owner.
-
-"'Um,' says the plunger. 'Well, she'll only be at 5 to
-1, whereas I've got a cinch in that that'll be as good as
-15 to 1. Do you think we can do a little business?'
-
-"'On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,' says the
-poor owner, chewing a straw. 'Maybe I'll be able to see
-my way to delivering the goods for a thousand down.
-Otherwise I win.'
-
-"The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness,
-oiliness, bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor
-owner.
-
-"'Why,' he says, 'I can buy all the Juliets from here
-to Kentucky and back for a thousand.'
-
-"'Yes,' says the poor owner, 'but you can't shove a 15
-to 1 shot through every day, either. Let's not talk about
-it any more. You've got my terms. Thousand down,
-right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand,
-Juliet walks, and I'll get the coin anyhow by betting on
-her.'
-
-"He got the thousand two hours before the race was
-run. The poor owner looked Juliet over, and called his
-boy into a dark corner of the stable.
-
-"'Take her out in front, son,' he said, 'and tow-rope
-them. Don't let 'em get within a block of you. I'll send
-your mother a couple o' hundred after you fetch her
-home.'
-
-"'She'd win with a dummy on her,' says the kid.
-
-"Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand
-he already has in his kick, and the thousand the
-beefing plunger has given him, and spraddles it all over
-the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1.
-
-"Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger,
-with his mouth twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet.
-All he gets is a line of chile con carne conversation, and,
-finally, a puck in the eye.
-
-"'Do others or they'll do you' isn't the way they used
-to teach it when I went to Sunday-school," concluded
-the old-time trainer, "but there are occasions when the
-rule just has to be twisted that way."
-
-
-
-
-JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY.
-========================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago Tracks.*
-
-
-"The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race,"
-said a horse owner and trainer at an uptown café the other
-night, "was on a horse that stood at 100 to 1 in the betting.
-It was also the first race I ever saw run by thoroughbreds.
-I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery
-store for $8 a week at the time, and I didn't know a race-horse
-from a ton of coal. I got a couple of my fingers
-crushed between two salt fish boxes one morning, and I
-had to lay off from work. I didn't want to hang around
-my room, and didn't know what to do with myself, and
-so when a no-account young fellow I knew suggested that
-I go over with him to Monmouth Park and have a look at
-the races, I fell in with the proposition. Besides the
-remains of my previous week's pay, about $3, I had $20
-saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note
-in my inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip
-tickets for my friend and myself, and for two tickets of
-admission to the race grounds, I was practically broke
-with the exception of a few cents, for I didn't count the
-$20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that unbroken.
-Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted
-of me was to have me pay his way on the train and into
-the grounds, for he promptly lost me as soon as we got
-by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not that I
-wanted his help, for I hadn't the least idea of doing any
-betting with my savings, but I didn't cotton to the notion
-of being played for a good thing and then thrown that
-way.
-
-"I walked around among the crowd with my hands in
-my pockets, wondering a good deal over the dope talk
-of the ducks that knew all about the horses and their preferred
-weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was all
-Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled
-into the betting ring. It wasn't long before I began to
-rubberneck at the prices laid against the horses on the
-bookies' blackboards. Although I didn't know anything
-about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had
-made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that
-this race I made my first bet on was composed of a cheap
-mess of fourteen selling platers. They were at all kinds
-of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1 against. The latter
-price was laid about three of 'em. I didn't exactly understand
-what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow
-standing near by to explain it. He looked me over out of
-the slants of his lamps, thinking, probably, that I was
-stringing him. When he saw that I was a green one he
-told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won
-that I had put a dollar on I'd be $100 ahead of the game.
-This looked pretty good to me. I didn't know anything
-about horse form or horse quality then, and I thought that
-one of 'em had just as much chance as another to win.
-So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked best
-and elbowed my way up to a booky's stand to put a dollar
-down on it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my
-hand. I passed the twenty up to the bookmaker—he went
-broke, and has been a dead 'un for a good many years
-now—and said:
-
-"'Give me a dollar's worth of that fourth horse from
-the top—that one with the 100 to 1 chalked before his
-name.'
-
-"The booky looked down at me contemptuously, without
-accepting the twenty I proffered him, and said:
-
-"'I don't want no dollar bets.'
-
-"Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all
-of the ducks back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties
-and hundreds gave me the laugh. I didn't like to be shown
-up in that public way. I was just as sore at that time
-about being made to look like thirty cents as I am to-day.
-So I did a bit of lightning thinking. 'Twenty's a big
-bunch to me,' I thought, 'and I've had to hop out of bed
-at half past 3 in the morning to go to meat market a good
-many times to get it together; but I'll be hanged if I'm
-going to let this fellow get away with his idea of making
-me look small, even if I haven't got a show on earth.' So
-I passed the bill up to him again, saying:
-
-"'All right, there, billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth
-of that fourth horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked
-before his name.'
-
-"I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn't
-help me a little bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted,
-'Two thousand dollars to $20 on the fourth one from the
-top,' and the chap that wrote me the ticket grinned back
-at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the
-hoarse hoot, loud and long continued. I'll bet I was blushing
-on the bottom of my feet when I snatched the ticket
-and hurried away from that booky's stall, with the
-chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears.
-Well, my horse walked in.
-
-"When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky
-sized me up, with all kinds of wrath in his eyes.
-
-"'A good make-up you've got for a Rube,' he said to
-me. 'You're good. That's the most scientific commissioner
-act I've seen pulled off up to date, and I've been
-at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a two-year-old.'
-
-"I didn't know what he was talking about. The word
-commissioner was particularly mysterious to me, but I
-wasn't going to let him put it on me again, and I like to
-have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave him. He
-chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked
-backward with it in my hands and grinning at him. He
-was the maddest-looking man I ever saw, before or since.
-I didn't go back to my grocery job, nor did I hop in and
-slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn't know anything
-about. I didn't play another horse that year, but went in
-and made a study of the game, going to the tracks every
-day to see 'em run and to think the whole institution over.
-It has taken me all of the years that have passed since to
-find out that the study of horse racing don't amount to a
-row of spuds, that study doesn't beat the game. I simply
-had a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew
-all there was to be learned about horse racing, and those
-plays put me on the velvet I've had to a greater or less
-extent ever since. I don't often play them now—I've got
-a fairly nifty string, and I run 'em and let the other fellows
-do the guessing.
-
-"What set me to thinking about this first play of mine
-was a letter I received the other day from an owner, who's
-racing his string down at New Orleans, about the win of
-that plug Covington, Ky., the other day. The price laid
-against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the
-rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post
-time, throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when
-the plater romped in, after being practically left at the
-post. My friend says in his letter that a big bookmaker
-declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise rail birds
-on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow
-got chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver,
-found $2 in quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to
-the bookie on Covington, Ky., to win. The layer took the
-money and it cost him $450. The bookie, my friend writes
-me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his fellow-layers
-ever since.
-
-"I don't often pay any attention to good things," continued
-the turfman, "and it's rarer still that I am compelled
-to regret my indifference to the bottled-up cinches,
-but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I overlooked
-a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me
-several minutes' hard thinking. I didn't lose any money
-over it, but it's hard to think of the inside chance I neglected
-on that occasion to make an old-fashioned hog killing.
-I had four or five of my three-year-olds out at Lakeside
-and was pulling a purse down with 'em once in a
-while, and depending on the purses to keep me even with
-the game and strong for hay money. I wasn't doing any
-betting; I took my confirmed indifference to good things
-along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back
-at the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so,
-for if there's any place in the country outside of the outlaw
-tracks where good things do have a habit of going
-through right often, then that place is Chicago. I didn't
-profit by any of 'em that were made to stick last fall, however,
-although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from
-20 to 1 to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping
-with all the money. A lot of men I knew out at Lakeside—fellows
-with small strings, none of which ever won or
-got in the money—were on all kinds of velvet by giving
-ear to the inside good things, but they didn't make me
-jealous a little bit. I'm in the game for keeps, and that's
-more than can be said for the good-thing players.
-
-"Anyhow, for all that, I'm still regretting that I overlooked
-this chance I'm speaking of. I was in a Dearborn
-street hang-out for racing men one night, along toward
-the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy came inside
-and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me.
-I went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for
-me. He was employed as a general stable roustabout by
-the owner of a California string, and I had befriended the
-man in the paddock a few days before when he was engaged
-in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was
-getting the worst of the scrap when I stepped in and
-pulled his antagonist off of him. It didn't amount to anything,
-this, but the tank stable hand that was waiting for
-me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain seemed
-to feel grateful to me for it.
-
-"'Hello, Bill,' said I to him, 'what's up?'
-
-"'Got fired this afternoon,' he replied.
-
-"'Broke?' I asked him.
-
-"'I didn't hunt you up to touch you, boss,' he said. 'I
-got a good thing I want to give to you. You've been
-square to me. The good thing's to come off to-morrow,
-and nobody's on. I'm preaching on it because I've been
-dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and
-because I want to put you next, that's been on the level
-with me.'
-
-"'You can pass me up,' I told the man. 'I don't play
-the sure ones, you know.'
-
-"'But this is ripe, and it's going to happen,' persisted
-the man. 'It's a baby. It's a looloo. It's a cachuca. It's
-that filly Mazie V. in the two-year-old race to-morrow.
-You know who's stable she belongs in. I heard the chaw
-about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they didn't
-get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.'s going to walk
-in to-morrow. No dope, but she's fit. She worked three-quarters
-in .15 flat early yesterday morning when nobody
-was looking, and she's on edge. They're going to burn up
-the books with it. I know that nobody can tout you, and
-I'm not trying to tout you. But here's a chance, and I
-came down to let you know.'
-
-"Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn't
-help but grin at him at that.
-
-"'How long have you been rubbing 'em down?' I
-asked him.
-
-"'I've been around the horses since I was ten years
-old,' he replied.
-
-"'And still so easy?' I couldn't help but say. 'Well,
-I won't say anything of what you've told me so as to queer
-the price, if there's any play on Mazie V., but, of course,
-as for myself, I pass it up; thanks all the same to you.
-Need any money?'
-
-"No, he didn't want any money, he said. He had
-simply hunted me up to put me on to one of the best
-things of the meeting, and he shambled off.
-
-"When the books opened for that two-year-old race
-the next day, Mazie V., a clean-limbed filly that had never
-shown a particle of class, opened up the rank outsider in a
-big field, which included some very fairish two-year-olds.
-I looked the books over, not because I was betting, but
-just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was
-being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot.
-
-"'If they're going to burn the bookies out on Mazie
-V., I thought, amusedly, 'it's a wonder the stable connections
-don't take some of this good 150 to 1.'
-
-"As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who
-had hunted me up with the Mazie V. good thing the night
-before plucked me by the sleeve. He was several times
-as drunk as an owl, and I didn't care to talk with him.
-
-"'Are you down?' he asked me, lurching. 'Because 'f
-you ain't, you're campin' out, an' that's all there is to it.'
-
-"'Go and take a sleep,' I told him, and passed on. But
-he didn't want any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted
-a box that he found in the betting ring, and started to
-make an address to the hustling bettors.
-
-"'Hey!' he shouted, 'if you mugs want to git aboard
-for the barbecue, play Mazie V. She's going to be cut
-loose. She's a 1 to 10 chance. She's going through. It's a
-cinch.'
-
-"The crowd guyed him.
-
-"'It's so good,' shouted the poor devil, 'that I just
-put the last $8 I got on earth on her to win—not to show,
-but to win. Hey! I'm not touting. I'm trying to give you
-all a win-out chance. You needn't think because I ain't
-togged out that I'm a dead one on this. Even if I have got
-a load along, why'——
-
-"Just then somebody, probably an interested party,
-kicked the box from under the man and he went sprawling.
-That closed him up. The crowd roared, but not a
-man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie
-V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a
-thing the stable hand's drunken recommendation of the
-filly switched them off. Just before the horses went to the
-post the $5 bills of people that weren't pikers, but stable
-connections, went into the ring in such quantities on
-Mazie V. that she closed at 100 to 1 in a few of the books,
-and at much smaller figures in most of the others.
-
-"Well, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over
-her field was something ridiculous. The race was something
-easy for her. There was nothing to it but Mazie V.
-She got away from the post almost dead last, and then
-picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy going,
-and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with
-daylight between her and the favorite. It was one of the
-killings of the Chicago racing season, and the books were
-soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets.
-
-"'That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least,'
-I heard poor Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took
-1 to 15 on Hanover, putting down $45,000 to win $3,000,
-and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten by Laggard.
-And that's what I think about that Mazie V. good
-thing—hard money not to have won."
-
-
-
-
-THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT.
-====================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers Were Damaged.*
-
-
-An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of
-yearlings and keeping up a lot of old campaigners out at
-the old Ivy City track near Washington, was chewing
-wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking aloud.
-
-"One of the things that I can't exactly figure out," said
-he, "is whether I'm a ringer-worker or on the level. That
-proposition has been bothering me a heap in the middle of
-nights right along since the fall of '87. I got into the center
-of a game then that has kept me apologizing to myself
-ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn't a sure-enough
-proper ringer. And I didn't put him over the
-plate, either. My end of it was only to cop out a few,
-and all I had to do was to——
-
-"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky
-for the man I was training for in 1885. There were
-some Fonso bull-pups to be auctioned off, and the boss
-wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso, don't you?
-He's the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the
-blue ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three
-for being still the finest specimen of a thoroughbred in
-Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple of Fonsos and I
-went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one
-I got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore
-hoofs. He was out of a good mare, but he upset all the
-calculations of breeding. He was the worst seed in looks
-that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I've been fooling
-with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an
-angular swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and
-as fast as a caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn't expect
-ever to make anything out of him, but I was pretty
-flush then, and I didn't want to see a Fonso pulling a dray
-if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything
-out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave
-him the hoot when he was led into the auction ring, and I
-couldn't hold down a grin myself when I sized up the poor
-mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great sire that ever
-crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang
-jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn't
-blame 'em. But I led the colt out, put him in a stall, and
-then went back to the sale. I got two high-grade Fonsos
-for my boss, and they won themselves out for him twenty
-times over in the next three years. But they don't figure
-in this story.
-
-"I went at my freak Fonso right away to see if anything
-could be done with him. I devoted more time to that
-one than I did to any of my two-year-olds or three-year-olds
-in training, hoping that he might have something up
-his sleeve and that it could be dug out of him with careful
-handling. It was no go. I couldn't get him to do a quarter
-in better than 35 seconds. Bat or steel had no effect on
-him. He had a hide like a rhinoceros, and he made the
-exercise boys weary. Here was a colt born a Fonso, out
-of a mare that had been of stake class when in training,
-that was no better than a truck-horse, and at the end of
-two weeks I gave him up. A circus came along to Lexington,
-where I had my string, and with the circus, in
-charge of the performing horses, was an old trainer friend
-of mine from the St. Louis track who had been chased
-into the show business by a long run of hard luck. I took
-him out to look over my bunch, and when he came to the
-Fonso colt he laughed.
-
-"'Where did you get that world-beater?' he asked me.
-
-"'Oh, that's a Fonso colt that I picked up down the line
-at a sale a while back,' I told him.
-
-"He didn't exactly call me a liar, but he looked as if he
-wanted to. Then I told him all about the colt. Like most
-trainers, he had the blood and breeding bug pretty bad
-under his bonnet, and he tried to throw it into me that I
-wasn't giving the colt a fair shake. Told me a lot of stuff
-that I already knew about some great racehorses that
-couldn't get out of their own way as yearlings, and tried
-to convince me that this Fonso thing of mine was liable
-to fool me up a whole lot as a two-year-old.
-
-"'Well, he doesn't get oats at my expense until he's
-ready to race,' said I. 'If you think his chances at next
-year's stakes are so devilish big, he's yours for a quarter
-of a hundred.'
-
-"'I've got you,' said my friend with the show. 'I'll
-take him along, anyhow. It's worth that much to a man
-to be able to say to himself as he smokes his pipe after
-his work's done that he's got a Fonso colt of his own. And
-I'll bet you an even $100 that I get one race out of that
-swayback, anyhow, before he's two years older.'
-
-"I didn't take him. I was disgusted with my hundred
-dollars' worth of Fonso, and I was glad to get the $25
-that my friend in the show business gave me for him. He
-took the mutt away with the show, and I forgot all about
-that sentimental purchase of mine for a couple of years.
-
-"I hadn't any killing luck during those two years. In
-fact, the game went against me pretty strong. Most of the
-string that I had in training went wrong or showed themselves
-platers, and when the boss decided to quit racing I
-was up against it completely. I had two or three platers
-of my own that made their oats money and a little more,
-and these I raced on the St. Louis track, pulling down a
-purse once in a while, and getting second money often
-enough to keep me in coffee and sinkers. When the St.
-Louis game closed down at the end of September, a number
-of us that had small strings struck out for the bush-meetings
-in nearby States. I shipped my three to a metropolis
-on the banks of the Missouri River where a State
-fair was about to be held and where $200 purses were offered
-for running races. I figured my three lobsters to be
-as good as any for the bush-meetings, and I calculated on
-getting one or two of the purses at this State Fair.
-
-"I got into the town—they call it a city out there—with
-my horses three days before the State Fair was to
-begin. On the day that I got there a circus that had been
-exhibiting in the town for two days wound up its season
-and started East for its winter quarters. I saw the
-boarded-up wagons passing through the streets on their
-way to the freight depot. I was watching the dead procession
-when my circus friend, the man on whom I had
-worked off my no-account Fonso colt, picked me out of
-the crowd and came up to me. The circus moving out
-was the one he had been attached to when last I saw him
-and sold him the colt.
-
-"'Hello,' said I, 'how many stakes have you pulled
-down with that one up to date?'
-
-"He dug his hands into his pockets and grinned but
-made no reply.
-
-"'Have you still got that colt?' I asked him.
-
-"'Yep,' said he.
-
-"'Going to take him along with you to the show's winter
-headquarters?' I inquired.
-
-"'Sh-sh-sh!' said he. 'I'm not going along with the
-show. I quit 'em here. Season's over. I've got some business
-here next week, anyhow. I'm going to race that
-Fonso on the Uncle Tom circuit, beginning with the State
-Fair here.'
-
-"Of course, I couldn't do anything else but prod him,
-and I did.
-
-"'Fact,' said he, seriously. 'Got him entered in the
-first race on the card—mile.'
-
-"'I've got one in that myself,' I told him. 'Shall we
-fix it up between us?' I added, just for fun.
-
-"'You might do worse, at that,' said he, sizing me up
-out of the tail of his eye. 'I'm going to win in a walk.'
-
-"Then I hooted him a good deal more, of course. He
-let me get through, and he then took me off into a corner
-and told me some things.
-
-"'That plug like to have broken my heart ever since I
-got him,' he said. 'I've had him in four or five times already
-at the bush meetings, but he was never one, two,
-three, until the last time, when he took it into his head to
-run when they got into the stretch and was only beaten
-a nose by a pretty fair bush plug. This was two months
-ago. The trouble with this Fonso colt you sawed off
-on me is that he's a sulker. He's got the speed in his
-crazy-shaped bones, but he won't let it out. Well, between
-you and me—and I put you next because I know you
-want a dollar or so as bad as I do—I'm confident that
-with a douse out of a pail and a bit of a punch with a
-needle just before post time, he can beat anything out this
-way. He's out at the Fair grounds now, and I worked
-him a mile in .48 this morning. He roars like a blast
-furnace, but his wind is all right, nevertheless. He's still
-as ugly as ever, if not uglier. I put you next, because it
-might be a good thing for you to scratch your nag out of
-that first race and cotton to your cast-off. There'll be a
-big price on account of his wheezing and his ragged
-looks.'
-
-"'How did you enter him?' I asked. 'As a Fonso?'
-
-"'Not on your natural,' said he. 'Any old thing's
-eligible, and I simply told 'em I didn't know the mutt's
-breeding, that I had him along with me in the show, and
-just had an idea he might run a little.'
-
-"Well, son, the winter was beginning to loom up, and
-I wasn't ulstered and swaddled out for it. I went out to
-the Fair grounds with my friend and looked over the
-Fonso freak. My friend called him Star Boarder, because
-he'd been eating circus oats and hay for two years without
-ever doing a lick of work to pay for his fodder. The
-colt had, of course, filled out and lengthened, but he was
-still as homely a beast ever I clapped an eye on. We
-had him led out on the six-furlong track, and an exercise
-boy who weighed about 145 pounds took him over the
-course at top speed. The nag did it in 1.21, and the
-performance tickled me. The colt had a crazy, jerky, uneven
-stride, and seemed to go sideways, but he certainly
-got over the ground lively with that weight up. I saw
-the chance, and I needed the coin.
-
-"'Can he keep that gait up for the mile?' I asked his
-owner.
-
-"'He wants four miles,' he replied. 'His roaring is
-a bluff.'
-
-"'Count me in, then,' said I. 'He'll walk in that
-race. I'll scratch mine out.'
-
-"We went along the line and looked over the other
-horses, especially the twelve that were entered for that
-first race, and, although there were some good-lookers in
-the bunch, they had been campaigned heavily for months,
-and were a jaded lot. I scratched my pretty fair horse
-out of that first race. Then I sold the poorest nag of my
-three platers to a banker in town for a stylish saddle
-horse. Got $400 for him. I wanted the money for betting
-purposes.
-
-"There was a big crowd out at the Fair grounds on
-the day the racing began. Four books were on, all of
-them run by representatives of big gambling houses in
-town. My friend had the Fonso colt taken out of his
-stall and slowly trotted around the track about three-quarters
-of an hour before the first race, that in which
-the horse was entered. The gathering crowd in the
-stand laughed over the horse's awkward, climbing gait
-and clumsy appearance. That's what we wanted 'em to
-do. We wanted the price, or the horse would have been
-kept in his stall.
-
-"Only seven of the field originally entered for the race
-went to the post. Now, I didn't have anything to do
-with conditioning Star Boarder, and I never belonged to
-the syringe gang, anyhow; I kept strictly away from the
-paddock and the barns before the race, because I didn't
-want to see anything. But the way that Fonso colt, with
-all his clumsiness, held his head up and pranced around
-as he was going to the post, with a pretty fair boy that
-I brought along with me from St. Louis on his back, by
-the way, was certainly great. Dope makes a horse about
-as perky as three drinks of whisky makes a man who's
-been off the booze for a long while. The trouble is that the
-dope doesn't last so long in a horse as it does in a man,
-and I was pretty anxious for a prompt start, so that the
-dope in this homely cast-off of mine wouldn't die out.
-
-"The betting on Star Boarder opened at 15, 6, and 3.
-There was an even-money favorite, a horse that had pulled
-down a number of mile purses at St. Louis, a 2 to 1
-shot, and the others slid up to the nag my friend and I
-wanted to have win; Star Boarder being the rank
-outsider at 15 to 1. I put my $400 down on him with the
-four booked all three ways, $200 to win, $100 for the
-place, and $100 to show. In the morning my friend
-handed me $200 of his savings from the circus business
-to bet. I played his coin $100 to win and $100 a place.
-I had hardly got the money down before I heard a big
-whoop of laughter from the stand, and I rushed out to see
-what was the matter. Star Boarder was running away.
-There had been a false break, and the fool plug had kept
-right on going. He had a mouth like forged steel, and the
-boy couldn't do anything with him. I stood and damned
-Fonso and all his tribe to the last generation, and I could
-see my friend in the paddock shaking his fist and grinding
-his teeth.
-
-"'Oh, well,' said I to myself, 'it's all off, and it serves
-you bully good and right for not racing your own plugs
-and letting these con and dope grafts go to the devil.'
-
-"The horse went the full length of the course before
-he was pulled up, and then he was roaring and wheezing
-like a sea-lion. The crowd laughed, and the books gave
-the post-time bettors all the 60 to 1 against Star Boarder
-that they wanted—which, of course, was none.
-
-"I went back to the paddock then, while the horses
-were gyrating at the post, and found the brute's owner.
-I laid him open.
-
-"'To blazes with casting up!' he said. 'Isn't the
-last of my cush on the skate, too?'
-
-"I felt like ten cents' worth of dog's meat when I
-slunk back to the stand to see 'em get off. After fifteen
-minutes' delay at the post—the starter was a farmer—and
-Star Boarder blowing like a sand-blast and the foam
-standing all over him from that little six-furlong sprint,
-away they went in a line, Star Boarder in the lead! Star
-Boarder at the quarter by a length! Star Boarder at the
-half by a length! Star Boarder at the three-quarters by
-two lengths! Star Boarder in the stretch by three lengths!
-And if that dog-goned, knock-kneed, bone-spavined, no-account
-maiden Fonso colt didn't just buck-jump under
-the wire by six clear lengths of open daylight, you can feed
-me hay and carrots until the next spring meeting and I'll
-only say thank you kindly, sir!
-
-"I can't, as I say, make out whether that was a case of
-ringing or not. Anyhow, it was up to the State fair people
-to make the holler if any was coming, wasn't it? They
-didn't. The Rube bookmakers did, but they weren't sustained,
-and they had to dive into their satchels. Star
-Boarder is over in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to-day,
-pulling an old lady around in a phaeton, and still
-holding down the distinction of being the homeliest son of
-one of the handsomest sires in the history of the American
-stud."
-
-
-
-
-HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER.
-======================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *He Salts a 100 to 1 Shot Away for a Good Thing and Is Steered Off.*
-
-
-"Washington, as I remember it, was a pretty nice
-old jogger of a town," said an old-time trainer who got
-in at Bennings, the race-track near Washington, a few
-days ago with a well-known string of horses in preparation
-for the spring meeting there. "I'd like to have a
-look at it again by daylight. Got in this time after dark
-and came right out here before sunrise. First time
-I'd hit Washington for five years—since the fall meeting
-at St. Asaph in 1894. I surely would like to have
-another look around Washington. But I guess I'll have
-to pass it up. I'm not hunting for bother nowadays."
-
-The paddock in which he stood is only a few minutes'
-run by train from Washington. It seemed odd, therefore,
-that he did not step on a train and run over to Washington,
-since, as he said, he hankered for another sight
-of it. He was asked about this:
-
-"Well," he replied, "I'm waiting for five fellows that I
-used to know over in Washington to die. When they've all
-cashed in, maybe I'll have a chance to look around Washington
-again. But I understand that they're all alive
-and on edge now, and I don't exactly feel like running
-into them. I know that I'd never be able to square myself
-for a thing that happened down at St. Asaph during
-that fall meeting in 1894, so what's the use of stacking
-up against the bunch and wasting wind?
-
-"I had a small string of dead ones at that St. Asaph
-meeting. I didn't get oats money out of them. That
-year was the frost of my life, anyhow. I started
-in around the New York tracks in the spring with
-a bundle of three thousand or so that I had hauled
-down by backing 'em out on the coast during the winter
-meeting, and I began to melt before the leaves commenced
-to show up on the trees. There was nothing doing for me.
-I couldn't get down right. Nearly a dozen good things
-that pals of mine with strings had got into the pink
-of it to send over the plate at long prices wound up
-among the also rans and the crimp those things took in
-my wad was something ridiculous. I only handled a few
-horses during the summer meetings that year on the
-metropolitan tracks. They were all crabs and did no
-good. So I had to plug along by shying a ten or twenty
-into the ring when I heard of something that looked nice.
-I couldn't even make this clubbing game go through.
-The books got two out of three of my slips of the green,
-and I got to wondering how it would feel to drive a
-truck. They certainly had me down that year.
-
-"When the fall meeting at Morris Park wound up
-I had $200 and a headache. I was figuring on how I
-could take this down to the winter meetings in the South
-and run it up to something worth while, when the owner
-of the bunch of dead ones I spoke of came along and
-asked me to take 'em down to St. Asaph and try to get
-a race or two out of them. I knew they were lobsters,
-all of these horses, and I was ugly enough to tell the
-owner that when I wanted a job handling cattle I'd go
-down to West street and get one, with a sea voyage to
-Glasgow or London thrown in. There wasn't a horse in
-the lot that could beat my old aunt in Ireland over the plate
-for money or marbles; but I decided to take them down
-to St. Asaph anyhow, just for the sake of keeping on the
-inside of the game and finding out if there was anything
-going on that would enable me to run that small shoestring
-of mine into a tannery. So I took them down to
-that Virginia clay course across the Potomac and fixed
-them up the best I knew how. They wouldn't do. St.
-Asaph was getting some good horses straight from the
-Eastern tracks then and my platers were never in the
-hunt—never one, two, six, in fact. Worse than that, the
-books began taking my little $2 and $5 bets away from
-me right from the getaway, and I could see a winter
-ahead in New York with all the trimmings cut out. I
-met a dozen or so of pretty square chaps in Washington,
-business men that liked to see 'em run and that used
-to ask me occasionally what I thought. I landed most
-of them right on several dead good things without ever
-getting a dollar on myself from want of nerve, my pile
-was so low, and they made good, all right, when these
-things went through. But I was bunking up with such
-a hoodoo that I sloughed off even this rake-off, and when
-the thing happened that I am going to tell you about
-I only had $70 left out of the cozy cush I had started in
-the season with.
-
-"Now, I've been at this game, on both sides of the
-fence, for more than twenty years, and, if any man is,
-I'm dead next to the fact that the horse game is hard
-and craggy. I never yet was guilty of looking upon the
-running game as something easy. Yet I'm bound to admit
-that I often get what you can call, if you want to, a
-hunch on a horse. Something that a plug does in his
-running, even if he doesn't get near the money, takes
-my eye, and from thinking about it I get a hunch on
-him. I don't get a hunch like this every day, or every
-week or month, for that matter, but I've noticed that
-these hunches of mine have gone through nine times
-out of ten during the past twenty years or so. Well,
-there was a horse called Jodan that had run in two or
-three six-furlong sprints at Morris Park that fall, and
-I had liked his work. He was out of the money in both
-of those races, but I liked the way he went at his work.
-That horse Jodan looked to me like he had it in him.
-These two Morris Park races had been captured, one,
-two, three by good ones, and I could see when I had a
-chance to look Jodan over in his stall that he was short
-of work. The string to which the horse belonged had
-a poor trainer, and I knew that a good trainer could get
-some six furlong races out of Jodan. I had a hunch on
-Jodan, and I fixed it in my head that if ever the horse
-got into the hands of a good trainer and was brought
-around right for the six-furlong distance, he'd get a
-piece of my money, no matter what company he was up
-against.
-
-"Well, along toward the close of the St. Asaph meeting
-Jodan turned up at the track with another trainer
-handling him—a man who had as good a knack of conditioning
-horses as ever I met up with, and an old chum
-of mine. I rubbed up with him before he had been on
-the track fifteen minutes, and asked him what he was
-going to do with Jodan.
-
-"'I am going to try him out in the first three-quarter
-event I can squeeze him into,' he told me, 'and I wouldn't
-be surprised to see him get a piece of it. His right fore-leg
-is a bit bum, but if it holds together I don't see
-why the fellows I know shouldn't get a bite off a real
-good thing in Jodan. He's got a turn of speed, and I've
-got him dead right. The only thing that worries me is
-that swollen knee, and I'm doing my best at patching
-that up.'
-
-"I told him of the hunch I'd had at Morris Park on
-Jodan, and he told me to stay with it, and he'd attend
-to his end of it to help me out.
-
-"'There'll be all kinds of a price on him when I send
-him to the pump,' he said, 'and I'll let you know in time
-just how he is.'
-
-"Well, that hunch just grew and grew on me. The
-Washington chaps that I had met and pushed along with
-the good things that I didn't have the sap to play myself
-heard from me on the Jodan question. I told them
-that I had him up my sleeve and to stand by. They had
-never heard of the horse and they almost side-stepped
-when I told 'em he was as good as any of them over a
-three-quarter route—that he had never been got right.
-There were a lot of six-furlongers down at St. Asaph
-then that could negotiate the distance in .15 flat, and
-they couldn't see where a horse that they had never heard
-of had a look-in with that kind. I held my ground, however,
-and they said that when it was to come off they'd
-throw a little bit of a bet at the bird, just because I
-said so.
-
-"A couple of days later Jodan's name showed up
-among the entries for a six-furlong sprint, and I had another
-chaw with his trainer.
-
-"'He's good,' he told me. 'Stay with your hunch.
-He ought to do.'
-
-"The race was to be run on a Saturday. I looked up
-my Washington friends and told them confidently what
-Jodan was going to do with a bunch of the best three-quarter
-runners in training. Four or five of them couldn't
-help but give me the hoot on the proposition, and they
-said they weren't going over to the track, anyhow—too
-busy closing up the week's business, and so on. They
-couldn't see where Jodan figured with the lot he was to
-meet. I went around to the rest of these Washington
-fellows on the Friday evening before the race and told
-them again about Jodan. They, too, were all going to
-be too busy with the Saturday wind-up of business to
-take in the races that day, but five of them gave me $10
-each to put on Jodan for them. None of them had
-any confidence in the thing, though.
-
-"The Jodan race was the first on the card. There
-were fourteen entries, and not a horse was scratched.
-The track was deep in dust, and I knew then Jodan liked
-that sort of going. It looked like a cinch. I knew that
-the bookies would be dead to Jodan, but I didn't think
-they'd take the liberties they did with him. The favorite
-opened up at 2 to 1, and he was played down to 6 to 5
-in no time. Then there were four or five shots in it ranging
-from 3 to 1 to 15 to 1, when the rank outsiders were
-written in all the way up to 150 to 1. Jodan, my mutt,
-stowed away for a good thing, opened up at 100 to 1
-and stuck there. I went out to the stable where Jodan
-was quartered to find his trainer, but I couldn't dig
-him up. He was mixed up with the bunch in the paddock
-or in the stand. So I decided that it wasn't necessary
-for me to see him, anyhow, before putting my
-money on Jodan. I had seen him the night before, when
-he whispered to me that Jodan was gorgeous, and that
-he was going to play him to win, no matter if the books
-laid 1000 to 1 against the horse.
-
-"So I traipsed around to the ring to put down my
-money and that of my friends on Jodan. As I say,
-Jodan's price all over the ring was 100 to 1, and no
-takers. I had the five tens the Washington chaps had
-given me and the last fifty spot I had on earth in my
-mitt, ready to shoot around and plant it in $10 gobs on
-Jodan before the price could be rubbed, thus standing
-to win $5000 for myself and $5000 for the Washington
-fellows, with my share out of their winnings for putting
-them next. I was the very next man in line to plant my
-first ten with one of the books, when I felt a hard pinch
-on my right arm, and I wheeled around suddenly to
-swat the duck that had given it to me. It was my friend,
-the trainer of Jodan. He nodded me over to the little vacant
-space.
-
-"'You were just going to take some Jodan, weren't
-you?' he asked me.
-
-"'That's what,' said I. 'He'll turn the trick, won't
-he?'
-
-"'No,' he replied shortly. 'I've been trying to find
-you for the last hour to tell you. The mutt's got another
-twist during the night somehow or another, and now
-it's about twice its right size. Stay off. He can't do
-it. He's not limping much, but I can't see how he'll go
-a quarter with such a leg. It'll be a miracle if that hard-luck
-skate finishes at all.'
-
-"This was a hard fall for me, I'm telling you that. I
-had been building on it for one of my cinch hunch things,
-and to hear that it had gone rank took the nerve out of
-me. Of course, in a dismal kind of way, I was glad my
-friend the trainer had put me next to the state of things
-in time to keep me off the dead one for my whole fifty
-and the fifty of my friends in Washington, but that
-wasn't much salve for the hurt I got when he told me
-that Jodan couldn't possibly do it. With Jodan out of it
-I felt certain that the 6 to 5 favorite would come in all
-alone, and so I put the whole bundle down that way
-$120 to $100. It made me glum to think of the difference
-between that and $10,000 to $100.
-
-"Then I went up to the stand to see the lot file past
-on their way to the post. My horse, the favorite, was
-just a-prancing and looked to me like a 1 to 10 thing
-with Jodan out. But my trainer chum had put me on
-right. Jodan's knee was as big as your hat, and he had
-his limp along with him. One of the stewards noticed
-this and made a bit of talk about not allowing Jodan to
-race, but when he was told that Jodan always went to
-the post with a bum knee, even after his warming up,
-he closed up and Jodan went around to the pump with
-his field.
-
-"They got off the first break. The people in the stand
-were down on the favorite almost to a man, and the yelp
-they let out when he shot to the lead from the first jump
-was a heap noisy. My poor old Jodan plug was almost
-left at the post, but his boy got him going all right, and
-I was rather surprised to see him quickly join the rear
-bunch. By this time, at the half, the favorite was just
-buck-jumping five lengths out in front of the first division.
-Then the hind ones began to move up, and I stood
-by to see Jodan get shuffled out of it. But he didn't
-shuffle. He passed right by the rear gang and nearing
-the three-quarters he was at the saddle-girths of the front
-division and going like a cup defender in half a gale.
-
-"'You'll chuck that in a minute, my boy,' I thought,
-with my mind on Jodan. 'Three-legged races look all
-right on paper, but they don't go through.'
-
-"I lost the colors when they turned into the stretch,
-but I saw that the favorite was still a good two lengths
-in front. The track was so deep in dust that I couldn't
-make out the others until they were well into the stretch
-for the lope to the wire. Then when they were all settled
-down to their barrels in the flying yellow dust, I saw
-one of the front divisionites behind the leader shoot out
-around on the outside and bend down to it. Say, I closed
-my lamps down tight. That horse coming on the outside
-like a black devil, with his bit almost crunched into
-flinders, was Jodan. I opened up my eyes when they were
-about sixty yards from the wire. In the middle of the
-whirlwind of dust I saw the favorite faltering, with
-Jodan a neck away and going like as if his distance was
-only a quarter of a mile and he a-covering it there in the
-stretch. Then I pulled my glasses away from my head,
-sat down, shut my eyes again and shook hands with death
-for a few seconds while the Indians all around me were
-howling 'Jodan!' 'Jodan!'
-
-"'Jodan wins!' they yelled when the horses got under
-the wire, and I opened up my eyes just in time to see
-Jodan with open daylight between him and the favorite.
-That was a three-legged miracle, all right. I was in a
-daze, but I had a picture in my head of five fellows in
-Washington that had treated me right waiting for the
-race train to get in so that I could hand them each a
-thousand. I couldn't stand for that, and I had too many
-different kinds of heartbreak warping me out under my
-vest to feel like trying to explain the thing to them.
-So I walked over to Alexandria and caught the afternoon
-train for Richmond, after leaving my bum string in
-the hands of another trainer. From Richmond I went
-on down to New Orleans, where I had some luck—never
-enough luck, though, to square the game up with me
-for that win of Jodan's, which made me feel old and
-tired for a long time afterward.
-
-"If I outlive those five Washington fellows, or they
-take it into their lids to go to the Klondike together, maybe
-I'll have another look around under the shadow of that
-big dome yonder. But I don't want to meet them. Explaining's
-too hard work, and the circumstances of that
-St. Asaph happening, which occurred as I've spieled it,
-were 'agin' me!"
-
-
-
-
-STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION.
-=================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *It Paid $2,000 to $2, and Looked Like a Winner Until the Last Jump, But——*
-
-
-There was a period of prolonged, nerve-racking excitement
-one afternoon last week in a demure and retiring
-Harlem poolroom that doesn't draw any color line. A
-colored sport was threatening to tear the place loose from
-its foundations and to fire a volley over the ruins—in a
-purely figurative sense, that is to say. Literally he didn't
-commit any breach of the peace at all. But he had a combination
-ticket in his clothes for a couple of hours that
-practically made all the rest of the people in the place forget
-what they were there for. He was as black as that
-overworked one-spot of spades. He was known to his
-envied intimates only as Mose, and the very large checked
-suit of plaid that he wore had a certain cake-walk suggestiveness,
-as did his huge red necktie, his patent leathers
-with blue polka-dotted uppers, and his three large yellow
-diamonds, two of them on his fingers and the other
-screwed in the middle of his shirt bosom with crimson
-horizontal bars. He was a "spote" all right.
-
-He entered the poolroom alone, looked up at the board,
-and then dug a bit of paper, obviously a telegram, out of
-his Oxford cloth Newmarket overcoat. A man who was
-rude enough to look over his shoulders saw that the telegram
-was a night message and that it bore the New Orleans
-date. It contained the names of five horses, with the
-initials of the sender.
-
-"He's a po'tuh on uh Pullman," vouchsafed the sport
-to the privileged character who had looked over his shoulder
-at the despatch. "An' he's uh babe, yo' heah me! He
-knows 'em lak he knows uh blackin' brush. Ah's uh
-gwine tuh mek uh combinashun on de hull five. De ticket
-'ll win in uh walk."
-
-After sizing up the house betting on the New Orleans
-races for a few minutes, he walked up to the counter
-where the combination tickets exuded from the lightning
-calculator. Just at that moment there was nothing doing
-at the combination counter. The sport produced his telegram,
-cleared his throat, and began.
-
-"Ah's got de hull five babies," he said with a grin to the
-ticket writer. "An' ah's uh gwine tuh tek 'em all tuh win.
-Doan' want none o' 'em fo' place or show. Dey's all got
-tuh come in all alone."
-
-"Shoot 'em out," said the ticket writer.
-
-The sport named the five horses that he knew were
-going to win the New Orleans races. They were, in the
-order of the races, Mint Sauce, Russell R., Deyo, Benneville
-and Donna Rita.
-
-The ticket writer executed his bit of lightning head
-work, with frequent glances at the board to get the prices
-on the runners, and then he looked up at the sport with a
-grin.
-
-"Huntin' for a hog killin', ain't you?" he asked.
-"Goin' to put us out o' business? It figures a thousand to
-one. How much do you want on it?"
-
-"Two dolluhs," replied the sport and he passed up the
-money. The ticket writer pencilled the names of the horses
-down on the ticket, placed the figures "$2,000 to $2" at
-the bottom of it, and handed the bit of pasteboard to the
-sport with the remark:
-
-"You're a good thing. Come again."
-
-"Yo' all kin do yo' hollern' w'en de hosses run," was
-the sport's good-natured reply, and then he went to the
-extreme outer row of seats in the pool room and sat down
-to wait for $2,000 to accrue to him on an investment of
-$2.
-
-Along toward 3 o'clock the betting came in on the first
-race at New Orleans. The horse Mint Sauce that the
-sport had in his combination ticket was the odds-on favorite,
-although he had been at a good price in the house
-betting. The queer crowd of players surged up to the
-counters to put their money down on things they liked,
-that figured all right in the dope books; but the sport kept
-his seat. His speculation for the day was over. He was
-simply waiting for his $2 to grow to $2,002.
-
-Then they were off at New Orleans, as the telegrapher
-announced with a bored air, electrifying the crowd into
-silence. It was a six-furlong race, and there was nothing
-to it but Mint Sauce all the way. At the three-quarters,
-when the telegrapher announced that Mint Sauce was
-third and just galloping, the sport leaned back in his seat
-with an it's-all-over expression, snapped his fingers a
-couple of times for luck, and said:
-
-"It's uh cake-walk fo' dat baby. Ah'm on right so far."
-
-"Mint Sauce wins by two lengths," announced the operator,
-and the announcement was received with silence.
-Poolroom crowds don't play favorites as a rule.
-
-"Mah nex' is this heah Russell R.," said the sport,
-gazing at his ticket again, "an' Russell R. he's dun got
-tuh win. Ah feels uh leetle squeenchy uhbout he all, but
-Russell R. he'll buck-jump in."
-
-The betting came in on the race a few moments later,
-and Russell R. was at a long price. Several horses in the
-race were at much shorter prices. The sport didn't look
-worried a little bit over this.
-
-"Russell R. he's dun got tuh win," he said, and that
-was all there was about it.
-
-"Off at New Orleans," announced the weary looking
-operator again, and then he began to call off the way the
-race was being run. It looked bad for the sport's ticket
-until the telegrapher had carried the nags along to the
-three-quarter post and then Russell R., who hadn't been
-anywhere, got his first call, joining the bunch as third at
-that stage of the journey.
-
-"Sadie Burnham in the stretch by a length!" announced
-the telegrapher. "Lomond second by a length,
-Russell R. third," and then the sport began to root for
-his horse. He swayed back and forth in his wicker rocking
-chair, moaning, "Come, yo' Russell hoss! Yo' heah
-me uh-talkin', hoss—come, yo' Russell—or yo' doan' git
-no oats—ketch him, yo' baby, an' yo' pa'll treat yo'
-right"——
-
-"Russell R. wins, by a head!" announced the telegrapher.
-
-"Oh, yo' wahm thing, yo' Russell!" suppressedly exclaimed
-the sport, his finger-snapping suddenly stopping
-and an upturned crescent grin spreading over the whole
-area of his chocolate countenance.
-
-It seemed that some of the less important sports must
-have been "riding" Russell R. too, for their exultant
-"Uh-huhs!" rang around the room. The colored sport
-dearly loves a long shot.
-
-"De nex' on mah piece o' pas'e-boa'd," said the sport,
-ransacking through his pockets again for his ticket, "is
-dain'jus. Ah doan' lak dis heah hoss Deyo, but Ah ain't
-uh-playin' whut Ah laks, but whut's dun sent tuh me. So
-Deyo she's dun got tuh win, too."
-
-It was after 4 o'clock by this time, and the poolroom
-was filling up with young fellows turned loose from the
-down-town offices. Many of these late arrivals had
-straight tips in the form of telegrams on the third race at
-New Orleans and they almost overwhelmed the ticket
-writers. When the betting came in on that race Deyo was
-at a long price, much longer than the house betting had
-quoted the nag, and the sport looked a bit anxious over
-this. His worried look disappeared, however, when the
-second line of betting came in, showing that Deyo was
-being backed down some on the New Orleans track.
-
-"Dey's sumthin' uh-doin' on that mule," he said, and
-the telegrapher began to call off the race. It was something
-easy for Deyo, who beat the favorite by three
-lengths. The sport didn't have to snap his fingers or sway
-in his chair at all. Deyo was in front all the way. Three-fifths
-of the $2,000 to $2 ticket was won.
-
-By this time the sport was the cynosure of a good many
-pairs of eyes. The possibilities of the ticket he had in his
-pocket were whispered about, and a number of the real
-things in the sport line edged over and asked to have a
-look at the ticket.
-
-"It's a alimpey-boolera," they said, and they rubbed the
-back of it for luck. Then a lot of them went up to the
-combination desk and got combination tickets for the remaining
-two horses that appeared on the colored sport's
-ticket. By the time the betting came in on the fourth race
-it was known all over the room that the sport had a $2,000
-to $2 ticket with three of the horses already over the plate.
-The sport enjoyed it all with becoming modesty.
-
-"Dis heah hoss, Benneville, will now step out an' run
-seben fuhlongs fo' me," he said, referring to his ticket
-again. "Ah doan' know mahse'f jes' how good dis heah
-Benneville is jes' now, but dis is his day tuh win by uh
-block."
-
-Benneville came in an odds-on favorite, and won by
-three open lengths. The sport again was relieved of the
-necessity of rooting.
-
-"Ah'n dun rode dat one mahse'f," he said grinning,
-and he found himself in the middle of a crowd of sports
-of his own color.
-
-"Look uh-heah, nigguh, doan' yo' all remembuh me?"
-a lot of them inquired of him as they crowded around him.
-
-"Remembuh nothin'," said he impartially. "Ah doan'
-mek it mah bizness tuh remembuh nobody."
-
-"Hey, what does your ticket call for in the next?" was
-a question that fifty men threw at him as he sat in state
-in his wicker rocker.
-
-"De nex' skate on de list," he replied, spelling out the
-letters on his ticket, which was being rubbed a good deal
-for luck by all hands within rubbing distance, "is de
-maiuh Donna Rita. Ah wouldn't give $2 fo' Donna Rita
-mahse'f, de way she's bin un-runnin', but Donna Rita's
-dun got tuh walk in all by huhse'f dis time," whereupon
-he returned the ticket to his pocket as if it already represented
-$2,002.
-
-The sport had got down Donna Rita into his combination
-at a long price in the house betting. When the first
-line of betting came in from New Orleans, however,
-Donna Rita was seen to be the favorite for the race, with
-a big field to beat.
-
-"Donna Rita's lak gettin' money in uh lettuh," said the
-sport, and every man in the room that heard these words
-of wisdom from the lips of the man with the magical combination
-ticket in his pocket, played Donna Rita to win.
-So here was the sport, enthroned like any monarch of Dahomey,
-with the crowd surging around him. One of the
-white sports, waving a roll as big as his fist, elbowed his
-way through the crowd surrounding the colored sport
-and flatly offered him $500 for his ticket, after looking at
-it and seeing that Donna Rita, much the best horse in the
-next race, had her name inscribed there. It was a temptation,
-but the sport was game, and stood pat.
-
-"Dis heah ticket ain't fo' sale," he said. "De two
-thousan's good enough fo' this coon."
-
-Another man offered him $800 for his $2 ticket. The
-offer was declined. There wasn't a man in the crowd that
-wasn't rooting for the sport's ticket to wind up all right,
-and to make their rooting more effective they played
-Donna Rita to win the last race almost to a man. The
-less important sports were keeping close to their brother
-in hue. They wanted to be in at the finish—perhaps to
-help the sport to celebrate. At post time there was hardly
-a man at the betting counters. They were all hovering
-near the sport for luck.
-
-"Off at New Orleans!" shouted the telegrapher, who
-knew about the sport's ticket by this time, and there was
-a note of unusual excitement in his voice as he called off
-the race. "Donna Rita in the lead!"
-
-"Oh, yo' babe, Donna!" shouted all the "spotes" in
-unison, and "stay right theah, yo' nigguh!" shouted the
-one particular sport.
-
-"Donna Rita at the quarter by five lengths!" called out
-the telegrapher, and the poolroom might have been taken
-for an Emancipation Day festival. "Donna Rita at the
-half by five lengths!"
-
-"Ef yo' lubs yo' man, come uhlong!" moaned the sport
-in ecstasy.
-
-"Donna Rita at the three-quarters by three lengths,
-Kisme second, Virgie O. third," droaned the operator.
-"Donna Rita in the stretch by a head!"
-
-The sport rocked to and fro and groaned.
-
-"Virgie O. wins by a nose!" announced the telegrapher.
-
-That settled the combination. The sport's followers fell
-away from him like autumn leaves from wind-tortured
-trees.
-
-"They ain't nothin' in this horse-racin' game, is they?"
-the frequenters of the poolroom said to one another as
-they slouched out, and the grating tones of the cashiers
-counting bills soon echoed through the deserted room.
-
-
-
-
-"RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK.
-================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *He "Runs a Shoestring into a Tannery," and Then Gets the Cold Shoulder from the Lady Fortune.*
-
-
-A party of turfmen in Washington for the Benning
-meeting were talking the other evening of the remarkable
-streak of luck which has enabled Billy Barrick to run a
-borrowed shoestring of $200 up to an amount which is
-now said to approximate $100,000 in the last six weeks.
-
-"Barrick's double-ended luck, both at faro bank and
-horses," said one of the bookmakers in the party, "is a
-whole lot out of the common. Luck is a full-bred sort of
-an affair, and it does not often run along hybrid lines.
-What I mean to say is that the man who has a huge run
-of luck at one game almost invariably falls into the doldrums
-and goes all to pieces when he switches to another
-game. The luckiest men I ever knew on the turf, for example,
-were the unluckiest card players, and most of them
-stubbornly spent a good many thousands of their pony
-winnings before they found this out. Barrick seems to
-be an exception. He has got into the current, and he could
-probably get away with the money at fan-tan or Cingalese
-pool while he's in his present shape. I'm a bit afraid
-of him just now myself, and when I see his commissioners
-bearing down on my book I'm sorely tempted to rub the
-whole slate until I get a chance to rubberneck and find
-out what they're after. If I were dealing faro bank, so
-weird has his luck at tiger-bucking been lately, too, that
-I believe I'd make it a thirty-cent limit when I saw him
-coming. But he's an exception, as I say. It's the man who
-sticks to the one game that drives the swaggerest dog-cart
-and wears the whitest gig-lamps in the long run.
-
-"I remember a chap out in St. Louis who ran a shoestring
-of five cents up to pretty close to six figures in the
-summer of 1895. He bucked more games in doing it, too,
-than Barrick has thus far, but he couldn't go a route, and
-they ate him up when the whisky got into his head in
-such quantities that he saw treble without having a focus
-on anything. His name was Red Donnelly, and he had
-charge of the bookmakers' paraphernalia in the betting
-ring of the St. Louis fair grounds when the Lady Fortune
-beamed upon that nickel of his and invited him to bask for
-a time in her domain. He was a loose-jointed spraddle-shaped
-sort of a young chap of 25 or so who had been
-hanging around the St. Louis tracks from his early boyhood.
-He learned so much about the horses that he could
-never win anything on them when he played in the ten-cent
-books made by the railbirds. He handicapped them
-down to the sixteenth of a pound, and the horse that he
-put his dime on consequently got beaten, as a rule, by a
-tongue. He had been holding down the job of a dog-robber
-for the bookmakers for two seasons before he struck
-his lead on that nickel. He came out to the track one day,
-early in June, 1895, with the solitary nickel reposing in the
-depths of his trousers' pockets, salted there to pay his fare
-back to the city. He got to pulling the five-cent piece out
-of his clothes and looking at it longingly by the time the
-first race was due. He wanted to get down on a race, but
-there were no five-cent books. The bottom sum accepted
-by the railbird books was a dime. Red strolled out to
-the barns and got to pitching nickels with a pack of idle
-stable boys. The luck was with him from the jump, and
-when he accumulated a dollar in nickels he exhibited
-symptoms of a man suffering from chilblains. His reason
-for getting cold feet was that he had a good thing in the
-fourth race, and by the time he had acquired the dollar
-the betting had begun on the fourth race.
-
-"Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and
-saw that the price offered against his good thing, the old
-nag Hush, was 60 to 1. Donnelly needed a bundle of
-cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly, but he was
-game when it came to sticking to his good things, and
-he slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a bookmaker
-he knew. He took good-naturedly the mocking
-hoot which the booky gave him for handing in twenty
-pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself out
-to the rail just as the horses went away from the post.
-The race was really something silly for Hush, in the unwieldy
-field of nineteen horses. Hush led all the way, and
-pranced under the wire first in a big gallop, pulled double.
-The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way.
-
-"Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The
-bookmaker knew him well, knew of his taste for rum, and
-knew also that few of Red's rare dollars ever found their
-way to the humble shack of the man's infirm old Irish
-mother.
-
-"'I believe I'll just pinch this out on you, Red,' said
-the booky to him, 'and pass it along to the old lady when
-I go in to-night. It won't do you any good.'
-
-"'Come to taw,' replied Red. 'I want to put thirty or
-forty cents down on the next race. I got another good
-thing in it.'
-
-"The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61.
-Red carefully folded the dollar bill and tucked it into his
-waistcoat pocket. Then he invested the $60, in $10 clips,
-with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the next race, at 15 to
-1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked
-the bookmakers silly—they all knew him well from his
-working around the place—by socking it to six of them
-for $150 each. A committee of safety was immediately
-formed around Donnelly, but he couldn't be held down.
-He tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, purchased
-a package of cigarettes made in Turkey for forty
-cents, and looked over his dope-book carefully. Then he
-strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in the
-last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something
-ridiculous for her. She won on the bit, and Red was
-$3,660 to the good on that nickel that he had salted away
-in his homespuns for the return trip to town.
-
-"When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber—he's
-a big-hearted Barney—had him, as it were, by the
-scruff of the neck. Barney announced to all of us that
-he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney
-said went with us, for we all knew Red's propensities.
-Donnelly put up a weak growl, but he knew 'way down
-deep in him that Schreiber could and would take care
-of the cash better than he could or would. Barney
-pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate compartment
-of his wallet, and handed Red $150.
-
-"'I'll just let you have a little change, Red, said he,
-'and if you think you can run that up into a tan-yard, go
-ahead. But I'm a-going to handle this for you the right
-way. You're not tied enough in your ways to have
-such a vast sum on your person all at one and the same
-time.'
-
-"Donnelly didn't demur much. The $150 was a huge
-sum itself for him, and he, of course, knew that Schreiber
-would do the right thing with the main bunch. As a
-matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day
-to the credit of Donnelly's old mother, and Schreiber
-and the old woman were the only people who knew anything
-about that end of it for a long time afterward.
-
-"We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium-tremens
-finish we foresaw for him, and when he didn't
-turn up at the track at all on the following day, necessitating
-the turning of his dog-robbing work over to
-another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremendous
-barrel-house toot Red must have gone on down the
-levee way. That's where we were camping out. When
-we picked up the papers on turning out the following
-morning we found a scare-head story in one of them
-relating in great detail and elaborate diction how one Mr.
-John S. Donnelly, a gentleman well known on the Western
-turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin's faro bank, over in
-East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily
-without meals from 7 o'clock on the evening of Monday
-until 11 o'clock on Wednesday night, when Ed
-turned the box on him and announced that it was all off
-for the present. We all shouted 'fake!' when we saw
-that, but a couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed
-over to McGuckin's place to see if there was anything
-in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it. We found
-Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark
-things about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout
-and running shoe tongues up into leather factories. We
-expressed our sympathies with Ed, for which we came
-perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to
-St. Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel-house
-route with a fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly.
-Then we decided to drive out to his mother's little old
-shack. Our route from the levee out there took us
-through the down-town district, and we both saw Red
-on the street at once. We drew up alongside the curb,
-and called him. He was cold sober, and he had $16,210
-in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him
-where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of
-the swellest tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We
-went along with him, and it was one lovely sight to observe
-the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to ornament
-his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and
-then we went with him to the haberdasher's. He was
-all for green and yellow neckties, pink-striped shirts,
-and that sort, and we let him have his way. Then he became
-sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that
-big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally consented
-to come along to a bank with us and deposit
-$14,000 of it in his name. We tried to hold out for having
-it put in his mother's name, but he wouldn't stand
-for that. After leaving the bank Red's eagle eye caught
-sight of the shiny things in a jeweler's window, and he
-decided then and there that he couldn't go to sleep without
-having the third finger of his left hand made conspicuous
-by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he
-coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his
-clothes, and we dragged him then into the cab and drove
-out to his mother's little old shanty. The old lady had her
-little talk with Barney Schreiber about the $3500 by that
-time, and the to-do she made over her 'bye Johnnie' was
-worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other
-bunch that Red had copped and that we had plunked it
-into the bank for him, the quantities of corned beef and
-cabbage which she threw into the pot for the dinner
-which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her
-phenomenal son were amazing.
-
-"Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of
-weeks by his extraordinary conduct. He would ride
-out to the track in a hack, with a gilt-stamped cigarette
-in his face, attend to his job as usual around the betting-ring—that
-is, he'd supervise, for he quickly accumulated
-a staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on—and then
-he'd go up into the grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk
-clothes and look at the races. He didn't put a bet down
-on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober
-all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals
-he had suddenly got, but he only passed along with the
-remark: 'I'm letting 'em run for O'Flaherty. Nothin'
-doin'.'
-
-"We waited for the crash, but it didn't seem to come
-on schedule time. One afternoon he called me aside and
-showed me his bank-book. It showed an additional deposit
-of $5000, making the total $19,000.
-
-"'When did you pick up that new roll?' I asked
-him.
-
-"'Went up against the wheel at Terhune's last night,
-and yanked it out in three hours,' he said.
-
-"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked
-him.
-
-"'Last night,' he replied.
-
-"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up
-at the track one afternoon with a light in his eye. He
-went out into the paddock and spent three-quarters of
-an hour looking at a horse and by that time the third race
-was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000
-around on Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old
-race, but Madeira romped in two lengths to the
-good. That night Red, still moderately sober and
-level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We
-began to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's
-game and to consider the possibility of his becoming a
-real fixture. A lot of owners with bum skates tried to
-work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only
-passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an
-additional line of thinks with regard to what we thought
-was his increasing shrewdness. Besides, you see, Red
-began to be right good to us. He told us all very soberly
-one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that
-he didn't want to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his
-money to the out-of-town poolrooms. The good thing
-was David, who won the last race in a walk at 15 to 1,
-and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that.
-
-"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people
-got at Donnelly and tried to induce him to either invest
-a part of his money—he had almost $50,000 then—in a
-string of useful horses, to be put into the hands of a competent
-trainer—or to have the whole bundle properly invested
-in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby,
-when Red's streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have
-to go back to buying cigarettes by the cent's worth. The
-man was too bull-headed, though, to listen to anything
-like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine
-house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff
-black silk dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore
-in which to go to mass.
-
-"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of
-games around town every night, and it honestly appeared
-as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud poker, draw,
-wheel, red and black, mustang, bank—all seemed to be
-right in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up
-where he was bucking things every night, and, following
-his play, we always got the good end of it. He didn't
-know much about any of the games, and the idiotic
-things we had often to do in order to consistently follow
-his play made us gag, but nine times out of ten
-them came out right. One man in our party, a bookmaker,
-who determined to copper all of Red's play at
-the different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck
-had to turn some time or another, almost went broke before
-he came into the fold and quit coppering.
-
-"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling
-at the red stuff. By the time his great luck was a month
-old, however, the booze had nailed him, and he got to
-throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man
-can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or
-judgment. Red came into the ring palpably drunk one
-afternoon and spread around $20,000 on Strathmeath
-at even money. None of us wanted to take the
-money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that
-horse was Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and
-a bit ugly, and we accommodated him. Strathmeath ran
-third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly
-dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't
-go to bed for five nights, and at the end of that
-time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck drop
-away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly.
-For instance, he was whacking at a bank one night,
-stupefied with hooters of half rye and half absinthe, and
-he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed it
-on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a
-clip, and lost it twelve straight times. The frowns of the
-Lady Fortune got his nerve, and he began to play favorites
-at the track. The favorites went down to inglorious
-defeat, one after another, for days.
-
-"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber,
-got hold of Red when he had only the $6000 left, landed
-him in a fix-up ward, and sobered him up. When he
-came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in an express
-business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside
-of the express office more than half dozen times, except
-to draw what was coming to him. He was at the track
-all the time the races lasted, and when the season closed
-he put in his time down on the levee. He never had a
-day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his
-death, somewhat less than a year after they came his way
-with a whoop and a rush.
-
-"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to
-stroke her hair, chuck her under the chin and be good
-to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice to a man who
-treats her favors wantonly."
-
-
-
-
-AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP.
-================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap Won by Kinley Mack.*
-
-
-"We'll get Red Beak Jim to hike us down in his caloosh,"
-said the main guy of the four. The four were job
-holders in one of the New York city departments, and
-they were talking about ways and means of reaching the
-Sheepshead track for the Suburban.
-
-"Good thing," said the three others. "Go on and ask
-Jimmy for a figure, down and back, for the bunch. Hey,
-and don't let him dicker you out o' your gilt teeth. Jimmy's
-a robber."
-
-So the main guy of the four sprinted after Red Beak
-Jim. He found him with the major portion of his countenance
-immersed in the collarette of an open-faced malt
-magnum.
-
-"Hey, Jim," said the main guy, "hitch 'em up and
-bring 'em around about noon. Down to the Bay and back.
-There's four of us. What d'ye say to the note for $10 for
-the job?"
-
-Red Beak Jim removed the mammoth piece of glassware
-from his face long enough to remark:
-
-"Nothin' doin'."
-
-"Ain't, hey?" said the main guy. "The old caloosh's
-fallen apart at last, hey?"
-
-Red Beak Jim sat the beer-glass down and wiped off his
-mouth with the back of his coat-sleeve.
-
-"It'll be jugglin' around when you're yelling for ice
-at any old price a hunnered," said he. "Nope, I'm 'ngaged
-f'r th' Bay."
-
-"Say, you've got your fingers crossed or your suspenders,"
-said the main guy. "Give you fifteen for the job."
-
-"Goin' t' take three down," said Red Beak Jim. "Ten
-a head. Sorry I didn't ask 'em fifteen. Trucks is chargin'
-ten a head."
-
-"Ten a head," said the main guy, sarcastically. "What
-in, zinc money? Hey, pull around, Jim, or you'll lose a
-wheel. Ten a head? Get away with that hasheesh. Give
-us a figure."
-
-"You've got it," replied Red Beak Jim. "Ten per,
-round trip. I'm a good thing at that. But I'm 'ngaged."
-
-"So's me little sister," said the main guy. "All right,
-work your edge. What's ten a head to us, at that? Hey,
-we got the baby to-day, Jim, and you want to put some
-braces under that old caloosh. We'll have two ton o'
-money coming back. Bring 'er around, then, at noon.
-Say, you ought to get a pair o' knucks and a sandbag.
-You're too good on the clutch to push a caloosh around.
-Have 'er there prompt at noon, now, Jim."
-
-"Sure," said Red Beak Jim, and he was there at noon,
-all right, with the hack all varnished up and dusted off,
-and the pair looking fit to reel off a mile in five minutes,
-on the bit. The four were inside, stirring their pieces of
-ice around with the spoons, when Red Beak Jim pulled
-up. He jumped off the seat and stuck his head in the
-door.
-
-"At the pump, gents," said he.
-
-They yanked him in to have one before the start, and
-they all got him over into the dark corner. Then the main
-guy addressed him.
-
-"Jim," said the main guy, "we're handing this to you
-because you're all right—from the heels down. On the
-level, though, Jim, we pass this along to you because it's
-right. It's prepared. It's a nightingale in the woods, and
-it'll be singing when all the rest of 'em are still trying to
-find out where the wire is. Horse of the century? Nix.
-Not for these little Willies. The black, let 'er sleep wonder?
-Not. We stay out there. The Whitney thing with
-the Frenchy name? Hoot, mon. Pass this squad by.
-Nope. We got it right, Jimmy. And we're handing you
-the forty bucks now so's you can plant it right. Here's
-the forty—and say, you want to remember that you're
-paid, see? Well, you get over the fence somehow—let a
-kid take care o' your two goats and the caloosh—and you
-put the whole forty on Kinley Mack. See? Got that
-chalked? You put the forty on Kinley Mack, and part o'
-the two ton o' gilt we'll have on the come-back 'll belong to
-you. Kinley Mack's going to stand 'em all on their heads
-and twist 'em round. Don't say we didn't put you next.
-Uneeda win. Well, you win. Nothing to it. Kinley Mack.
-Ain't that right, you ducks?"
-
-"That's right, all right," said the other three, all together.
-
-Red Beak Jim emptied the flagon thoughtfully.
-
-"I got mine at that game," said he finally. "They
-made a bum o' me before you people was through playin'
-jacks. They can run f'r Hogan. These"—salting away
-the two twenties the main guy had handed him—"will do
-f'r me. I don't want t' git rich fast, nohow. I'd booze meself
-foolish. Much 'bliged, gents, but I can't see no Kinley
-Macks or Billy Bryans, f'r that matter, wit' a spy-glass."
-
-"All right," said the main guy, disgustedly. "But when
-the ring's around Kinley Mack, and they're paying off the
-wise people on him, you want to muffle the bleats you'll
-have coming, see? Don't say we never dished you up a hot
-one. You're a sport, Jimmy, and so's a tadpole. You'll
-never butt in among the first six. All right. Come on,
-you people."
-
-They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their
-glasses once more, and then they climbed into the hack
-and were away in a row, to a good start.
-
-At each of the seven places at which they stopped for
-ice, with trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they
-announced to friends that they met that it was only going
-to be a one horse race.
-
-"Run on a fast track, hey?" said the main guy to
-everybody he knew at the stops. "Say, that's his graft.
-That's his main plant. A race-horse can run on any old
-kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse of
-the century business and you smoke stogies for a few
-months. Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say,
-d'je ever happen to hear of Salvator and Tenny and Hanover
-and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre and Sir
-Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two-dollar
-mutts like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt
-in? Say, Hamburg could've run backward as fast as this
-horse of the century that you people have all got the bug
-about. Kinley Mack! Kinley Mack! Hey, fellers?"
-
-"Thash ri'," said the other three, and then they climbed
-into the hack again.
-
-When they got down to the track entrance and alighted
-the main guy of the four, still mindful of his duty toward
-struggling fellow men, made a final appeal to Red Beak
-Jim.
-
-"Jim," said he, "how about taking our steer, hey?
-This is the good thing o' the year. It's going to be a long
-summer. Going to put that forty on Kinley Mack?"
-
-"I'm goin' t' take a nap after I have a smoke," replied
-Red Beak Jim, filling his pipe.
-
-The four walked away with an air of disgust, while
-Red Beak Jim grinned after them.
-
-Each of the four had a one-hundred-dollar note wherewith
-to back Kinley Mack off the boards. The temptations
-of the first three races, however, collared them, and
-when the slate went up for the Suburban they each had a
-fifty-dollar note wherewith to play Kinley Mack, the good
-thing. When the horses were at the post for the third
-race, the main guy, who happened to be standing close
-to the fence that separates the grand-stand crowd from
-the people in the cheap field, saw Red Beak Jim, with
-his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, leaning
-against the rail. He called the hackman, and Red
-Beak Jim approached the fence with a grin.
-
-"Thought you'd get on, anyhow, hey?" said the main
-guy.
-
-"Naw, I jes' crep in t' see 'em run an' hear th' hard
-losers tell how it was they lost," said Red Beak Jim.
-"Nothin' doin' wit' me."
-
-"Ain't going to put those forty on Kinley Mack, hey?"
-asked the main guy.
-
-"Not if I'm awake," said Red Beak Jim, and the main
-guy walked away from the fence with an expression
-of commiseration on his face.
-
-The horses were still at the post for the third race
-when the main guy was approached by a horseman he
-knew. The horseman was chewing a straw. He looked
-very wise.
-
-"Cashed yet on Imp?" the horseman asked the main
-guy.
-
-"Hey?" asked the latter, bending his ear.
-
-"Only a canter for that one," said the horseman, in
-a low tone, temporarily removing the straw from his
-face. "Just a little exercise gallop for the black filly."
-
-"Say, is that right?" inquired the main guy. "Is she
-so good as all that to-day?"
-
-"Surest thing you know," said the horseman. "She'll
-give 'em all a fifty-pound beating or I don't know a hoof
-from a currycomb. I'm only spinning this along to the
-people I've got some use for. That's the reason I dip it
-up for you."
-
-"But say," whispered the main guy of the four, "I
-got it straight as a ramrod on Kinley Mack."
-
-The horseman smiled benignly.
-
-"On this track?" said he. "That one wouldn't beat
-a fat man on this track. He wants slop and slush. I'm
-only telling you, that's all. You splurge on Imp, and it'll
-be all yours."
-
-"I always was stuck on that darned old mare, anyhow,"
-mused the main guy of the four, as he walked off
-in search of the other three. "She sure can rip the air
-when she's ripe. Got a thunder of a notion to switch
-to her at that. That fellow ought to know. He's been
-handling 'em long enough. Kinley Mack only a mudder,
-hey? Had kind of a hunch that way myself, but I didn't
-want to own up. Last week, before I got this Kinley
-Mack thing, I was sure going to play Imp, and I'd feel
-like a nickel's worth of lard if she'd go out and spread-eagle
-'em now that I've got this Kinley Mack thing."
-
-He stood still for a moment with his hands in his pockets,
-oblivious of the jostling crowd, and then he slapped
-his thigh.
-
-"I've got the hunch—it's Imp!" he muttered.
-"Lemme find the fellers and put 'em next."
-
-He found the other three. They were putty when
-the main guy told them what the horseman had said.
-They'd always liked Imp, anyhow.
-
-Their four fifty-dollar notes went on Imp straight,
-when the slates went up. They all stood together and
-rooted for the black mare when the horses got off. When
-Kinley Mack romped in, an easy winner, they didn't say
-anything at all. They didn't even look at one another.
-They avoided one another's gaze, thrust their
-hands deep into their pockets and studied the jockeys as
-they dismounted. When the first numbness had passed
-the main guy of the four led them to the bar and they
-drank the longest one of the day in silence. They looked
-up into their glasses as they twiddled their spoons, but
-they didn't look at one another.
-
-There was $17 still left among the four—not enough
-for any sort of celebration or doings when they got back
-to town. So the main guy gathered up the $17 in silence
-and put it all on a horse at 10 to 1 in the fifth race, with
-the idea of running the shoestring into a tannery. The
-10 to 1 shot was never in the hunt at any stage of it,
-and they were all out. Silently they wended their way
-out of the gate.
-
-Red Beak Jim was sitting on the seat of the hack, with
-his legs crossed, smoking a pipe. He looked interested
-when the four came along.
-
-"Youse people must have all kinds," said he.
-
-They climbed into the hack without a word.
-
-"D'je play that one?" inquired Red Beak Jim, picking
-up the lines.
-
-"Ask me aunt," growled the main guy.
-
-Red Beak Jim clucked at the horses, and they moved
-off in good style.
-
-The hackman pulled the horses up alongside the step
-in front of the first roadhouse.
-
-"Hey, don't get too glad all of a sudden," growled
-the main guy to Red Beak Jim. "Who told you to do
-that?"
-
-Red Beak Jim disposed of the lines and stepped down
-without making any reply, while the four watched him
-gloomily. Then he grinned, hoisted up the right-hand
-front flap of his livery coat, dug into his right-hand
-trousers pocket and pulled out a wad about the size of a
-healthy cantaloupe.
-
-"I'll ask youse gents to split a couple o' quarts on me,"
-said Red Beak Jim. "I got 8 to 1 f'r me forty."
-
-They gazed at him and his wad with their jaws dropping.
-
-"Did you play Kinley Mack?" they gurgled in unison.
-
-"That's the one youse people said, ain't it?" inquired
-Red Beak Jim. "I t'ought I'd take a little flyer on him,
-jes' f'r luck."
-
-
-
-
-THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS."
-==============================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *And How He Got a Horseman Without Much of a Conscience into Hot Water.*
-
-
-"No Man alive can afford to lose the friendship even
-of a yaller dog. Not even an ornery yaller dog can you
-afford to have agin' you at any stage of the game. The
-dog'll get back at you one time or another, sooner or
-later, and take a mouthful or two out of you, if you
-haven't had sense enough to keep him on your staff of
-friends."
-
-The man who used to make a business of putting ringers
-over the plates at the outlaw race-tracks had passed
-from the reflective to the confidential mood. Perhaps the
-rings which he made on the cherry table with the bottom
-of his glass suggested circular race-tracks to him. Perhaps
-the prancing of the fox-terrier pup in the back
-room made him think of horses kicking up at the post.
-But, whatever the cause of it, his burst of confidence
-was unusual, and the other men at the table listened to
-him attentively.
-
-"My yellow dog was a yellow man—that is, the one
-I'm thinking about just now," he went on. "He took
-a hunk out of me down at Alexander Island, Va., near
-Washington, about five years ago. He had me out. All
-he had to do was to count ten on me and take the pot, and
-he knew it. He worked the edge. I didn't blame him a
-bit then, and I don't now. But it was hard money to lose.
-When I get hold of the right end of a bulge on a man that
-I've got it in for, I don't hesitate to work it myself—but
-I always feel a bit sorry for a man that I get up into a
-corner, all the same. This yellow man felt sorry for me.
-He showed it. He was about as sympathetic a yellow
-man as ever I saw on the occasion I'm going to tell you
-about. But he wouldn't let go, for all that. He needed
-the money, of course, but then he wanted to get back at
-me, too.
-
-"'I'se dun got de aige on yo' all, boss,' he told me,
-'an I'm sure a-gwine t' wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But
-yo' dun me dutty, Cap.'
-
-"You see, I had employed this yellow man as a stable
-hand when I first got my string of ringers together and
-took them out. He was all right for the first few months
-of the winter campaign, but then he began to get jagged
-on me with a heap of regularity. He got mixed up with
-that gin that they keep on hand in Maryland for the
-Afro-American trade, and it spoiled him for me. He
-was no use whatever after the gin took hold of him. I
-warned him a lot, but it did no good. I was a little bit
-afraid of the job, for he knew a good deal about my
-string, but I finally decided that I'd have to take a chance
-and fire him. I turned up at the track stable one morning—this
-wasn't more'n a million miles from Baltimore—and
-I found my yellow man Lem sulky and ugly drunk, and
-the string chewing on their stalls. I gave him a boot
-and a hist out of the stable and told him not to come
-back.
-
-"'This yellow man'll probably queer me,' I thought
-at the time, 'but I can't go along playing 1000 to 1
-shots like him for favorites. If he peaches—well, there
-are other States besides Maryland.'
-
-"I was rather surprised that he didn't come back when
-he got sober. But, nope, he didn't come back at all. I
-got another stableman and during the following week,
-the last of the meeting, I pulled off three good painted
-things with as good as 15 to 1 around two of 'em, without
-yellow Lem turning up to pester me at all. I thought
-of him a good deal. Every time I got one of my plugs
-at the post I stood by to see the yellow man walk into
-the judges' stand and give me away. I'll bet I lost ten
-pounds worrying about that darkey and what he might
-do during that last week in Maryland. I felt as light
-as a snowball when I got my string out of that State
-and over at the Alexander Island track, near Washington.
-When I got 'em all safe over there, says I to myself,
-'This yellow ex-man o' mine is probably back in Thompson
-street, with his carcass full of gin by this time. So
-I'll just cut out the worry about him.'
-
-"Well, I started in at the preliminary work of pulling
-off a real swell thing at Alexander Island. It was about
-as easy to enter a horse down there as it is to go broke
-up here, and I put the best one of my lot in the overnight
-races for a week. I entered him as a half-breed from a
-Warrenton farm—a maiden six-year-old. It went
-through easy, the overnight entering did, and I began
-to lay my horse up for a price. The horse had done a
-mile in 1.40-1/2 and he had the whole bunch down at Alexander
-Island outclassed by 212 pounds. The plug had
-belonged to the best of the Western selling-plater division
-as a three- and four-year-old and he had been in a few
-stakes at that. I got him as a five-year-old and he surely
-was a meal-ticket for me. He wasn't painted a bit—you
-didn't have to dye 'em at Alexander Island. If Hanover
-had been an outlaw you could have stuck him into any
-old race down there and they'd never have got next.
-
-"I had a boy along with the string who'd been chased
-off the Western licensed tracks for funny work, and what
-that boy didn't know about riding like as if his life
-depended on his winning, and forty wraps on his mount
-all the time, wasn't worth knowing. Say, he had six
-separate and distinct bridle welts on both of his forearms
-that he got in pulling horses. He was invaluable, that
-boy. When we were out to win he never made anything
-but a nose finish of it even if our horse was up against
-the worst set of outlaw dray-plugs in training. Oh, that
-boy knew his gait all right! I did the best I could to
-keep him from going to Joliet for pocketpicking in Chicago
-a couple o' years ago, but it was no use. He's still
-doing his bit.
-
-"Well, I had him sail this good nag of mine over the
-course in seven races the first ten days of the meeting.
-The horse was a bit too likely looking, and there was
-only 5 to 1 against him in the first race. He finished
-fourth. The boys in the ring quoted 8 to 1 around him
-in No. 2 race, and he finished sixth in a field of seven.
-And so on. He was in the ruck in most of the races,
-and he finished the last two of the seven a rank last.
-By that time you could have written your own ticket if you
-wanted to play him, which is what I was waiting for.
-My boy complained that during the last three races he
-had all colors of trouble in holding the horse in.
-
-"'You'd better open the watermelon quick,' said
-he to me after the seventh race, 'or I'm liable to lose him
-and win the next time out.'
-
-"And so I had the pie counter all spread out for his
-next time out. It was a six-furlong race, which was my
-horse's distance. Two of the cracks of the outlaw brigade
-were in the race, and they both opened up at even money.
-Then one of 'em was played down to 1 to 2 on. It
-was a twelve-horse race, and my nag opened up the rank
-outsider with any amount of 100 to 1 quoted around him.
-I didn't want to be too chesty and spoil my dough, and so
-I only took $50 worth of it, scattering it around in $10
-gobs. I reckoned that $5000 would be a good-enough
-pulldown on the race, and I didn't want to take any
-chances on being shut out of the game down at Alexander
-Island. I put a few of the boys I knew next to what was
-going to happen, told 'em not to go it too strong or they'd
-queer me, and they mixed up $5 all over the ring on my
-100 to 1 horse, that should have gone to the post at 1 to
-100. They broke the price down to 30 to 1, but that
-didn't make any difference to me, for I had picked up
-all I wanted of the 100 to 1.
-
-"When they went to the post I picked out a spot on
-the rail some distance away from the grand stand to watch
-the race. I felt pretty good. I knew it was going through.
-My horse had worked the six furlongs in 1:16 flat the
-afternoon before, and I knew that he was easy money.
-The only thing I was afraid of was that he would get
-away from the boy and beat the bunch by eight blocks,
-thus bringing me into the judges' stand on suspicion. I
-was thinking of all these things when I heard a voice behind
-me.
-
-"'Aftuhnoon, Cap,' said the voice. 'How's yo' all tuh-day?'
-
-"I looked around. The voice belonged to Lem, my fired
-yellow stable man. Lem was sober, and got up as if for a
-cake-walk. He had business in his eye, too.
-
-"'Hello, there,' says I, kind of coddingly. 'How're
-you cutting it?'
-
-"'Oh, tol'able, boss—tol'able,' he replied.
-
-"'Where are you working?' I asked him.
-
-"He smiled blandly in my teeth.
-
-"'I'se a-wukkin' yo' all dis aftuhnoon, boss,' said he.
-'But I ain't no hog. Jes' half o' de rake-down'll do me.
-Mus' hev dat much, fo' sure. Jes' nachully need dat
-much.'
-
-"'What the devil are you talking about?' I asked him,
-but I knew he had me where he wanted me.
-
-"'Well, yo' see, boss, it's jes' dis-a-way,' he replied.
-'I'se a-gwine tuh quit rubbin' dem down an' take tuh
-speculashunin' m'sef. I'se a-gwine tuh staht fo' San Francisco
-tuh see whut all I kin do with de bookies out da-a-way,
-an' jes' nachully needs de coin tuh go on out an' begin
-wuk on 'em. Dis yeah's uh good one yo' all's pullin'
-down tuh-day, an' I was trailin' yo' w'en yo' all put yo'
-bets down. Yo' stan's tuh win $5,000 on de ole hoss, an'
-yo'll win it. I'll take ha'f o' dat, boss, an' go on out tuh
-de coast tracks with it.'
-
-"I think I must have been looking pretty hard at that
-yellow man when he slung me this spiel. Oh, he had me
-all right. It was my looking at him so hard that made
-him get off the rest of the speech:
-
-"'I'se dun got de aidge on yo' all, boss, an' I'm sure
-a-gwine tuh wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun
-me dutty, Cap.'
-
-"As I say, I knew he had me, but just out of curiosity
-I shot this one at him:
-
-"'S'pose, you yellow devil, that I don't cough up a red
-of it? What then?'
-
-"He grinned and rolled his eyes over toward the
-judges' stand.
-
-"'I'd jes' nachully be obleeged tuh do de bes' I could
-fo' de proteckshun o' de spoht o' racin,' he replied.
-
-"The horses were still making false breaks at the post
-and it was too late for me to hop into the ring and lay
-enough down to win $2,500 for the yellow man and still
-have $5,000 to the good myself. It was a sore game, that,
-but I had to stand for it.
-
-"'All right,' I said to the darkey, 'you've turned this
-trick and you'll get the $2,500. But you want to go West
-with it, as you say you are, or I'll get a night doctor or
-two on your trail. Chop away from here and I'll see you
-after the race.'
-
-"'I knows yo' will, boss,' said the yellow man, giving
-me that triumphant grin of his, and he turned and went
-down the rail to take in the race. Race, did I say? Oh, it
-wasn't a race. My horse got away from the post three
-lengths to the bad, and he trailed after the bunch dismally
-all the way around to the stretch turn, but I never had a
-quake. I could see, if nobody else could, that my boy was
-ripsawing the horse's mouth, and I knew it was all right.
-At the stretch turn the boy let out a couple of links and the
-nag joined the front bunch. The boy drew it fine, as I
-had instructed him, and won by a short head, and it was
-funny to see the wise guys from Washington who had
-scattered all kinds of Government-earned money all over
-the ring turning mental flipflaps of despair. I watched to
-see if there'd be any holler about anything when the boy
-weighed in, but there wasn't, and the race was confirmed
-all right. I went around and did my own collecting, and
-several of the poor devils of bookies had to go out of business
-after the rest of the boys that I had put on to the
-thing came along and cashed their tickets. I found my
-yellow man waiting for me on the outside of the ring, and
-when I got him into the shadow I gave up the $2,500. I
-saw that he got a ticket and started for San Francisco the
-next day. I felt so sad when I heard a few months later
-that in an attempt to learn how to smoke hop out there,
-to add to his jag répertoire, he had died in a Chinese joint
-after hitting up thirty-six pills. I felt so sad."
-
-The ex-ringer operator was plunged in meditation for a
-while, the others remaining sympathetically silent, and
-then he resumed in another strain.
-
-"Next to the worst jolt I ever got—and the worst was
-the time down in Maryland when one of my plugs with
-two whitewashed barrel spots and a whitewashed forehead
-star got rained on at the post, practically out of a
-clear sky, and the spots got washed out, and I had to get
-out of the State of Maryland over fences—next to that
-jolt, the way one of my boys threw it into me at a county
-fair meeting in West Virginia was pretty bad. I had
-tongue-hammered that kid pretty hard two or three times
-at that meeting for winning when his mounts weren't due
-to win and I didn't want 'em to win, and he got sulky. I
-tried to coddle him up a bit, for I had a real good one to
-pull off on the last day of the fair, and I thought I had
-him all right on my staff again. The real good thing was
-a horse of mine that I had entered in the final race, which
-the jays down there called a mile race for the 1:55 running
-class.' 1:55! I had a skate with me down there that
-could just common canter a mile in 1:45, and he could
-have done it in three seconds better if pinched at any time.
-I had had the plug lose three or four races during the fair
-meeting, and he wasn't as good as Chinese money in the
-estimation of the West Virginians by the time the race
-that he was going to win came around. My boy was to
-have the mount, and our mutual confidence seemed to be
-restored by the time the good thing was booked to happen.
-But he had an ice-pick up his sleeve for me all the
-time."
-
-"'Didn't try with the horse, and lost, eh?' asked one
-of the ex-ringer worker's listeners.
-
-"'Oh, no, it wasn't that,' was the reply. The horse
-won by a tongue, and the boy gave him a beautiful tight
-ride to keep him from winning further off. But he put
-every grafter that he knew, and he knew 'em all at the
-fair meeting next to what was going to happen, and made
-split terms with all of them. That is, he put 'em on, on
-condition that he was to get half of each man's winnings
-on the race. Now, I had figured on picking up $8,000 or
-$10,000 easy on that good thing, and I had lain awake
-nights making plans to meet possible hitches. It certainly
-wasn't treating me right, the way that boy did. I thought
-I'd get as good as 25 to 1, anyhow, at the first betting. I
-intended to take a mess o' that and then wait for the betting
-to go up, for I confidently expected, and had a right
-to expect, that the nag's price, in view of what the farmers
-down there thought of him, would go up to 50 or 100.
-
-"When the betting on the race opened I was on hand
-with my wad. Say, I couldn't get within twenty feet of a
-one of the twelve bookies doing business. I never saw
-such a scramble, even in the 50-cent field at Sheepshead.
-Of course, I thought they were all getting aboard of the
-favorite, and so I drew back, knowing that if they were
-playing the favorite my plug would be going up in price
-all the time. Then I noticed a lot of the educated money,
-the coin of the grafters that I knew around the grounds,
-going in, and I wondered if they were Rubes enough to
-play a favorite in the last race on get-away day. So I
-drew close to the bookies' stands—as close as I could get—and
-then I found that they were all writing my horse's
-name. Nothing but my horse. Not a horse in the race
-but my horse. It was a staggerer, that was. Of course, I
-thought of my miffed jockey right away, and I knew he
-had done it. When I finally was able to get up to the
-bookies, I found that my plug's price had been played
-down from 20 to 1 to 9 to 10 on, and I was so disgusted
-that I stayed off altogether, although I knew my horse
-was going to win. He did win. The boy couldn't peach
-because his rake-down had been too big, but he showed
-me $3,500 in bills an hour after the race, got off twenty
-feet and told me all about it, and then bolted. I haven't
-seen him since."
-
-
-
-
-EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER.
-===================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Wherein It Is Shown That, When There Is "Something Doing," a Bank-roll Is Liable to Be Wrecked.*
-
-
-"I heard somewhere the other day," said one of a party
-of turfmen who were dining together after the McGovern-Erne
-fight, "that Billy Thompson, the ex-Duke of
-Gloucester, is trying to cook up some scheme whereby
-the legal authorities of New Jersey 'll relent and permit
-him to start the old Gloucester merry-go-round again.
-I don't think he'll make it stick, if the story is true,
-but if Gloucester ever is started again I know a man
-who'd be very liable to burn the barns down some dark
-night. I don't think he'd let the Gloucester mud-lark
-and snow bird race-track operate while he lives.
-
-"In 1880 this man I'm talking about—he had passed
-up a good grocery business to play the races a year before—had
-nursed together a wad of about six thousand
-dollars, and this gave him a bad case of the Sandow
-vest. He was so chesty over having all that money that
-he concluded he'd try a whirl on the block. There was
-only winter racing going on when he got that smoky
-notion into his hat, and that was at Gloucester. As you
-fellows know, they used to run 'em there in snow up
-to the saddle pommels, and the plug that could make out
-the best without going over the fence, or that didn't become
-crazy from snow blindness, always yanked down
-the money at Gloucester—that is, if he was meant to
-win.
-
-"This ex-sugar-and-tea guy was a dead verdant one
-at the bookmaking game when he went on the block
-at Gloucester, but he kept his ears open and his mouth
-shut, and he had quite a streak of luck, besides, from
-the go-off, so that at the end of his first week at laying
-odds he found that he'd averaged a clean-up of about
-$200 a day. You couldn't see him then without sending
-up your card, he was so vast and heap-much. He
-was thinking of going down Dixieway to make a bid on
-the Belle Meade farm, and, by the end of his third week
-on the block, when he had run his $6000 into a bit more
-than $10,000, he was probably the haughtiest gazabo on
-this side of the Rocky Mountains.
-
-"One day—it was at the beginning of his fourth week
-at bookmaking—a duck who had a string of good ones—of
-their kind—chasing the Gloucester will-o'-the-wisp
-for the poolroom purses, invited himself to take dinner
-with the ex-grocer with the streak of luck. After they
-had stored the feed away at the high-riding bookmaker's
-Philadelphia hotel, the man with the string leaned back
-in his chair and sprung what he had in mind. He mentioned
-the star sprinter of his string.
-
-"'You know, of course,' said he confidentially, to the
-ex-grocer, 'that that nag can eat up any horse down
-here at three-quarters of a mile. He'd never be beaten
-at that distance if we let him out every time he went to
-the post to race. But, of course, if I'd let him win every
-time out, there would never be any price on him. He'd
-be a 1 to 20 shot every time he got a lead-pad on, and
-I'm not going down the line on that kind of prices.
-Neither am I running my string over at Gloucester for
-hygienic reasons. Perceive?'
-
-"The new bookie perceived.
-
-"'Well,' this oily geezer went on, 'that horse is entered
-in a six-furlong sprint to-morrow, as you know.
-He'll probably be an even-money favorite. He'll lose.'
-
-"'He will, hey?' said the new man on the block, suspicious
-like. 'That's darned good of you to tell me.
-But you're not telling me that for your health, either.
-He's going to lose, eh?'
-
-"'Yep, he'll lose,' repeated the smooth owner. 'Now,
-you're a pretty nice young fellow, ain't you? I like you.
-Understand?'
-
-"'Um,' said the ex-grocer. 'What's your graft, anyhow?'
-
-"'Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose,'
-said the confidential owner once more. 'Now, you see this
-thousand-dollar William, don't you? Well, I want you to
-take a thousand-dollars' worth of my horse to win
-for my account, see, when you make your book on that
-race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he's going to lose
-anyhow. You see, I just want to pick up an honest dollar
-or so. You take this $1,000 of the suckers' money for
-me on your book, and your reward 'll be in knowing
-what's going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see?
-Is it a go?'
-
-"Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the groceryman.
-It looked like taking candy from a child. If
-that owner's horse wasn't going to lose, it looked like a
-cinch that he wasn't going to risk any thousand-dollar
-bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that
-he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding
-he was going to give the talent the next day. He chuckled
-to himself when the other books only laid even money
-against the sprinter when the betting on the race began
-the next afternoon.
-
-"'They wouldn't do a thing but fall over themselves
-to lay a long price if they knew, like I do, that the favorite
-is going to kerflop,' mused the ex-groceryman—he wailed
-me the whole spiel afterward—and he laid 2 to 1 against
-the sprinter's chances on his slate. The other bookies over
-his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he
-only exulted whole lots inside of him.
-
-"'You are wise people,' he thought, 'but this is where
-I get the big end of it.'
-
-"Within three minutes after he had started his slate
-he had taken in the horse owner's $1,000 worth of his
-horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just battled to get at
-his book at their figures. Said he to himself, 'I'll just
-tap myself on this watermelon,' and by the time the horses
-went to the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public
-money at 2 to 1 on that horse that was going to lose, and
-he knew that he'd be just $5,000 to the good.
-
-"Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got
-away the skate that the ex-grocer had laid his whole
-$1,000 against walked in on the bit, fifteen lengths to the
-good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps all
-the way from the flag-fall.
-
-"The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay
-pipe and an eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went
-out of business, and he's been out of business ever since.
-It took him about a week to get contiguous to the fact
-that the men who collected his $10,000 were the smooth
-owner's commissioners, but when he went gunning the
-owner had removed his string from Gloucester, and was
-taking a little winter cruise in a felucca in the Ægean
-Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up again, and there's a
-conflagration, I'll know how it started."
-
-"There's another chap that I know of who's been smoking
-unfragrant tobacco in a pipe for a good many years
-on account of an outlaw track deal," said one of the other
-turfmen at the table, "but he wasn't a new man at the
-game. He was an old-timer—so much of an old-timer
-that it was up to him to know that, once having made a
-tool of a man or a boy in the racing business, it is never
-the part of wisdom to throw him overboard on the presumption
-that he's a dead one. Turf followers, as you fellows
-all know, have a habit of resurrecting themselves at
-inopportune moments when it seems that they are so
-deeply buried that they'll never struggle to the top of the
-ground again, and when they do run a shoe-tongue into
-a tan-yard they are more than liable to get hunk with
-former pals who have cast them aside in the hour of adversity.
-Now, it is a particularly dangerous thing for any
-man connected with racing to do business with a jockey.
-I never heard of a bit of jockey-tampering that didn't get
-out sooner or later, to the disadvantage of the man that
-did the corrupting. I guess we all know of cases in which
-jockeys, after being ruled off for crooked work, have become
-exacting pensioners on the hands of the men responsible
-for their downfall for long stretches of years.
-The story I have in mind is of a jockey who, while he
-wasn't set down through following the directions of the
-bookmaker he did business with, was treated with characteristic
-meanness by the latter when he was up against it
-owing to an accident; and the way this jock got even with
-his former tamperer was unique.
-
-"You all remember the boy Kelley? He wasn't exactly
-a boy at the time this thing happened—he was a man of
-twenty-two or so, which probably accounted for the fact
-that when he was riding at Guttenberg he had most of the
-other jockeys faded; give me a rider with a man's hand
-on his shoulders every time for my horse. Now, the
-morale of Guttenberg wasn't like unto that pervading a
-theological institution, but Kelley the jock wasn't any
-worse than his neighbors. He was like all the rest of the
-people mixed up with the weird game at the Gut. It was
-a poor jock at the Gut who didn't have a bookmaker on his
-staff, and Kelley wasn't a poor jock by fifty good pounds
-under the saddle. It used to be an off day with Kelley
-when he didn't put up a ride in accordance with this bookmaker's
-orders. All of the jocks at the Gut did similar
-things, and they were stood for. The hectic flush of humiliation
-didn't mantle the alabaster countenances of the
-Gut stewards to any huge extent when the 1 to 5 shot was
-beaten a furlong. Kelley was enabled to throw big money
-into his bookie's satchel, because, being such a top-notch
-rider of outlaws, most of his mounts went to the post favorites;
-so that when he snatched a horse it meant the
-good of the books, and of his bookmaker in particular, for
-the latter would of course lay the longest price in their
-judgment against one that he knew was going to run like
-a mackerel along a dusty road. Kelley profited fairly well
-at the hands of this bookmaker, and on his side he was
-absolutely loyal in his crookedness. He invariably delivered
-the goods. He had the knack of making it appear to
-the people with the field glasses that he was riding like
-a fiend, when in reality he had his horse pulled double,
-and when he was following orders he could permit the
-favorite under him to be beaten out by a tongue on the
-wire in a way that would raise the hair of the folks in the
-stand.
-
-"Well, one day Kelley was dumped from a horse he
-was riding when the track was slippery and broke his leg.
-He had been improvident and extravagant, like most of
-the jocks of that day, so that when the accident put him
-on the flat of his back he found himself broke. What was
-more natural than that he should send to the bookmaker
-whose orders he had been following for a long time for
-assistance? He wrote to the bookie and asked for the
-loan of $100. The bookmaker ignored the request. Then
-the laid-up jockey sent a friend to the bookmaker. The
-latter made some remark about not coughing up for the
-oats and keep of dead ones—figuring, you see, that Kelley's
-injuries were such that he wouldn't be able to get
-back to the riding game until the close of the meeting. So
-the jockey had to stave off doctors' and other bills as best
-he could, and I guess that he set his teeth down pretty
-hard and did some robust thinking while his leg was healing.
-
-"A couple of months after this accident Kelley, somewhat
-pale, turned up in the paddock at the Gut one morning
-and announced that he was fit to ride again. His
-services were immediately in demand, and Mike Daly got
-him to ride his horse Gloster in the first race on the card.
-Gloster was the best horse in the race and was certain to
-be favorite. The bookie, who had used Kelley before his
-accident and afterward turned him down, got to Kelley
-by the underground process, through an agent, with the
-inquiry as to whether a little business couldn't be done on
-Gloster. Kelley, with all the good nature in life, sent word
-that there could, certainly; that he could get Gloster
-beaten by an eyelash.
-
-"The betting opened and Gloster was the favorite all
-over the ring at odds of 1 to 2 on. Then Kelley's bookmaker
-began to shoot the price up—first to 3 to 5 on, then
-to 4 to 5 on, then to even money, and then right up to 6
-to 5 and even 7 to 5 against. The way that bookie hauled
-in the money on Gloster was a caution. It seemed that
-every plunger and casual bettor in the inclosure wanted a
-piece of Gloster at Kelley's bookmaker's odds—all the rest
-of the pencillers still held Gloster at 1 to 2 on—and the
-bookmaker took in thousands of dollars on the horse.
-When they were still whacking him with Gloster bets he
-became somewhat nervous and sent his agent to Kelley
-again for reassurance. Kelley told the agent again that
-Gloster wasn't going to win.
-
-"'He's taking in billions on Gloster,' said the agent to
-Kelley.
-
-"'Let him handle the whole mint on the nag,' replied
-Kelley. 'Gloster will just about get the place—maybe.'
-
-"In the meantime the judges, who occasionally made a
-bluff at getting haughty and virtuous, got next to the big
-odds that one bookmaker—Kelley's bookmaker—was
-offering against Gloster, and, naturally enough, they became
-suspicious. Five minutes before the horses were due
-to go to the post, therefore, they called Kelley into the
-stand and asked him squarely if there was anything doing
-by which Gloster was going to get beat.
-
-"'If Gloster doesn't win this race,' replied Kelley, 'you
-can rule me off for life.'
-
-"Kelley had put every man, woman, child and dog that
-he knew at the track on to the fact that he was going to
-win by a Philadelphia block on Gloster, and the bookmaker
-who had turned him down when he was on the flat
-of his back with a broken stilt in the middle of winter
-got the play of all of them. Dollar bets and $1,000 bets all
-looked alike to the bookmaker. He took all the money that
-came along without rubbing. He thought he had a corked-up
-good thing.
-
-"When the bugle sounded and the horses emerged
-from the paddock, the bookmaker, with his glasses in his
-hand, was leaning against the rail, and he looked up with
-a grin to catch Kelley's eye as the jockey rode by on Gloster.
-He caught Kelley's eye, but there was no responsive
-grin. There was, instead, a dirty sneer on Kelley's drawn,
-pale mug, and, as he caught sight of the leering bookie he
-drew Gloster up for just an instant and spat viciously in
-the direction of the man who had treated him with such
-ingratitude.
-
-"The bookmaker saw in that instant that he was
-ditched. His face went white, and he clutched the rail, and
-he was still digging his fingernails into the rail when, a
-few minutes later, the victorious Gloster, who had won by
-about half a furlong, was led into the paddock, with Kelley
-walking alongside of him. When that bookie got
-through paying off the Gloster bets he had taken in he
-was out of business, and when the story of how it all came
-about leaked out, there wasn't a man in the game that
-didn't say that the bookie got all that was coming to him."
-
-
-
-
-THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS.
-=================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *And the Evaporation of His Resolution to Have Nothing to Do With Them.*
-
-
-"Touts," said Busyday, oracularly, to his companion
-on a train bound for the Bay on Suburban day, "are the
-derned nuisances of the racing game. You want to watch
-out for them. If by chance you should get separated from
-me in the crowd, don't you let any of the sharp-eyed, soft-voiced
-ducks talk you into playing this or that one. Just
-you stick to those selections I wrote out for you on that
-piece of paper. They're the logical winners. A friend of
-mine, whose brother is a bookmaker, handicapped 'em
-for me, and I'm going to play every one of 'em myself.
-That's the only way to win; stick to your selections, and
-don't let yourself be touted. The man who listens to touts
-smokes a pipe. Understand?"
-
-"Uh, huh," replied Busyday's friend, who was from
-Busyday's native town out West. He had never seen a
-horse race in his life, whereas Busyday was an old-timer
-and learned at the game, having seen three Handicaps and
-two Suburbans ran.
-
-"They make kind of a lukewarm effort to keep the
-touts off the tracks," went on Busyday, disparagingly;
-"but the touts are too smooth for 'em, and they're always
-around, looking for good things like you, old man.
-All you've got to do is just to flout 'em from the jump,
-as soon as they edge up to you, and they'll shoo-fly instantly,
-rather than take chances on being spotted by the
-Pinkerton people. Tell 'em to go to the devil, that's all."
-
-"Uh, huh," answered Busyday's friend and guest,
-once more.
-
-It came to pass that Busyday and his visiting townsman
-were separated before they had got off the train.
-The car was jammed, and in the confusion of getting
-off they made their exits by different doors. Busyday
-frantically yelled out his friend's name as soon as he
-found himself alone on the platform, but, of course, he
-got no reply. His friend was engulfed in the crowd.
-
-"I s'pose I ought to have held hold of his hand, like
-a fellow does when he takes his sister's kids out for a
-walk," he reflected. "This is blasted mean luck from the
-go-off. The touts'll get hold of him now, sure as
-shootin', and they'll strip him. Good thing he's got his
-ticket back to the little old slab of a town where we
-used to play shinny together."
-
-Busyday roamed around the grand-stand and the betting
-ring for ten minutes before the slates went up
-for the first race, trying to catch sight of his friend, but
-it was no use. His townsman wasn't visible anywhere.
-Then a sudden swirling and eddying in the betting ring
-told him that the prices were up for the first race.
-
-"I'll have to pass the old boy up until I get this bet
-down," said Busyday to himself, pulling out of his pocket
-the slip of paper that the handicapper had given him the
-evening before. "Let's see, what one of 'em have I got
-to win this? Oh, yes; Peaceful—good name, but it
-doesn't sound as if a horse with a name like that could
-run much. I'd rather have a horse called Lightning Express,
-or Cyclone, or Helen Blazes, or something like
-that, run for my money. S'pose, though, this handicapping
-chap knows what he is doing, and so I'll just
-put my first ten on Peaceful to win. Hey? How's
-that?"
-
-There was a soft, persuasive buzz right in Busyday's
-ear.
-
-"D'ye notice all the suckers breakin' their necks t'
-land on that Peaceful dead one?" were the words that
-formed the buzz.
-
-Busyday jerked his head around suddenly, and he found
-within four inches of his ear the countenance of a young-old
-man with red hair, a freckled skin, and a pale-blue,
-shifty eye.
-
-"Dead one?" echoed Busyday, the red-haired, young-old
-man smiling amiably in his face.
-
-"Libster," said he of the pale-blue, shifty eye, looking
-entirely disinterested. "Out-and-out libster. Crab. Run
-about a dozen sprints, and still a merry maiden. And
-look at the chancts th' mutt's had to win! Leads th'
-percession into th' stretch every whirl, and then chucks
-it. A proper dog, Cap. That's on the dead. Worst
-quitter on th' grounds."
-
-"Um," said Busyday, stroking his chin and wondering
-why his handicapper had picked Peaceful.
-
-"I got th' baby," buzzed the freckle-faced, young-old
-man, after a silence.
-
-"Hey?" asked Busyday.
-
-"For a pipe," said the shifty-eyed one. "Say, I don't
-git out o' me Waldorf bunk at 3 o'clock every mornin' for
-me health."
-
-"Is that so?" inquired Busyday, just for the sake
-of saying something.
-
-"Not on yer dinner pail," said the aged youth with the
-shifty eye. "I light out fer th' tracks t' watch 'em at
-their early mornin' works. I'm a railbird, all right, but
-I know where th' dough is. I seen this baby that I'm
-tellin' you about do the five-eighths in a minute flat th'
-other mornin', an' if he ain't a moral fer this, here's my
-lid an' you can eat it," whereupon the shifty-eyed one
-removed his 50-cent straw hat and offered it to Busyday.
-
-"What's the name of this wonder?" inquired Busyday,
-trying to work up a superior smile.
-
-The aged youth bent over, placed his mouth within a
-quarter of an inch of Busyday's ear, and whispered:
-
-"Stuart. He'll walk."
-
-"Oh, well, then, I'll waste a ten-spot on Stuart," said
-Busyday, trying to say it languidly, as if he didn't take
-much stock in himself or anybody else. Then he plunged
-into the vortex around one of the bookmakers' elevated
-chairs, got his feet trod upon, his hat jammed down over
-his eyes, and his ribs treated to an all-hands elbow massage,
-and finally succeeded in passing up his ten-dollar
-bill on Stuart to win.
-
-"Stuart, thirty-five to ten," droned the bookmaker
-to the sheet-writer, and then Busyday found himself
-beaten to the outskirts of the crowd.
-
-"You on?" he heard in his ear, and, turning, he saw
-the freckle-faced one smiling up at him.
-
-"Yep—dropped ten on it," replied Busyday. "Kind
-o' liked Stuart myself when I saw him entered."
-
-Then Busyday steered for the lawn to see the finish
-of the race. He was trying to get some sense out of the
-list of owners' colors on his program, so as to be able
-to distinguish his horse as they raced under the wire,
-when a calm man next to him, with a pair of field-glasses
-to his eyes, mumbled:
-
-"They're off!"
-
-There was a big shout all around.
-
-"Lady Uncas out in front," said the calm man coolly.
-"She'll curl up. She seems to be staying, though, at
-that. Nope, she's collared. Stuart's nailed her. He
-walks," and the calm man put down his glasses as the
-horses galloped past the sixteenth pole.
-
-Stuart came in all alone, and Peaceful was back in the
-ruck.
-
-"I had my suspicions about that Stuart horse right
-along," said Busyday to himself. He had never seen
-the horse's name until the evening before. "Don't know
-why, but I kind o' liked him. Probably because the
-Stuart were a pretty swift bunch," and he chuckled to
-himself over his humor as he made his way to the bookmaker's
-line to cash.
-
-"Somethin' easy—like findin' it, hey?" he heard
-buzzed into his ear as soon as he put his foot into the
-betting ring, and there was the old-faced young man,
-grinning complaisantly up at him.
-
-Busyday handed to the shifty-eyed one, who stuck to
-him right up to the paying-off line, buzzing learnedly
-all the time about the race just ran, a $10 bill out of his
-$35 winning.
-
-"Th' next," said the red-haired wiseacre of the rail
-when Busyday had fought himself away from the cashing
-crowd, "is what you might call a one-hoss race. A
-one-hoss race, right."
-
-"Lambent, of course?" said Busyday, looking at his
-piece of paper with the selections on it. Lambent was his
-handicapper's selection.
-
-The freckle-faced screwed the whole left side of his
-face up into one prodigious wink.
-
-"Not this cage," said he. "Try the next. Lambent?"
-and he put one large, white, freckled hand over his face,
-as if to hide his confusion, and grinned through his fingers.
-
-"Well, Lambent figures to win, doesn't she?" asked
-Busyday weakly.
-
-"Who, Lambent?" and the shifty-eyed smiled some
-more. "I'm goin' t' match her in a sweepstakes against
-me old aunt, and back me aunt off th' boards fer a hog-killin'.
-There's on'y one in this. Skinch. You can tap
-on it."
-
-"Which one?" asked Busyday in a wabbly tone.
-
-Again the aged youth bent over until his mouth was
-within a quarter of an inch of Busyday's ear.
-
-"Swiftmas," he replied. "Been saved up for a good
-thing, right. If he don't buck-jump in, here's me lid,"
-and once more he extended his half-dollar straw hat for
-Busyday's mastication.
-
-"Well," said Busyday to himself between his teeth
-as he made his way through the jostling crowd to one
-of the bookmakers' stands, "I guess I'm a weak and
-erring brother, all right, but danged if I don't play that
-redhead once more, anyhow," and he got $40 for his
-$20 on Swiftmas to win. Swiftmas won by a head.
-
-"They were too foxy t' win too far off," Busyday was
-informed by means of a buzz in his ear, by this time well
-known, as he was elbowing his way again to the cashing
-line. "Boy drew it fine so's not t' spoil th' price next
-time out."
-
-The freckle-faced old youth got $15 out of Busyday's
-$40 winning, and then he looked Busyday over carefully
-and inquired:
-
-"How about me?"
-
-"You'll do," replied Busyday, candidly. "Name the
-next."
-
-"His Nibs, the Prince of Melbourne," whispered the
-freckle-faced, and Busyday glanced at his handicapper's
-selections. It was the Prince of Melbourne there, too.
-
-"He can't lose," said the shifty-eyed. "Just a pleasant
-airing fer him. Nothin' to it. W'en you put yer
-coin down, you might as well stay right here so's t' be
-foist in line. Put a bunch on."
-
-"I've got some of their money," mused Busyday,
-"and I won't pass it all back to 'em in a lump."
-
-He got $75 to $30 on Prince of Melbourne to win,
-bought three cigars for a dollar and a pint of wine, and
-then suddenly wondered where his townsman was.
-
-"No use trying to look him up, though," he reflected,
-"in this jam of Indians. Poor old chap, I s'pose he's
-smashed flatter'n a pancake by this time, without the price
-of a bottle of pop," and he reproached himself a good
-deal for not having hung on to his guest when they left
-the train. He was aroused from his reflections by the
-yowl, "They're off!" and by the time he got out to the
-lawn the horses were coming down the stretch.
-
-"His Princelets, with his mouth wide open," he
-heard the crowd yell, and then his chest expanded, and
-he muttered to himself: "I always did have a soft spot
-for that derned old plug!" For the moment he forgot
-that the Prince of Melbourne happened to be a two-year-old.
-
-"Oh, w'en I pick up a good one as I go along I
-like t' put me fren's on," buzzed the freckle-faced in
-his ear, as he made for the paying-off line. Notwithstanding
-the fact that the Prince of Melbourne's name appeared
-on his handicapper's list of selections, Busyday
-very cheerfully gave up one-third, or $25 of his winnings,
-on the two-year-old to the red-haired youth. The latter
-soaked the bills away in his white-and-brown-striped
-trousers, and then he remarked, in an offhand sort of
-way:
-
-"Well, this is where you pass me up, ain'd it, so?"
-
-"Well," said Busyday, "I came down to play
-Banastar, and I think I'll have to stay with that hunch, if
-you're agreeable."
-
-"Cert'nly," said the shifty-eyed, with an expression
-more of sorrow than of anger on his lined face. "Go
-ahead. Help yourself. Have all th' fun that's comin'
-t' you."
-
-"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Busyday.
-"Ain't Banastar the play?"
-
-"And he looks like a duck with a purty good top-knot
-on him, at that," said the freckle-faced, dreamily, paying
-no attention to Busyday's question, and apparently
-addressing empty air.
-
-"What's the matter with Banastar?" repeated Busyday.
-
-"I'm not queerin' yer fun, Cap," went on the shifty-eyed.
-"You come down wit' th' Banastar bug in yer
-nut, like all the rest, and I'm not a-switchin' you."
-
-"Look a-here," said Busyday, "what the dickens are
-you giving us, anyhow? Don't you think Banastar'll
-win the Suburban?"
-
-"Cap," said the aged youth, spitting dryly and for the
-first time looking Busyday squarely in the eye, "there's
-a mare in this bunch that'll run things around all the
-Banastars from here to Hoboken an' back. She kin fall
-down, an' win. She kin take naps between poles an'
-walk. She's a piperino, if ever one was pushed up fer
-geezers to nibble at. But I'm not a-switchin' you, un'stand?"
-
-"Mare, hey?" said Busyday, looking over his program.
-"You mean that Imp?"
-
-"Ain't it?" said the freckle-faced. "Well, I guess
-yah. She win th' last time out with' 126 up, eatin' peanuts
-down th' stretch, from a bunch purty near as good
-as this. Banastar? Cap, I ain't no hog, an' you've
-passed along what coin was a-comin' to me. I'll lay
-you 2 t' 1 Banastar won't git one, two, t'ree."
-
-"Dog-goned if I know what to do," mused Busyday.
-"Here I've been shouting Banastar ever since the Handicap,
-and I promised my wife faithfully that I'd play
-Banastar. Say," addressing the freckle-faced, who stood
-by sorrowfully regarding him, "is this Imp fast enough,
-that's what I want to know? Won't Banastar beat her
-on speed?"
-
-The aged youth held up one thumb vertically and indicated
-with the forefinger of his other hand.
-
-"De Empire State Express," said he.
-
-Then he held up his other thumb.
-
-"Steam roller," said he. "Take yer pick."
-
-Busyday made a sudden dive for a bookmaker's line.
-
-"Which I may remark, in strict confidence," he said
-to himself as he tugged at his wad and counted out five
-twenty-dollar bills, "that there may be softer marks between
-here and High Bridge than myself; but, confound
-that freckle-faced tout's red head, I'm just a-going
-to slide along with him and play Imp at that, Banastar
-or no Banastar!" and ten seconds later the bookmaker
-was taking Busyday's five twenties and droning out,
-"Six hundred to $100 on Imp to win."
-
-Busyday was lighting the last of his three-for-fifty
-cigars over in a corner of the betting ring when the well-known
-buzz reached his ears again.
-
-"On?" inquired the buzz. "Good and hard?"
-
-"Yep," said Busyday. "Hundred."
-
-Imp's win is turf history. As Busyday handed the
-tout two crisp $100 bills the freckle-faced remarked:
-
-"An' you ain't th' on'y collect I make on this, Cap. I
-got a hayseed on th' mare fer $300, an' I had him on
-all th' rest o' them good things, at that."
-
-"Well, so long, Red," said Busyday. "I'm getting
-back to town to dinner. Next time I come down I'll give
-you my trade if I see you around."
-
-Then Busyday went up into the stand to take a final
-look around for his townsman. He didn't see him, and
-he started for the gate. Just as he got outside the gate
-he saw his fellow townsman and guest stepping into a
-hack. His fellow townsman and guest looked pretty
-jaunty, but Busyday didn't notice it.
-
-"Hey, there, old man," he called after his friend, and
-the latter looked around.
-
-"Oh, here you are," said Busyday's friend, with an
-expensive cigar stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees
-in one corner of his mouth. "Trimmed?"
-
-"Nope," said Busyday. "I landed on a few little
-good things that occurred to me after I got to looking at
-the program, and I win 'bout a thousand. Poor old jay,
-I suppose they put you out o' business, eh?"
-
-"Not by a long sight!" said his friend. "I ran into
-a freckle-faced, red-headed duck as soon as I got in the
-grounds. I lost that piece o' paper you gave me with the
-whadyoucallem—selections—on it, and so I played what
-this red-headed chap told me to. Copped out 'bout
-$2800, altogether. Had $300 on Imp to win the big
-race."
-
-Then Busyday knew to whom the freckle-faced had referred
-when he spoke of a hayseed.
-
-
-
-
-A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH.
-===========================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Narrative of the Red-Haired, Freckle-Faced Tout Who Had a Good Thing up His Sleeve.*
-
-
-When the first line of betting on the fifth race at
-Gravesend was chalked up shortly after 4 o'clock in the
-Harlem street poolroom on Wednesday afternoon last, the
-red-haired, freckle-faced tout gave one swift glance at
-the figures, clutched his armful of "dope" books and sped
-over to a corner of the room where two flashy, well-fed
-looking chaps sat tilted back in chairs, smoking and unconcernedly
-waiting for the running of a race at Latonia
-in which they had a good thing.
-
-"Here's the soft spot o' your life," said the red-haired,
-freckle-faced tout, pulling a chair up alongside the two
-unconcerned-looking chaps. "This'll be like pullin' th'
-milk teeth out o' a fox terrier's face. This is a real dill
-pickle. Are you two comin' out into th' garden, Maud, or
-are you goin' t' let this one get away from you."
-
-"Back t' your dray," said one of the unconcerned-looking
-chaps. "Another stiff, hey? T' your dray!"
-
-The red-haired, freckle-faced tout pulled his chair closer
-to them.
-
-"But this is th' hand-made, copper-coiled mash," said
-he, earnestly. "It's on'y onct in a while that you get them
-people that lays th' figures out o' line like they are on this
-one. This is th' mellow goods. Just send a few aces along
-on it, that's all. It's 100 to 1."
-
-"Now you stawp, Red!" said the other unconcerned-looking
-man. "You stawp, you rude thing!"
-
-"He'll come home on th' bit," said "Red." "Lemme
-show you where he's been landin', an' you can see if he's
-any 100 t' 1 toss. Lemme pass you th' line, an' if you
-don't take none o' it, then I'm on a cattle boat by way o'
-Glasgow," and the red-haired, freckle-faced tout opened
-up one of his dope books and started to show the pair of
-flashy looking chaps where Rolling Boer had finished in
-his previous races.
-
-"Go take a sail with yourself, Red," put in one of the
-easy-looking chaps. "Nothin' doin'. Rolling Boer, hey?
-Not with Fenian bonds, good when Ireland's free. Rolling
-Boer, you say, Red? When did they get that one out
-o' the cavalry? Rolling Boer, 'll still be jogging down the
-stretch when you're in bed, Reddy. Say, it's a wonder you
-don't dig up a live one 'casionally. Stop trekkin. Winter'll
-be coming on soon, and you'll be nix the price of a doss.
-Rolling Boer! To the woods!"
-
-The red-haired tout mopped his face with a frayed blue
-polka-dotted handkerchief.
-
-"Sey, what's half a ten spot to you people?" he said in
-a tone of entreaty. "The one you're waitin' f'r'll be 'bout
-1 to 4 on, an' this is sunshine money, at 100 to 1. You people
-know how they stan' them 1 to 4 things on their heads
-out in Latonia. Say, take me spiel on this, won't you, f'r
-a fi'muth? Look where he got off th' last time out, an'
-where he finished! If you can't see him t' win, take th'
-20 to 1 third. It'll be a shame t' spen' t' money—but take
-it won't you?"
-
-The two complaisant-looking chaps turned away from
-the red-haired tout and began a conversation between
-themselves. The tout looked very warm, and an expression
-of despair crossed his weazened features. He mopped
-his face again with his blue polka-dotted handkerchief
-and slunk away. He sided up to one of the board-markers
-and said, out of the corner of his mouth:
-
-"Say, get an ace down on Rolling Boer f'r me, will
-you? It's a skinch."
-
-The board-marker grinned.
-
-"I'm all out, Red," he replied. "Pushed me last ace
-up on the last whizz, an' didn't get a whistle f'r it."
-
-"This super's good f'r a deuce in any hock shop—I've
-had it in f'r three," went on the red-haired tout, appealingly,
-pulling out an old silver time-piece and trying to
-pass it to the board-marker. "Lemme have a buck on it,
-an' I'll pass you back five f'r it after th' ring's around
-Rolling Boer. How's that?"
-
-"I'm all t' th' gruel, didn't I tell you?" replied the man
-with the chalk, with some asperity. "I got a ticker o' me
-own. You're puffin' secon's, Red. Rolling Boer couldn't
-beat me little sister skippin' rope."
-
-The red-haired tout walked away with an expression
-of deep misery on his face.
-
-"They think they are wise t' th' ponies, hey?" he muttered.
-"It's bean bag they ought t' be playin'!"
-
-He dug a quarter, two dimes and a nickel out of his
-change pocket and looked at the coins dismally.
-
-"It's me feed coin," he mumbled, "but maybe I can
-get some piker t' go along with f'r another four bits."
-
-He walked over to a shabby-looking chap who was
-slouching around with his hands in his pockets.
-
-"Say, you got a bundle on you?" the red-haired tout
-inquired of the shabby-looking man.
-
-The shabby-looking man dug a fifty-cent piece out of
-his left-hand waistcoat pocket.
-
-"That's all I was huntin' f'r," said the tout, displaying
-his coins. "Let's put th' two pieces t'gether an' nail 'em
-f'r $50 each."
-
-"On what?" inquired the shabby-looking man without
-any apparent interest whatsoever.
-
-"On a pipe," said the red-haired tout. "Rolling Boer.
-He'll make 'em dizzy and stroll in with his head a-swingin'
-an' his tail a-swishin'. Do you come in with me f'r the
-half?"
-
-The shabby-looking man put his fifty-cent piece back in
-his left-hand waistcoat pocket.
-
-"You'll be fallin' out o' bed in a minute, Red," said the
-shabby-looking man. "Not for me. I need the beers—ten
-of 'em."
-
-"Yes, you're a sport right, I think nix," said the red-haired
-tout, walking gloomily away. "You're a dead
-game, with the copper on."
-
-His eagle eye caught sight of a fat man with some
-three parts of a jag sitting at the "dope" table, alternately
-puffing at a ravelled cigar and nodding sleepily.
-This jagged man had on one side of his head a straw hat
-that looked as if it had been rained on and then sat on.
-The red-haired tout went over to him.
-
-"Say, your lid's on the pork all right, ain't it?" he said
-amiably to the jagged man. "Been scrappin' with a cable-car?"
-
-"Fade away—fade away," said the jagged man, sleepily.
-"Do a disappearing stunt."
-
-"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," said the red-haired
-tout, edging over confidentially to the jagged man. "I'll
-pass you this cage o' mine—on'y bought it three days ago,
-and coughed a two-spot f'r it—f'r that one o' yours an'
-half a buck t' boot," and the red-haired tout removed the
-pretty fair-looking straw hat he was wearing and pushed
-it over to the jagged man. The jagged man took his ravelled
-cigar from his mouth and grinned broadly.
-
-"Say," he said to the red-haired tout, "you gimme th'
-tizzy-wizzy—hones' yo do. Me wear a No. 2 lid? Say, do
-your fadin' stunt—fade away."
-
-The tout picked up his hat, put it on, and walked away.
-
-"Now they've hammered Rolling Boer down to 80 to
-1, hey?" he said, looking up at the second line of betting.
-"B'jee, I'd climb a porch t' yank out a couple t' put on
-that one."
-
-He was disconsolately biting his nails and looking
-around to see if there was any way out for him before the
-bunch of two-year-olds at Gravesend went to the post.
-
-"They're at the pump at Gravesend!" announced the
-board-marker.
-
-Just as the announcement was made, a little man with
-a straw-colored mustache and a red, white and blue band
-around his straw hat mounted the stairs, passed the spotter
-sitting at the door with a nod, lit a fresh cigarette, and
-walked up behind the red-haired tout.
-
-"Thay, Red," he said, "what'th good in thith?"
-
-The red-haired tout wheeled like a man who's been
-touched on the shoulder by a deputy sheriff.
-
-"You haven't got a minute!" he said, rapidly, to the
-little man with the straw-colored mustache. "It's th' baby
-o' th' year! Gimme three aces—two f'r you, an' one f'r
-me, an' in four minutes from date you'll be lookin' over
-th' sides of a balloon, chucking off ballast made out o'
-money."
-
-The lisping little man with the straw-colored mustache
-smiled indulgently and pulled out a roll, from which he
-stripped a five-dollar note.
-
-"That'th the thmalletht I've got, Red," he said, handing
-over the note to the tout. "Thay"——
-
-He chopped off the question, however, for the tout
-made two bounds for the money-taker's window.
-
-"Three on Rolling Boer, T. L. M.!" he shouted, giving
-the initials of the little man with the straw-colored mustache.
-"Th' other two on th' same, just plain R-e-d, Red,
-and both bets straight."
-
-The man behind the desk grinned.
-
-"High-ball mazuma for the house, Red," he said, twisting
-his mustache. "That one ain't got a look-in."
-
-The tout was back at the side of the little man with the
-straw-colored mustache who believed in him just as the
-operator sung out: "Off at Gravesend!"
-
-"Thay, Red," said the tout's little man, "which one of
-'em did you put thothe five"——
-
-"Rolling Boer at the quarter by a head!" sang out the
-operator.
-
-"On that one!" said the red-haired tout, giving his
-thigh a whack with his bundle of "dope" books. "It's a
-pleasant outing for that one! He'll"——
-
-"Rolling Boer in the stretch by a nose!" called out the
-operator.
-
-"Thay, he'll curl up, won't he, Red?" said the little
-man at the tout's side, nervously. "Did you play him
-straight or one, two, three"——
-
-"Rolling Boer wins by a nose!" shouted the operator.
-
-It was a bit too much for the red-haired tout. He didn't
-have any words handy. So he slammed his "dope" books
-down on a chair, pitched forward, turned a cart wheel,
-and then walked around the room on his hands with his
-coat hanging over his head, and a grin of indescribable
-happiness all over his freckled features. The little man
-with the straw-colored mustache who had believed in Red
-followed the tout about the room.
-
-"Thay, what do we win, Red?" he asked. "What
-prithe wath that horth?"
-
-"You yank out $240, an' mine's $160," said the red-haired
-tout, getting on his feet again.
-
-"Thay, Red, you're all right," said the red-haired tout's
-benefactor, pumping him by both hands.
-
-The two flashy-looking chaps who had first been tackled
-by the tout on the Rolling Boer proposition now walked
-up behind him with long faces.
-
-"Say, Red, why didn't you pitch that at us a little
-stronger, hey?"
-
-"Get t'ell away from me, you pikers!" was the red-haired
-tout's reply.
-
-
-
-
-HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES."
-===================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is Liable to Occasionally Slip a Cog.*
-
-
-"Yes, siree," said the man with the ravelled cigar and
-the granulated eyelids who swung precariously from a
-strap in a car of a returning Sheepshead Bay train the
-other evening, "it certainly is funny about these here
-hunches that women have, ain't it?"
-
-"No," said the two seated men he was addressing.
-
-"Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into
-their heads," went on the man with the ravelled cigar, ignoring
-the lack of encouragement extended to him. "And
-when it comes to picking out good things on a race-track,
-picking 'em out just on hunch, ain't they wonders, hey?"
-
-"Nope," said the two men at whom he was directing
-his conversation.
-
-"It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band
-how they can stick a pin in a program with their eyes
-shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that wins a-blinking,"
-continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing
-two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar.
-"Their system beats the dope and the handicapping all to
-shucks, don't it?"
-
-"Nix," replied the two men in the seat.
-
-"Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch
-as I did out at Morris Park 'bout six or seven years ago,"
-went on the man with the eccentric cigar. "Told my wife
-one night during the fall meeting at the park that I was
-going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I knew
-had told me about a good thing that was going to happen—he'd
-got it from a trainer to whom he'd sold a pair of
-shoes—and I was going after some of it.
-
-"'Theophilus Nextdoor,' says she to me, 'how dare
-you deliberately tell me that you are going to gamble your
-money away, when I haven't a rag to my back and the
-coal not yet put in!'
-
-"'Can't help it, Clarissa,' says I, 'I've just naturally
-got to invest $50 on this good thing. I know it ain't right,
-but I've got to do it, anyhow.'
-
-"Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I
-tried to square it up with her the next morning, and at
-the breakfast table I read her the names of the horses
-that were going to run in the race in which I had the
-good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came
-to the name of a horse called Jodan, she dropped her
-coffee cup with a clatter and stared at me.
-
-"'Jodan,' said she. Isn't that short for Joseph
-Daniel?'
-
-"'Yes'm, I guess so,' I said, not knowing whether it
-was or not, but anxious to stroke her the right way.
-
-"'Is that the horse you are going to invest your money
-on?' she asked me, breathlessly.
-
-"'No, it's another one,' said I.
-
-"'Well, you might just as well stay home, then,'
-said she, positively. 'You'll lose your money. Jodan
-will win. I dreamt all night last night of my Uncle Joseph
-Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a
-little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph
-Daniel, as it must be, then Jodan will win.'
-
-"'But that's plain superstition, and races ain't won
-that way,' I said to her.
-
-"'I don't care one bit, so I don't,' she said to me.
-'You will simply be throwing your money away, and I
-need so many things, if you invest it on any other horse
-than Jodan.'
-
-"I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told
-me that her lost Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had
-once won a full-rigged ship race from Shanghai to Boston,
-and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than
-one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph
-Daniel McGeachy couldn't lose. I told her that, while
-I didn't know anything about this Jodan horse, I didn't
-think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk friend
-had given me, but she wouldn't listen to me. The last
-thing she said to me before I left the house was:
-
-"'If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, disgraceful
-gambler, you play Jodan. You'll be sorry if
-you don't.'
-
-"Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads,
-women, ain't they?"
-
-"No," said the two men in the seat near the strap-clutching
-man with the ravelled cigar.
-
-"Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife's
-queer hunch on that Jodan horse on my way out to the
-track, and the more I thought about it the weaker I became
-on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given
-me.
-
-"'Women have got something away ahead of sense or
-reason,' says I to myself on the train on the way out,
-'and I sure would feel almighty cheap and no-account
-if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle Joseph
-Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would.
-I've got a good mind to put a little money on that Jodan
-horse anyhow, derned if I haven't.'
-
-"I was still undecided about it when I got out to the
-track. That's the edge the bookmakers have got, ain't
-it—the people that have real good things and then wabble
-when it comes to sticking to them?"
-
-"Nope," said the two men in the seat.
-
-"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that
-race in which I had the good thing, blamed if Jodan
-wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good thing horse
-was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking
-at the prices, getting pulled around and butted into,
-and I had the dingedest time making up my mind what
-I was going to do that you ever heard of in your life.
-
-"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that
-Jodan horse wins at 100 to 1 without my playing him,
-I'll never hear the last of it as long's I'm on top of the
-ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and night,
-that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I
-didn't have enough gumption to take it. And if the
-good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave me wins at 5 to 1,
-I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a chance to
-pick up $250 if I don't play it.'
-
-"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more
-room to make up my mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly
-and dived into the betting ring.
-
-"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little
-gamble myself, and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm
-going to play that good thing my shoe-clerk friend gave
-me, and nothing else.'
-
-"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a
-$250 to $50 ticket on my good thing."
-
-Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily
-and looked genuinely distressed.
-
-"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause,
-"how these things happen?"
-
-The two men in the seat to whom he had been
-addressing his conversation exhibited a certain suppressed
-interest as to the outcome.
-
-"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to
-1?" said one of them finally, with a grin that clearly indicated
-his belief that he had the result discounted.
-
-The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit
-the same for the eighteenth time.
-
-"Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in!" he
-said, puffing away without removing his eyes from the
-match. "My good thing spread-eagled 'em from the
-jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was
-last. It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain't
-it?"
-
-"Blamed if it ain't," said one of the men in the seat.
-
-"I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife
-that night and told her it was a fair replica of her Uncle
-Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and she told me that she
-just wouldn't believe that Jodan hadn't won until she
-saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She
-caved, though, when I uncovered the $250 and told her
-that she couldn't get that cerise-silk-lined tailor-made
-dress quick enough to suit me, and she said that she
-might have known that no horse named after her Uncle
-Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more
-luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, could win anything.
-
-"Well, a month or so after that I went down to Washington
-on a little matter of business, and took my wife
-along with me. There was horse racing going on near
-Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph, across the
-Potomac in Virginia.
-
-"'Clarissa,' said I to my wife one morning, after I'd
-got all through with my business in Washington and was
-ready to come back to New York, 'I think we'd better
-stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph. A man
-that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave
-me a good thing last night, and I think I ought to see
-to it. It's going to come off to-day.'
-
-"Of course she told me again that I was going to
-rack and ruin, and never would make anything of myself,
-but I told her that I just naturally had to go over to
-St. Asaph that day and play Jodan.
-
-"'Jodan!' she almost screamed at me. 'Theophilus
-Nextdoor, how can you have the hardihood to stand there
-and tell me that you are going to waste your money on
-that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in need
-of new fall outfits?'
-
-"I told her that I'd see to the fall outfits, but that
-I sure couldn't get away from that Jodan good thing.
-
-"'Why,' I said, don't you remember how wild you
-were about this same Jodan horse only a little more than
-a month ago?'
-
-"'I just don't care one bit if I was,' she replied. 'I
-know and you know that any horse named after my Uncle
-Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck
-than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win, and I
-should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand
-there and tell me to my face,' etc., etc.
-
-"Well, she wouldn't go along with me to the track
-over at St. Asaph across the Potomac, and so I went
-alone. The man I had met in the shooting gallery had
-told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I couldn't
-fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found
-that my wife was so opposed to Jodan's chances was
-more than ever determined to play him, for I'd learned
-something about the nature of the feminine hunch, don't
-you see?
-
-"It like to've carried me off my feet when I saw the
-price on the blackboards against Jodan. Jodan was
-quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite was at 3 to 5 on, and all
-of 'em, the whole fourteen in the race, were at shorter
-prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had intended
-playing on Jodan, thinking that he'd be about
-10 to 1 or something like that, and I just thought and
-thought and thought over the thing.
-
-"'By jimminy!' said I finally, after standing over
-in a corner alone for a while, thinking, 'my wife may
-be right about Jodan, and all that, but I came over here
-to play Jodan, and I'm going to play him or just bust,
-win or lose!'
-
-"Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to
-$10 ticket on Jodan to win. 'Take that hay out of your
-hair, pal,' the bookmaker said to me when I passed my
-money over—and went up to the stand to see the race,
-thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take
-a chance on playing against the feminine hunch.
-
-"Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out
-of the clouds in the stretch, and won the derned old race
-on the wire by a nose from the favorite, and when I
-hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my wife the
-way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was
-sure a caution.
-
-"The feminine hunch," concluded the man with the
-ravelled cigar and the granulated eyelids, "is all right
-when you copper it, but it won't do to play it open. Am
-I right?"
-
-"No," said the two men in the seat, and then the rush
-to get off the train began.
-
-
-
-
-A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT.
-=====================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *He Was Thought to Be a No-Account Cripple, but He Proved Himself to Be "All Horse" When Called Upon.*
-
-
-"A friend of mine who came here from Chicago for
-the Bennings meeting was telling me about that Jim
-McCleevy mule," said an old-time owner of thoroughbreds
-who is wintering a string of jumpers and breaking
-a bunch of yearlings out at the Bennings track. "That
-makes a queer story, and there are some strange things
-connected with the thoroughbred game, at that. This
-McCleevy horse wasn't worth a bag of moist peanuts at
-the beginning of the present racing season. He couldn't
-beat a fat man. He had never been in the money. He
-was a legitimate thousand-to-one shot in any company.
-He was the candidate for the shafts of a brick cart, when
-by some odd chance he passed into the possession of a
-nice young woman who was going to school somewhere
-in the State of Iowa. The girl's uncle was mixed up
-some way or another with the turf, and he bought the
-McCleevy plug for a joke, paying a few dollars for
-him. In a spirit of fun he wrote to his niece that he
-had bought Jim McCleevy in her name, and that the
-horse belonged to her and would be run in her interest.
-The young woman didn't know the difference between
-a race-horse and a chatelaine bag. She was an orphan,
-and struggling to get an education for herself. Her
-ambition was to take a course at a woman's college, but,
-up to the time of this incident, which lasted throughout
-the spring and summer, her hope of putting this ambition
-over the plate was pretty shadowy, and it looked
-like it was up to her to get a job teaching a country
-school in order to support herself. But she wrote to
-her uncle that she accepted the gift of the no-account
-racer with gratitude, and inquired if the horse could
-not trot right fast, for, if so, she might be able to dispose
-of him to some well-to-do farmer in her neighborhood.
-
-"Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good
-trainer, who saw at once that the horse had been underestimated,
-that he had been badly handled, and that it
-would be worth the effort to try to make something of
-him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the
-skate and fixing him up, and then he sent him out one
-morning with a lummux of a stable boy on his back and
-put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in
-1:44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days
-later he was slapped into a selling race at a mile and a sixteenth,
-with light weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and
-all kinds of a price, for there were some good ones in
-the race, which was at the Harlem track, in Chicago.
-The girl's uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring
-on the mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home
-on the bit. That was the beginning of McCleevy. He
-was put into a couple of races a week at a mile and
-more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the
-entire racing season at Chicago, and he won race after
-race, no matter how they piled the weight penalties up
-on him. When he didn't win he broke into the money,
-and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that
-almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses
-that seemed to outclass him, the uncle of the girl who
-owned him got some of the money every time. He
-parleyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim
-McCleevy's first race, and he got it back and a bunch
-besides every time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread
-around Chicago, and a Chicago newspaper man went
-down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned
-the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she abhorred
-gambling—well, she certainly did enjoy the prospect
-of being enabled to complete her education. Her
-uncle deposited between $8000 and $9000 in her name,
-the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on
-Jim McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and
-the horse, which developed quite a bit of real class, still
-belongs to her.
-
-"Odd, isn't it, that an underestimated race-horse should
-hop out and not only give a nice girl that had never so
-much as has stroked his sleek neck a chance to fulfil her
-ambition for an education, but win her a start in life that'll
-probably make her one of the eligible girls in the State of
-Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that—how a cast-off
-crab suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off
-a mortgage on a church.
-
-"That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was
-racing a few of my own out there at the time, and saw the
-affair from the beginning to the wind-up. I'll have to duck
-giving the names, for the good man who profited by the
-sudden development of the nag he accidentally became
-possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates
-in a pretty little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Catholic
-church on the outskirts of Cincinnati.
-
-"There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia
-barns at that time who was in hard luck from a whole
-lot of different points of view. I'd known him on the metropolitan
-tracks years before, and he had been, in his day
-of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever
-one chewed a straw. When his health went back on him,
-however, six or seven years ago, and he couldn't personally
-attend to his work—he ran an open training stable—it
-was all off with him. The strings that he had been
-handling were taken away from him by the owners and
-put in other hands, and he went up against the day of adversity
-with a rattle. He had a few horses of his own, but
-these proved worthless, and most of them were finally
-taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he
-developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the Latonia
-barns, four years ago, he could barely move around.
-How he contrived to exist I don't know, but I guess the
-boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in a while for
-the old man. The only horse that he had left when I
-reached Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year-old
-gelding that was a joke. Well, call him Caspar. The
-mention of Caspar's name made even the stable-boy grin.
-Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse
-that's pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He
-was all out of shape, with a pair of knees on him each as
-big as your hat; of all the bunged up, soured, chalky old
-skates that ever I looked over, this Caspar gelding was the
-limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old and a
-more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as
-a two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was
-campaigned and drummed a heap, and when the old man
-shot him as a four-year-old Caspar could just walk, and
-that's all. He was a cripple from every point of the compass.
-He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as
-vicious and ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never
-got anywhere near the money as a four and five-year-old,
-and he hadn't been raced at all as a six-year-old, when I
-first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape. But the
-old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn't
-stand the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care
-of as a baby to some truck driver to be overworked and
-abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed him, nursed him
-and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug was
-making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a standing
-gag around the Latonia stables.
-
-"'Wait'll I joggle Caspar under the string by four
-lengths in the Kentucky Derby!' a monkey-faced apprentice
-jockey would say solemnly to the other kids, and
-then they'd all holler.
-
-"Well, about a month after I struck Latonia—it was
-then getting on toward midsummer—the old trainer in
-hard luck who owned Caspar took to his bunk, not to get
-up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days before
-he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had
-known for a number of years. The priest was the pastor
-of that little brick and stone church on the outskirts of
-Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old trainer had been a
-good Catholic all his life, and he received the last offices
-of his faith. Then he said to the priest:
-
-"'Father, there's a crabbed, battered-up old dog of
-mine over at Latonia that I'll make you a present of. He's
-worth about one dollar and eighty cents, but he was a
-good racing tool when he was young, and I've never felt
-like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He's crippled
-up some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that
-he could haul your buggy around. I wish you'd take him
-and see that he doesn't get the worst of it. Caspar was
-pretty good to me a few times when I was up against it.'
-
-"When the old man turns up his toes and dies the
-kindly priest came over to the barns to see if he could get
-any assistance in the way of putting our old hard-luck pal
-under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough for a
-tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father
-thought he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh
-that had been presented to him by the old man. So
-one of the trainers escorted him to Caspar's stall.
-
-"'Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?'
-the priest asked the trainer, who smiled.
-
-"'He'd kick a piano-mover's truck into matchwood the
-first clatter out of the box,' replied the trainer.
-
-"'I'll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide
-what to do with him,' said the priest, and he went
-back to Cincinnati and buried the old trainer.
-
-"Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy
-who had just got a job in one of the barns put a bridle
-and saddle on old Caspar and took him for a breeze
-around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, and
-a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work
-of the horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the
-rail where I was standing that the old devil looked mighty
-skittish, and was doing a lot of prancing for a hammered-to-death
-skate, with bum knees and all sorts of other complaints.
-About a minute later there was a yawp all along
-the rail.
-
-"'Get next to that old Caspar!' a lot of the trainers
-shouted. I looked over toward the back-stretch, and there
-was the old skate with his head down, eating up the
-ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our watches
-just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them
-on him. It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn
-and come a-tearing down the stretch. If he didn't do that
-five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of our watches told
-the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When
-he passed the judges' stand Caspar wanted to go right
-ahead and work himself out, but we all hollered at the boy
-to pull him up. The kid stopped the old gelding with
-difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he had a mouth on him
-as hard as nails.
-
-"We got together and talked about Caspar. We were
-dumbfounded, and didn't know what to make of that exhibition
-of speed. Then a trainer who was, and still is,
-noted throughout the country as the most skilful horse-patcher
-that ever got into the game spoke up.
-
-"'The old devil's just come back to himself, that's all
-there is about it,' he said. 'There are a lot of sprints in his
-old carcass yet. All he needs is some patching. If he'll
-run like this work he's just done in five-furlong dashes,
-there's a chance for a slaughter with him. I'm going to
-ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can't be
-oiled up.'
-
-"The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning
-and saw the priest.
-
-"'Father,' said he, 'I don't want to get a man of your
-cloth mixed up with the racing game, but I think I can
-do something with that old racing tool, the old man bequeathed
-to you.' Then he told the priest about Caspar's
-phenomenal work that morning.
-
-"'Bless me!' said the good man, 'I fear it would not
-be seemly for me to'——
-
-"'Oh, that end of it'll be all right, father,' said the
-trainer. 'If I find I can do anything with the old rogue
-I'll shoot him into a dash under my own colors, and you
-won't be entangled with the thing a little bit. It won't
-cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find that
-he'll do I'll get my end of it by putting down—er—uh—well.
-I won't lose anything anyhow.'
-
-"Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had
-the permission to see what could be done with old Caspar.
-"'Let me know how you progress,' the priest had asked
-him.
-
-"The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing—and
-we all vowed ourselves to secrecy about the matter—went
-to old Caspar. He was a nag-patcher, as I say, from the
-foot-hills, and the way he applied himself to the reduction
-of Caspar's inflammations, and to the tonicking up in general
-of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And
-it came about that early morning's work of Caspar's
-that had surprised us so was no flash in the pan at all. The
-old 'possum had somehow or another recovered his speed
-all of a sudden, in addition to a willingness to run, in spite
-of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks Caspar, as
-fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The
-trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so.
-
-"'Well,' inquired the priest.
-
-"'He's going to run in a five-furlong dash day after
-to-morrow,' said the trainer. 'And he'll walk. It is a copper-riveted
-cinch—er-uh—I mean, that is, Caspar will
-win, you see. It'll be write your own ticket, too. Any
-price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the
-entries, they'll think it's a joke.'
-
-"'My son,' said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking
-in the corner of his eye, 'gaming is a demoralizing
-passion. Nevertheless, if this animal, that came into my
-possession by such odd chance, possesses sufficient speed
-to—er'——
-
-"'Oh, that's all right, father,' said the trainer and he
-bolted for it.
-
-"As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an
-all-around chuckle the following afternoon when the entry
-sheets were distributed and it was seen that Caspar
-was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a wonder,
-not a word had got out about the patching job that had
-been in progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable
-work. The stable lads and railbirds who were on kept
-their heads closed and saved their nickels for the day of
-Caspar's victory.
-
-"Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently
-expected Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling
-good sprinters—one of them was so good that his
-price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was the rank
-outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the
-bookies giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of
-them wise enough to rub when they suspected that there
-was something doing. The trainers', railbirds', and stable-boys'
-money that went in forced the old skate's price down
-to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks
-of 100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati—wired our
-commissions over. The old horse favored his left forefoot
-a trifle in walking around to the starting pole, and that
-worried us a bit, for he'd been all right on his pin the
-night before. We didn't do any hedging, however, but
-stood by to see what was going to happen. All of us, of
-course, had enough down on him to finish third to pull us
-out in case he couldn't get the big end of the money.
-
-"It was a romp for Caspar. If I'd tell you the real
-name of the horse you'd remember the race well. Caspar,
-with a perfect incompetent of a jockey on his back, jumped
-off in the lead, and was never headed, winning, pulled
-double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made
-all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn't go.
-They had to cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch
-of Latonia trainers, including myself, had ever made, and
-there wasn't a stable boy on the grounds that didn't have
-money to cremate for months afterward.
-
-"After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar
-up for the hogslaughtering—he was close on to $15,000
-to the good, and he didn't have me skinned any, at that—hustled
-over to the priest's house.
-
-"'Father, the plug made monkeys of 'em,' is the way
-he announced Caspar's victory.
-
-"'Truly?' said the priest.
-
-"'Monkeys,' repeated the trainer, and then he pulled
-out a huge new wallet that he had bought on the way to
-the priest's residence. He handed the wallet to the father.
-'When I was here, a couple o' days ago,' said the trainer,
-looking interestedly out of the window, 'I had along with
-me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that
-morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed
-among the poor of the parish—used to be an acolyte and
-serve mass myself, a good many years ago, when I
-was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you see,
-and so I invested it in—er-uh—a little matter of speculation,
-to your account, so that it amounts to—er-uh—well,
-I understood there's a bit of a mortgage on your church,
-you know."
-
-"The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven
-one thousands, one five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill.
-The trainer had put the $50 down on Caspar for the priest—without
-the father's sanction or countenance, of course—at
-150 to 1.
-
-"'Well,' went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to
-save any questions as to the nature of his speculation, 'it
-certainly would have done your heart good if you could
-have seen that old nag cantering down the stretch'——
-
-"'It did,' said the father, with a smile. 'It is no sin,
-I conceive, for even a man of my cloth to watch noble
-beasts battling for the supremacy, there being, I take it,
-nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.'
-
-"Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to
-the paddock as sore as a boil, all of his old infirmities
-breaking out with renewed strength, and he was turned
-out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he
-could have known, it might have cheered his declining
-days to realize that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice
-little brick and stone edifice of worship on the outskirts of
-Cincinnati."
-
-
-
-
-A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES.
-=================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *How the Incredulity of a Lot of Bookmakers Was Turned Into Gasping Astonishment.*
-
-
-A mixed party of turf followers in Washington for
-the Bennings meeting, and Washington men about town,
-had a café talk the other night about some things that
-have happened in former years on running tracks, legitimate
-and outlaw, in this neighborhood.
-
-"When the outlaw track over at Alexander Island,
-across the Potomac, was running a few years back," said
-a New York player, "I came down here from the wind-up
-meeting in New York one fall to see if there was anything
-in the game in these parts. Then, as now, I was
-playing, and not laying. So this Alexander Island happening
-that I'm going to tell you about didn't bother
-me any, bad as it knocked a lot of the books.
-
-"I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A
-couple of days before the game was to be on, while I was
-in the Pennsylvania avenue refreshment headquarters of
-the boys who came here from New York and other tracks
-to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as
-if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum
-pipe in the game of life for a long time previously, walked
-in and edged around to the back room where the bookies
-were figuring on the amount of fresh money they were
-about to begin taking out of the national capital. The
-tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell
-about him, and as soon as I saw him I knew that he followed
-'em in some kind of a hanger-on capacity. He
-walked over to a table where a number of the bookmakers
-were seated.
-
-"'Say,' said he, leaning his hands on the table and
-addressing the party in general, 'you people are sports,
-ain't you?'
-
-"The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man
-were intended to convey to him the idea that they weren't
-publicly posing as hot tamales, anyhow. The man got
-no reply.
-
-"'You're going to make books across the way, ain't
-you?' the up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an inquiring
-look all around.
-
-"'Well, what if we are?' asked one of the bookies,
-just for the good-natured sake of breaking the silence.
-
-"'Well,' said the down-at-the-heel sport, 'I've got a
-couple o' nags that have been running for the past six
-weeks over at the Maryland outlaw. They haven't been
-one, two, six in any race over there, and I've gone broke
-paying entrance fees for 'em. Maybe they'll be able to
-do better over across the way at Alexander. I want to
-chuck 'em in a couple over there, anyhow, for luck. But
-I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland outlaw people, and
-I can't get my plugs away from there until the thirty's
-paid. Now, you people are sports, and so'm I. What I
-want to know is, will you people cough up the thirty
-for me as a loan, so's I can get that pair o' mine down
-here?'
-
-"The bookies listened to the man with gradually increasing
-smiles, and when he finished they gave him the
-laugh in chorus.
-
-"'Stop your kidding,' said one of them. 'I can get
-all the outlaw racehorses I want for $2 a head.'
-
-"They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-looking
-sport, who appeared to be rather a guileless sort of
-chap for a man with a short stable of racers.
-
-"'They're a good pair, all right, and one of 'em's on
-edge, too,' he persisted. 'He worked six furlongs in
-1:21 flat a couple of days ago.'
-
-"The bookies all looked at the man as if he were demented.
-
-"'One twenty-one flat for a six-furlong route!' exclaimed
-one of them. 'Why, look here, my friend, you're
-not smoking hard enough to suppose you can win down
-here with a skate that does well when he works six furlongs
-in that time, are you? Don't you know that there's
-a whole bunch over there now that can go that route in
-1:16 or better?'
-
-"'Well, they've got a chance, anyhow,' said the shabby
-man. 'Do I get the $30 to get 'em out o' hock?'
-
-"The bookies all turned their faces the other way,
-then, and when the man with the pair of hocked nags
-saw that it wasn't any use he dug his hands into his
-pockets disconsolately and shambled out.
-
-"On the day that the meeting opened I saw the shabby
-man in the betting ring. I was behind him when he
-handed one of the bookies a $5 bet on one of the horses
-entered in the second race of the day. The bookmaker
-had belonged to the party that gave the laugh to the
-shabby man when he asked for the $30.
-
-"'Playing 'em, eh' said the bookie, smiling at the
-run-down-looking man. 'Couldn't get your pair away
-from the Maryland outlaw, I suppose.'
-
-"'Yes, I dug up and got 'em out,' said the man.
-'They're here now. The one you just gave me a ticket
-on at $100 to $5 belongs to me.'
-
-"'Oh, is that so?' asked the bookmaker. 'Well, I
-hope you win. But you've got a couple of 3 to 5 shots
-to beat, you know.'
-
-"'I got a chance,' was all the man said, walking
-away.
-
-"I took a look at his horse, the rank outsider in the
-race, when he went to the post with the others. He was
-a six-year-old gelding, and he looked rank and broken
-down. A boy that the shabby man had brought along
-from the Maryland outlaw was on the horse. It was a
-mile race, and the horse was twelfth in a field of twelve.
-I saw the gloomy-looking, shabby man in the paddock
-after the race superintending the rubbing down of his
-nag. He seemed to be a whole lot in the dumps.
-
-"The same horse was entered in the fourth race on
-the next day's card. It was a field of crack outlaw performers,
-and his horse was again the extreme outsider
-at 40 to 1. I saw the shabby man walk around putting
-down $2 bets here and there on his plug, and I felt
-sorry for him. The bookies simply smiled commiseratingly
-at him. The hard-looking man's horse finished
-ninth in a field of nine.
-
-"'Why don't you cut it out?' asked one of the bookmakers
-of the man with the tough appearance. 'You're
-wasting your stake.'
-
-"'I got a chance,' was the reply.
-
-"The man got out his other horse on the following
-day. He got 50 to 1 on him for the six-furlong race, and
-his plug, another rank and no-account looker, finished
-last. This was the horse that could work six furlongs
-in 1:21. The seedy man's confidence in his pair of skates
-seemed rather pathetic to me.
-
-"After each of his horses had been in about half a
-dozen races each, always finishing last, the both of them,
-and the seedy man putting twos and fives down on them
-right along until the bookies felt like not taking his
-money, I thought he'd take a tumble and quit the game.
-But on the eleventh day of the meeting his 'mile racer,'
-the six-year-old gelding, was entered again. He went
-to the post with a field composed of the cracks among
-the outlaws. I happened to be close to the seedy man
-when he went around according to his custom, putting
-down small bets on his horse. He seemed to be rather
-better fixed than usual that day, for he had quite a
-bundle of fives with him.
-
-"'What do I get on my horse?' he asked the first
-bookie he struck.
-
-"The layer grinned, for he knew there were eight or
-ten good ones in the race, three or four of them quoted
-around even money.
-
-"'I've got 75 to 1 hung up about him, and all you
-want of it,' said the bookie. 'You can write your own
-ticket, in fact.'
-
-"'Hundred to 1?' asked the seedy man.
-
-"'Why, sure,' replied the bookmaker. And he took
-$5 of the 'owner's' money at 100 to 1. Just out of curiosity
-I followed the seedy man in his tour of the books
-and I saw him put down $70 in $5 bets on his horse to
-win at 100 to 1. It struck me then that there was
-to be something done on the seedy man's horse. But
-I wasn't capping the bookies' game, and I've got
-a fad for minding my own business, anyhow, and
-so I kept off the race and went into the stand to watch
-it. I had a hunch to play the seedy man's horse for a
-good wad, but I reflected that if I got on and the good
-thing went through the bookies 'ud be suspicious about
-such a well-known player as I was being in on it, and
-in the investigation the seedy man might be cut out, and
-I didn't want to knock him. But I surely was a whole
-lot interested in the way that race was to come out.
-
-"I took a good look at the seedy man's horse as they
-filed past the stand to the post. He looked much better
-and pretty nippy at that for such a rancid outsider.
-The same boy that had ridden the horse in his first race
-at Alexander Island and landed him nowhere was up.
-It was a mile race.
-
-"The favorite, a horse called Walcott—4 to 5 on in
-the betting—got off on the right foot with a jump and
-started to tiptoe the field. At the quarter he led by three
-lengths, with the second choice, a good outlaw named
-Halcyon, beginning to set sail for him. The rest of the
-field of thirteen were all strung out, the seedy man's
-horse 'way in the ruck. But I kept my glasses on that
-horse all the way, and I could see that at the half he was
-under the devil's own pull. The boy had half a dozen
-wraps on him and I felt then, even if the favorite was
-still a good four lengths in the lead, and going easily,
-that there was but one horse in the race, and that horse
-the seedy man's. It was a watermelon just opening, but
-I suppose I was the only man at the track that happened
-to have got next to the game. The judges didn't observe,
-of course, that the seedy owner's horse was under
-twenty wraps, for they looked upon him as a dead one
-and paid no attention to his running.
-
-"At the far turn Walcott, the favorite, was still three
-or four lengths in front, Halcyon, the No. 2 choice, having
-fallen back, beaten out. They were all in a bunch
-behind the leader, and all going mighty well at the
-head of the stretch. All the time I had my glass focused
-on the horse belonging to the shabby man. Walcott
-seemed to be just galloping, as I say, at the head of the
-stretch, when I saw the jockey suddenly sit down on
-the shabby man's horse and start to ride a-horseback. It
-was pretty, I tell you, to see that old six-year-old hop
-out after the galloping favorite and chase him down the
-stretch. The old horse, without a bit of whipping or
-spurring—the boy had simply given him his head—pumped
-up like an express engine, and the favorite was
-taken out of his gallop and extended, under whip and
-spur, before they were half way down the stretch. Passing
-the stand, Walcott and the seedy man's horse were
-nose and nose, the latter gaining at every jump. Walcott
-was beaten a head on the wire by the rank outsider in a
-pretty finish.
-
-"The stewards had the seedy man in the stand immediately
-and then called the boy up. It was an astonishing
-reversal of form, and action seemed to be called for.
-The seedy man's story was straight, however. He had
-given his horse a half pint of whisky before the race and
-he supposed that was responsible for the win. Doping
-horses was all right at Alexander, and so the stewards
-couldn't kick about that. The stewards touched upon
-the ringer question, but the seedy man was such a simple
-kind of duck, and his story was so connected about
-past owners of his two horses and their life-long careers
-on the outlaw tracks, that the stewards finally declared
-the race all hunk and the bets stood.
-
-"I saw the shabby man cash his $70 worth of
-100 to 1 tickets. He didn't gloat any over the bookies
-who had grinned in his teeth before the race—just collected
-his money quietly, saying: 'Well, I had a chance,
-didn't I?' The bookies were confident that the seedy
-man had a mighty valuable pair of ringers on his staff,
-and that one of them had just won the mile race in the
-beautiful, finely-drawn nose finish, but they couldn't
-welch on their bets. With his $7000 the seedy man took
-his string of two away the next day.
-
-"I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair
-Grounds' racing. He was no longer a seedy man. He
-was covered with gig lamps, and he had it in every
-pocket. Said I to him:
-
-"'D'ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled
-off in Washington a few years ago? There was some
-quality in that old outlaw of yours that got the money.'
-
-"He looked at me with a broad grin.
-
-"'Outlaw be damned,' said he. 'That horse was one
-of the cracks out of the West, on licensed tracks. He
-was a bit of paint. He had done a mile in 1:39-1/2 twice—round
-miles—and he was as game as a wild turkey
-egg. Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so,
-running him as a ringer all over the country. I was
-going to open my six-furlonger in Washington that time,
-but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack
-from Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1:14
-was a common canter for him. The Willie Wises back
-in the East are not so many at that, are they?'"
-
-
-
-
-THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB."
-====================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *It Referred to Nothing Calculated to Disturb Domesticity, but It Came Near Wrecking a Happy Home.*
-
-
-When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm
-of patent attorneys reached the firm's office in West
-Broadway on Monday morning last his eye caught sight
-of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the latter's
-desk. As the junior partner was in Washington
-and wasn't due back in New York until 4 or 5 o'clock in
-the afternoon, the senior partner opened the telegram.
-It was a night message from St. Louis, and it read as
-follows:
-
-"Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don't
-let anything scare you out. He's easy. Bub."
-
-The senior partner scratched his head over this.
-
-"Conway—Jim Conway," he muttered to himself.
-"Now, who the dickens can Jim Conway be, I'd like to
-know? We've got no client named Jim Conway, and
-we're not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr.
-Conway is the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this
-is."
-
-The senior partner turned the message upside down
-and every which way, but the longer he looked at it
-from various points of view the more puzzled he became.
-
-"Mighty belligerent sort of an affair, too," he mused.
-"Now, what has this Jim Conway done to my partner
-that he needs to be punched for it? And who's this
-Bub? Bub! That's a deuce of an undignified name for
-a man to put on paper. Great Scott! I wonder if my
-junior partner has gone in for prize fighting at that Jersey
-athletic club he belongs to? Perhaps he's been
-matched to box some fellow member named Jim Conway,
-and this Bub chap down at St. Louis is wiring him encouragement.
-Nope, that can't be right, either. My
-junior partner has been taking on fat at an alarming rate
-lately, so that he can't be training for a boxing contest."
-
-He took a few turns up and down the office, holding
-the telegram out at arm's length.
-
-"I hope the boy don't get into a serious mix-up with
-this Jim Conway fellow, whoever he is," he muttered
-nervously. "I don't believe the lad has done anything
-that he'd be ashamed to have me know about, and yet it's
-blamed queer that he should be getting telegraphic despatches
-from people by the name of Bub, urging him to
-employ physical force for the subjugation of a chap with
-such a Boweryesque sort of name as Jim Conway. The
-question is, what's the boy done to Conway, or Conway
-to him, that it should be necessary for one or both of
-them to resort to fisticuffs? Now, if the boy were to get
-mixed up in a brawl with this Conway there'd be the
-deuce to pay. It 'ud get into the papers, and it might
-have a serious effect upon our tidy and growing practice.
-I wish that junior partner of mine were a bit more level-headed.
-He's too clever and industrious and promising
-to have anything whatsoever to do with folks who travel
-under such names as Conway and Bub, and I'm going
-to give him a mild little personally conducted talking to
-when he gets back from Washington this afternoon.
-Why, I wouldn't have him get into a street fight, or a
-fight anywhere else for that matter, for big money—not
-only for the sake of the firm, but for his own sake. He's
-pretty handy with his maulies, and all that, but this fighting
-business is not the thing for gentlemen, not by a long
-shot. I just wish I could find out who this Conway duffer
-is, anyhow."
-
-The young woman who manipulates the typewriter for
-the firm came in just then.
-
-"By the way, Miss Bringlunch," the senior partner
-said to her, "have we any person of the name of Jim
-Conway on our list of correspondents?"
-
-"No, sir," she promptly replied. "We've got a Conners,
-Coleman, Coulter, Conneff, Curran—lots and lots
-of C's—but no Conway."
-
-"So I thought," said the senior partner. "Er—by the
-way, did you ever happen to hear Mr. Barlock refer to
-a person by the name of—er—Bub?"
-
-The young woman smiled as she tied her black sateen
-apron in the back.
-
-"I've heard him call the newsboys who come into the
-office with papers Bub," she replied.
-
-"Er—yes, yes," murmured the senior partner, "so
-have I. But this is a St. Louis Bub. Well, no matter."
-
-The senior partner dived into the mass of papers on
-his desk, but he couldn't get the bloodthirsty telegram
-to his junior partner out of his mind. He was puzzling
-over it still radiant when his junior partner's young
-wife came along toward 11 o'clock in the morning. She
-wanted to find out the exact hour her husband was due
-back from Washington.
-
-"He'll be here a little after 4, I guess," said the senior
-partner. "Er—by the way, Mrs. Barlock, does Jack
-number among his friends or acquaintances anybody by
-the name of Jim Conway?"
-
-"Jim Conway?" repeated the junior partner's wife,
-with a finger at her lip. "Why, no, not that I know of.
-I never heard him say anything about a Mr. Conway.
-Why?"
-
-"Oh, nothing," said the senior partner, in a constrained
-sort of tone, putting away the message from St. Louis
-for the fiftieth time.
-
-The wife of the junior partner suddenly looked
-alarmed.
-
-"That telegram!" she gasped, noticing the senior
-partner's furtive manner of slipping the despatch into his
-pocket—"is anything wrong with Jack? Has the train
-been wrecked? Has the"——
-
-And she started to her feet in great agitation.
-
-"Calm yourself, calm yourself," said the senior partner,
-also rising and smiling reassuringly. "There's nothing
-the matter. Train wrecked? Why, the idea! How
-did you ever get such a notion"——
-
-"But that telegram that you handle so mysteriously,"
-said the junior partner's wife, not yet over her alarm.
-
-"What telegram—this?" said the senior partner, taking
-the night message from St. Louis from his pocket.
-"Why, this is an ordinary—er—business telegram addressed
-to Jack from St. Louis, and it's"——
-
-"Let me see it, please, if it's for Jack," said the junior
-partner's wife, holding out her neatly gloved hand, and
-the senior partner could do nothing else but pass it over.
-
-"'Hammer—Jim—Conway. Punch—him—your—limit.
-Don't—let—anything—scare—you—out. He's
-easy. :small-caps:`Bub`.'" the junior partner's wife read, slowly and
-distinctly, her eyes widening at each sentence. "This,
-then, is the Mr. Conway that you spoke of. Mr. Topknot,
-what is the meaning of this? What in the world
-is the"——
-
-"You can search me," said the senior partner desperately.
-"Er—that is, it's all as mysterious to me as
-it apparently is to you. I've been bothering my head
-about it all the morning. I wouldn't have worried you
-by showing it to you, but as long as you asked to see
-it, why, of course"——
-
-And the senior partner coughed behind his hand and
-looked dismal.
-
-The junior partner's wife paced up and down the office
-with the telegram in her hand.
-
-"Why, it looks as if Jack had an enemy named Jim
-Conway, and that he intended to fight him, doesn't it?"
-she exclaimed beseechingly to the senior partner. "I'd
-just like to know who this horrid, nasty ruffian who signs
-himself Bub is, that's all. My Jack fighting a man with
-such an awful, 'longshoremanish name as Jim Conway!
-Why, that name sounds like the names of the roustabouts
-we read of in the papers who attack their poor wives
-with cotton hooks and throw burning lamps at them.
-And goodness gracious sakes alive! the very idea of Jack
-Barlock ever dreaming of lowering himself by getting
-into difficulties with such—oh, I don't know what to
-think of it all; indeed I don't!"
-
-And she strode up and down the office again in great
-agitation.
-
-"Now, now, now," put in the senior partner comfortingly.
-"We don't know anything about the contents
-of the message, and it may be that this Mr. Conway is—er—why,
-the fact is, come to think of it, it may be a
-message in code. Jack's got a code of his own, you know,
-and maybe he"——
-
-The wife of the junior partner was looking at him
-so suspiciously, however, that he couldn't go on. An expression
-just a trifle harder than was exactly becoming
-gradually stole into her face, and she walked over close
-to where the senior partner sat in his revolving chair.
-
-"Ah," she said in a hard tone, "I begin to see. You
-are trying to cover up something—you men always stick
-together in these affairs. It may be that this Mr. Conway
-is married, and that Jack—great heavens! if I only
-thought it! If I even dreamed that such a thing could
-be—after all the sacrifices I've made for Jack—living
-away from mama all this time—and"——
-
-Then she reduced her handkerchief to a wad about
-half an inch in diameter and began to dab at the corners
-of her eyes.
-
-"My dear girl," said the senior partner, "I give you
-my solemn word that I know no more about that message,
-nor about Mr. Conway, than you do. I never
-heard of Mr. Conway in my life before I opened that
-telegram. My dear Mrs. Barlock, I am sure you are exaggerating
-the importance of this despatch. There is no
-reasonable ground whatsoever upon which you can base
-any—er—accusation against the boy, and, as I say, it is
-possible—in fact, it's more than probable—that this message
-is in Jack's private code, and that"——
-
-"I—don't—believe—any—such—boo-hoo"——And
-the lovely young matron began to rock herself to and
-fro and to dab at her eyes unremittingly. "It's just as
-plain as day that Jack has done some wrong to this poor
-Mr. Conway, and this friend of Jack's in St. Louis, named
-Bub, has heard that Mr. Conway is looking for Jack, and
-he has sent him this telegram to warn him to be on his
-guard—and—boo-hoo—who would ever dream that my
-Jack would get himself involved in such an awful"——
-
-Her feelings overcame her again at this point, and she
-was unable to proceed.
-
-"Mrs. Barlock," said her husband's senior partner,
-severely, rising and confronting her, "I am surprised at
-you—I am, indeed. I was certainly of the opinion that
-in a matter of this sort you would at least give your
-husband—a most considerate husband—the benefit of the
-doubt; that you would at any rate give him an opportunity
-to explain himself. How do we know what he
-is to Conway or Conway to him?" And the senior partner,
-growing eloquent, declaimed as if he were speaking
-of Hecuba instead of the mysterious Conway. "Is it
-not more than likely that you are doing him a grievous
-wrong by even so much as imagining for a moment that
-this extraordinary telegraphic communication from—er—this
-Bub—person has any reference whatsoever to—er—uh—domestic
-or family affairs? Wait until Jack returns,
-my dear Mrs. Barlock, and I've not the least doubt
-that he will explain everything to your entire satisfaction,
-and"——
-
-"Oh, yes, explanations—explanations!" exclaimed the
-junior partner's wife, giving her eyes a final dab and rising.
-"You'll telegraph him on the train to have some
-sort of an explanation ready, and then he'll come in here
-with a deeply aggrieved countenance—just as if he had
-had no part at all in endeavoring to break up this poor
-Mr. Conway's home and tell me hypocritically that I've
-wronged him and all that. I know you horrid men and
-the way you stand by each other through thick and thin,
-no matter how wicked you know each other to be. I shall
-be back here at 4 o'clock, when Jack is due, Mr. Topknot,
-and notwithstanding the way he is treating me, if
-there is any possible way I can prevent him from meeting
-this Mr. Conway and having a disgraceful altercation
-with him, I shall do it. And I promise you that
-I shall be able to detect very easily whether he is telling
-me the truth or not when I demand him to explain this
-terrible business."
-
-Saying which, the junior partner's wife pulled her veil
-down and swept out of the office with the general air of
-a deceived wife in a play.
-
-"Huh! it'd naturally be thought I'd know enough
-not to make such an egregious ass of myself as to show
-her that telegram!" growled the senior partner to himself.
-"There'll be all kinds of a bobbery around here
-this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter
-proves to be something that Barlock wouldn't want his
-wife to know about—and I've no doubt now that it will
-prove just that way, the young idiot!—why, he'll be
-sulky with me, and there'll be little or no work done on
-those new cases, and—oh, it's a devil of a mess all
-around, that's what it is!"
-
-For all of which, however, the senior partner had his
-work to do, and he pitched in and was up to his ears
-in it until about half-past 3, when the junior partner's
-wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of ominous calm,
-arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome,
-haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great
-mass of white pompadour hair and an expression of unyielding
-austerity. The junior partner's wife and her
-mother replied to the senior partner's courteous greetings
-with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint belief
-that he was in league with the absent junior partner
-in his nefarious doings, or that he was at any rate attempting
-to shield the young man.
-
-"Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam?" the senior
-partner politely asked the junior partner's wife's mother.
-
-"I am quite cool enough, thank you," said the junior
-partner's wife's mother, snappily.
-
-"Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water?" he asked the
-junior partner's wife.
-
-"You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty,"
-she replied in a tone which seemed to convey the idea
-as plainly as words that she feared he might put something
-in the water that wouldn't do her any good.
-
-The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three
-sat in unbroken silence for fully fifteen minutes, when
-the sound of a blustery, cheerful voice was heard in the
-office boy's anteroom, and a few seconds later a tall, broad-shouldered,
-frank-faced young man entered the office.
-When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms
-extended.
-
-"Why, hello, there, Patsy!" he said. "I didn't know
-you'd be waiting for me, or I'd have come a-running—why,
-what's the matter here, anyhow?"
-
-The junior partner's wife had shaken herself loose and
-averted her face when her husband had attempted to
-fold her in his arms. He stared at her for a moment,
-and then he stared at his mother-in-law.
-
-"What's up, mom?" he asked his wife's mother.
-"What have I been and gone and done now, I'd like to
-know? Did I leave the water running in the bathroom
-before starting for Washington, or have you lost my
-bull-pup again, that you all look so queer—or what the
-deuce is it all about?"
-
-Neither of the women vouchsafed him any reply, and
-he turned to his senior partner.
-
-"I say, Topknot, look here; are you in on this?" he
-said to his senior partner, who was twiddling his thumbs
-and looking very much confused. "Did I rob a bank in
-my sleep last week, or have the papers come out and accused
-me of being a member of the Ice Trust, or"——
-
-"My boy," the senior partner interrupted, judiciously
-rising and taking the mysterious telegram from the inside
-pocket of his frock coat, "the telegraphic message which
-I have in my hand, and which, I regret to say, I opened
-this morning, knowing that you would not be back in New
-York until late in the afternoon, has been the occasion,
-owing to its somewhat mysterious contents, of the seeming"——
-
-"Let's see it, Topknot," said the junior partner, reaching
-for the telegram.
-
-He spread it out and glanced over its two lines. By
-the time he got through reading it he was in a frenzy of
-excitement. He jerked his watch out and looked at it.
-
-"I've just got time," he muttered to himself, hastily.
-"I'll just about be able to make it. Patsy, you stay
-here with your mother until I get back. I'll be back in
-twenty minutes or half an hour. Tell you all about it
-when I get back," and he was out of the office door and
-down the steps like a boy breaking out of a little red
-schoolhouse for recess.
-
-A vacant cab happened to be passing just as he got
-outside, and he hailed the driver and darted into the vehicle.
-
-"Drive like the devil to ——'s!" he shouted to the
-driver, and in something under three minutes he had
-rushed into the upstairs poolroom about four blocks from
-his office.
-
-The second line of betting was in on the second race
-at St. Louis, and the horse Jim Conway was the rank outsider
-at 60 to 1. The junior partner crowded his way up
-to the counter and laid down a ten-dollar note.
-
-"Gimme Jim Conway," he said to the man behind the
-counter.
-
-"Conway, $600 to $10," said the money taker, and he
-had no sooner finished the words than the instrument
-began to click.
-
-"They're off at St. Loo!" sang out the operator.
-"Rushfields in the lead, Cathedral second." Pause.
-"Cathedral at the quarter by two lengths, Rushfields
-second." Pause. "Cathedral at the half by three lengths,
-Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the three-quarters
-by a length, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral
-in the stretch by a neck, Rushfields second by a
-neck." Longer pause. "Jim Conway wins, easy, by
-three lengths!"
-
-"Whoopee-wow!" The yell went up from the long-shot
-players in the room who had taken a chance on Jim
-Conway.
-
-The junior partner stood around with a broad grin on
-his face while he waited for the race to be confirmed.
-Then he collected, bounded downstairs, hailed another
-cab, and in exactly seventeen minutes from the time he
-had left his office he was back there again. He was
-greeted with the same frigidity as characterized his original
-welcome. He still wore his broad grin, and he
-walked over to his desk, raised the lid, and began to dig
-into his pockets. He produced first one fat roll of bills
-and then another, and he slammed each roll down on his
-desk as if it were so much shavings. His wife and his
-wife's mother and his senior partner watched his performance
-with open mouths, as did the office boy who
-stood in the doorway. When the junior partner had
-made a pyramid of bills on his desk about as big as a
-fair-sized derby hat, he turned to his wife and asked her,
-still grinning:
-
-"Did you read this telegram, my dear?" holding the
-message out in his hand.
-
-"I certainly did," she replied, "and you would oblige
-me greatly if you would"——
-
-"And who do you think this Jim Conway was, Patsy?"
-he interrupted.
-
-"I hadn't the least idea in life," she replied, without
-any sign of relenting, "nor have I at the present
-moment. I intend, however, to find out who Mr. Conway is
-at the earliest possible mo"——
-
-The junior partner fell into a revolving chair, stuck
-his legs out in front of him as far as they would reach,
-and roared so that he must have been heard all over the
-building. He roared so loud and long that the performance
-was infectious, and his wife and his wife's
-mother and his senior partner, notwithstanding the fact
-had begun to dawn upon them that they were in a foolish
-position, had to smile in spite of themselves. When
-the junior partner was able to splutter he managed to
-gasp his explanation in short sentences. Bub was a
-friend of his in St. Louis who followed the races out
-there, and who had promised to tip him off on the first
-good thing at a long price that was to be put over the
-plate at the St. Louis meeting. Bub had kept his promise,
-and the junior partner was $600 to the good. That
-was all.
-
-"And if you don't go out and corner the foulard dress
-goods market to-morrow, Patsy," the junior partner concluded,
-addressing his wife, "on the strength of what
-our four-footed pal, Jim Conway, has done for us,
-why"——
-
-When they had gone, the office boy, in sweeping out
-the office, picked up the telegram, that had slipped to
-the floor while the junior partner was laughing.
-
-"Now, w'y couldn't I ha' got a piece o' dat!" said the
-office boy, disgustedly as he read the telegram. "I bin
-pickin' dat skate ev'ry day f'r de las' two weeks, and I
-knowed dis mornin' w'en I seen de St. Loo entries dat
-he'd win in buck-jump."
-
-
-
-
-STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND.
-===========================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *A Game in New Orleans That Makes Modern "Big" Poker Games Seem Tiny by Comparison.*
-
-
-"The shrinkage in the value of poker winnings that
-get talked about nowadays," said the New Orleans turfman
-at the beach dinner, "is mournful, that's what it
-is. A few days ago a man told me that So-and-so, a
-gilded youth from up the State somewhere, had recently
-swooped down upon a gentleman's poker club in New
-York, and had removed himself from the scene of play,
-after a five-hour séance, with $8500 in winnings. The
-man who told me this leaned back, after he had sprung
-the $8500 climax, and waited for my eyes to protrude.
-He looked a bit miffed and sulky when they didn't protrude.
-
-"'Why, durn it all,' said he, 'I believe you affect your
-cold-blooded way of taking things. To see you twiddle
-your thumbs a man 'ud suppose that you had no more
-sense than to imagine that an $8500 winning at a short
-poker sitting was the most ordinary thing in the'——
-
-"'Easy, easy,' I had to put in, for he was heating
-himself unduly. Then, to bring him around to good nature
-again and to convince him that I wasn't attitudinizing,
-I was compelled to spend a half hour or so in unwinding
-a bit of a reel of the days when there were poker giants
-in this country. He wasn't quite willing, at the finish,
-to acknowledge that the winner at draw of $8500 was a
-poker pigmy, but when I happened to mention the occasion
-when Phil Cuthbert of St. James's parish dropped,
-in a two-handed game at the St. Charles Hotel in New
-Orleans, a little bundle of $400,000"——
-
-"He told you, of course, that you were smoking," interrupted
-the New York man.
-
-"No, he didn't. He asked me if it got into the New
-Orleans papers. I told him that in 1868 the New Orleans
-papers were too busy roasting the carpet-baggers to devote
-any space to such a minor matter as a $400,000
-poker game at the St. Charles Hotel, where draw games
-approximating that in size were generally going on at
-any old hour of the day or night. There was some
-rhetoric, I admit, in that 'approximating' statement, but
-I wanted to set this New York man right. As a matter
-of fact, a $50,000 game of draw was not at all uncommon
-in the St. Charles's private poker parlors. After
-Phil Cuthbert had dropped that mound of $400,000 on one
-hand, the New Orleans papers did announce that Mr.
-Philip Cuthbert, the well-known planter of St. James's
-parish, was about to start on a gold-prospecting tour
-in the mountains of Honduras; but they were generous
-enough not to mention, if they knew it, that, with four
-aces in his hand, he had lost $400,000 to Mr. Joseph
-Lescolette, shipper, of Havre, Pernambuco, and New
-Orleans."
-
-"Lost $400,000 on a hand consisting of four aces, am
-I to understand you said?" asked the New York man.
-
-"The statement was to that general effect," replied the
-New Orleans turfman.
-
-"Suppose you just lead up to that gradually by telling
-the story."
-
-"Well, in order to do that, I've got to plead guilty to
-having been a table arranger and sweep-out boy at the
-St. Charles at the time the thing happened," said the
-horseman from New Orleans. "However, having
-achieved greatness since, I see no reason why I shouldn't
-be willing to acknowledge that. Besides being table arranger
-and sweep-out boy, it was one of the functions
-of my job at the St. Charles to sort o' stand by, as sailor-men
-say, when games were on in the private parlors,
-and run errands for the gentlemen playing. There
-was plenty of high poker play to be had at any of
-the first-rate New Orleans clubs at that time—too much
-of it, in fact, for the club games became so open, owing
-to the too generous distribution of visitors' cards by the
-club members that many of the high-playing men of the
-town abandoned club poker playing altogether. When
-they felt the hunch to get into a game of draw they adjourned
-to the St. Charles, where, in the seclusion of a
-private parlor, they enjoyed freedom from the neck-craning
-gaze of onlookers, and freedom also from that
-bane of the genuine lover of a game of draw, the chap
-who stands behind one's chair and keeps up a running
-commentary of approval or disapproval.
-
-"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 café 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.
-==================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *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.
-
-"I had the buck when it came my turn to deal again,
-and so it was a jackpot. I was wishing myself well out
-of it, and had cold feet, if ever a man did, though I was
-afraid to say so with so much of my opponents' money in
-my clothes. My hands probably trembled a little as I
-dealt that round, and even this fact probably caused them
-to suspect that I was monkeying with the deck and to
-watch me narrowly. The man on my left opened the pot
-for the size of it, and all stayed. When I picked up my
-hand and saw that I had given myself a clean, pat flush,
-ace on top, it made me pretty nervous, and before I stayed
-I did a heap of considering.
-
-"'The best thing you can do, young fellow,' said I to
-myself, 'is to stay out of this jack altogether, or else
-throw that straight of yours face up in the center of the
-table, proving your squareness to these cutthroats, and
-let them play the jack out among themselves. If you
-don't do one of these things, you're going to get hurt in
-just about three minutes.'
-
-"Then I considered some more. Here I had a fine and
-probably winning hand that I had come by perfectly on
-the level, and it would be rank cowardice to throw it away,
-and mighty poor poker, besides.
-
-"'I'll be damned if I do any such thing just to convince
-these chaps that I'm not a thief,' was my final conclusion;
-and with that I made it twice the size of the
-pot to draw cards. They all glowered I tell you what,
-but they all stayed, every one of 'em. They not
-only stayed, but they bet and raised each other like
-the devil, and forced me to out-raise all of their raises
-every time it came around to me.
-
-"Jim Cathcart, whose beady eyes had been blazing ever
-since I doubled the value of the pot to draw cards, was
-as bad-looking a man as I want to see when, finally, the
-man at my left called my last big raise. There had probably
-been some signals in knee-rubbing under the table,
-for the other two cowboys followed the lead of the first
-and called me in turn. When it got around to Cathcart
-he slammed his bundle of greenbacks into the pile with
-an oath.
-
-"'Podner,' said he, looking hard at me with his little
-red eyes, 'some o' your work here to-night has been so
-cut-an'-dried lookin' as to excite a whole lot of doubt
-about your bein' on the level; an' if you happen to have
-anythin' in that fist o' your'n this time that'll top these
-here three aces o' mine, then, by hell, you havin' dealt this
-mess yourself, there won't be no manner o' question but
-that you're a damned proper crook.'
-
-"Was I scared? Well, the hand just fell out of my
-paw, face up on the table, I was so scared! I was so
-paralyzed with fear that I simply couldn't move or say
-a word, and, what's more, I'm not a particle ashamed to
-own up to it. When the cards fell out of my hand Cathcart
-reached over and spread them out with his left hand.
-
-"'Well, by hell, you are a crook, ain't you?' he
-snapped when he saw the value of the hand that beat his
-own good one, and as he spoke he whipped out the big
-gun on the right side of his belt. I was blind with terror,
-and when I heard the loud report of a gun I gave it all up
-and figured that I was already three-quarters of the way
-over the Big Divide.
-
-"When I opened my eyes a second later I saw Cathcart
-staring at the door, his right arm hanging limp at
-his side. His gun had fallen on the table without being
-discharged, and his left arm was in the air. So were the
-six arms of the other three men, and they also had their
-eyes glued on the door. I wheeled around to look that
-way myself. Standing quietly under the lintel of the
-door, with his two big guns covering the five of us, was
-the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man I had noticed
-eyeing us before we started the game of poker.
-The man was Wild Bill, Abilene's celebrated Marshal.
-The shot I had heard when I had given the whole thing
-up was from one of Wild Bill's unerring guns. It had
-pinked Cathcart in the right shoulder just in the nick
-of time, causing the gun with which he had intended to
-shoot me to fall from his hand.
-
-"'Slope for your camp, son,' said Wild Bill to me
-quietly, still covering the four men. Well, for all I
-know, he might be covering them yet. I do know,
-though, that I was out of that room like a cat out of a
-bag, and the way I cut for our camp, over the newly-laid
-ties, eight miles away, was a warning to grasshoppers.
-
-"It was while I was making this little journey, hitting
-a high place only once in a while, that I came to the determination
-that for a man who could not fight shy of
-bull-head luck any better than I could, the game of draw
-poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for
-health and peace of mind; and I haven't departed from
-that determination down to the present moment of time."
-
-
-
-
-CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS.
-===============================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Professional Sharpers Who "Work the Liners."*
-
-
-An Englishman who travels a good deal was generalizing
-at one of the clubs last night on the subject of
-the card sharpers who devote themselves exclusively to
-the ocean steamers.
-
-"It's a marvel to me," he said, "that the American
-steamship people, or the police, or somebody, can't drive
-these sharpers off the American steamers. It's nothing
-short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong
-somewhere. Can't be collusion, I don't suppose, or"——
-
-"Oh, come now, stow that, mate," said an American
-who does a bit of traveling himself. "If they're not
-worse, and more of them, on the English transatlantic
-steamers, I'll turn British subject, take the Queen's
-shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks
-from Dahomey to"——
-
-"Humbug! We don't fight naked blacks. We only
-subdue them, that's all. Punitive expeditions, you know.
-But about these card sharpers on the American ships.
-Why, it's simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to
-mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of
-it is, the cads get themselves up like gentlemen, so how's
-a man to know"——
-
-"Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man,"
-put in the American.
-
-The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen
-will when compelled to admit that the universe is not
-entirely an open book to them.
-
-"Well, yes, I did," he admitted gamely. "Not very
-hard, though. I think twenty guineas would about cover
-it. But it wasn't the money so much. It was the way
-the thing was done—positively beastly, I say. Man was
-introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an
-American I know well. Good fellow, too. Man had
-been introduced to him by somebody else, and so on, so
-that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he
-came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst
-of it was, I myself presented the chap to any number of
-fellows I knew on the ship, and all of 'em got bit more
-or less, and all of 'em looked at me reproachfully when
-it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper,
-just as I looked reproachfully at the man who"——
-
-"Sort of endless chain, wasn't it?" put in the American.
-
-"Well, if you want to put it that way," said the Englishman.
-"And worse still, the man got my guineas
-at my own game. If it had been poker, now, I wouldn't
-have minded so much, for I never could master that queer
-game, and I don't believe there's anything in it, anyhow.
-But nap! Chap beat me clean at nap, that I've been
-playing ever since I was at Harrow. Odd, too, that I
-beat him easily at first and had all the luck, and was
-probably fifty guineas ahead of him. Then suddenly the
-luck changed, you see"——
-
-The American smiled.
-
-"What the deuce are you grinning at? The luck
-changed, as I say, and, by Jove, the fellow positively
-couldn't lose. If my daughter hadn't become ill on the
-fourth day out, I dare say I might have lost quite a bit
-of money, and"——
-
-"Unquestionably you would have," put in the American.
-"So that in one respect your daughter's illness—which
-I trust was not serious—was really a blessing to
-you. It's queer to me that no Englishman I have ever
-met in ocean voyaging is able to perceive that when he
-is playing at cards with a stranger who permits him to
-win easily and heavily at first, it is time for him to make
-his devoirs, more or less respectful, to the stranger, and
-proceed to take a constitutional on the main deck, henceforth
-abjuring cards with said stranger. Now, an
-American is able to see into that game right away. If
-he is playing with a friend, and the friend is a winner
-from the go-off, as we say over here, all well and
-good. The American voyager who is up to snuff puts
-his friend's initial winnings down to the chances of the
-game. But when he gets into a game with a stranger,
-and the stranger simply shoves money from the outset
-over to his side of the table—well, do you know what
-the American of to-day does under those circumstances?
-He simply awaits the moment when the luck begins to
-change, and then he has an imperative appointment with
-his wife in the cabin. He thus picks up quite a bit of
-cigar money from a man who he instinctively knows is
-a sharper."
-
-"Fancy now," said the Englishman. "If I had only
-known that"——
-
-"But you didn't know, and, as I say, I never came
-across the Englishman who did. Why, the ocean voyaging
-card sharpers have become so well aware of this
-little shrewd habit of American passengers with whom
-they sit down to a game that of late years they have altogether
-abandoned that old, old trick of permitting their
-victims to win with ease at the outset. They only work
-that trick nowadays on Englishmen. Fact is, I think
-there ought to be a rule on all transatlantic steamships,
-English and American, absolutely prohibiting British
-subjects from playing cards at all aboard ship."
-
-"Tommyrot!" said the Englishman.
-
-"Not so much so as you might imagine," said the
-American. "Of course, I don't mean that literally, and
-yet I don't know but what, after all, it might be a good
-thing. I have watched the wake of a steamer on the trip
-across the Atlantic fifty-two times—that is, I have made
-twenty-six round voyages—and I suppose that on these
-voyages I have seen as many as a thousand men plucked
-at cards. I will venture to assert that 80 per cent. of
-them were Englishmen. So you will perceive there is
-some justification for what I said about your countrymen
-playing cards aboard ship.
-
-"I've seen some clever men of your country badly done
-by the ocean-going card sharpers, too. At the time your
-Lord Lonsdale came to the United States—Violet Cameron
-incident, you know—he was a pretty young man,
-even if he did at that period of his life stand in urgent
-need of a guardian with a heavy club. Well, amid the
-newspaper uproar over his landing in this country with
-the Cameron, the fact did not come out that Lonsdale
-was plucked of $12,000 on the trip over by Ned Turner,
-one of the most notable of the older clique of steamship
-sharpers. But it's a fact, all the same. I was not
-only a board the steamer at the time, but I was one of
-a number of men who endeavored to pound some sense
-into young Lonsdale's head while the plucking was going
-on. But he was a stubborn chap and would listen to no
-one, and even when he was quite convinced that Turner
-was a sharper, at the end of the voyage he stood for his
-big loss like a little man, and became genuinely angry
-at some of his English friends aboard who recommended
-him to stop payment on the checks he had given Turner
-to cover the greater portion of the plucking.
-
-"I think Turner had it in mind to do Lonsdale when
-he got aboard at Liverpool. Turner had been working
-the ships for fifteen years, in spite of the efforts of the
-steamship companies to keep him off their vessels, and at
-this time he was a man of 40 or thereabouts. Lonsdale
-was pretty liberal in the use of wine at this time, and
-it was at the buffet that Turner, who was a fine-looking
-insinuating and accomplished man, found young Lonsdale
-on sailing day. The two men struck up a friendship
-from the very first day of the voyage, and it was Lonsdale
-himself who first suggested, as he afterward
-acknowledged—for he was a manly fellow—the poker
-game. Lonsdale had only recently learned the hands in
-poker—which is about all any man ever learns about it,
-if the truth were told—and he had the poker initiate's enthusiasm
-for the game to an exaggerated extent. Before
-going any further, I ought to say that Turner always
-maintained afterward that in his play with Lonsdale he
-was perfectly on the level.
-
-"'The young fellow insisted on playing,' said Turner,
-'and he couldn't play any more than my aunt in Connecticut.
-I played with him, because that's my business. But
-I didn't have to play crooked—and I don't admit that I
-ever did play crooked, understand—to get his $12,000.'
-
-"Well, at any rate young Lonsdale and Turner started
-the game on the first day out, and kept it going almost until
-the steamer passed Fire Island. Of course Turner beat
-him right along. He made no effort to let Lonsdale win
-from him at first. He simply played poker and raked in
-the young man's money and checks. A lot of us aboard
-knew Turner, and those of us who had met Lonsdale
-in England got him aside on the second day out and
-diplomatically put it to him that he was engaged in a pretty
-difficult encounter—that, in brief, Turner was a professional
-player of cards. For our pains we were told
-that we were too confoundedly officious, that he was
-more than 7 years of age and knew what he was about,
-and all the rest—you know the talk of a boy; and this
-boy was flushed, too, you understand.
-
-"At any rate, when the steamer was drawing near
-this shore Lonsdale decided that he had had enough—not
-that he would not have gone on playing for another seven
-days, had the voyage been protracted to that extent, but
-he had to get ready to land. Several of us were in the
-card-room when the last hand was played. Turner won
-the hand and Lonsdale scribbled a check on his American
-banker for the amount the hand represented. Then he
-looked up at Turner for a minute and said:
-
-"'Some of my friends here estimate you a little unkindly,
-Mr. Turner.'
-
-"'How's that?' inquired Turner, looking not a whit
-surprised.
-
-"'Well,' said Lonsdale, 'they maintain that your skill
-at cards affords you something better than a livelihood.'
-
-"'I never denied that,' said Turner coolly.
-
-"'In playing with me on this voyage you have employed
-skill alone?'
-
-"'At your suggestion, I have played draw poker with
-you for seven days. I understand draw poker, and I
-have $12,000 of your money. Do you want it back?'
-
-"You see, that was a magnificent bluff on Turner's
-part. The young chap, he knew, would not welch.
-
-"'Oh, if you choose to be insulting'——said Lonsdale,
-flushing hotly, and he rose from the card-table and
-left the room.
-
-"Well, a couple of elderly Englishmen aboard who
-knew Lonsdale and his father before him went to him
-then and told him that it would be perfectly proper and
-right for him to stop payment on the checks he had given
-to Turner, who, they told him in so many words, was
-nothing short of a swindler.
-
-"'Mind your own damned business,' said Lonsdale.
-'I'll do nothing of the sort,' and that was the end of it.
-It must be confessed that you folks over there have a
-wonderfully game fashion of sticking to a bad proposition;
-but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was
-kept off the ships of all the lines after that, and I don't
-know what became of him.
-
-"How they contrived to keep Turner off the ships unless
-he really wished to remain off is something that I
-can't explain, for it is simply a plain statement of fact
-to say that the steamship companies have always found,
-and probably always will find, it impossible to prevent
-the card sharpers from running on their boats. They
-have often tried it. They tried it on one notable occasion,
-as I remember, with George McGarrahan, in 1881.
-McGarrahan was the Nestor of the steamship card sharpers,
-and all the steamship companies knew him. The
-president of one of the most prominent transatlantic lines
-sent for McGarrahan—who, by the way, has since died
-in New York—and told him that he would not be permitted
-to travel henceforth on the vessels of the line.
-
-"'The deuce you say!' replied McGarrahan. 'How
-are you going to stop me?'
-
-"'Refuse to give you passage,' answered the president.
-
-"'You will, will you?' said McGarrahan. 'Well, if
-you do that, I'll get enough damages out of your line to
-make it unnecessary for me ever to touch a card again
-as long as I live.'
-
-"His position was correct in law, as the president of
-this line found out upon investigation. The steamship
-company, you understand, is not the regulator of the
-habits of its steamers' passengers. If the passengers
-don't know any better than to play cards with sharpers,
-that is their own lookout. And a steamship company
-cannot decline to sell passage to a man because it claims
-he is a short-card player. It devolves upon the company
-to prove that the man is a card sharper, and the steamship
-people know that this is practically impossible, for no
-man who is done at cards by one of these men on an
-ocean steamship is going to rise in his seat and make announcement
-of the fact to the world.
-
-"Observation tells me that there are not nearly so
-many of these men on the ships now as formerly. The
-short-card players who make a business of traveling have
-found the trains much more profitable, since the officers
-of the steamers got into the habit of going quietly among
-the voyagers of a card-playing turn and warning them of
-the danger of getting into games with such and such
-men. That was the system, and a pretty effectual one,
-too, adopted by the steamship companies to squelch the
-ocean card sharpers. The result has been that the
-sharper can now only make a general campaign of all the
-big steamers—and the big steamers are the only steamers
-they consider worth working—before the officers know
-them, and then their game is dead practically. So that
-they find it more profitable to take to the swell trains on
-the swell runs, making the same trip rarely, and thus preventing
-their countenances from getting too familiar to
-the railroad people."
-
-"How the deuce do you know all this?" inquired the
-Englishman.
-
-"Well," replied the American, "you may be pretty certain
-that I haven't dreamed it. Besides, I figured it that
-you required some consolation for the loss of your twenty
-guineas. Didn't you?"
-
-
-
-
-THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER.
-================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner Ought to Know.*
-
-
-"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a
-whole lot," said one of the men in the back room of an
-uptown café.
-
-The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in
-the lap of his master and wagging his stump of a tail
-foolishly. His master was a squat, thin-faced man of the
-all-aged class; that is, he might have been anywhere from
-30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners
-of his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up
-he looked like ready money. He lapped the dog's
-clipped ears one over the other and looked reminiscent.
-
-"Well," said he, replying to the other man's remark,
-"I can't say that he does look dead wise and smooth to
-the naked eye. He's not one of these here fresh sooner
-dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows the first
-clatter out o' the box. He's no trick mutt, anyhow. I
-raised him from a pup, and I never taught him any of
-the jay tricks that these pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts
-go through. What he don't know about standing up in
-a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub
-and waltzing on his front feet and playing 'possum, and
-all that kind o' dinky work, would fill a big book. But
-if any of you people think you can give him any points
-on the value of hands in a game of poker, then you need
-a new dope cook, and that's which."
-
-"Poker?" said another of the party, incredulously.
-"Say, shoot it in light. Your yen-hok's overworked."
-
-"That's what I said—poker," replied the fox terrier's
-owner, firmly. "I'm putting you next now, because I
-don't make it a business to do pals in a poker game. He's
-the best poker dog on the American continent, that mutt.
-Can't begin to figure on how many times he's won me
-out, and for how much. He's sulked on me two or three
-times at critical junctures in games of draw, and given
-me the wrong tips, just to get square with me for something
-or other, but that was when he was young and
-sassy and disposed to work his edge on me. He's been
-tipping me off right now for seven straight years, and—well,
-I've got a dollar or two scattered around," and the
-owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a
-25-cent cigar.
-
-"Didn't have a bit o' trouble teaching him the game,
-I suppose?" asked one of the men at the table.
-
-"Well," replied the fox terrier's owner, striking a
-match on his diamond-incrusted match safe, "I can't say
-that teaching him the hands was altogether a snap. At
-first he used to get the kings and jacks mixed once in
-a while, and then he had a habit, when he was learning
-the game, of getting the eights and tens twisted, too.
-But I broke him of those defects after a while. It wasn't
-so much trouble teaching him the value of the hands in
-poker as it was to fix up a sign manual by which he could
-express himself and tip me off on the hands held by the
-other fellows. But patience was my long suit in teaching
-that dog the game of poker, and in less than a year after
-I showed him the first pack of cards he ever saw, he was
-able to put me onto the worth of every hand around a
-table without any of the marks falling to the scheme. His
-method of communicating such information to me during
-the progress of a game is a bit involved and intricate, and
-we've got a lot of little code signs that would require too
-much elaboration in the explaining, but I'll just give you
-a little idea of the way the thing works.
-
-"Suppose I'm sitting in a four-handed game. The dog
-is nosing around the room, not in any ostentatious kind
-of way and not getting himself noticed at all by the other
-three in the game. A hand is dished out. The dog
-noiselessly rubbernecks behind the chair of the first player
-on his route. The first player, we'll say, has got a pair
-of sevens, and I've got my eye on the dog. The dog
-quietly gapes twice, to indicate that player No. 1 has a
-pair, and then blinks both of his eyes seven times in
-rapid succession. See? Of course I know then that No.
-1 has only got a pair of bum sevens. I pretend to scan
-my hand, while the dog quietly gets behind the chair of
-player No. 2. We'll say No. 2 has three queens. The
-dog passes his right paw over his right eye three times.
-If it's three kings, left paw over his left eye three times.
-If it's three bullets he puts his left paw at his nose and
-holds it there for a second, and, if three jacks, his right
-paw at his nose. Savvy? And so on. He's got the
-whole manual and code worked out to a stretch finish. If
-No. 3 has got a pat flush he closes his left eye and keeps
-it closed until he sees I'm noticing him. If No. 3 has got
-a pat full house he shuts up his right eye in the same
-way.
-
-"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.
-=================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *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.
-==========================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *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.
-
-"The game they dub poker out there isn't poker at all,
-in my opinion. It's a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy
-moves that must have been chucked into the original
-game by early California vaqueros with such a taste for
-embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their
-pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. Whatever
-they call it, it's not American draw poker by a
-darned sight. The kind of poker that I was raised on—the
-real thing, the article of draw that we play on this
-side of the Alleghanies—doesn't take any more account
-of the joker, for instance, than it does of the card case;
-but out in California they think a man's plumb blind crazy
-if he registers a kick over having the joker in the deck.
-I'd as lief play old maid or grab for corn-silk cigarettes
-as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it; but
-out there I had to take the game as it was served up,
-and, as between poker with a joker and no poker at
-all, I, of course, accepted the lesser of the two evils and
-played. But I got dumped on the game for about 2,000
-miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn't
-have to count themselves because they were so many at
-the game. The trouble was that I played the game of draw
-that I was brought up on and they played their crossbred
-game, and the result was just about as queer as it
-would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby
-football to a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his
-hands.
-
-"I'll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker
-idea. This was my first visit to the slope, you know and,
-although I'd often heard vaguely that young 'uns, playing
-draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while shoved
-the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of
-course, never dreamed that rational adult human beings
-in any quarter of the earth could have the nerve to inflict
-such a dismal outrage upon the noble game of draw as
-to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found out different
-the very first game of draw that I sat into out in
-San Francisco.
-
-"It was a four-handed game, and I was the only Eastern
-man in the bunch. The other three fellows were
-business men who belong to the Native Sons' organization,
-which accounts for the weird brand of poker they
-played. They played what was taught 'em in their youth
-out there; didn't know any better, and thought, and no
-doubt still think, that their game is right.
-
-"I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was
-25 cents ante and $5 limit. I gave myself two rattling
-good pairs, kings up on tens. All of the other fellows
-stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of
-dollars more to draw cards. This let two of 'em out of
-it, but I thought my two pairs were good enough for a
-$2 raise, and so I played with the raiser. He drew one
-card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and he
-came at me on the double with the limit. I'd caught another
-king, and had as neat-looking a full house as a
-man needs to have in any kind of a game.
-
-"'Five more'n you,' said I, and we shuttled the limit
-back and forth until we each had about $50 in the pot.
-Said I to myself, 'I've got you beat, my boy, for the
-percentage of the game is 'way against your holding
-fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter
-out of the box, and, even if you've filled those two pairs
-of yours—which you probably haven't, for the percentage
-is plumb against you—you certainly haven't got aces on
-top.' Now, that was good poker reasoning, the kind of
-reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money
-ahead of the game anyway for twenty years or so, and
-I gave him the raise-back just as often as he threw it
-at me.
-
-"'Finally,' said he, 'we are getting out of our depth
-and beyond the breaker line, ain't we? I've got you
-man-handled, but you junipers from the East never can
-feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I'll skate in
-my little five and call you.'
-
-"We each had about $80 in the pot then.
-
-"I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the
-pair of tens, and was just about to make some good-natured
-crack about getting a hoe to scoop in my winnings
-on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and
-raked in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a
-pair of aces up on a pair of sixes and the joker.
-
-"'What the dickens are you doing there?' I asked him
-when he raked in the pot. 'Can't you see it's a misdeal?
-I forgot to take the joker out of the deck.'
-
-"'Misdeal nothing,' he said, still smiling. 'You had
-a good hand all right, but aces beat kings, you know,
-anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.'
-
-"'Yes,' said I, 'but you've only got aces up, and I've
-got a full hand, kings up, and it's a misdeal, anyhow'——
-
-"Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought
-to be in a lunatic asylum.
-
-"'Misdeal?' said my friend who had swiped the pot.
-'What the deuce are you giving us, anyhow? I caught
-the joker on the draw, and it just filled my hand—three
-aces and a pair of sixes. Don't an ace-full beat a king-full
-in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from?'
-
-"'You mean you call the joker an ace?' said I, the
-thing beginning to dawn upon me.
-
-"The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying
-to find out if I was drunk or not.
-
-"'Why, do you mean to say,' said the man I had played
-with, 'that you don't know that in poker the joker is
-any old thing you choose to make it—that, when you get
-it either on the deal or on the draw, you can call it anything
-you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full house
-or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need
-sleep. You've been working too hard. Turn in and
-have a long night of it.'
-
-"I couldn't help but laugh.
-
-"'Well,' said I, 'you people may call this joker-jiggling
-poker, but somehow or another it suggests tag and
-I-spy and little girls singing "London Bridge is falling
-down" to me. Why in the devil don't you play poker
-with a pinochle deck and be done with it? Come on, and
-we'll build card houses, or what's the matter with playing
-casino for chalk or pin-wheels?'
-
-"'Why, don't you benighted people back East use the
-joker?'
-
-"'Yes,' said I, 'we do. We always give the joker in
-a new deck to babies in arms to cut their teeth on.'
-
-"Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is
-that straights don't go. I've been catching occasional
-pat straights and drawing to 'em all my life, and I think
-the straight is one of the prettiest plays in poker. In
-playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one
-card, you've got the fun of trying to figure out whether
-he's drawing to a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight
-or a flush, and it's interesting work. If he stands pat,
-it's up to you to determine by the mind-reading process
-whether he's simply bluffing or actually has a pat straight
-or full hand or flush in his paws.
-
-"Well, out on the coast they've heard occasional rumors
-of such things as straights being played somewhere
-or another in the game of draw, but you won't meet one
-coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the
-straight consists of and what the chances are of a man's
-getting a pat straight or of filling a one-ended or double-ended
-straight. As for playing straights, they've never
-even dreamed of such an absurdity. I found that out in
-the second game of draw I got into out there.
-
-"It was in Portland, and another four-handed game,
-the other three fellows being business men also. We
-played along for a while without my running into any
-snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on
-the deal four cards that had in them the making of a
-corking good straight, capable of being filled at either
-end, from nine up to queen, so that either an eight or a
-king on the draw would have fixed me all right. I decided
-to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the
-fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw.
-When I caught my king I was glad I had decided to draw
-to my straight. A king-high straight is a pretty good mess
-of cards in any man's game of draw as we know draw
-back in these parts.
-
-"There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of
-course, with that clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn't
-going to let any of 'em put it on me. I met every raise
-and stuck so persistently and confidently that the whole
-three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far
-as that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me.
-The last time I raised it they kind o' exchanged looks,
-and the man at my left called me. The other two men
-followed suit, and there was a general laying down of
-hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow
-next to him aces up on treys, and the man at my right
-three sixes. I projected my right arm to sweep in the
-good-sized pot after spreading out my king-high straight.
-
-"'Hold up, there!' they all yelled at me at once.
-'What's all this? What are you trying to do—hypnotize
-us?' And the man who had laid down his three eights
-made a reach for the pot.
-
-"It was now my turn to think the whole three of
-'em looney.
-
-"'Is there so much smoke in here,' said I, 'that you
-three people can't perceive that I've got a king-high
-straight?'
-
-"'Straight?' said the man with the three eights.
-'Straight be damned! You've got one king up on nothing.
-How old are you, anyhow—seven? Straight?
-Listen to him!' And the three of 'em gave the hoarse
-hoot in chorus. I asked 'em to get around me and pinch
-me, because I wanted to find out if I was dreaming or
-not, but they were too busy leaning back in their chairs
-and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay
-any attention to me. That's what I got for not inquiring
-beforehand into the kind of draw I stacked up against
-in Portland.
-
-"The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Barbara.
-I got into a game of draw with three hotel clerks,
-all good fellows, but all addicted to the nursery poker
-they play out there, and again I forgot to nail 'em up
-against the wall and make 'em exude information about
-the kind of game they purposed playing. We got along
-all right for an hour or so, and at the end of the time
-I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o'
-tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw
-three or four times and beat 'em out on their own game—
-which is a silly game, and about as brainy as bean-bag,
-all the same. I also kept away from my inclination to
-draw to straights, and, having made this much progress,
-I really didn't think I was in for any more rude and costly
-surprises in the game. That's where I did the leap-year
-figuring.
-
-"I gave myself a neat mess of clubs—four of them—with
-the ace for a capstone. I have always been lucky
-in bobbing to flushes, and this looked good. Two of the
-other fellows drew two cards each, and the other man
-asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to
-look gloomy and depressed. An ace-high flush has always
-been good enough for me on this side of the
-continent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three hotel
-clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too,
-and, although there was nothing frantic about the betting,
-it was nice and smooth and even, and the pot grew in a
-way that suited me down to the ground. When it got so
-large on five-dollar raises as we thought it ought to be
-there was a general suggestion for a call and a show-down.
-Two of my fellow players had threes, small
-ones, and the other two pairs that we wouldn't stay
-with very long back in this neck of the woods. Well, I
-flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just
-about to say something about easy money when the man
-with the best threes scooped in the pot.
-
-"'Must have left your specs at home, my boy,' said I,
-thinking he was only fooling. 'Pass that pile over.'
-
-"'For why?' said he.
-
-"Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious.
-
-"'For why?' I repeated. 'Well, the instructors at
-whose feet I sat to learn what is learnable about the game
-of draw poker always taught me to believe that a flush is
-better than threes.'
-
-"'Yes,' said he, 'but didn't you draw a card?'
-
-"'What the devil difference does that make?' I inquired.
-
-"'Oh,' said he patronizingly, 'I see you're a bit new
-at the game. You see, you can't draw to flushes. You've
-got to hold 'em pat.'
-
-"Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I
-had to stand for it, on the 'do-as-the-Romans-do' principle.
-
-"In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows
-who were so warm that they wouldn't play anything but
-jack-pots. At the start-off of the game—the first hand—none
-of the four of us could open it. It went around
-three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of
-queens. Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught another
-queen, and played the hand for all it was worth.
-When I was called I showed down my hand, and had 'em
-both beat.
-
-"'Foul hand,' said they. 'You didn't have openers,'
-and they looked at me suspiciously.
-
-"'The dickens you say!' said I. 'I went in with a
-pair of queens and caught another one—there they are.'
-
-"'But you needed aces,' said they, all at once. 'It
-went around four times, and jack-pots are progressive, of
-course. D'ye mean to say you didn't know that? Sorry,
-old man, that we'll have to split the pot.'
-
-"'Are they always progressive out here?' I asked.
-
-"'Always,' they answered, and that settled it. The
-pot was split."
-
-
-
-
-THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET."
-===================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Few Gamblers Perceive "the Psychological Moment" For Quitting Play and Retiring Rich.*
-
-
-An old man whose mind is still alert, and the movements
-of whose tall, somewhat stooped body are as free
-and spry as those of many a man fifty years his junior, is
-Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in this
-country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the
-statesmen with a penchant for gaming who lived in Washington
-fifty, forty, and thirty years ago, when it was
-deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land to
-try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above
-board. Martin is now verging upon 80 years of age,
-and even to the present generation of Washingtonians his
-white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His age
-does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is
-about as wide now, he says, as it was back in the fifties.
-He had a great deal of money at one time in his career,
-but most of it went by the board. He had the caution
-to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years
-ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. He has passed
-most of his life in Washington, but before and after
-the war of the rebellion he had adventures in many parts
-of the United States where gaming was at its highest.
-He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about
-the statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the
-national life of the country before the war, and the local
-newspaper have published many of his reminiscences of
-this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets into his
-stride and the company is congenial he talks well and
-entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of
-the well-known young American turf plunger who, after
-having beaten the English racing game to the tune of
-$150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly that,
-only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad.
-
-"Another example of the chance taker who has not
-mastered the fine science of quitting," was his way of
-summing it up. "That seems to be the most difficult
-point in the gambling business—to know just the right
-time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself.
-I wish I had. Any fool can go on playing when he is
-away ahead of his game, but it takes a man of unusual
-strength of character, perception and foresight to knock
-off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that it begins
-to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a 'psychological
-moment.' I don't know of any business in
-life in which the psychological moment plays a greater
-part than it does in gambling. Most of this country's
-old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or,
-worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of
-one of them leaving not enough money behind to have
-his body put into the ground that I don't recall the time
-when he had tens or hundreds of thousands. The gambler
-by profession has many a psychological moment in
-the course of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of
-them. He goes on dabbling at a percentage that his common-sense
-tells him is against him, and that he has only
-temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds himself
-broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn't
-break off when he was on top of the wave. I have known
-a few professional gamblers who knew just when to quit.
-Some of them are still alive, old men like myself, and
-they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left
-good sums of money behind them.
-
-"I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best
-known of the New Orleans gamblers before the war, win
-$60,000 in an afternoon's play at faro. This was in Memphis.
-He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he
-returned with all of the money and he began to buck
-the king. He played it open every time and the king
-lost eight straight times in two deals. That cost Plantagenet
-$20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken
-off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the
-eighth straight losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He
-was frank enough to admit that he had cold feet.
-
-"'While freely acknowledging that I am more or
-less of a d—d fool,' he said coolly, 'I strive for the reputation
-of knowing when I've got enough, even of a good
-thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If the box
-were only depleting me gradually but surely I don't doubt
-that I'd go until I was all up. But I can see legible handwriting
-on the wall from as considerable a distance as
-my neighbors, and when I'm on top, as I am now, well
-and comfortably, and eight straight kings range themselves
-against me on the left hand side of the layout,
-that's the kind of a signal I'm waiting for, and I pass.
-I'll bet any man on the side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that
-the next king out of the box wins, but no more faro.
-
-"Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was
-standing by when Plantagenet made this little talk.
-
-"'You are wise in your generation, George,' said he.
-'Now, it is about a 10 to 1 shot against the king losing
-again. Consequently you can afford to give me at least
-2 to 1 on that proposition. I'll bet you $2,500 to $5,000
-that the king does lose the next time out.'
-
-"'Taken,' said Plantagenet, covering Wooton's money,
-and the crowd gathered round to watch the dealer riffle
-the cards. The box was fully half out before a king
-showed, and it showed on the losing side—nine straight.
-Wooton pulled down the side bet.
-
-"'Which I may remark,' said Plantagenet with the
-greatest coolness, 'that this ninth consecutive lose of the
-king simply confirms and makes good the hunch I had to
-quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go a bit
-further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper
-and sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck
-your bank now with dummy chips representing all of
-my winnings and the roll I originally started with, and
-that, although I shall play as carefully and as cautiously
-and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really
-represent money, I shall lose every stack within two
-hours.'
-
-"Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the
-latter knew that Plantagenet would try to win with the
-dummy chips even though he would be $1,000 loser if
-he did.
-
-"'Go ahead and prove your case,' said Wooton, and
-a dealer who was off duty was called upon to deal. Plantagenet
-kept cases himself and played his own particular
-system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton stood
-by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular
-game. Plantagenet's luck had deserted him, and he lost
-two bets out of every three. It seemed impossible for
-him to get down right, and he lost steadily. He had
-played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes
-and Wooton hand him the $1,000.
-
-"'That's the way it would have been had I been playing
-with money,' said Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed
-with him. Plantagenet was one of the men who knew
-when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren
-around him, in the early seventies, he left more than
-$500,000 to be distributed among his heirs.
-
-"Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a professional
-gambler, but who outdid most of the famous
-professional gamblers of the South in the late fifties in
-the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning humor,
-was another man who knew when to quit. I saw
-him win $32,000 in one night at bank in the rooms of the
-old Crescent City Club. Then he curled up all of a
-sudden and cashed in. He wasn't a quitter in the ungenerous
-sense, but he used to say that the little angel, supposed
-by the sailors to sit aloft and watch out for Jack
-Tar, had a habit of informing him, when he was bucking
-another man's game, just the proper time to pass it
-up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him.
-On this occasion Joe Randolph, a heavy player from
-Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not pressing his luck—for
-quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets
-out of five.
-
-"'All right, Randolph,' said Baker after he had cashed
-in. 'I'll let you make five $10 bets in my behalf on the
-deal now running and I'll bet you an even $2,000 that I
-(or you) lose four out of the five; this, just to show you
-that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is
-good.'
-
-"Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with
-more than an even chance in his favor, and he lost, for
-every one of the five bets lost. Baker would quit when
-he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he was
-away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in
-a four-handed poker game with friends in one of the
-parlors of the old St. Charles Hotel between the hours
-of 6 and 9 o'clock one evening. He had practically an
-unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering
-the size of the game—$200 limit—but he yawned and
-pushed his chair back with the simple statement that it
-wasn't his night. The next night he lost $2,000 more
-to the same three friends, and again he resumed his seat.
-On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four
-hours' play, but he gave no sign of quitting.
-
-"'Isn't it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms
-and forsake us again, Baker?' asked one of his friends
-in the game, jokingly.
-
-"'No,' said Baker, 'I'm going to stay along to-night.
-I'll begin to win soon, and then you can all stand by.'
-
-"He began to win on the very next deal and at 2
-o'clock in the morning he had not only retrieved his losses
-on the week's play, but he had all the money in the crowd.
-Baker was possessed of a species of intuition that was
-something extraordinary. I don't know what else to call
-it but intuition. I never saw him take a daring chance
-that he did not win out on it—chances that no professional
-gambler would dream of taking, and diametrically
-opposed to all of the rules of percentage in games of
-hazard. One night he walked into 'Don' Haskell's
-Madrid Club in St. Louis—this was in the fall of '59—and
-stood and watched a few deals out of the box at the
-$500-limit faro table. Then he reached over and bought
-five yellow—$100—chips from the dealer. He put them
-all on the ace and coppered the card. The ace lost, and
-the dealer put five yellow chips on the top of the original
-five on the ace, and waited for Baker to haul them down.
-Baker absent-mindedly made no move, to take the chips
-until the dealer reminded him of them.
-
-"'Let them stand, with the ace coppered,' said Baker.
-
-"'But it's $500 limit, Mr. Baker,' said the dealer.
-
-"'Let it stand, Jack,' said 'Don' Haskell, coming up
-behind Jack and addressing the dealer. 'Let it stand
-as long as Mr. Baker wants to make play with the ace coppered,
-and we'll see if we can't commit assault and battery
-on his "intuition."'
-
-"Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then
-waited for the turns on the ace. The ace was only half
-a dozen cards below, and it lost. The dealer ranged ten
-more yellows beside Baker's pile.
-
-"'Let them stand, ace coppered,' said Baker, scanning
-the cases for a few deals back carelessly.
-
-"'Don' Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer
-and the other players at the table neglected to put any
-bets down in their interest in Baker's peculiar play. There
-was only one more ace left in the box and it came out a
-loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside
-Baker's pile—$4000—and he and the proprietor waited for
-Baker to haul them down. Baker leaned back and lit a
-cigar, leaving the $4000 in yellows to stand.
-
-"'I'll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you're
-willing, "Don,"' he said quietly to Haskell.
-
-"'The longer the better,' said Haskell, and the dealer
-began to slip them out. The first ace was way down in
-the center of the box, and Haskell looked a bit chagrined
-when it came out a loser.
-
-"'Eight thousand, eh?' he said, looking over the stack
-of yellows on the coppered ace. 'One more whirl at it,
-Baker—that'll be about all I can stand to-night if you take
-it down.'
-
-"The ace came out on the losing side again—a thing
-that no professional gambler would have bet on had he
-been offered 5 to 1 on the proposition—and Baker cashed
-in $16,000. He would have let it run again had Haskell
-been able to stand it, but the 'Don' had enough. Baker
-stood by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again
-and then he put $500 on it to win. It won and he took
-the boat for New Orleans with $16,500 of Haskell's
-money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned
-Ripley and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans
-trio of tiger buckers, broke the Madrid Club's bank roll
-wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker was the man
-who started Haskell in business again.
-
-"When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often
-to have a sudden feeling that it was time for some strong
-bucker on the other side of the table to cash in and quit,
-but of course it was no part of my business to make any
-such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Washington,
-in the winter of '66, when the outcast son of a rich
-tobacco man of Richmond came along and whacked my
-box for $12,000 in a single night's play at $200 limit.
-I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that
-since his father had run him out of Richmond he had
-had more than his share of hard luck. In fact, he had
-often been hungry, and I had often given him a $5 or
-$10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had
-started in on my box with a shoestring—where he got it
-I don't know—and, as I say, he got me to the tune of
-$12,000 before I turned the box on him for the night.
-The man in whose interest I was dealing was very wealthy
-and a generous man. He knew the young chap's father.
-He came to me after the young man had left with his
-winnings and said:
-
-"'You'd better hunt up that boy and tell him that he'd
-better not play any more. He's had his run of luck, and
-he's got enough to give himself a start. I don't want the
-money back. If he handles it right it'll do him more
-good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense
-into the lads' head.'
-
-"That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat
-of a man whose bank had been raided. I hunted the
-young fellow up that morning and told him about it. He
-was full of hifalutin' talk about wanting to give the proprietor
-of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing.
-
-"'He can take care of himself,' said I to the boy. 'He
-knows your father, and I dare say he's clipped your
-father's bank roll for a good deal more than $12,000 on
-occasions when your dad has visited Washington and
-gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple
-and fine linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor
-in Richmond with a high head and a proper countenance.
-That'll be better than walking into Richmond in need of
-a Russian bath.'
-
-"The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn't
-keep his promise to me to stop. He came in that night,
-and in half an hour's play he ran his $12,000 up to
-$15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of
-final warning. He paid no attention to me, though.
-Then he began to lose, and in three hours he was flat
-broke. He went out with a wild light in his eye, and the
-next morning he was found dead in his little boarding-house
-room, with a bullet in his brain.
-
-"It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence
-hates a quitter, but that doesn't apply to gambling. The
-knowledge of when to get cold feet, and the gentle art of
-doing the same, are valuable assets for any man who tries
-to buck another man's game."
-
-
-
-
-CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER.
-==================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *And They Got Him the Whole Length of the Missouri, Until He Went Against Another Game and Won Out.*
-
-
-"A man hunting for poker trouble could get a-plenty
-of it on the Big Muddy stern-wheelers around the latter
-sixties and the early seventies," said Joe Reilly of Sioux
-City. "There weren't many regular poker sharks working
-the Missouri River boats in those days like there were
-on the Mississippi steamers, but just the same the men
-that traveled on those weather-boarded, lop-sided old
-sand-bar wagons on the Big Muddy all knew how to play
-poker some, I'm a-telling you. Cato Bullman found this
-out when he went up against a whole lot of different men's
-games on the old 'Gen. W. T. Sherman' in 1872.
-
-"Bullman was pardners with Nate Stillwater in running
-a big general store in Yankton, and both of 'em were
-making a mint of money at the time I'm going to tell you
-about. They'd ha' made more, I guess, if Stillwater
-hadn't drank too much whisky and Bullman hadn't played
-too much poker. Now, all in all, Stillwater handled his
-whisky pretty well, and at such times as he found it was
-getting a half-Nelson on him he'd leave it off for a spell
-and attend to business, so that his end of the dissipation
-of the firm of Stillwater & Bullman wasn't half as bad
-as Cato's. Cato loved to play poker so much that he'd
-knock right off in the middle of selling a bill of goods
-to a gang of freighters to go off somewheres and sit in a
-game. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, even if it
-was darned poor business policy, if Cato ever won. But
-he never did. He had no license ever to touch a pack
-of cards. In the first place, he was a yap at cards,
-and any American kid that knew how to play old maid
-could have hopped out of the back of a prairie schooner
-and beaten Cato out of his boots at the game for money,
-marbles or chalk. In the second place, Cato was a natural
-born hoodoo. If he was drawing to three aces, and
-the other fellow was taking five cards, the other fellow'd
-beat Cato out and have plenty to space. So that it was
-just about up to Cato to holler murder and take to the
-brush whenever anybody flashed a pack of the pasteboards
-on him. But he didn't see it this way. He went right on
-playing poker and getting soaked for his share of the
-profits of the firm. Cato appeared to be just stone-blind
-to the fact that the foxy people that didn't do much of
-anything else around Yankton except to play cards were
-in a fair way to fix themselves with meal tickets for life
-at his expense, and as he was pretty near seven foot high
-and built in proportion, none of us felt like trying to kick
-any sense into his fool head.
-
-"Anyhow, in the summer of '72 Bullman started down
-the river on the old 'Gen. W. T. Sherman' for St. Louis
-to buy goods. He had $10,000 in greenbacks along with
-him. Before he went aboard the boat Stillwater, who
-wasn't much more'n five foot high, ranged himself alongside
-Cato's big carcass, and says he:
-
-"'Cato, this here v'yage you're about to embark on is
-a business trip and nothin' else. It ain't no jamboree
-and it ain't no poker picnic. There's some smooth people
-gits aboard these here mud ploughs down below at the
-landings, and in their hands you'd be nothin' but a great
-big moon-eyed jayhawker, which you are. So throughout
-this here journey you'd best git 'way up on top o' the
-boat and sit on a pile o' planks just abaft the pilot-house
-and smoke your pipe. You're not to play no poker at all,
-you hear me? When you git stuck on a sand-bar you can
-fish over the side for bullhead catfish, but you don't play
-no poker. If, when you git back here, I hear that you've
-been playing poker, I'll mangle you up a heap; now you
-hear me a-talkin'.'
-
-"Cato reached down, picked up his partner by the
-scruff of the neck, and held him out at arm's length.
-
-"'I ain't a-goin' to play no poker, old man,' says he
-to Stillwater. 'Won't touch no cards at all till I git back.
-Kind o' lost my knack at the cards lately, anyhow,' as if he
-ever had any knack at 'em. 'And you want to let the red-eye
-alone while I'm gone, too,' Cato finished, and then
-set his little partner down. Then Cato went aboard the
-boat. As I was going along down to St. Louis myself,
-Stillwater calls me aside and says to me:
-
-"'Jest keep an eye on that big galoot on the way down,
-and if he gits restless and shows an inclination to get tangled
-up with a poker deck, jest bat him over the head
-with a capstan bar.'
-
-"But I wasn't making any rash promises like that.
-Well, Cato was all right the first day out, and he followed
-his pardner's instructions and sat around on deck
-smoking his corn-cob pipe and feeling his big wallet occasionally.
-He kept as far away as possible from the little
-deck-house where a game was started going before the
-boat pushed out into the stream, but the rattle of the chips
-was bound to reach his ears occasionally. On the second
-day some stockmen got aboard that Cato knew, and Cato
-took a few drinks with 'em. Then they invited Cato
-into a little game. Cato looked at me kind o' guilty like,
-and then shook himself together like a man does that
-says to himself, 'It's nobody's danged business but my
-own.' So he sits into the game with the stockmen. They
-were only going down a few landings, and when they got
-off they had $2000 of Cato's money. I never in my life
-before or since saw such hoodoo luck as Cato had in that
-game with those stockmen. He didn't get a pair more'n
-once in a hundred hands, and if he did get a pair and happened
-to better it in the draw he'd give a hoot that 'ud
-wake up the owls ashore and then bet like an Ogallala
-Sioux with four aces and a dirk knife. It was just simply
-painful to watch Cato in that game, and no mistake.
-When the stockmen got off some of them actually looked
-so sorry for Cato that I kind o' thought they'd offer to give
-him his money back. But they didn't.
-
-"'I'm kind o' out o' luck lately,' says Cato to me after
-the stockmen had got off with his $2000, 'and I b'lieve
-I'll just draw in now and wait for a hunch. No good
-buckin' agin' a streak o' bad luck, is there?'
-
-"Well, I told him that if my 10-year-old boy down in
-Sioux City wasn't able to play poker any better than he,
-Cato, could before he put on long trousers and suspenders
-I'd send him up to a lumber camp until he became of age.
-But Cato didn't pay any attention to me, and when an
-awkward, overworked-looking man, dressed like a farmer,
-got aboard a couple of landings below he struck up an
-acquaintance with him. This farmer-like looking man
-had a pretty keen pair of eyes in his head, as I noticed,
-and he had besides that yokelly way of finding out
-about other people's business. So it didn't take him
-long to dig it out of Cato that Cato was going down to
-St. Louis to buy a stock of goods. The three of us were
-sitting on the hind rail, whittling, when this farmer-like
-looking man turns to Cato and asks him:
-
-"'Ever play key-ards?'
-
-"Cato looked at me again and hesitated.
-
-"'Oh, wunct in a while,' says he, finally, and in a pair
-of minutes they were in the middle of a poker game. The
-stranger asked me to sit in, of course, but I could see
-that he wasn't over-anxious to have me in the game, and
-I never played poker on steamboats, stern-wheel or side-wheel,
-anyhow.
-
-"Cato's hoodoo luck followed him right along in his
-game with the overworked-looking man, who seemed to
-me to have considerable of a job covering up a natural
-sort of deftness he had in handling a pack. The two
-played for three or four hours, the stranger announcing
-occasionally that he was going to get off at the next landing,
-so's to screen himself from the inference that he was
-getting cold feet, probably. He was about $1000 ahead
-of Cato's game when the boat was nearing his landing.
-
-"'Hev to make it a jackpot naow,' said he, when the
-old stern-wheeler began to wheeze and snort a little preparatory
-to stopping at the landing.
-
-"He dealt the jackpot hand himself and each man had
-$100 in the center of the table. It was to be sweetened
-for $100 each time the deal passed. But it didn't pass.
-Cato opened the pot for $100 and his Reuben-looking
-opponent stayed. The betting swayed back and forth
-until each man had $1000 up, and then the farmer-like
-looking man called Cato. Cato had three eights. The
-other man had three tens. The other man stuffed the
-bills from the center of the table into his overalls, shook
-Cato quite effusively by the hand, and went ashore.
-
-"'Got enough?' says I to Cato when the old sandbar-bucker
-was once again under way.
-
-"'Say,' says he to me, 'ye can't never jedge a man by
-his looks, can ye? That man knows a hull heap more'n
-you'd think, don't he?'
-
-"'Got enough, Cato?' I repeats, for I wanted to pin
-him to the question in hand.
-
-"'Well, I shorely am out o' luck, and no mistake,'
-was as far as he would commit himself.
-
-"The next day a man who looked like members of
-Congress out my way used to look got aboard. He was
-dress in a long black broadcloth coat and wore a big
-black slouch hat, and he carried himself like a man that
-amounted to a good deal. He was amiable in his manners,
-though, and he hadn't been aboard more'n half an
-hour before he happened to fall into talk with Cato. Cato
-was a little sore about the loss of his $4,000, but this
-legislator-like looking man was so entertaining and
-sprung so a lot of good stories over the jug of good stuff
-which Cato brought out of his stateroom that Cato appeared
-to forget his troubles for the time.
-
-"'Monotonous work, this steamboat traveling, isn't
-it?' says the statesmanlike-looking man to Cato after a
-while. 'I've only four hours traveling to do, and yet
-I've been dreading it for a week. What do you say to
-a little game of dime-ante. You play, of course?'
-
-"Cato scratched his chin.
-
-"'Durned if b'lieve I can any more," said he ruefully,
-and then, like the innocent big dogan that he was, he
-tells his new friend how he has already lost $4,000 on
-the trip down, and that he feels like hanging on to his
-remaining $6,000.
-
-"'Oh, but only a little dime-ante game, you know,'
-says the man who looked like a member of Congress, and
-his eyes opened up a bit, I noticed, at the mention of the
-$6,000.
-
-"'O. K.,' says Cato. 'Jest to pass the time,' and down
-they sat. I was asked in, but I told the statesmanlike-looking
-man that I had left my specs up in Yankton and
-therefore couldn't see the hands well enough to play.
-Well, the dime-ante and the dollar limit that they started
-in at lasted just until Cato got a whopping big hand,
-which happened to be given to him by the man that looked
-like an M. C.
-
-"'Say,' says Cato then, looking a heap excited, 's'posin'
-we jest take the limit off'n this here game, anyhow, fur
-a little while?'
-
-"'Why, certainly,' says his opponent genially, and
-Cato walks right in and wins $500 clean on that hand of
-his. He gives me a look out o' the tail of his eye that
-says, 'Well, what do you think of me now,' and the game
-goes on.
-
-"Well, the M. C.-looking man begins to win quite a
-good deal then, and he, like the farmer-looking man,
-brought the game to a jackpot finish as the boat approached
-his getting-off place.
-
-"'Fur how much?' inquired Cato, who was about
-$1,000 out already.
-
-"'Oh, about $50 and $50 sweeteners,' said the man
-across the table.
-
-"'No, we won't, either,' says Cato. 'We'll each put
-in $1,000, an' no sweeteners. That's jest as good fur
-you as 'tis fur me.'
-
-"'Exactly,' says the distinguished looking man playing
-with him, and Cato dealt the hands. Neither man
-had openers. Then the other man dealt 'em. Cato opened
-it on jacks up on treys, and caught another jack in
-the draw. The boat snorted and wheezed preparatory to
-being made fast. Cato bet a flat $1,000 on his jack full,
-and the M. C.-looking man, looking kind o' impatient to
-get ashore, win or lose, calls him. Cato lays down his
-jack full with a grin at me—and says his friends across
-the table:
-
-"'You do indeed, my friend, appear to labor under a
-blanket of ill-fortune,' and he spreads out his four nines
-and gathers in the pot. Then he hurries ashore, after
-shaking the crestfallen Cato warmly by the hand.
-
-"'Got $3,000 left now, haven't you, Cato?' says I
-then, for it began to look to me as if word had been
-passed down the whole length of the Missouri River that
-Cato Bullman was traveling on one of its steamboats with
-money. 'Better let me keep that $3,000 for you.'
-
-"'No, I'm durned if I do,' says Cato. 'Might as well
-lose it all now, devil take it,' and he gnawed on his fingernails,
-thinking about what kind of a story he'd put up to
-his partner, I guess, when he got back to Yankton broke.
-
-"Well, Cato did lose it all, or close on to all of it. He
-foregathered with a man that got aboard at Omaha, and
-said he was a civil engineer for the Union Pacific Railroad.
-The civil engineer got $1,800 of Cato's greenbacks,
-and then got off. Twenty miles below Omaha, at
-a little handing, a gappy looking hog raiser that Cato had
-met before climbed over the rail, and Cato thought he
-saw a chance to recoup his drooping fortunes. The hog
-raiser relieved Cato of $1,000, and had an important engagement
-to look at some fancy hogs at the next stop.
-This left Cato with $200.
-
-"'Convinced that you're a damphool yet, Cato?'
-says I.
-
-"'Dang'd if I don't begin b'lieve I am,' he owns up.
-
-"'How about those goods you were going to buy in
-St. Louis?' I asked him.
-
-"'I dunno,' he said, mournful like.
-
-"Well, when we got to Leavenworth, Kan., the wheezy
-old Sherman tied up for twenty-four hours for repairs to
-the machinery. Cato was pretty gloomy. We went
-ashore and put up at the old Planters' House. On the
-night we struck Leavenworth I walked Cato around to
-sort o' relieve his mind. We were strolling down Shawnee
-street when we both saw a pretty much lighted up
-place into which a lot of well-gotten up men were going.
-When we came up to the place we heard the rattle of the
-chips and click of the marble and the choppy talk of the
-keno men, and then we saw that it was Col. Jennison's
-famous Bon Ton gambling joint, running wide open and
-full blast. Cato made for the door. I grabbed him by
-the sleeve.
-
-"'Come out o' that,' says I. 'You've only got $200,
-which won't more'n get you back to Yankton. Haven't
-you been enough of an idiot already?'
-
-"'I got a hunch,' says Cato, releasing himself from
-me and starting again for the door.
-
-"'Hunch!' says I, but he was already inside.
-
-"Well, Cato goes up to the faro table where the big
-men of the town seem to be playing bank, and says I to
-myself, 'Joe, you'll have to dig up to send this crazy
-man back to his pardner in Yankton.'
-
-"Cato bought $200 worth of chips, tapping himself,
-and began. Gentlemen, he couldn't lose. He scattered
-his chips over every card on the table, and he couldn't
-lose. He won eight bets out of ten. He let his money
-lie on cards four times over, and won every time. He
-didn't use a copper, but played every card wide open.
-There didn't seem to be a split in the box for Cato. In
-less than twenty minutes he had won over $3,000. There
-was a $500 limit on the game. Cato asked to have it
-removed. When the limit was taken off, Cato made
-three $1,000 bets running, and won every one of them.
-Then he came off his perch and got down to $200 bets
-again, playing 'em like a veteran, and just simply unable
-to lose, gentlemen. The rest of the men at the table
-quit playing just to watch Cato. Once in a while Cato'd
-play the high card, just to see if his luck was holding.
-The high card came out every time he did it. They
-switched the dealer three times. They switched the lookout
-half a dozen times. They tried different boxes.
-They changed tables. They did everything. But, gentlemen,
-Cato Bullman was playing faro, and he couldn't
-lose. I was proud of the big duffer. In an hour he was
-$18,000 ahead of Col. Jennison's bank. They sent across
-the way to get Col. Jennison who was playing a quiet
-little game of poker in the Star of the West saloon. Col.
-Jennison came over to the Bon Ton and sat down to handle
-the box for Cato himself. Cato soaked Col. Jennison
-every bit as hard as he had soaked all of Col. Jennison's
-dealers. Col. Jennison was game, but, when at
-the end of three hours, Cato was still going right ahead
-winning like a cyclone, he turned the box over with this
-little remark:
-
-"'Gentlemen, the game is closed for the night.'
-
-"When Cato cashed in he had just $35,200. I took him
-by the arm and walked him down to the hotel and got him
-into his room. Cato went to the basin to wash his hands.
-When he turned around to me again he looked into the
-barrels of both my guns.
-
-"'Cato,' says I, 'I'm sorry, but I'll just trouble you to
-hand over every cent of that $35,200 you've got, right
-away now, darned quick, or I'll blow the whole top of
-your head off.'
-
-"Cato didn't demur a little bit. He plunked the
-money down—most of it was in $1,000 and $500 bills—on
-the table.
-
-"'I don't suppose I've got enough sense to pack it
-around, fur a fac',' said he.
-
-"When we got to St. Louis I handed Cato $10,000 to
-buy his goods with, and expressed the $23,200 to his address
-in Yankton.
-
-"'Well,' said his little pardner, Stillwater, when Cato
-got back to Yankton, 's'long as you won, you big clod-hopper,
-I don't s'pose I need to mangle you up none.
-But if you had lost!'"
-
-
-
-
-FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN.
-==============================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *He Was Too Handy with the Pasteboards, Wherefore He Arrived Prematurely in the "Happy Hunting Grounds."*
-
-
-"It happens more or less frequently," said a traveling
-Inspector of Indian Agencies, "that an educated buck
-Indian degenerates in the long run into a bad proposition.
-I'm thinking particularly of an educated Oregon Indian,
-about a three-quarter blood, who got the big-head so bad
-after he had been polished off mentally back this way
-that he never mixed up with his people when he returned
-from the East. He was a Umatilla. He was
-first sent to Carlisle, and when he had finished there he
-was passed on to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, to take
-the law course there. It was in view that he was to become
-the attorney for his tribe upon the conclusion of his
-Blackstone-thumbing. He squeezed through the law at
-Johns Hopkins, and then he was told of the nice fat thing
-that awaited him out among his own people. He turned
-the proposition down cold. He said flatly that he had no
-intention whatever of mixing up with his own bunch at all
-any more. He likewise remarked that he knew his gait,
-and that he intended to follow it.
-
-"A couple of months after he quit Baltimore he turned
-up at The Dalles in Western Oregon and settled down
-to the career of a short poker player. Where he had
-picked up the game it would be hard to say; but he certainly
-was a daisy at it. There wasn't a kink in the game
-that he didn't have the hang of. Now, The Dalles isn't
-any bad man's camp; it is a very beautiful health resort
-in the Cascade Mountains, on the south bank of the Columbia
-River; there wasn't a hard character in the place
-until this educated buck established his headquarters
-there; and it suited his game to a T. He made it his
-business to nail young tourists who didn't have any more
-sense than to sit into a poker game with a stranger, much
-less an Indian, and an educated Indian at that; and he
-just stripped them in sets of fours for several years. He
-was a splendid-looking buck and he dressed as men dress
-who've got the money to tog themselves out right back
-this way. When he was engaged in the act of getting
-a new victim he knew how to throw much cordiality and
-some grace into his manners; but ordinarily he was a
-sulky, morose, bad Indian. 'Way down in the deeps
-of him he was a rank coward, for he never tried to twist
-his tentacles about a man who he thought would make a
-stand, much less a scrap, upon discovering that he was
-being done; he always picked out palpable lily-livers who
-looked, to his shrewd eye, as if they would stand for anything
-rather than mix it up with him.
-
-"It did not take the square people of The Dalles long
-to get next to the fact that this educated Indian, who had
-coolly taken up his abode among them, was a cheat and a
-swindler, and that his sole occupation consisted in fleecing
-pulp-headed young tourists. They talked a great deal
-of giving him the razzle-dazzle and chasing him out, but
-somehow or other this suggestion never came to a head.
-The men at The Dalles who had the interest of the place
-at heart would point the swellerino buck out to young
-strangers who looked as if they might be likely victims
-of the Indian short-card fleecer, and tell the young goslings
-just where and how the buck stood. It may sound
-incredible, but even after being warned in this fashion
-a whole lot of the young addlepates fell into the buck's
-mesh and got themselves done to a proper turn by him.
-They were able to take care of themselves, they would
-reply chestily to their warners, and, just to prove it,
-they'd take a hack at the Indian's game. When they got
-through they'd be smoking punk tobacco in pipes while
-the Indian would be blowing the smoke of perfectos in
-their faces, and they'd stand for their craggy end of it
-without a whistle. The buck was 6 feet 3 inches high
-and weighed 235 pounds, and he looked like a macerator
-from the high ridges. So he was never called by any of
-his Dalles victims, even when they knew the details of
-how they'd been plucked. One poor little devil of a rich
-man's son from Omaha whimpered one night when the
-Indian had removed about $800 from him by dealing from
-both ends and the middle of the deck, and he said to the
-buck piteously:
-
-"'I just hope you've played fair, that's all.'
-
-"The Indian reached over and struck the pollywog
-with all of his force on both sides of the face with his two
-open palms, leaving the blood-red welt marks of his fingers
-on the lamb's fair cheeks. The whining victim
-drilled for his life up the hotel stairs to his room, and the
-Indian looked after him sardonically. There wasn't a
-man about that didn't know that the Indian had scandalously
-cheated the lad, but not a one of them said a word.
-There was a keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired
-man, a stranger, standing at the hotel desk reading
-a just-arrived letter, when the thing happened. His face
-flushed angrily when he saw the burly Indian slap the
-undersized fool of a boy, and he turned to the hotel clerk
-and remarked:
-
-"'Is this the real thing here? Does the gang stand
-for that kind of work on the part of a mud-hided raw-meater?'
-There was plenty of contempt in the way the
-stranger spoke.
-
-"The clerk shrugged his shoulders. 'We can't undertake
-to cut in on any of the plays of our guests,' he replied.
-'We just board and lodge 'em, that's all. If
-they're jays enough to mix up with grafters, it's their
-game, and we're not asking for any rake-off, one way or
-the other.'
-
-"The stranger muttered something about a chicken-livered
-population, and strolled out. He took his train an
-hour or so later.
-
-"At certain seasons of the year, when there wasn't
-must doing in his line at The Dalles, owing to periodical
-scarcities of pluckable tourists, the Indian would hit up
-Baker City, Pendleton, and other Oregon towns in search
-of good things, and a couple of times a year he included
-Olympia and Walla Walla in his itinerary. He sung
-somewhat smaller in those places than he did at The
-Dalles, but by keeping his eye skinned for men liable to
-call the turn on him and working quietly he generally
-succeeded in pulling apart at least one jelly-fish in each
-of the towns he took in on these off-season tours.
-
-"About three months after he had left the marks of
-his fingers on the lamb's face at The Dalles—this was in
-the fall of '92—he turned up one day at Walla Walla.
-He strolled around the hotel corridors with an eye to
-business, and along toward night he met with a young
-fellow named Hellen, whose father, a wealthy Chicago
-man, had recently foreclosed a mortgage on a big ranch
-about sixty miles from Walla Walla. The son, a rather
-raw young chap, had come out to look the ranch over,
-and the Indian got next to him as soon as he struck the
-town. The buck was an expert billiard player, and he
-suggested a game of pin billiards to the young Hellen
-chap. He played off on the youth, and soon got him to
-betting on shots. After losing about a dozen $5 bets
-on shots, the Indian socked it to the young man from
-Chicago by betting $300 that he could execute a certain
-difficult shot. It looked like board and lodging to the
-young man that the Indian's $300 would spin into his
-clothes, so he put up $300. The Indian made the shot
-with consummate ease and took down the pot.
-
-"'Fluke!' said young Hellen. 'I'll go you another
-$300.'
-
-"The buck got this bunch, too, without half trying. It
-would naturally be thought that the tenderfoot would
-have smelt a rat by this time. But he didn't. He had
-plenty of money, and probably he considered it piquant to
-lose his coin to a swagger-looking, educated Indian. Anyhow,
-the two were playing poker in the card-room of
-Walla Walla's stag hotel half an hour later.
-
-"There were plenty of men in that card-room who
-knew that the Indian was a short-carder, but men out
-that way aren't garrulous, and they pay a heap of attention
-to the job of minding their own business. The
-youth from Chicago was the merest mutt in the hands
-of the Indian, and he lost from the jump. He would
-stand pat on a full house, and the buck, drawing three
-cards, would still beat him after sky-scraping betting.
-A number of onlookers at the game may have seen the
-little side-plays of the Indian, but they only grinned at
-each other over the hopeless imbecility of the young man
-from Chicago.
-
-"Finally the Indian, perhaps losing some of his dexterity
-from the drinks he was steadily absorbing, over-stepped
-himself. He filled two pairs from the discard
-and he did it clumsily. The young man with whom he
-was playing saw the move.
-
-"'I say, there,' said he, 'what are you doing there,
-you know?' pointing to the discard. 'Didn't you—er—didn't
-you make a mistake and take a card out of that
-pile?'
-
-"The Indian, who was about $1,600 to the good, had
-cold feet, anyhow, and so he threw his hand face downward
-on the table and glared at the Chicago boy. The
-Chicago boy quailed.
-
-"'Er—well, maybe I made the mistake myself'—he
-started to say, when a big voice cut in with:
-
-"'No, you didn't son. You didn't make any mistake
-at all. You're up against the real thing in the way of
-a mud-skinned short-riffler, that's all.'
-
-"A keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired
-man was the speaker. As he spoke he reached down
-from behind the Indian's chair and got two huge hands
-around the buck's neck. The onlookers formed a clearing.
-The Chicago youth got himself on the outskirts of
-the bunch.
-
-"'About three months ago,' said the keen-eyed man,
-dragging the huge, half-choked Indian to his feet, 'I saw
-you at The Dalles leave the prints of your dirty fingers
-on the face of a little whiffet you had just fleeced. I
-hankered then to confer a few personally conducted slaps
-of my own make and manufacture on your coppery jowls,
-but for some reason or other I passed the hanker up on
-that occasion. Well, the slaps are coming to you now.
-It's better late than never, and I'm going to slap you into
-jerked beef just for luck.'
-
-"The buck was finally up against the real thing, and
-he knew it. I'll bet that his face was whiter than mine
-is now when the big-framed man, who had the devil of
-anger lurking in his eyes, suddenly loosed his right hand
-from around the Indian's neck, and, still clutching him
-by the left, swept the loose arm back for the momentum
-and brought his heavy palm smack against the buck's left
-cheek with a noise that sounded like the explosion of a
-charge of blasting powder. The slap rattled the Indian's
-teeth and made his big head joggle from side to side like
-the head of an automaton. Clutching the Indian's throat
-again then with his right hand, the big-framed man repeated
-the slapping performance on the Indian's right
-cheek with his left hand, and left a welt there that might
-have been made by a cat-o'-nine tails. The buck was too
-dazed, in the first place, by the suddenness of it all, to
-make a move: in the second place, he was too cowardly.
-The big-framed man—he was an expert mining engineer
-from Nevada, and his name was Varus Pryor—slapped
-the Indian's face, first with his right and then with his
-left, for three minutes, with all his might, and then, getting
-behind the buck, proceeded to slap him into the
-street. With first one hand and then the other clutching
-the collar of the Indian's coat, he slapped him out to the
-front door of the hotel. Then he gave the buck the knee
-in the small of the back, and hoisted him across the pavement
-to the middle of the street, where the Indian spun
-around and fell for a moment.
-
-"'I don't care what the Indian Bureau says about it,'
-said the keen-eyed man, standing in the doorway of the
-hotel. 'God Almighty never intended that white men
-should stand for such alligators as that copper-mugged
-swindler, and'——
-
-"'Stand clear, pard, he's going to plug you!' shouted
-a man from a second-story window of the hotel.
-
-"The Indian, pretending to be hurt, and only half
-risen to his feet in the obscurity of the middle of the
-street, had got his gun out, and the yell from the second
-story reached Pryor just in time. As it was, the buck
-planted a ball in the front door of the hotel, only two
-inches above the big-framed man's head. By that time
-Pryor's gun was working, and he drilled six holes forty-eight
-hundredths of an inch in diameter plumb through
-the swindling Umatilla's chest. Forty-five minutes later
-he was acquitted by a coroner's jury on the grounds of
-self-defense and justifiable homicide—a two-in-one verdict.
-
-"This," concluded the traveling Inspector of Indian
-Agencies, "was the finish of just one mentally-burnished
-buck Indian, and I know of several others."
-
-
-
-
-THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER.
-=================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Story of a Séance at Stud Between Two Oregon Contractors and the Close Finish Thereof.*
-
-
-"Somehow or another, I don't like the game of stud,"
-said a Government contractor from Portland, Ore. "It's
-too much of a strain to play stud. There are too many
-heart-breaking and headache-producing possibilities attached
-to the mysterious card the other fellow has got
-in the hole. I'd rather take the chance of guessing what
-all of his five cards are than to engage in the perspiring
-business of trying to figure out the horrible possible value
-of the one blind card, especially if the four cards he
-has exposed are capable of being amplified into a hand of
-the topper kind by the addition of that bit of pasteboard
-in the pit. I can't get away from the impression that it's
-like putting all of your money in one bet to play stud.
-Now, there's a good deal to the game of draw besides
-mere bluffing. In fact, bluffing is almost an obsolete feature
-of the game among the experts at draw poker. The
-man that plays his hand in draw will beat the bluffer every
-time in year-in-and-year-out play.
-
-"The folks out my way had the stud-poker fad pretty
-badly about eight or ten years ago, but now they've
-got back to their first love and stick pretty generally to
-the game of California draw—which, by the way, is a
-whole lot different game from the draw you people back
-here play. For example, a man sprung a thing on me
-last night that he called a pat straight. I had three aces,
-but he said his pat straight topped me, and as he had his
-gang with him, I had to look pleasant and let him rake
-in the money. If a man out on the Slope were to talk
-pat straight to a party of aborigines, they'd conduct him
-to the Alcalde's calaboose and have him locked up to
-await a commission's decision as to his responsibility.
-
-"But to get back to the period when the stud-poker
-fad got hold of us out in Oregon. I was a witness of a
-heart-disease finish of a game of that kind a few years
-back that caused me to decide that ordinary draw was
-good enough for my money right along. It was right
-after the big fire that ate up the best part of The Dalles
-eight years ago. As soon as the building contractors of
-Portland got word to the effect that The Dalles was being
-licked up by the flames, they hopped aboard trains and
-made for The Dalles with an eye to business. They knew
-that The Dalles, which was chiefly a wooden layout before
-the fire, would be immediately rebuilt in brick and
-stone, and that the contractors who got on the scene of
-ruin first would scoop in the bulk of the business. Two
-of these contractors were—well, I'll have to side-step on
-their names, for they're two of the most prominent citizens
-out on the banks of the Willamette, and both of
-'em walk up the middle aisle on Sunday as if they never
-heard of such a thing as stud poker. Both of them are
-Irishmen, which is why neither of 'em could see that he
-was licked on this occasion.
-
-"One of them, we'll say, was Dan Carmody, and the
-other was Tim Feeney. Carmody got into The Dalles
-a few hours ahead of Feeney, and he made those few
-hours count. He went around to the business men of
-The Dalles who had been wiped out by the fire and asked
-them what they wanted with him. They hadn't burned
-the wires up telegraphing for Carmody to come to them,
-but Carmody about convinced them that they had done
-just this thing, and he began making estimates for 'em
-with pencil and pad. He corralled them in the one remaining
-hall of the town and told them to go ahead and
-just let him know what they wanted of him. Carmody's
-cyclonic nerve appealed to their fancy, and they found
-themselves juggling with the figures Carmody was putting
-down on his pad. Three hours after Carmody struck
-The Dalles from Portland he had in his inside coat pocket
-rough drafts of contracts to build a new stone business
-block, including a theater, and also to erect a large, ornate
-hotel, the cost of both buildings to be not more than $350,000.
-Oh, Carmody was a hustler all right.
-
-"He had an idea that his friend and business rival,
-Tom Feeney, would be down on the next train from Portland,
-and he went to the station to receive him. Sure
-enough, Feeney stepped off the next incoming train. Carmody
-had his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat
-and a big cigar stuck aggravatingly in his teeth when
-Feeney ran into him. Feeney's jaw fell.
-
-"'When did you get in, Dan?' he asked Carmody.
-
-"'Three hours ago,' replied Dan, with a grin.
-
-"Feeney made a funny motion, as if to jump aboard a
-train that was just pulling out for Portland, but he came
-back to his cheerful rival and asked him:
-
-"'Anything doing, Dan?'
-
-"Carmody executed two very shifty jig steps in token
-of his happiness, and then reassumed his dignity.
-
-"'Well, I'll tell you how it is, Tim,' he said. 'These
-people here are pretty badly chewed up, y' see. Now,
-maybe they'll be wanting to rebuild a few chicken coops
-and outhouses—I don't know but what they will. Now,
-there's a chance for you, Tim.'
-
-"Feeney didn't look very merry over this. Says he:
-'Chicken coops, is it? And who's going to throw up the
-new business building and the opera house, and the hotel,
-and the like?'
-
-"Carmody was laying for that question. He drew the
-two rough contracts out of his pocket.
-
-"' Looks as if I'm It over here, don't it, Tim?' he asked
-Feeney, as the latter read over the two contracts with a
-gloomy countenance. 'Nice work, hey? That's what you
-get for monkeying around in bed all the morning, Tim.
-Why don't you be like me, now? I never go to bed,' etc.
-Carmody couldn't refrain from working that nice edge
-of his, and strung the dismal-faced Feeney for keeps.
-Feeney finally walked away, the picture of dejection, to
-see if there were any crumbs to be picked up in the way
-of rebuilding. He found, however, that all of the business
-men that had not already been got by Carmody were disposed
-to wait awhile for the disposition of insurance, and
-he didn't get a smell of the rebuilding. He walked around
-the still-smoking Dalles for the remainder of the day,
-figuring on how much Carmody was going to make out of
-his two big contracts. Carmody himself started in to open
-wine by way of celebration, so that by the time the night
-boat for Portland was ready to leave her slip he was pretty
-comfortable. Both he and Feeney took the night boat and I
-happened to be going down to Portland on the boat myself
-that night. Feeney had taken the bowl himself a bit
-during the day to assuage his depression over his lack of
-success, and he was pretty mellow when the boat pulled
-out. Carmody, with about a dozen quarts under his belt,
-dug Feeney up as soon as he got aboard, and the two
-walked up and down the main deck, arm in arm, Carmody
-keeping up his merciless stringing of his friend.
-Then Carmody heard the clatter of the chips in a $10
-limit game of stud that had already started in the card-room,
-and suggested a two-handed game of stud to
-Feeney, with some accommodating non-player to deal
-the cards. Feeney was agreeable, and Carmody, seeing
-that I wasn't mixing up with the game in the card-room,
-asked me if I wouldn't dish 'em out for an hour or so of
-stud between himself and Feeney. It was to be $100
-limit and $10 ante. The two men didn't get up to the
-$100 limit at all until after they had played for half an
-hour, and Carmody was $600 or $700 winner. Then
-Feeney found himself with kings up on tens in front of
-him and a card that he either liked or elected to bluff
-on in the hole, while Carmody had three aces face up and
-a card in the hole that he appeared to think a heap of,
-judging from the way he bet.
-
-"'These kings of mine,' said Feeney, with the transparent
-air of a man making a win-out bluff, 'may not
-look very pretty alongside those three bullets of yours,
-Carmody, but they suit me, at that. You can have a peep
-at the blind for $100.'
-
-"'I wouldn't think of paying so little money for the
-privilege of gazing at such a good card as you think you've
-got, Tim,' said Carmody. 'Now, having already got you
-beat on the show-up, I guess I can afford to charge you
-another $100 for a glimpse of the other one-spot that I've
-got in the pit.'
-
-"This kind of talk went on for ten minutes, the two
-men raising each other back at $100 a clip until there was
-$3800 in the pot. Feeney talked and acted like a bluffer
-all the time, but nevertheless Carmody began to suspect
-that, after all, Tim might have something in the hole
-to beat him. So when Carmody called Feeney's last
-$100 raise the latter knew that his friend with the contracts
-in his pocket didn't have any four aces, and he just
-scooped in the pot before he showed up what he had in
-the hole. It was the third king, completing a nice full
-hand, that Feeney had in the hole, and the money was his.
-Carmody turned up a deuce, that he had tried to make
-the bluff was another ace, and looked properly crestfallen.
-
-"'For a Mulligan that knows so little about business as
-you, Tim,' said Carmody, 'you've got a mighty crafty way
-about you of making it appear that you're bluffing. We'll
-try it again, and from now on I'll know that when you
-look and talk like you're bluffing you've got the hand.'
-
-"Both men had been ringing up the steward's boy a
-good deal, during the progress of the game, and they
-were not, therefore, any more sober than was necessary.
-On the very next hand Feeney took a big hunk out of his
-rival. He had three deuces face up and Carmody had
-three jacks on top. Feeney began to bet $100 with so
-much natty confidence that Carmody decided that his
-compatriot was adopting new tactics in bluffing, and, quite
-naturally, with his three nice-looking jacks plainly in
-sight, he not only stood every raise but raised back the
-limit every time.
-
-"'I figure it this way,' said Carmody, abstractedly to
-himself, when there was nigh onto $4000 in chips in the
-center of the baize. 'This Harp from Connemara across
-the table can't turn two of these tricks one right after
-the other. The percentage of the game is against such
-a thing as that. And he's just perky and sassy because
-he thinks I'm on to his first exhibited system of bluffing.
-Tim, another $100, if you want to feast your Mulligan
-blue eyes on this other knave of mine in the hole.'
-
-"'And $100,' said Feeney, with all the confidence in
-life.
-
-"Thus they went on for fully fifteen minutes, until the
-proportions of the pot were really alarming, considering
-that neither of the men was a millionaire or anything like
-it. There was $7200 in the middle of the table when
-Carmody wilted. He attempted to put his wilt on philanthropic
-grounds.
-
-"'With a drink or two in you, Tim,' he said, 'you're an
-incautious and unwise citizen for a man humping along
-toward 60 years of age'—Feeney wasn't more than 48,
-and didn't look that. 'And Mrs. Feeney's been telling
-my wife for the past twelve years that she's aching to
-have a look at the old sod, but that her man Tim considers
-himself too poor for the journey. So I won't be
-the means of casting gloom around your household, Tim.
-I see your $100, and what's the color of that cheap ten or
-eight spot you've got in the hole?'
-
-"Feeney turned over his fourth deuce and hauled down
-the money. That sort o' took Carmody's nerve and he
-had to have several big drinks of the hard stuff to set
-him right again. While he was drinking Feeney took up
-the end of the stringing that Carmody had abandoned.
-
-"'How much do you figure you'll pull down from those
-two contracts, Dan?' he asked his rival in business.
-
-"'About $75,000,' answered Carmody quickly, 'which
-is just about $75,000 more than The Dalles fire has been
-worth to you, eh, Tim?'
-
-"'What's the use of depleting the capital that you've
-already got in bank?' asked Feeney, with a twinkle in
-his eye. 'Just play me stud for those contracts. I'll
-say they're worth $60,000, and I'm good for that if I'm
-good for a cent.'
-
-"Carmody studied for a moment. He was already out
-$11,000 in this poker game, and he wanted that money
-back. The idea of playing his contracts against Feeney's
-hard cash rather appealed to his imagination, which was
-not less active on account of the huge quantity of stuff
-he had been drinking.
-
-"'Well, I'll tell you what I'll do to give you a start in
-life, Tim,' said Carmody finally. 'You've got my checks
-for $11,000. Supposing you call those two contracts worth
-$70,000, return me those checks for $11,000, and say that
-the two contracts I've got in my pocket are worth $59,000
-as they stand. Then I'll give you a chance to take as
-big a fall out of the contracts as you think you can.'
-
-"That idea suited Feeney to a T, and I stood by to
-begin dealing again. The two contracts were pushed
-into the center of the table by Carmody, and it was an
-additional part of my business, besides dealing, to make
-note of the changing value of the contracts as the game
-progressed.
-
-"Well, the game continued to go Feeney's way, and
-Carmody just looked at his contracts as Feeney began
-to edge them nearer and nearer to his end of the table.
-Carmody, while he figured that the contracts were so
-much velvet, didn't look happy when Feeney picked $12,000
-more out of them, leaving their value to Dan only
-an approximate $47,000, but he played on in the hope of
-better luck. Finally a queer hand came around. Carmody
-caught two queens, an eight and a seven. So did
-Feeney. This thing made Carmody mad.
-
-"'Of all the niggering out I ever saw,' he exclaimed,
-'this is the worst. But it's about time I had the best of
-it when it comes to pure bull-head luck.'
-
-"So he bet the limit that he had a better card in the
-hole than Feeney. Feeney came back at him every clip,
-and when I interposed a remonstrance over the heftiness
-of the game, expressing the opinion that both of them
-would probably be sorry they had gone into the thing
-so heavily when the gray dawn came around, they said
-they knew they'd be sorry, and went right ahead.
-
-"'This is surely the hottest case of a stand-off in a
-deal in stud that I've seen yet,' said Feeney, 'and I
-shouldn't be surprised if we had to split the pot when the
-show-down comes. But I'm as good as you, Carmody,
-on the four that show, and I'm with you all night if you're
-going to keep it up that long.'
-
-"When my tab of the shifting value of the contracts
-showed that Carmody's interest therein was only an even
-$30,000, Carmody looked up at the ceiling of the card-room
-and reflected.
-
-"'Here,' he said, 'is where I get my contracts back
-and break even, or where I have to go into partnership
-with a slow-witted Irishman on those buildings at The
-Dalles. Feeney, I call you.'
-
-"Feeney turned over a six spot. Carmody's card in
-the hole was a five. Feeney was the possessor of a half
-interest in Carmody's fine contracts at The Dalles, and
-that's how it happened that these two builders, who had
-always gone it singly and alone, built up The Dalles in
-partnership. They got along so well together at The Dalles
-work that three years later they went into a general contracting
-partnership and they've been getting rich ever
-since. But it was their stud game on The Dalles boat
-that induced me to conclude that old-fashioned draw
-was good enough for me."
-
-
-
-
-THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN.
-=======================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *With the Result That His Clothes Finally Went into a Pot, and Fortune Scowled upon Him.*
-
-
-"When a man arrives at that pitch where he'll bet the
-clothes off his back over a jackpot, it's about up to him
-to let the game of draw alone, in my opinion," said a
-traveling special agent of the Treasury Department.
-"I'm talking about a game of draw that happened last
-fall down in the Territory, on the south bank of the
-Canadian River, in the Chickasaw country, between four
-St. Louis men. They were on their annual hunting trip
-down there. They were well-known business men of old
-St. Loo, pals of a half a lifetime, and they had been after
-bear, deer, feathered game, or any old thing shootable
-down in the Territory every year together for more than
-a decade. They always played poker on these outings,
-too, and the bank president always got all the money.
-The other three couldn't do anything whatever with the
-bank president's brand of poker. They'd been digging
-at him on these excursions for ten years, trying every
-conceivable scheme to get his money, and even playing
-in combination against him, but when it came time to
-strike camp he always had all the money in the crowd,
-owned all the camp fixtures, and served out smoking
-tobacco to his three chums in a lordly way only when
-he felt generous. It made 'em hot, but they had to accept
-his alms if they wanted to smoke.
-
-"The three of 'em determined when the party set out
-from St. Louis in their special car last autumn that the
-bank president wasn't going to come back from the hunting
-trip with all the money, even if they had to leave his
-bones to bleach on the banks of the Canadian. They declared
-together that the bank president's sassiness for
-the remainder of the year after eating them up at poker
-down in the Territory was something unbearable, and
-they didn't intend to stand for it any more.
-
-"They played a little poker in their car on the trip
-down from St. Louis, and this gave one of the three conspirators
-a chance to get hold of the bank president's two
-decks of cards. The conspirators carefully marked these
-two decks of cards—marked 'em both just the same way—and
-then, during the temporary absence of the bank
-president in another part of the car, he elaborately explained
-to his two companions in infamy how he had
-done it, the three going over the bank president's two
-decks in detail, so as to master the markings. Then the
-two decks were returned furtively to the bank president's
-grip, and the rest of the playing on the trip down was
-done with ordinary packs. They never played big on
-these journeys, anyhow, but reserved their stiff games for
-the bad-weather days in camp.
-
-"When they got to their point of debarkation on the
-line, they left their car on a siding and struck out for
-their regular camp, about seventy-five miles from the
-railroad. They stuck to the bagging of pelts and antlers
-for a week or so; then a threatening morning came along
-and the bank president suggested poker.
-
-"'What's the use?' they all demurred, eying the
-bank president gloomily. 'You always get the whole
-works, and then you're insufferable for the rest of the year.
-We don't think you're on the level, anyhow.'
-
-"'Oh, I'll give you all a chance this time,' said the
-bank president, grinning. 'I won't be hard upon you.
-Then, you see, the more you fellows play with me in the
-game, why, the more you learn about poker, and I'm sure
-the instruction you get helps you a lot in your games with
-the dubs up in St. Loo. I'm noted, anyhow, for my generosity
-in giving others the benefit of my wisdom.'
-
-"'Well,' said the spokesman and arch-conspirator of
-the three, 'we'll play a little game of table-stakes, but
-checks don't go; this thing of the three of us writing
-you checks that keep your large family in opulence for a
-year is'——
-
-"'All right, let it be table stakes,' replied the bank president
-amiably. 'I'm not a man to take bread out of the
-mouths of the impoverished,' and with more of such badinage
-the game started.
-
-"An ordinary deck was used at first—a deck out of
-the satchel of the real estate man, the infamous member
-of the conspiring trio who had marked the bank president's
-cards. The bank president, as usual, had all of
-the luck from the jump. He seemed to rake down every
-pot. The three glared at him and made all sorts of insinuating
-remarks about the phenomenal luck of the bank
-president that had continued for a dozen years. The
-bank president regarded them indulgently, and told them
-they'd learn the elementary principles of the game after
-they'd camped with him for another ten years or so.
-
-"After an hour's play the bank president beat the real
-estate man—the other two had dropped out—out of a stiff
-jackpot with a pair of better threes, and the real estate
-man simulated great rage and tore the deck of cards into
-many pieces.
-
-"'For heaven's sake, give us another deck!' he exclaimed,
-passionately, with a furtive wink at his two companions
-in crime.
-
-"The bank president reached back of him, collared
-his grip, and produced one of his decks with a bland
-smile. They surely were scientifically marked, for this
-bank president had an eye in his head, and he didn't get
-next.
-
-"'Well, we'll try one of my decks,' said the bank president.
-'Of course, it'll be a shame to plug you with a
-new musket—none of my decks has been riffled yet—but
-maybe my unfamiliarity with the range of the fresh
-gun'll give you all a show at me.' Oh, this bank president
-was arrogant in victory, all right.
-
-"Well, he wasn't one, two, three, from then on, of
-course. It was done mighty well, and not so as to excite
-the bank president's suspicions in the least, but he
-found himself topped practically every time, and his face
-grew long. He was quite heavily in the hole at the end
-of an hour's play with his own deck.
-
-"'Oh, we've got on to your bluffing style of play, that's
-all,' said the real estate man complaisantly. 'You just
-had us scared together for the past ten years, but you're
-as clear a proposition now as a mountain creek. I always
-thought you were more or less of a counterfeit and
-a four-flusher, anyhow, didn't you, fellows?'
-
-"Of course the other two thought so, too, and the bank
-president's brow clouded as, time after time, after he had
-bet hard on hands that looked to him to be worth every
-dollar he ventured on them, he found himself topped, niggered
-out. The real estate man increased the bank
-president's worry by flashing a nine-high straight against
-the financier's eight-high straight, and then the latter did
-a card-tearing stunt himself. He ripped his deck into
-ribbons with a running commentary of strong talk.
-
-"'It must be a rank deck that'll permit of a set of
-amateur skates like you fellows putting it on me,' he said.
-Then he dug into his grip again and produced the other
-'phony deck, his three companions warning him against
-letting his angry passions rise, and so on.
-
-"The three conspirators let the bank president pull
-down a couple of sizable pots with this deck just for the
-sake of enjoying his renewed impertinence, and then they
-went at him good and hard. At the end of an hour
-they had the bank president's supply of ready cash—about
-$500—badly wilted. He had only $100 left when it came
-around the real estate man's turn to dish out a jackpot
-round. The bank president was under the gun, as they
-say out there of the man who's to the left of the dealer
-of a jackpot, and he cracked the pot open for the limit.
-The other two stayed, and when it got up to the real estate
-man he raised it the limit. This knocked his two
-confederates out of it—as a matter of fact the arch-conspirator
-winked them out of it—but the limit was just
-what the bank president wanted with his four bullets.
-
-"The bank president took one card with a crafty, I'll-make-him-think-I'm-four-flushing
-expression of countenance.
-The real estate man, with a queen-high sequence
-flush of hearts remarked that the bunch he had was good
-enough for him. Then they got to betting, and it was
-no time at all before the bank president had done the
-apology act with the remains of his $500. He pulled
-out a check-book then and was fumbling around for a
-fountain pen when the real estate man called him down.
-
-"'Not on your life,' he said. 'Agreement was that
-checks don't go, you'll remember.'
-
-"'But this hand'——the bank president started to say.
-
-"'Makes no difference about that hand,' interrupted
-the real estate man. 'Agreement was for table stakes.'
-
-"'But, great Cæsar, man,' pleaded the bank president.
-'I want to get some kind of a decent run for this hand.
-Why, I'd bet the clothes right off my back on it.'
-
-"'Well,' said the real estate man calmly, 'we didn't
-make any stipulation about clothes and personal possessions,
-and you can get the clothes off your back if you
-want to. But no checks.'
-
-"'Well,' said the bank president, peeling off a big solitaire
-ring, 'this stone's worth $400, and I'll raise you that
-much.'
-
-"'I see you,' said the real estate man. 'What else have
-you got that I can raise against?'
-
-"'Well,' replied the bank president, 'this watch is
-worth $300 and'——
-
-"'Skate it in,' interrupted the real estate man. 'Raise
-you $300 then, your valuation of the ticker.'
-
-"'Dog-gone the luck,' said the bank president, 'I don't
-want to call you. I know I've got you beat. I'd be
-willing to bet my corduroys, shoes and hat that I've got
-you soaked, for'——
-
-"'Rush 'em to the center, then,' calmly replied the real
-estate man. 'Supposing I appraise the corduroys, shoes
-and hat at $50 for the bundle. That satisfactory?'
-
-"'It's got to be,' replied the bank president mournfully.
-
-"'All right, then, put 'em in the pot and I'll consider
-that you've called me,' said the real estate man.
-
-"The bank president stood up, peeled off his coat and
-waistcoat and hunting breeches and dropped them on the
-blanket that served for a table. Then he removed his
-pair of high hunting shoes and placed them on top of the
-clothes, and tossed his fore-and-aft cap on the heap. Then
-he sat down in his underclothes, picked up his four aces,
-and said:
-
-"'Now, dern you, put down your little straight or full
-and I'll show you what you're up against.'
-
-"The wealthy depositors of the St. Louis bank of
-which he was the head would have enjoyed seeing his
-face when the real estate man calmly laid down his sequence
-flush and hauled down the pot, togs and all, without
-a word.
-
-"'You're a good thing, ain't you?' said the other two,
-who had been taking the play in with a positive knowledge
-of how it was going to come out.
-
-"The bank president looked pretty forlorn as the three
-sat there and guyed him. Finally he stood up.
-
-"'Well,' said he to the real estate man. 'I'll just write
-you a check for the fifty you allowed on those togs of
-mine,' and he started to reach for the clothes in order to
-dress himself. The real estate man held the suit, shoes
-and hat out of the bank president's reach.
-
-"'These things ain't for sale,' he said. 'They'll all
-just about fit me,' trying on the hat, 'and I guess I'll
-just hang on to them as a sort of No. 2 outfit.'
-
-"'But, great Scott, man!' exclaimed the bank president,
-'don't you know that I haven't got another stitch
-in camp—that that rig-out's the only one I brought from
-the car?'
-
-"'Too bad,' said the real estate man. 'You hadn't
-ought to've skated the togs into the pot, then. Sorry,
-old man, but honest, I really couldn't think of parting
-with these things for any amount of money. I've only
-got one suit along with me, too, and only one hat and
-pair of shoes, and if they get wet what am I going to do?
-Got to have a change, you know. I really feel very
-deeply for you in your predicament, and so do the other
-boys—don't you fellows?—but I need this outfit in my
-business.'
-
-"The other two men nodded their heads in grave endorsement
-of this stand and the bank president frothed at
-the mouth.
-
-"'What the devil do you expect me to do, you blamed
-idiot?' he shouted at the real estate man. 'Stand around
-the tent and shiver, or cut across the trail in my underclothes
-for the car to get another set of togs?'
-
-"'I wish I could think of some plan to help you out,
-old man,' answered the real estate man with commiseration
-in his countenance, 'but I really couldn't think, under
-any consideration, of giving up these things,' and he made
-the suit, the shoes and the hat up into a neat bundle as
-he spoke. Just then one of the other men, who had been
-prowling outside, came running into the tent breathless.
-
-"'Say, fellows,' he exclaimed, 'there's some fresh bear
-tracks right over there in the clearing,' and he grabbed
-his gun. So did the other two. The bank president
-made as if to pick up his rifle, too, when his eye fell on
-his lack of raiment. By that time the real estate man
-was fifty yards from the tent, at a lope with the other two.
-
-"'Hey, come back here, you confounded cut-throat!'
-the financier yelled after the real estate man, who had
-the bank president's clothes, shoes and hat slung in a
-neat bundle over his shoulder. But the three men were
-out of voice range in a jiffy.
-
-"They came back, beaming, along toward nightfall,
-with the pelts of two nice young black bears. They
-found the bank president moping around, wrapped up in
-a blanket and sulphurizing the air when they reached the
-tent. Then they sat around him in a circle and expressed
-their sincere sympathy with him and told him his
-case was only one more instance of the awful evil of
-gambling. After supper and a pipe they all turned in,
-leaving the bank president still sulking and uttering terrible
-maledictions under his breath.
-
-"The real estate man and the other two went out early
-the next morning—the bank president's clothes along with
-them—and when they got back they found the blanketed
-financier on the verge of apoplexy from sheer wrath. The
-real estate man then made a great show of charity by giving
-up the togs, and the bank president was in a state
-of good-nature by the time camp was struck. The three
-conspirators united in a letter of explanation, inclosing
-all of their winnings, to the bank president when they
-got back to St. Louis, and when the bank president got
-the letter and his disgorged losings he was most tickled to
-death and instantly became as perky and impudent as ever.
-
-"'I knew you couldn't have done it if you'd played on
-the square,' said he, the first time he met them. 'Wait
-till next year, that's all.'"
-
-
-
-
-THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS.
-==========================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *Wherein It Is Shown That It Is Easy Enough to Be Cool When Playing with Another Man's Money.*
-
-
-"I happen to know that a considerable number of the
-most famous professional gamblers in this country made
-their reputation with other men's money," said a Rocky
-Mountain man of large experience. "These men have
-had their names heralded far and wide as the stakers
-of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, upon the
-turn of a card, and innumerable yarns have been spun as
-to their cool, John Oakhurst-like manner of scooping in
-a table full of money upon the smashing of a bank, or of
-calmly lighting their cigars and strolling out when fortune
-went against them. So far as the stories themselves
-are concerned, some of them are undoubtedly right; but
-all of them leave out the very essential fact that the men
-were simply players of other men's money—'table touts,'
-we call 'em out West. I suppose it is a reasonable proposition
-that it is a whole lot easier to risk another man's
-money at the table than it is to endanger your own. Of all
-the men I am telling you about hardly a one had enough
-luck at the tables to keep himself warm when putting up
-his own coin; perhaps it was owing to the extreme caution
-of their play under these conditions and the far greater
-strain involved in the hazarding of their own money.
-They could take another man's money—the money of a
-man who probably did not know the difference between
-00 and 33 in a wheel layout, but who could afford to
-venture almost an unlimited amount of money on a game—and
-in at least eight cases out of ten they could run
-the initial stake into a pile that would mean for themselves
-a rake-off or percentage of thousands or tens of
-thousands; but in venturing their own money I have seen
-few of them who were any good in the matter of keeping
-their nerve under rein.
-
-"Back in the sixties Tom Naseby was generally considered
-the most dangerous man at a faro table on the
-Pacific Slope. Bank after bank, from Portland to San
-Diego, went to the wall under his system of play—or lack
-of system, I ought to say—and at the end the San Francisco
-banks shut him out altogether, so that he was compelled
-to start a layout of his own. Among Naseby's
-smashes that were famous on the coast was that of
-breaking Byron McGregor's Kearny street institution to
-the tune of $150,000; of hitting up Tillottson's $10,000
-limit game in San Francisco for $100,000 and closing the
-doors, and of banging Ned Jordan's bank in Portland for
-$125,000, all within the space of three months. Yet
-Naseby told me himself that on none of these plays was
-he venturing a *sou marqué* of his own money—that it
-had all been handed over to him, the initial stakes for each
-big play, that is, by Ralston, the millionaire San Francisco
-banker, who committed suicide. Out of each winning
-Naseby of course got a big cut of the money, for
-Ralston went into the thing for the sport of it and was a
-very generous man. Naseby, who belonged to the tribe of
-savers for a rainy day, hung onto these rolls. Naseby
-played faro with just about as much skill as a Zulu wields
-a war club, and he frankly confessed that his coups were
-simply the result of unlimited confidence and unlimited
-backing allied to bull-head luck.
-
-"Frank Burbridge, the most famous poker player that
-Portland has ever brought out, was another man who
-made his reputation as a gambler upon the strength of
-the vast winnings he hauled out upon stakes furnished by
-wealthy men. Some of these rich backers of Burbridge
-remained behind the screen and only received Frank's
-reports as to how he made out in the games for which
-they staked him, but others came out into the open and
-sat alongside Burbridge when he was playing with their
-money—not for the purpose of watching him, for he was
-strictly on the level, but just for the fun of watching the
-game. One of the big contractors for the building of the
-Oregon Short Line, a man worth many millions of dollars,
-was one of Burbridge's clients who liked to watch
-the expert poker player play the hands. He was constantly
-staking Burbridge for big games with dangerous
-opponents. If Frank won, all right; he got most of the
-money himself. If he lost, all right, too; the contractor
-simply went into the thing for the mental distraction it
-afforded him.
-
-"I was a witness of one of those big games in which
-Burbridge engaged with a stake furnished by the contractor.
-It was played at the old Willamette House in
-Portland, and it was a two-handed game. The other
-player was a very wealthy Portland man who was said
-to have made a big pot of money by simply making the
-suggestion that he intended to parallel the Oregon Short
-Line. This rich man thought he knew how to play poker
-until his friend, the contractor of the Short Line who
-was Burbridge's staker, put him up against the latter—partly
-for the interest of watching the game, and partly,
-perhaps, for other reasons. Anyhow, the Portland man
-had a whole heap of an opinion of what he knew about
-poker, and played the game incessantly for pastime. He
-had never happened to sit in a game with Burbridge, and
-Burbridge's backer finally suggested to the Portland man
-that he have a try at what he could do with the man
-who was known to be the most expert player of poker in
-the Northwest.
-
-"'Oh, he's a professional,' said the Portland man,
-'and I don't play cards with professionals in a contest of
-skill such as I see you want to make this. I play with
-'em once in a while just to study their games, but not
-for big money. I wouldn't trust them under such circumstances.'
-
-"'Well, you trust me, I suppose, don't you?' said the
-contractor.
-
-"'Certainly,' was the reply.
-
-"'All right, my friend,' said the contractor, 'I'd just
-like to find out to satisfy my own curiosity how good you
-can play poker. I don't amount to much at it myself,
-and I don't think you're any better than I am. Very
-well. You sit into a game with Burbridge, and I'll
-deal all the hands myself, and sit by to see fair play—though
-Burbridge plays just as fairly as I would myself
-under the same circumstances. Does that proposition
-suit you?'
-
-"'Yes,' said the Portland man, 'I'd just like to give
-Burbridge a whirl under those circumstances.'
-
-"So the game was arranged. Four or five of us
-were invited around to the old Willamette House to
-look on while the game progressed. The two
-men sat down to the game about 8 o'clock at night. The
-Portland man—I will call him Tunwell, which is pretty
-close to his right name—had occasionally met Burbridge,
-who was a very smooth, urbane sort of chap of thirty,
-and so they nodded good-naturedly to each other when
-Tunwell came into the room. The contractor was on
-hand with his check-book. The conditions were simply
-that the contractor was to deal each of the hands, and
-then retire from the table with the remainder of the deck
-until the call for cards. Then he was to dish out what
-cards were called for, and get away from the table again
-until the hand was played. The rest of us were to sit
-around, with the privilege of having peeps at the hands.
-Tunwell was to have the privilege of asking the advice of
-any of us as to proper plays, as Burbridge was to be permitted
-to refer hands that heavily involved the contractor's
-purse to the latter—not to seek advice, but simply to
-inform him what he intended to do in the play. The
-game was to be without limit, and the chips were worth
-$5, $25, and $50.
-
-"So the game began. Tunwell soon proved himself
-a pretty cool man. He didn't put up a stingy game, but
-he simply had the proper sort of regard for the worth
-of the cards the contractor dished out to him, and he
-played them right, as we who were watching the game
-and had a chance of seeing both hands soon discovered.
-Two or three times in the early part of the game I, for
-one, thought he was a bit overcautious, but in general
-his line of play was away above the average. Tunwell
-was a big, gray-eyed man of the type that is jammed
-full of well-controlled nerve, and he held himself on this
-night in additional check because he knew that he was up
-against a hard proposition. The play at first didn't
-amount to much—fifty or hundred-dollar bets occasionally—and
-both men seemed to be sparring for information
-on the style of each other's play. Tunwell finally decided
-upon a bluff. He had a nine high, and he went up to
-$500 on it. Burbridge laid down. This was pretty good
-for Tunwell, but he had the sense to show no exultation.
-Now, after making a thing like that go through,
-most men would keep on bluffing until called when on
-steep and craggy ground, but Tunwell didn't. He resumed
-the system of playing for what his hands
-were worth. This he stuck to for half an hour or
-so, when he was $800 ahead of the game and then
-he made another bluff on a pair of queens. Burbridge,
-who had three aces, laid down, and Tunwell's pile was
-amplified by $1,000.
-
-"'That was a cold bluff, Burbridge,' said Tunwell.
-
-"'Oh, I don't think so,' said Burbridge. 'There was
-too much confidence in your eye for that.' Which shows
-that even a great poker player is as likely as anybody to
-get mixed when it comes to studying eyes in a game.
-
-"After a while Burbridge caught a pat full house, and
-Tunwell filled a still better full hand. It was Tunwell's
-bet, and he went $1,000 on it. Burbridge laid down—wherein
-it was plain to be seen that he was a man who
-possessed that indefinable thing, the poker player's
-'hunch.'
-
-"Now, all these plays I'm telling you about were simply
-part of the warming up. The two men were simply
-studying each other. They didn't really begin to play
-poker until two hours after they sat down.
-
-"Then the contractor dealt Burbridge a promising set
-of threes, and gave Tunwell a neat two pairs, with aces
-on top. Tunwell filled with another ace, and Burbridge
-got nothing worth mentioning in the draw, so that his
-three nines didn't look very big to us against an ace full.
-It was Burbridge's bet. He was one of those men who
-lay their cards down on the table and look up at the ceiling
-before making a bet.
-
-"'Five thousand dollars,' said he finally, still looking
-up at the ceiling reflectively, and the contractor, who had
-seen Tunwell's draw, winced a bit.
-
-"Tunwell looked at him pretty hard and scanned his
-hand. He raised him $5,000.
-
-"'And $5,000,' said Burbridge, quietly. Now, the
-contractor was a pretty game sort of man, but we could
-see that he felt badly over this.
-
-"Then Tunwell laid down. Burbridge's bluff worked.
-Of course, not until after the game did we tell him what
-Tunwell held that time, and when we did he said:
-
-"'I felt from the first, before I made a bet that he
-had me beat—but the bigger a man's hand, the easier it is
-to bluff him out of the money.' Queer remark, wasn't
-it?
-
-"Tunwell kept his nerve like a major after this heavy
-fall, and we couldn't see the slightest sign of faltering
-in his style of play. The game went back to the $100
-basis, and was comparatively uninteresting for an hour or
-so. In the course of the play during this time Tunwell
-caught four queens pat—a very remarkable thing—and
-got 50 only out of the hands. But unlike what most
-poker players would do under such circumstances, he
-didn't throw down the hand face upward on the table
-with an oath. He wasn't that kind of poker player.
-
-"Just about midnight both men simultaneously decided
-upon a bluff—and it's not often that men happen to do
-this in a two-handed poker game; when they do, something
-always drops. Both men stood pat. There wasn't
-a pair in either hand. It was a choice experience to note
-the offhand way with which Burbridge made the first
-bet on this pat hand of his.
-
-"'Ten thousand dollars,' said he, and his backer, the
-contractor, went to the window, raised it, and poked his
-head out for air.
-
-"'Same, more than you,' said Tunwell, scanning his
-hand as if it was the real thing.
-
-"Burbridge raised him another $10,000 and flicked a
-bit of ashes off his collar. Now Tunwell felt that his
-man was bluffing.
-
-"'I call you,' said he.
-
-"'Ace high,' said Burbridge.
-
-"'Ace high here,' said Tunwell.
-
-"'Queen next.'
-
-"'Queen next here.'
-
-"'Nine next.'
-
-"'Nine next here.'
-
-"'Six next.'
-
-"Tunwell tossed his four that was next on to the table
-face upward without the movement of an eyebrow.
-
-"'Six wins the $60,000,' said he, and the contractor
-strolled back from the window.
-
-"'Better luck next time, Tunwell,' said he, smiling,
-while Burbridge drank a glass of water.
-
-"'There isn't going to be any next time, my boy,' returned
-Tunwell. 'I'm no hog.'"
-
-
-
-
-THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE.
-======================================
-
-.. class:: center
-
- | *And How a Whirl at It Came Near Decimating the Population of a Section of the Indian Territory.*
-
-
-"I don't just recall the name of the cheerful worker
-who invented that wise phrase, 'There's a sucker born
-every minute, and they never die,' but whoever he was he
-had something inside his head besides mayonnaise dressing,"
-said a giant from the Indian Territory, when the
-talk among a party of Westerners at a roadhouse the
-other night switched around to sure-thing games and
-cinch propositions. "I don't suppose there ever was yet a
-sure-thing game rigged up that didn't get its quota of
-nibblers, and even its occasional easy marks, who'd go up
-against it with their whole rolls. I'm not speaking so
-much now of brace games as I am of layouts that might
-just as well have the words, 'You lose,' painted all over
-'em, they're such obvious air-tights for the dealers. I
-suppose we've all been up against brace faro. That's
-something that a man can't heel himself against; the most
-he can do when he gets next to it that two of 'em are
-slipping out of the box at one and the same time is to
-'stick up' the dealer at the business end of a .45—if he's
-quick enough—accumulate all the money in sight, and
-back toward the door.
-
-"But a man who'll lay up alongside of a brace faro
-layout or a brace wheel need not necessarily be sucker
-enough to hand his dust over to a smooth duck who's
-dealing a game that has all the scars, moles, tattoo marks
-and other perfectly visible Bertillons of a dead open and
-shut sure-thing layout. Yet I've seen men who were wise
-in their own business—horse-rustling, for instance—go
-broke against games that you'd think a ten-year-old would
-size up correctly without the assistance of an X-ray apparatus.
-
-"I'm thinking of the time that Jink McAtee, afterward
-one of the foxiest horse-thieves who ever used an
-upside-down brand in the Southwest, got interested in
-squeeze-spindle in Guthrie. It was in Guthrie, in May,
-1889, just after Oklahoma had been opened up, that the
-two Reeves brothers, Bill and Al, and Arthur Pendleton
-started an all-round layout in what was the first two-story
-shack that had been thrown up in the town. The
-two Reeves boys are still running the biggest layout
-in Guthrie, but Pendleton is dead. The Reeves-Pendleton
-brand of faro, as well as their keno, wheel, stud,
-and other legitimate games, was perfectly on the level,
-but in addition they had a few games in operation that
-was plain cases to most of the patrons of the layout of
-the sure-thing. The Reeves and Pendleton people didn't
-club anybody into stacking up against their sure-thing
-games. They just started 'em going, hired a man named
-Gately to run 'em, and struck the attitude that if among
-the sooners and boomers of Guthrie there was people
-imbecile enough to want to hit up these sure-thing games,
-it wasn't their funeral.
-
-"The most alluring among these sure-thing games was
-the outfit called the squeeze-spindle. You used to run
-across a squeeze-spindle quite often down in the Southwest,
-but so many of the dealers of that game got shot
-up and slithered that it has sort o' passed out. It's a
-lottery game ostensibly, where the player makes what the
-dealer calls 'conditional' winnings, and the dealer has to
-have the assistance of 'boosters' to throw confidence into
-the suckers. It took a good con man to run a squeeze-spindle
-game. The sucker would put up a hundred to
-win five hundred; he'd cop the coin 'conditionally'—that
-is to say, the arrow that flew around in the middle
-of the box had to point to another number of the sucker's
-selection before the money would be his to walk away
-with, and in the event of the arrow pointing to the right
-number the player would get twice the sum.
-
-"Of course the arrow never went the sucker's way
-twice hand-running, and equally, of course, it was a
-game where the dealer got all of the money. The reason
-it was called a squeeze-spindle was because the dealer
-had only to squeeze a button beneath the table to stop
-the arrow at any old point in its flight around the numbers
-that he wanted to. When a sucker was up against
-the game, a 'booster' would prance in with a big roll of
-the house's money, treble it on a couple of straight turns
-of the spindle, squeezed just his way by the dealer, and
-then the sucker would conclude that it was only his lack
-of capital that caused him to lose—just as the pin-head
-who doubles on favorites at the races tries to convince
-himself when's he's broke and smoking a punk pipe that
-he'd have been able to put all the bookmakers out of business
-if he'd just had the capital to keep on with his system.
-Once in a great while a squeeze-spindle dealer
-would let one of his good things get away with a bunch
-of money, if he felt reasonably sure that the sucker would
-come back at it with the coin later on; and thus the
-ingenuous little fiction 'ud go around that So-and-So
-had pasted a squeeze-spindle dealer for his whole roll, and
-this would make business.
-
-"Now, here was a game that you wouldn't think a
-man with the sense he was born with would bet twenty
-cents worth of zinc money on. But this man Gately, who
-ran the squeeze-spindle for the Reeves-Pendleton layout
-on a salary and commission basis, was a pretty smooth
-gazzabo in his generation, and he landed the good things
-with his layout right along, and often for sizeable money.
-He was a quiet, red bearded chap, with a mighty convincing,
-persuasive way about him, and a man who'd
-put up a fight, too, in a corner. He had free rein in the
-running of the squeeze-spindle and two or three other
-sure-thing devices that formed a sort of side-show to
-the main Reeves-Pendleton layout, and the proprietors
-pretended that his outfit was really independent of their
-plant—that Gately was simply renting space from them
-and going it alone. But all Guthrie knew differently.
-
-"Well, up against this squeeze-spindle plant goes this
-here Jink McAtee that I started to tell you about. Jink
-wasn't then known as a horse-thief. He had been a
-sooner—he got in long before the trumpet call on a thoroughbred
-Kentucky horse that he was afterward found
-to have pinched out of a barn—and he had made a pretty
-good thing out of the Guthrie corner lot that he had staked
-off. He sold it three days after the dash for $6000, and
-then he laid back on his liquor with a whole lot of content.
-He was a low forehead in looks and manners. He was
-the veriest duffer in his attempts to make the Reeves-Pendleton
-combination put up their shutters by attacking
-their square games, and he lost over $3000 of his corner-lot
-money at their faro tables. He blew in another
-couple of thousand of the bunch at the honkatonks
-around town before his little beady eyes fell on Gately's
-squeeze-spindle, and he perceived a chance to get all of
-his money back in jig-time. Gately pointed it out to
-him just how easy it was.
-
-"Before McAtee put a dollar down on the spindle
-Gately got Jink's eyes to popping by roping in a booster
-who pulled $3200 out of the squeeze-spindle in quicker
-time than a cayuse could make two jumps, and when
-Gately looked chagrined and sorrowful McAtee bit.
-Gately knew his man pretty well, and he permitted Jink
-to not only win $1600 'conditionally,' right off the reel,
-but he actually passed $400 of Jink's winnings over to
-him. Then he proceeded to wipe Jink out. When
-McAtee was all trimmed up, Gately looked sad.
-
-"'You didn't have quite enough along with you, McAtee,'
-he said, shaking his head real mournfully. 'If
-you'd had another $200 to cover that $1600 that you'd
-won and left in the hole, why, you'd had me heading
-for the Canadian River by this time.'
-
-"McAtee ate this spiel of Gately's up as if it was so
-much lunch on a counter, and went away filled with the
-idea that there was riches in the squeeze-spindle if it was
-hit right, and with enough money to back up the plays.
-So he went to just eleven of his sooner friends and talked
-squeeze-spindle to 'em. He put it to them just what a
-good thing the squeeze-spindle was rightly hammered.
-He told 'em how near he'd been to pulling out his losings,
-and more besides, through the medium of Gately's
-squeeze-spindle at the Reeves-Pendleton layout. They
-took Jink's word for it, and they all joined the pool that
-McAtee organized to smash that spindle. They got together
-$2600, and on the afternoon following Jink's play
-they walked down to the Reeves-Pendleton plant in a
-body. Each man had a rifle along with him. There
-wasn't anything remarkable about that. During the first
-year of Guthrie's existence every man carried a long-iron
-over his arm. If twelve men, all with rifles, were to
-line up in front of the Reeves-Pendleton layout in Guthrie
-to-day there'd be good reason for the people inside to
-suppose that they were going to be 'stuck up,' but there
-was no reason to suppose anything of the kind when Jack
-McAtee brought along his eleven subscribers to his
-squeeze-spindle-smashing pool that afternoon. Gately
-wasn't worried a little bit.
-
-"'My friends is all got a interest in this, podner,' explained
-Jink to Gately, 'and they come along jest t' see
-th' play.'
-
-"'Certainly,' said Gately, and then Jink and his bunch
-began to get action on the spindle. It all went their
-way at first. Gately didn't actually hand them any
-money out, but he let 'em make 'conditional' wins until
-they had their whole $2600 on the layout. Another correct
-twist of the arrow would enable Jink to double the
-money; on the other hand, if the arrow didn't hit the
-right number, Jink and his bunch only stood to lose, as
-Gately explained, $600 of their 'conditional' winnings.
-
-"Now, the situation was one calculated to rattle almost
-any man. Gately didn't intend that Jink or his twelve
-stalkers with the long-irons should get away with any of
-that money, and it shows that he was a man of nerve
-in making up his mind to that idea. He intended to
-get the $2600 after a long series of plays, and then take
-a chance on the Jink McAtee gang roaring and opening
-up on him. That's what he intended to do. But he was
-a bit rattled and stampeded over the intense way the
-gang had of looking upon the plays, and that's how he
-happened to make a mistake. He gave his button too
-short a squeeze, and blamed if the arrow didn't stop at
-precisely the number that stood to win Jink and his gang
-$2600 of the house's money, in addition to pulling down
-the $2600 they had in!
-
-"Gately saw his mistake almost as soon as he had
-made it, but a booster named Gilpin, who was watching
-the play, was the quicker thinker of the two. He jumped
-off a stool upon which he had been standing looking
-over the heads of Jink's crowd, and yelled out:
-
-"'Stand clear, there! Don't shoot!'
-
-"It was a ruse. Nobody had any idea of shooting.
-Jink and his gang were simply flooded with joy over their
-winning. But when they heard Gilpin's warning, they
-all jumped back, and that was Gately's chance to redeem
-his bad break. He snatched up the $5200—the rule of
-the spindle game is that the dealer must show the same
-amount of money the sucker has got in play, and Gately
-had $2600 of the house's money spread out—and back he
-jumped through the door, which led out into an alley.
-Jink and his crowd were stupefied. They stood stock still.
-Gately had gone with their money and the house's money,
-and they didn't think of taking after him. They figured
-it that the house would make good, perhaps. Anyhow,
-by the time they came to, Gately had mazed it through
-the wilderness of shacks of which Guthrie was already
-composed, and Bill Reeves had appeared on the scene.
-
-"I had been with Bill in the main layout in the next
-room, and we heard the shout of Gilpin. That's what
-took us in there. Jink made his talk, which was a pretty
-hot and threatening one, and he was backed up in it pretty
-forcibly by all the rest of his gang.
-
-"'Well, Gately jumped, that's all,' said Reeves. 'What
-am I going to do about it?'
-
-"'Hand over $5200, quick,' said McAtee and some
-others of his bunch.
-
-"'I haven't got anything like that much money in the
-place,' said Reeves. 'But I'll give you a check for it on
-the bank down the way.'
-
-"They demurred over the check proposition for awhile,
-but they finally took Bill Reeves's check for $5200.
-While they were demurring, Bill Reeves had a chance to
-scribble a note to the cashier of the bank, telling him not
-to cash the check when it would be presented—to make
-some excuse about not having just that amount of money
-on hand, or something of that sort. Now, I didn't want
-to be in that place at all just then, but there was no way
-of my getting out. I had come into the room with Bill
-Reeves, and I knew that if I tried to mosey away I'd
-be called back; that they figured me to have some sort of
-connection with the layout, which I didn't.
-
-"Jink took the check and went over to the bank to
-get the money. The cashier turned the check down on
-the ground that he had just shipped most of the bank's
-money to St. Louis. We knew that there was going to be
-trouble and a whole lot of it when Jink got back from the
-bank with that word, and I don't think any of us expected
-to last much longer. Jink came a-loping back
-from the bank, and when he came into the room and tore
-up the check with appropriate remarks his gang all lined
-up together, and we figured it that the shooting was going
-to begin right then. When the whole situation looked
-so squally that I had my eye on the nearest window to
-drop out of, Arthur Pendleton popped into the room.
-
-"'What's all this?' he yelled, for there was a lot of
-clicking going on in the room. Jink and his gang thought
-they saw a final chance of getting their money. So,
-smoldering, they told the story to Pendleton. Pendleton
-was a shrewd man, a forceful talker, and a diplomat
-from away back.
-
-"'All the money I've got, or that there is in the roll
-just now,' he said, 'is $600,' pulling the roll out of his
-pocket. 'You are perfectly welcome to that. When
-Gately comes back, or when you get him, as I wish you
-would, you can have the rest that's coming to you out of
-the roll he pinched.'
-
-"Well, the $600 looked like better than no bread to
-Jink and his bunch, and they took it and went out after
-Gately. It was getting along toward twilight. Reeves
-and Pendleton figured it that Gately, in pulling down the
-roll, had been acting in the interest of the house. They
-hadn't the slightest notion that Gately had eloped with the
-$5200. They thought he'd plant the money, keep out of
-sight for a few days until the Jink McAtee push could
-be compromised with, and then come back.
-
-"McAtee's gang beat up every shack in town thoroughly,
-but there was no Gately. They whipped the
-prairie for miles around, but they didn't spring Gately.
-Gately had gone. The gang came back to the Reeves-Pendleton
-layout, all of 'em pretty ugly. Pendleton got
-them bunched, made a speech to them to the effect that if
-Gately wasn't corralled within a week he'd make good the
-whole amount coming to them out of his own pocket,
-and soft-soaped them into accepting those terms. They
-dispersed.
-
-"When Gately didn't come back the next day, or give
-any indication to his employers where he was, they got
-worried.
-
-"'I think Gately has drilled,' Pendleton said to me
-that day. 'He's an Iowan, and there's going to be a big
-conclave and tournament of firemen in Council Bluffs
-next week. I'll bet Gately has made for Council Bluffs.
-I'm going after him. Come along with me.'
-
-"I told Pendleton that I hadn't anything to do with
-the game, but I wasn't overlooking business propositions,
-and when he offered me 50 per cent. of all the money
-we might reclaim from Gately, I went with him. We
-got onto Gately's trail in Council Bluffs, as Pendleton
-had shrewdly guessed we might, but he had been tipped
-off that we were after him, and he chased over to Omaha.
-We were right after him, and he jumped for a town in
-Southwestern Iowa called Red Oak. We were hot on
-his trail, and we met up with him squarely next day in
-Red Oak.
-
-"'Let's have the money, Gately,' said Pendleton.
-
-"'I'll pass you back the house bunch, $2600,' said
-Gately, 'but the rest of it I keep,' and he looked as if he
-meant it, good and hard, at that.
-
-"'How do you make that out a square deal?' asked
-Pendleton.
-
-"'Because,' replied Gately, pretty convincingly, 'it was
-me that took the chance. I made a mistake, and stood
-to lose the house's $2600. If I hadn't taken a chance,
-they'd have got the coin. If I'd have won their $2600,
-your shack would have been shot into a sieve, and me into
-the bargain. It was a case of run. I had to do the running.
-I earned the $2600, and I hang on to it.'
-
-"It struck me that this was pretty square talk, and I
-told Pendleton so, and advised him to cut out any idea
-of getting all the money back from Gately through the
-medium of a gun-play. Gately handed out $2600, and then
-he told us how he had got away. He had struck across the
-prairie for Mulhall, and some of the McAtee gang, in
-scouring the country a-horseback, had not only been right
-behind him, but they had passed him. He heard them
-coming from behind, and he thought they had recognized
-him in the twilight. He didn't dare to look back, but he
-stooped down as if to tie his shoe, and looked at them
-under his arm while in that stooping posture. They didn't
-figure that the man they were after would be taking things
-so leisurely as all that, and so they passed right by him
-in the gathering gloom, a-hunting Gately. Gately got
-to Mulhall, and took the first train up for Omaha.
-
-"Before we got back to Guthrie, Jink McAtee and
-several of his pals in the pool to smash the Gately squeeze-spindle
-had been given the sudden chase by the United
-States Deputy Marshals for some horse-rustling operation
-of theirs that had just come to light, and when Jink
-McAtee got shot full of slugs by a posse down in the
-Brazos bottoms, three years later, the Reeves-Pendleton
-layout still stood indebted to him in the sum of $4600
-with accrued interest, the balance that Jink and his push
-did not pull down in their attempt to stampede a squeeze-spindle
-layout."
-
-----
-
-
-
-*Nine Splendid Novels by* WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE
------------------------------------------------
-
-
-THE PIRATE OF PANAMA
---------------------
-
-A tale of old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventure. The
-scene is laid in San Francisco on board *The Argus* and in Panama. A romantic
-search for the lost pirate gold. An absorbing love-story runs through
-the book.
-
-*12mo. Cloth, Jacket in Colors. Net $1.25.*
-
-
-THE VISION SPLENDID
--------------------
-
-A powerful story in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars against
-graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates the story.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Net $1.25.*
-
-
-
-CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT
----------------------------
-
-A story of Arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter feud
-between cattle-men and sheep-herders. The heroine is a most unusual woman
-and her love-story reaches a culmination that is fittingly characteristic of the
-great free West.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition 50 cents.*
-
-
-
-BRAND BLOTTERS
---------------
-
-A story of the Cattle Range. This story brings out the turbid life of the
-frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor with a charming love interest
-running through its 320 pages.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Jacket in Colors. Popular Edition 50 cents.*
-
-
-
-"MAVERICKS"
------------
-
-A tale of the western frontier, where the "rustler," whose depredations are
-so keenly resented by the early settlers of the range, abounds. One of the
-sweetest love stories ever told.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents.*
-
-
-
-A TEXAS RANGER
---------------
-
-How a member of the most dauntless border police force carried law into
-the mesquit, saved the life of an innocent man after a series of thrilling adventures,
-followed a fugitive to Wyoming, and then passed through deadly peril
-to ultimate happiness.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents.*
-
-
-
-WYOMING
--------
-
-In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured the breezy
-charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the frontier with all
-its engaging dash and vigor.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents.*
-
-
-
-RIDGWAY OF MONTANA
-------------------
-
-The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics and mining
-industries are the religion of the country. The political contest, the love
-scene, and the fine character drawing give this story great strength and charm.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents.*
-
-
-
-BUCKY O'CONNOR
---------------
-
-Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with the
-dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing fascination
-of style and plot.
-
-
-*12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents.*
-
-
-----
-
-
-THREE SPLENDID BOOKS BY ALFRED HENRY LEWIS
-------------------------------------------
-
-
-FARO NELL AND HER FRIENDS
--------------------------
-
-A new story of "Wolfville" days—the best of all. It
-pictures the fine comradeship, broad understanding and
-simple loyalty of Faro Nell to her friends. Here we meet
-again Old Monte, Dave Tutt, Cynthiana, Pet-Named
-Original Sin, Dead Shot Baker, Doc Peets, Old Man Enright,
-Dan Boggs, Texas and Black Jack, the rough-actioned,
-good-hearted men and women who helped to
-make this author famous as a teller of tales of Western
-frontier life.
-
-*12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents*
-
-
-THE APACHES OF NEW YORK
------------------------
-
-A truthful account of actual happenings in the underworld
-of vice and crime in the metropolis, that gives an
-appalling insight into the life of the New York criminal.
-It contains intimate, inside information concerning the
-gang fights and the gang tyranny that has since startled
-the entire world. The book embraces twelve stories of
-grim, dark facts secured directly from the lips of the
-police and the gangsters themselves.
-
-*12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents*
-
-
-THE STORY OF PAUL JONES
------------------------
-
-A wonderful historical romance. A story of the boyhood
-and later life of that daring and intrepid sailor
-whose remains are now in America. Thousands and tens
-of thousands have read it and admired it. Many consider
-it one of the best books Mr. Lewis has produced.
-
-*12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents*
-
-----
-
-
-Books by Edward Marshall
-------------------------
-
-
-BAT—An Idyl of New York
------------------------
-
-"The heroine has all the charm of Thackeray's Marchioness in
-New York surroundings."—\ *New York Sun.* "It would be hard to
-find a more charming, cheerful story."—\ *New York Times.* "Altogether
-delightful."—\ *Buffalo Express.* "The comedy is delicious."—\ *Sacramento
-Union.* "It is as wholesome and fresh as the breath
-of springtime."—\ *New Orleans Picayune.* 12mo, cloth. Illustrated.
-$1.00 net.
-
-THE MIDDLE WALL
----------------
-
-*The Albany Times-Union* says of this story of the South African
-diamond mines and adventures in London, on the sea and in
-America: "As a story teller Mr. Marshall cannot be improved
-upon, and whether one is looking for humor, philosophy, pathos,
-wit, excitement, adventure or love, he will find what he seeks,
-aplenty, in this capital tale." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents.
-
-----
-
-*BOOKS NOVELIZED FROM GREAT PLAYS*
-----------------------------------
-
-THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE
------------------------
-
-From the successful play of EDGAR JAMES. Embodying a wonderful
-message to both husbands and wives, it tells how a determined
-man, of dominating personality and iron will, leaves a faithful
-wife for another woman. 12mo, cloth. Illustrated from scenes in
-the play. Net $1.25.
-
-THE WRITING ON THE WALL
------------------------
-
-*The Rocky Mountain News*: "This novelization of OLGA NETHERSOLE'S
-play tells of Trinity Church and its tenements. It is a
-powerful, vital novel." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents.
-
-THE OLD FLUTE PLAYER
---------------------
-
-Based on CHARLES T. DAZEY'S play, this story won the
-friendship of the country very quickly. *The Albany Times-Union*:
-"Charming enough to become a classic." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated.
-50 cents.
-
-THE FAMILY
-----------
-
-Of this book (founded on the play by ROBERT HOBART DAVIS),
-*The Portland (Oregon) Journal* said: "Nothing more powerful has
-recently been put between the covers of a book." 12mo, cloth.
-Illustrated. 50 cents.
-
-THE SPENDTHRIFT
----------------
-
-*The Logansport (Ind.) Journal*: "A tense story, founded on PORTER
-EMERSON BROWNE'S play, is full of tremendous situations,
-and preaches a great sermon." 12mo, cloth bound, with six illustrations
-from scenes in the play. 50 cents.
-
-IN OLD KENTUCKY
----------------
-
-Based upon CHARLES T. DAZEY'S well-known play, which has
-been listened to with thrilling interest by over seven million people.
-"A new and powerful novel, fascinating in its rapid action. Its
-touching story is told more elaborately and even more absorbingly
-than it was upon the stage."—\ *Nashville American.* 12mo, cloth.
-Illustrated. 50 cents.
-
-----
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
---------------------
-
-Both "booky" and "bookie" used throughout text.
-
-|
-|
-|
-|
-|
-
-.. _pg_end_line:
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diff --git a/37477.txt b/37477.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9039be8..0000000 --- a/37477.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8701 +0,0 @@ - TAKING CHANCES - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost -no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it -under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this -eBook or online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Title: Taking Chances - -Author: Clarence L. Cullen - -Release Date: September 19, 2011 [EBook #37477] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: US-ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES *** - - - - -Produced by Roger Frank, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. - - BY - CLARENCE L. CULLEN - - AUTHOR OF - "Tales OF THE EX-TANKS." - - G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY - PUBLISHERS - NEW YORK - - _Copyright, 1898-1899-1900, By_ - THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION. - - _Copyright, 1900, By_ - G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY. - - ---- - - - - -CONTENTS - - - INTRODUCTORY NOTE. - THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND. - "WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE. - JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY. - THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT. - HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER. - STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION. - "RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK. - AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP. - THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS." - EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER. - THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS. - A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH. - HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES." - A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT. - A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES. - THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB." - STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND. - GREAT LUCK AT AN INOPPORTUNE TIME. - CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS. - THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER. - WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER. - QUEER PACIFIC COAST POKER. - THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET." - CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER. - FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN. - THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER. - THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN. - THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS. - THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE. - - ---- - - - - -INTRODUCTORY NOTE. - - -To the man who, at any period of his days, has been bitten by that -ferocious and fever-producing insect colloquially known as the "horse -bug," and likewise to the man whose nervous system has been racked by -the depredations of the "poker microbe," these tales of the turf and of -the green cloth are sympathetically dedicated. The thoroughbred running -horse is a peculiar animal. While he is often beaten, the very wisest -veterans of the turf have a favorite maxim to the effect that "The -ponies can't be beat"--meaning the thoroughbred racers; which sounds -paradoxical enough. Poker, too, is a mystifying affair, in that all men -who play it appear, from their own statements, to lose at it -persistently and perennially. There is surely something weird and -uncanny about a game that numbers only losers among its devotees. -However, poker-players are addicted to persiflage. The genuine, -dyed-in-the-wool, blown-in-the-bottle pokerist rarely acknowledges that -he is ahead of the game--until the day after. - -These stories, which were originally printed in the columns of the New -York _Sun_, belong largely to the eminent domain of strict truthfulness. -If they do not serve to show that the "horse bug" and the "poker -microbe" are good things to steer clear of, they will by no means have -failed of their purpose; for the writer had nothing didactic in view in -setting them down as he heard them. - - _Clarence Louis Cullen_. - -_New York_, _Sept. 1, 1900._ - - - - -THIS WIRETAPPER WAS COLOR-BLIND. - - - _And His Visual Infirmity Cost Him $15,000 and His Reputation._ - -"I went down to New Orleans a couple of months ago to get a young fellow -who was pretty badly wanted in my town for a two-months' campaign of -highly successful check-kiting last summer," said a Pittsburg detective -who dropped into New York on a hunt last week. "I got him all right, and -he's now doing his three years. I found him to be a pretty decent sort -of a young geezer, although a born crook. I don't remember ever having -had such an entertaining traveling mate as he was on the trip up from -New Orleans. Before we started I asked him if he was going to be good or -if it would be necessary for me to put the bracelets on. He gave me an -on-the-level look and said: - -"'No, I don't think it will. But I pass it up to you. I don't want to -throw you. All I ask is, don't give me too much of a chance if you keep -the irons off of me. I wouldn't be jay enough to try a window-jumping -stunt, but don't give me a show to make either one of the car doors. If -you do I may have to give you a run for it.' - -"Well, I could see that he would be all right without the cuffs, and so -I didn't put 'em on him. He rode up with me in the sleeper all the way -from New Orleans to Pittsburg--I let him do the sleeping, though, of -course--and he had a drink when I did and played quarter ante when I -did, and none of the rest of the passengers were any the wiser. He was a -clinking good talker and he told me a lot of interesting stories of -queer propositions that he had been up against. For instance, when we -were running through the Blue Grass region of Kentucky, he turned to me -and asked me where the blue grass was. I told him that the term blue -grass was largely ornamental, and that, while the grass down there was -no doubt high-grade and the limit as fodder for thoroughbreds, I thought -it was mostly green, like the grass the world over. - -"'Well, I'm blooming glad to hear you say that,' he replied. 'It proves -that I'm not color blind on the whole gamut of colors, anyhow. If you'd -said there really was blue grass in these fields we're running through, -I'd have given myself up as a bad job in the matter of distinguishing -colors. But as long as the grass is green like other grass--well, -there's some hope for me.' - -"'Color-blind, eh?' I asked him. - -"'Yes, I guess I am, more or less,' he replied. 'I never knew it, -though, until last spring, and it cost me $15,000 to find it out.' - -"'Expensive information,' said I. 'How'd it happen?' - -"'If you'll undertake to forget about it by the time we get to -Pittsburg, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I was fooling around one of the big -towns--one of the biggest towns on this side of the Mississippi--last -spring, when I met up with a couple of wiretappers that got me -interested. They were the real kind--not fake tappers who rope fellows -into giving up coin just by showing 'em phony instruments in shady -rooms, but professionals, who really knew how to tap the wires and pull -down the money. They had been working together for some time, and when I -happened to meet them they had just pulled off a swell hog-killing up in -Toronto and had two or three thousand each in their clothes. They had -only recently struck the big town, and, as they had never operated there -before, they didn't have to do any sleuth dodging. Neither did I, -although I was doing a bit of business in the check line occasionally, -and was about a thousand to the good when I met them. We hitched up -together, the three of us, for a drosky whirl, and then they told me -that, while they made it a rule not to let outsiders into their game, -they thought I was good enough to be admitted to a good thing that they -were about to pull off. - -"'One of the largest and best patronized of the poolrooms of the town -was 'way on the outskirts of the city. The duck that runs it is worth -close on to a million, and the ticket writers have instructions never to -turn any man's money down, no matter how big the sum or how lead-pipey -the cinch he appears to have. Lumps of $20,000 and $30,000 have -frequently been taken out of that poolroom on single tickets, and it's -one of the few poolrooms where track odds are given. - -"'My two new pals had sized up the layout, and when I met them they -already had things fixed to pull down a few comfortable wads. They had -rented a vacant frame cottage about 300 yards across a big vacant lot -from the poolroom, and, by a little night work--they were both practical -wiremen, as well as expert telegraphers--had got the wire into a room on -the second floor of the house all right. It was prairie land all around -and slimly frequented territory, and they had no trouble in rigging up -the wire paraphernalia, which they carried alongside a picket fence to -the porch of the cottage, and thence upstairs. They had the thing all -tested, and every dot and dash that reached the poolroom registered also -in the second floor of that cottage. - -"'One of the fellows had formerly worked in a poolroom himself and he -had the race code down as pat as butter. They took me out to have a look -at the layout, not because they wanted a dollar out of me, for they were -on velvet, but simply because they both seemed to take a kind o' shine -to me, and it surely looked good. I spent two or three afternoons in the -second floor front room where the layout was fixed, and the chap who was -expert with the racing code broke the report direct from the track a -dozen times and sent it in himself, after having mastered the operator's -style at the track end of the line, and the poolroom operator was never -a bit the wiser. It was good, all right, that layout, and when they were -all ready to begin work I was in on the play. - -"'We decided to make the first killing on the day the Belmont Stakes -were to be run for at Morris Park. I was against their starting it off -on such a big stake event, especially as the race looked to be such a -moral for Hamburg, but they said stake events were as good as selling -races in their business, and so we had a little rehearsal and stood by. -My end of the job was to happen in the poolroom. I was to locate there -by a dust-covered window that looked out of the poolroom across the big -vacant lot to the frame cottage where the layout was installed and wait -for the signal. The signal was to be made by means of a handkerchief -waved in the air by one of the fellows from the window. The color of the -handkerchief was to tell the name of the winner. For instance, if -Hamburg won a white handkerchief was to show at the second-story window; -if Bowling Brook captured the stakes a yellow handkerchief was to be the -signal, and so on. When I got the signal I was to put the money down on -the winner, the tapper was to hold the result from the pool operator for -five minutes to give me time to get the money down, and then I was just -to wait for the poolroom operator to announce the race. It was the -easiest thing in life, and it would have gone through with a rush, not -only on that race, but on a whole lot of other ones later on, if I -hadn't been color blind. - -"'I was on hand in the poolroom on the afternoon that we were to do -business and I put a few dollars down on the first races at Morris Park, -just for the sake of getting the ticket writers used to my face and to -avert suspicion. I had a pretty fair line on the horses in training then -and I won two or three out of the bets that I played simply on form. The -fourth race on the card was for the Belmont Stakes, and after the third -race had been confirmed and the first line of betting came in on the -stake race I lounged over to the dust-colored window and looked -uninterested. But I had the tail of my eye on the window of that frame -cottage all the time, nevertheless. I had $2,000 of my pals' money in my -clothes and $1,000 of my own. I was a bit nervous, but I knew that I had -a pipe, and I also knew that the poolroom people had mighty little show -to get next. I had all kinds of a front on me then, and a $5,000 or even -larger bet was, as I say, not so unusual in that poolroom as to scare -'em or cause 'em to become suspicious. - -"'Well, the second line of betting came in, with Hamburg the natural -favorite at 4 to 5 on in the betting, Bowling Brook 4 to 1 against and -the rest at write-your-own-ticket figures. The poolroom took in -thousands of dollars of Hamburg money, for nobody in the big crowd that -surged about the poolroom could figure any other horse in the race to -have a chance. I myself thought it was a sure thing for Hamburg, but I -wasn't playing thinks, but cinches, and so I just stood at that window -and waited for the signal. I was, I suppose, somewhat excited internally -when I thought of the possibilities of the game, but nobody knew it. The -poolroom operator announced, 'They're at the post at Morris Park,' and -then I knew that 'ud be the last direct communication he'd have with -Morris Park until after the running of the Belmont Stakes. I leaned -there on that window, with one hand resting on my chin comfortably, -waiting for the flutter of the handkerchief away across the vacant lot. -The sun shone brilliantly, and the window of the frame cottage was in -plain view, and I didn't figure it as among the possibilities that I -could make a mistake. - -"'Well, when the whole crowd in the poolroom had become sort o' mute -with expectancy and the betting at the desk was almost over, I got the -signal. It was the quickest flash in the world, a white handkerchief, as -I was perfectly positive, nervously waved three times from the -second-story window of the frame cottage. I didn't see my pal waving the -handkerchief--only the flutter of the white handkerchief which announced -that Hamburg had won. So, without any apparent excitement, but in the -laziest kind of a way in the world, I just yawned, stretched my arms, -and remarked to a few fellows standing nearby: - -"'"What's the use of doping over the race. It's a pipe for Hamburg. I'm -going up and put a couple of thousand on Hamburg." - -"'So I walked up to the desk, passed over six $500 bills and said -"Hamburg." The ticket writer took the money without any visible emotion -and wrote me a ticket. Then I walked out among the crowd to hear the -calling off of the race, which I knew would happen within three or four -minutes. - -"'"They're off for the Belmont," the operator shouted in about three -minutes, and then said I to myself, "What an exercise gallop for -Hamburg! What a dead easy way of picking up large pieces of money!" - -"'I wasn't worried even a little bit when Bowling Brook was 'way in the -lead in the stretch. - -"'Hamburg's just laying in a soft spot right there, third, and when it -comes to a drive, how cheap, he'll make a crab like Bowling Brook look! - -"'Then the operator, after the ten seconds' delay following the -announcement of the horses' positions in the stretch, called out: - -"'"Bowling Brook wins!" - -"'Say, I'm not an excitable kind of a duck, nor dead easy to keel over, -but, on the level, my head went 'round and I had to grip hold of a chair -top when I heard that announcement. I couldn't make it out. It seemed -out of the question. I knew that my two pals hadn't dumped me, because -hadn't I played $2,000 of their money? At first I thought the operator -made a mistake, and I waited with a spark of hope for the confirmation -of the race. The confirmation came in. Bowling Brook had walked in, and -Hamburg had been disgracefully beaten. - -"'An hour later I met my two pals downtown. They greeted me with grins, -and held out their hands for the thousands. - -"'"Thing didn't go through, did it?" I said to them. "Where was the -mistake, anyhow? What was the white handkerchief--Hamburg's -signal--waved for?" - -"'They looked at me savagely. They were positive that I had tricked -them--that I had really played Bowling Brook with the money and was -holding it out on them. - -"'"White handkerchief be blowed!" said the man that had given the -signal, pulling a light yellow handkerchief from his pocket. "What color -do you call this?" - -"'Well, then I saw how the mistake had been made, and that I had made -it. In the brilliant sunshine I had mistaken the light yellow -handkerchief for a white one, and it was up to me. They didn't give me a -chance to get in a word, though, for they believed, and believe yet, I -suppose, that I had thrown them, and they both hopped me at once. I had -to put up the fight of my life, but I downed them both finally with the -aid of a chair and a spittoon, and got away. That's how I lost -$15,000--counting the winnings we'd have made had I played Bowling Brook -that time--by being color blind.'" - - - - -"WHOOPING" A RACE-HORSE UNDER THE WIRE. - - - _A Novel Method of Treating Sulky Thoroughbreds That Often Works - Profitably._ - -"I see they hollered an old skate home and got him under the wire first -by three lengths out at the Newport merry-go-round the other day," said -an old-time trainer out at the Gravesend paddock. "Don't catch the -meaning of hollering a horse home? Well, it's scaring a sulker pretty -near out of his hide and hair and making him run by sheer force of -whoops let out altogether. This nag, Kriss Kringle, that was hollered -home at Newport a few days ago, is a sulker from the foot-hills. He was -sold as an N. G. last year for $25, and at the beginning of this season -he prances in and wins nine or ten straight races right off the reel at -the Western tracks, hopping over the best they've got out there. Then he -goes wrong, declines to crawl a yard, and is turned out. They yank him -into training again awhile back, put him up against the best a-running -on the other side of the Alleghanies, and he makes 'em look like -bull-pups one day and the next he can't beat a fat man. He comes near -getting his people ruled off for in-and-out kidding, and then, a couple -of weeks ago, or maybe a bit less, he goes out and chews up the track -record, and gets within a second of the world's record for the mile and -three-eighths, I believe it was. - -"Then, Tuesday they have him in at a mile and a sixteenth, with a real -nippy field, as Western horses go. The right people, knowing full well -the old Springbok gelding's propensities, shove their big coin in on him -anyway, and take a chance on him being unable to keep up with a steam -roller after his swell race a while before, and the whole crowd fall -into line and bet on Kringle until the books give them the cold-storage -countenance and say, 'Nix, no more.' Then they get up into the stand and -around the finishing rail and they see the aged Kriss, who's a rank -favorite, begin like a land crab, when he usually goes out from the jump -and spread-eagles his bunch. They begin the hard-luck moan when they see -the sour son of Springbok trailing along third in a field of five, and -they look into each other's mugs and chew about being on a dead one. -Turning into the stretch, the old skate is a poor third, and stopping -every minute, a plain case of sulks, like he's put up so many times -before. The two in front of him have got it right between them, when -Kris comes along into the last sixteenth, still third by a little bit, -and then the gang let out in one whoop and holler that could be heard -four miles. It's 'Wowee! come on here, ye danged old buck-jumper!' and -'Whoop-la! you Kringle!' from nearly every one of the thousand leather -lungs in the stand and up against the rail, and the surly old rogue pins -his ears forward and hears the yelp. Then it's all off. The old $25 -cast-off jumps out like a scared rabbit at the sixteenth-pole. The -nearer he gets to the stand the louder the yelping hits him and the -bigger he strides; and he collars the two in front of him as if they -were munching carrots in their stalls, and romps under the string three -lengths to the good. That's what hollering a horse home means. It's a -game that can only be worked on sulkers. The yelling scares the sulker -into running, whereas it's liable to make a good-dispositioned horse -stop as if sand-bagged. - -"I've seen the holler-'em-in gag worked often at both the legitimate and -the outlaw tracks, and for big money. One of the biggest -hog-slaughterings that was ever made at the game was when an Iroquois -nag, a six-year-old gelding named McKeever, turned a rank outsider trick -at Alexander Island, Va., in 1895. The boys that knew what was going to -happen that time surely did buy it by the basketful for a long time -afterward. McKeever was worth about $2 in his latter career, and not a -whole lot more at any stage of the game, according to my way of sizing -'em. As a five and six-year-old, he couldn't even make the doped outlaws -think they were in a race, but his people kept him plugging away on the -chance that some day or other he might pick up some of the spirit of his -sire, the royal Iroquois, and pay for his oats and rubbing, anyhow. When -he was brought to Alexander Island in the spring of '95, and tried out -it was seen that he was just the same old truck-mule. One morning, after -he'd been beaten a number of times by several Philadelphia blocks, when -at 100 to 1 or so in the books, his owner had him out for a bit of a -canter around the ring, with a 140-pound stable boy on him. A lot of -stable boys and rail birds were scattered all around the infield, -assembled in groups at intervals of 100 feet or so, chewing grass and -watching the horses at their morning work. This old McKeever starts -around the course as if he's doing a sleep-walking stunt. The boy gives -him the goad and the bat, but it's no good. McKeever sticks to his -caterpillar gait, and his owner leans against the rail with a watch in -his mitt and mumbles unholy things about the skate. There's a laugh -among the stable boys and the rail birds as McKeever goes gallumphing -around. Then a stable lad that's got a bit of Indian in him leans over -the rail just as McKeever's coming down, and lets out a whoop that can -be heard across the Potomac. McKeever gives a jump, and away he goes -like the wind. It looks so funny to the rail birds along the line that -they all take up the yelp, and McKeever jumps out faster at every shout. -He gets to going like a real, sure-enough race horse by the time he has -made the circuit once, and he keeps right on. The owner gets next to it -that it's the shouting that's keeping the old plug on the go, and he -waves his arms and passes the word along for the boys to keep it up. -McKeever does six furlongs in 1:14 with the assistance of the hollering, -and the owner takes him off the track, gives him a look-over and some -extra attention, and smiles to himself. - -"Then he pushes McKeever into a six-and-half furlong race on the -following day. He stations about twenty or twenty-five rail birds, all -of 'em stable boys out of a job, in the infield, and hands them out -their yelling instructions. McKeever is up against one of the best -fields of sprinters at the track, and he goes to the post at 30 to 1 and -sticks at that. His owner puts a large number of his pals next to what's -going to happen, and not a man of them plays the good thing at the -track. They have their coin telegraphed in bundles to the poolrooms all -over the country. McKeever gets out in front, and he hasn't made more -than a dozen jumps before one of the kids inside the rail throws a whoop -that makes the people in the stand put their hands to their ears. -McKeever gives a swerve and a side step, and away he goes like the -Empire State express. A hundred feet further, when he's four lengths in -the lead, and the others, including the even money shot, nowhere, a -couple more rail birds shoot out another double-jointed yell, and -McKeever jumps out again like an ice-yacht. He gets the holler at every -100 feet of his journey, the rail birds not taking any chances on his -stopping, although after the first furlong he is six lengths to the -good, and the result is that McKeever simply buck-jumps in, pulled -double, with eight lengths of open daylight between him and the even -money shot. The owner looks sad, like a man who hasn't put a dollar -down, and says real hard things to McKeever when the horse is being led -to his stable. When he gets him inside his stall, though, the hugs and -loaf sugar that fall McKeever's way are a heap. The old-time poolroom -people will tell you yet how they had to turn the box, a good many of -'em, the day that McKeever was hollered home at old Alexander Island. - -"And, talking about Alexander Island, there were some funny ones yanked -off over there, sure enough, some of them almost as funny as a few that -happened over in New York at the legit tracks this passing season. -Without hurling out any names, I'll just tell you of how a plunger who -has been a good deal talked about this year, on account of his big -winnings, got the dump-and-the-ditch at the hands of a -poor-but-honest-not owner at Alexander Island in the same year of 1895. -This plunger wasn't such a calcined tamale in those days as he is now, -but he was some few, and he generally had enough up his sleeve in order -to keep him in cigarettes and peanuts; which is to say that he had a -winning way about him, and access to everything that was doing at that -outlaw track. He dealt in jockeys quite a lot, giving them their figure -with a slight scaling down, according to his own idea of what was coming -to them for being kind to him. He was wise and he was haughty, and -toward the wind-up of that Alexander Island season he fell into the -notion, apparently, that things had to be done his way or the kickers -fade out of the game. - -"This poor owner that I'm talking about went on to Alexander Island with -an ordinary bunch of sprinters, all except one filly, that was real -good, but a bit high in flesh, and not ripe. It was a filly that could -as a matter of fact beat anything at the track, being right and on edge, -and she had the additional advantage of not being known all about. The -poor owner has his own boy along with him, and he's pretty hard up. He -sticks this filly in a six-furlong event, with the idea of really going -after the purse, which he requires for expenses. He knows that the filly -isn't right, but he dopes it that she can beat the lot pitted against -her, anyhow, and he really means her to win. He tells his boy to take -her right out in front and get as good a lead as he can, so that in case -her flesh stops her the rest'll never be able to get near her. That's -the arrangement right up until post time. The filly--well, suppose we -call her Juliet--is not very well known at Alexander Island, and she has -5 to 1 against her. - -"Now, it happens that this plunger knows all about Juliet being, as I -say, a pretty fast proposition, but he doesn't think she can win in her -condition, and, anyhow, he has something doing on another one in the -race; he has so much doing in the race, in fact, that all the rest of -'em, except Juliet, are dead to the one he has picked to play. The -plunger digs up the owner of Juliet and says to him: - -"'My son, your baby won't do to-day.' - -"'She'll make a stab, though,' said the owner. 'I need the cush, being -several shy of paying my feed bills. The game has been throwing me -lately. She's going to try.' - -"'You need the purse, hey?' said the plunger. 'That's not much money. -Only $200, ain't it? How'd $500 do?' - -"'Spot coin?' asks the impecunious owner. - -"'Spot coin after my weanling gets the money.' - -"'You're on,' says the poor-but-honest-not owner. 'I'm not any more -phony than my neighbors, but it's a case of real dig with me just now. -Juliet'll finish in the ruck. Are you cinchy about the one you've got -turning the trick?' - -"'It's like getting money in a letter,' says the plunger. - -"'All right,' says the poor owner, 'you can walk around to my stall and -push me the five centuries after they're in.' - -"The poor owner saw his boy, and Juliet's head was yanked off, with the -boy's toes tickling her ears. She could have won in a walk, short of -work as she was, but the boy had a biceps, and he held her down so that -the plunger's good thing went through all right. - -"After the race the plunger, who had made a great big thing out of it, -hunted up the poor owner and beefed about the $500. He said that he -hadn't been able to get as much money on his good one as he had expected -and asked the poor owner to compromise for $300. The plunger's poor -mouth doesn't tickle the poor owner a little bit, but he is a pretty -foxy piece of work himself, and he takes the three hundred without -letting on a particle that he thinks it a cheap gag. The plunger goes -away thinking he has the poor owner on his staff for good, and the poor -owner makes sundry and divers resolutions within himself, to the general -effect that the next time he does business with that plunger he'll know -it. - -"Well, the poor owner doesn't race his good filly again for a couple of -weeks, and all the time she's getting good. He gives her her work at -about 3 o'clock every morning, in the dreamy dawn, so that nobody gets -onto it just how good she is getting. He shoots her in about two weeks -after he has been dickered down by the plunger. He knows that she's -going to win, and with his other skates he has picked up nearly a -thousand wherewith to play the Juliet girl to win. On the day before the -race the plunger comes to him again. - -"'I see you've got that nice little girl of yours in to-morrow,' he -says. 'How good is she?' - -"'She's got a show for the big end of it,' says the poor owner. - -"'Um,' says the plunger. 'Well, she'll only be at 5 to 1, whereas I've -got a cinch in that that'll be as good as 15 to 1. Do you think we can -do a little business?' - -"'On a strictly pay-in-advance basis, yes,' says the poor owner, chewing -a straw. 'Maybe I'll be able to see my way to delivering the goods for a -thousand down. Otherwise I win.' - -"The plunger made a terrific beef, and tried persuasiveness, oiliness, -bull-dozing the whole works, with the poor owner. - -"'Why,' he says, 'I can buy all the Juliets from here to Kentucky and -back for a thousand.' - -"'Yes,' says the poor owner, 'but you can't shove a 15 to 1 shot through -every day, either. Let's not talk about it any more. You've got my -terms. Thousand down, right now, and Juliet will also ran. No thousand, -Juliet walks, and I'll get the coin anyhow by betting on her.' - -"He got the thousand two hours before the race was run. The poor owner -looked Juliet over, and called his boy into a dark corner of the stable. - -"'Take her out in front, son,' he said, 'and tow-rope them. Don't let -'em get within a block of you. I'll send your mother a couple o' hundred -after you fetch her home.' - -"'She'd win with a dummy on her,' says the kid. - -"Then the poor-but-honest-not owner takes the thousand he already has in -his kick, and the thousand the beefing plunger has given him, and -spraddles it all over the United States on Juliet at from 5 to 7 to 1. - -"Juliet wins by fourteen lengths, and the plunger, with his mouth -twitching, hunts up the owner of Juliet. All he gets is a line of chile -con carne conversation, and, finally, a puck in the eye. - -"'Do others or they'll do you' isn't the way they used to teach it when -I went to Sunday-school," concluded the old-time trainer, "but there are -occasions when the rule just has to be twisted that way." - - - - -JUST LIKE FINDING MONEY. - - - _A Bottled-up Cinch That Came Off at One of the Chicago Tracks._ - -"The first bet that I ever put down on a horse race," said a horse owner -and trainer at an uptown cafe the other night, "was on a horse that -stood at 100 to 1 in the betting. It was also the first race I ever saw -run by thoroughbreds. I was clerking in a Long Island City grocery store -for $8 a week at the time, and I didn't know a race-horse from a ton of -coal. I got a couple of my fingers crushed between two salt fish boxes -one morning, and I had to lay off from work. I didn't want to hang -around my room, and didn't know what to do with myself, and so when a -no-account young fellow I knew suggested that I go over with him to -Monmouth Park and have a look at the races, I fell in with the -proposition. Besides the remains of my previous week's pay, about $3, I -had $20 saved up out of my wages, and I kept this in one $20 note in my -inside vest pocket. After paying for round-trip tickets for my friend -and myself, and for two tickets of admission to the race grounds, I was -practically broke with the exception of a few cents, for I didn't count -the $20 as available assets. I intended to hang on to that unbroken. -Well, I found that all my sporty friend wanted of me was to have me pay -his way on the train and into the grounds, for he promptly lost me as -soon as we got by the gate. I felt pretty sore at this treatment, not -that I wanted his help, for I hadn't the least idea of doing any betting -with my savings, but I didn't cotton to the notion of being played for a -good thing and then thrown that way. - -"I walked around among the crowd with my hands in my pockets, wondering -a good deal over the dope talk of the ducks that knew all about the -horses and their preferred weights, distances, riders, and so on; it was -all Greek to me then. Finally I was shouldered and jostled into the -betting ring. It wasn't long before I began to rubberneck at the prices -laid against the horses on the bookies' blackboards. Although I didn't -know anything about the nags then, I found out afterward, when I had -made a study of the game and got a little next to it, that this race I -made my first bet on was composed of a cheap mess of fourteen selling -platers. They were at all kinds of prices, from 4 to 5 on to 100 to 1 -against. The latter price was laid about three of 'em. I didn't exactly -understand what the 100 to 1 meant, and so I asked a fellow standing -near by to explain it. He looked me over out of the slants of his lamps, -thinking, probably, that I was stringing him. When he saw that I was a -green one he told me that the 100 to 1 meant that if a 100 to 1 shot won -that I had put a dollar on I'd be $100 ahead of the game. This looked -pretty good to me. I didn't know anything about horse form or horse -quality then, and I thought that one of 'em had just as much chance as -another to win. So I picked out the 100 to 1 shot whose name I liked -best and elbowed my way up to a booky's stand to put a dollar down on -it, holding my $20 bill tightly gripped in my hand. I passed the twenty -up to the bookmaker--he went broke, and has been a dead 'un for a good -many years now--and said: - -"'Give me a dollar's worth of that fourth horse from the top--that one -with the 100 to 1 chalked before his name.' - -"The booky looked down at me contemptuously, without accepting the -twenty I proffered him, and said: - -"'I don't want no dollar bets.' - -"Well, this made me feel pretty cheap, especially as all of the ducks -back of me, waiting to pass up their fifties and hundreds gave me the -laugh. I didn't like to be shown up in that public way. I was just as -sore at that time about being made to look like thirty cents as I am -to-day. So I did a bit of lightning thinking. 'Twenty's a big bunch to -me,' I thought, 'and I've had to hop out of bed at half past 3 in the -morning to go to meat market a good many times to get it together; but -I'll be hanged if I'm going to let this fellow get away with his idea of -making me look small, even if I haven't got a show on earth.' So I -passed the bill up to him again, saying: - -"'All right, there, billionaire. Just gimme $20 worth of that fourth -horse from the top, with 100 to 1 chalked before his name.' - -"I was chagrined to find that this strong play didn't help me a little -bit. The booky only grinned as he chanted, 'Two thousand dollars to $20 -on the fourth one from the top,' and the chap that wrote me the ticket -grinned back at him, and the crowd behind me again gave me the hoarse -hoot, loud and long continued. I'll bet I was blushing on the bottom of -my feet when I snatched the ticket and hurried away from that booky's -stall, with the chuckles of the hot-looking members ringing in my ears. -Well, my horse walked in. - -"When I went to cash my ticket for $2,020 the booky sized me up, with -all kinds of wrath in his eyes. - -"'A good make-up you've got for a Rube,' he said to me. 'You're good. -That's the most scientific commissioner act I've seen pulled off up to -date, and I've been at this game ever since Hickory Jim was a -two-year-old.' - -"I didn't know what he was talking about. The word commissioner was -particularly mysterious to me, but I wasn't going to let him put it on -me again, and I like to have drove him crazy with the slow grin I gave -him. He chucked the bundle of $2,020 at me, and I just walked backward -with it in my hands and grinning at him. He was the maddest-looking man -I ever saw, before or since. I didn't go back to my grocery job, nor did -I hop in and slough off my $2,000 on a game I didn't know anything -about. I didn't play another horse that year, but went in and made a -study of the game, going to the tracks every day to see 'em run and to -think the whole institution over. It has taken me all of the years that -have passed since to find out that the study of horse racing don't -amount to a row of spuds, that study doesn't beat the game. I simply had -a series of lucky plays after I figured it that I knew all there was to -be learned about horse racing, and those plays put me on the velvet I've -had to a greater or less extent ever since. I don't often play them -now--I've got a fairly nifty string, and I run 'em and let the other -fellows do the guessing. - -"What set me to thinking about this first play of mine was a letter I -received the other day from an owner, who's racing his string down at -New Orleans, about the win of that plug Covington, Ky., the other day. -The price laid against Covington, Ky., was at first 150 to 1, and the -rail birds in the know battered it down to 60 to 1 at post time, -throwing all kinds of misery into the layers when the plater romped in, -after being practically left at the post. My friend says in his letter -that a big bookmaker declined to take a dollar bet from one of the wise -rail birds on Covington, Ky., at 150 to 1, and that the young fellow got -chesty, dug into the pocket where he kept his silver, found $2 in -quarters and halves, and handed the $3 to the bookie on Covington, Ky., -to win. The layer took the money and it cost him $450. The bookie, my -friend writes me, has been poked in the ribs over the thing by his -fellow-layers ever since. - -"I don't often pay any attention to good things," continued the turfman, -"and it's rarer still that I am compelled to regret my indifference to -the bottled-up cinches, but, in common with about 3,000 other people, I -overlooked a proposition at Lakeside last fall that caused me several -minutes' hard thinking. I didn't lose any money over it, but it's hard -to think of the inside chance I neglected on that occasion to make an -old-fashioned hog killing. I had four or five of my three-year-olds out -at Lakeside and was pulling a purse down with 'em once in a while, and -depending on the purses to keep me even with the game and strong for hay -money. I wasn't doing any betting; I took my confirmed indifference to -good things along with me to Chicago, and I think now, looking back at -the season, that I made a bit of a mistake in doing so, for if there's -any place in the country outside of the outlaw tracks where good things -do have a habit of going through right often, then that place is -Chicago. I didn't profit by any of 'em that were made to stick last -fall, however, although I saw many a sure thing soaked down from 20 to 1 -to 4 to 1 at post time, and then come in romping with all the money. A -lot of men I knew out at Lakeside--fellows with small strings, none of -which ever won or got in the money--were on all kinds of velvet by -giving ear to the inside good things, but they didn't make me jealous a -little bit. I'm in the game for keeps, and that's more than can be said -for the good-thing players. - -"Anyhow, for all that, I'm still regretting that I overlooked this -chance I'm speaking of. I was in a Dearborn street hang-out for racing -men one night, along toward the wind-up of the racing season, when a boy -came inside and told me a man out at the front door wanted to see me. I -went out and found a drunken stable hand waiting for me. He was employed -as a general stable roustabout by the owner of a California string, and -I had befriended the man in the paddock a few days before when he was -engaged in a rum fight with another stable hand. He was getting the -worst of the scrap when I stepped in and pulled his antagonist off of -him. It didn't amount to anything, this, but the tank stable hand that -was waiting for me outside of the Dearborn street place in the rain -seemed to feel grateful to me for it. - -"'Hello, Bill,' said I to him, 'what's up?' - -"'Got fired this afternoon,' he replied. - -"'Broke?' I asked him. - -"'I didn't hunt you up to touch you, boss,' he said. 'I got a good thing -I want to give to you. You've been square to me. The good thing's to -come off to-morrow, and nobody's on. I'm preaching on it because I've -been dropped from the track just for getting a skate on, and because I -want to put you next, that's been on the level with me.' - -"'You can pass me up,' I told the man. 'I don't play the sure ones, you -know.' - -"'But this is ripe, and it's going to happen,' persisted the man. 'It's -a baby. It's a looloo. It's a cachuca. It's that filly Mazie V. in the -two-year-old race to-morrow. You know who's stable she belongs in. I -heard the chaw about it this afternoon before I got fired, and they -didn't get on to it that I was listening. Mazie V.'s going to walk in -to-morrow. No dope, but she's fit. She worked three-quarters in .15 flat -early yesterday morning when nobody was looking, and she's on edge. -They're going to burn up the books with it. I know that nobody can tout -you, and I'm not trying to tout you. But here's a chance, and I came -down to let you know.' - -"Well, of course I had to thank the man, but I couldn't help but grin at -him at that. - -"'How long have you been rubbing 'em down?' I asked him. - -"'I've been around the horses since I was ten years old,' he replied. - -"'And still so easy?' I couldn't help but say. 'Well, I won't say -anything of what you've told me so as to queer the price, if there's any -play on Mazie V., but, of course, as for myself, I pass it up; thanks -all the same to you. Need any money?' - -"No, he didn't want any money, he said. He had simply hunted me up to -put me on to one of the best things of the meeting, and he shambled off. - -"When the books opened for that two-year-old race the next day, Mazie -V., a clean-limbed filly that had never shown a particle of class, -opened up the rank outsider in a big field, which included some very -fairish two-year-olds. I looked the books over, not because I was -betting, but just out of habit, and I saw that every nag in the race was -being played but Mazie V., the 150 to 1 shot. - -"'If they're going to burn the bookies out on Mazie V., I thought, -amusedly, 'it's a wonder the stable connections don't take some of this -good 150 to 1.' - -"As I was thinking this over, the ex-stableman who had hunted me up with -the Mazie V. good thing the night before plucked me by the sleeve. He -was several times as drunk as an owl, and I didn't care to talk with -him. - -"'Are you down?' he asked me, lurching. 'Because 'f you ain't, you're -campin' out, an' that's all there is to it.' - -"'Go and take a sleep,' I told him, and passed on. But he didn't want -any sleep. Instead, he drunkenly mounted a box that he found in the -betting ring, and started to make an address to the hustling bettors. - -"'Hey!' he shouted, 'if you mugs want to git aboard for the barbecue, -play Mazie V. She's going to be cut loose. She's a 1 to 10 chance. She's -going through. It's a cinch.' - -"The crowd guyed him. - -"'It's so good,' shouted the poor devil, 'that I just put the last $8 I -got on earth on her to win--not to show, but to win. Hey! I'm not -touting. I'm trying to give you all a win-out chance. You needn't think -because I ain't togged out that I'm a dead one on this. Even if I have -got a load along, why'---- - -"Just then somebody, probably an interested party, kicked the box from -under the man and he went sprawling. That closed him up. The crowd -roared, but not a man in the gang, of course, put down a dollar on Mazie -V. If any of the pikers had even a dream of doing such a thing the -stable hand's drunken recommendation of the filly switched them off. -Just before the horses went to the post the $5 bills of people that -weren't pikers, but stable connections, went into the ring in such -quantities on Mazie V. that she closed at 100 to 1 in a few of the -books, and at much smaller figures in most of the others. - -"Well, the way that little filly Mazie V. put it all over her field was -something ridiculous. The race was something easy for her. There was -nothing to it but Mazie V. She got away from the post almost dead last, -and then picked up her horses at leisure, revelling in the heavy going, -and, loping up in the last sixteenth, walked in with daylight between -her and the favorite. It was one of the killings of the Chicago racing -season, and the books were soaked to over $20,000 on $5 bets. - -"'That certainly is hard money to lose, to say the least,' I heard poor -Mike Dwyer mumble on the day that he took 1 to 15 on Hanover, putting -down $45,000 to win $3,000, and Hanover got himself disgracefully beaten -by Laggard. And that's what I think about that Mazie V. good thing--hard -money not to have won." - - - - -THIS SON OF FONSO WAS OF NO ACCOUNT. - - - _But When He Did Take It Into His Head to Run One Day, the Bookmakers - Were Damaged._ - -An old-time trainer, who is trying out a bunch of yearlings and keeping -up a lot of old campaigners out at the old Ivy City track near -Washington, was chewing wisps of hay the other afternoon and thinking -aloud. - -"One of the things that I can't exactly figure out," said he, "is -whether I'm a ringer-worker or on the level. That proposition has been -bothering me a heap in the middle of nights right along since the fall -of '87. I got into the center of a game then that has kept me -apologizing to myself ever since. And, then, again, that plug wasn't a -sure-enough proper ringer. And I didn't put him over the plate, either. -My end of it was only to cop out a few, and all I had to do was to---- - -"Well, anyhow, I went down to a yearling sale in Kentucky for the man I -was training for in 1885. There were some Fonso bull-pups to be -auctioned off, and the boss wanted a Fonso or two. You remember Fonso, -don't you? He's the old nag, a great one in his times, who got the blue -ribbon only the other day at the age of twenty-three for being still the -finest specimen of a thoroughbred in Kentucky. The boss wanted a couple -of Fonsos and I went after them. I got him two and myself one. The one I -got was the worst-looking he-scrag that ever wore hoofs. He was out of a -good mare, but he upset all the calculations of breeding. He was the -worst seed in looks that ever I clapped my eyes on; and I've been -fooling with yearlings for a quarter of a century. He was an angular -swayback, leggy, low-spirited, thick-headed, and as fast as a -caterpillar. Yet I bought him. I didn't expect ever to make anything out -of him, but I was pretty flush then, and I didn't want to see a Fonso -pulling a dray if there was a chance in a thousand of making anything -out of him. That colt was a joke. The whole crowd gave him the hoot when -he was led into the auction ring, and I couldn't hold down a grin myself -when I sized up the poor mutt of a camel, the worst libel on a great -sire that ever crawled into an auction ring for a bid. The whole gang -jeered me when I offered $100 for the skate. I didn't blame 'em. But I -led the colt out, put him in a stall, and then went back to the sale. I -got two high-grade Fonsos for my boss, and they won themselves out for -him twenty times over in the next three years. But they don't figure in -this story. - -"I went at my freak Fonso right away to see if anything could be done -with him. I devoted more time to that one than I did to any of my -two-year-olds or three-year-olds in training, hoping that he might have -something up his sleeve and that it could be dug out of him with careful -handling. It was no go. I couldn't get him to do a quarter in better -than 35 seconds. Bat or steel had no effect on him. He had a hide like a -rhinoceros, and he made the exercise boys weary. Here was a colt born a -Fonso, out of a mare that had been of stake class when in training, that -was no better than a truck-horse, and at the end of two weeks I gave him -up. A circus came along to Lexington, where I had my string, and with -the circus, in charge of the performing horses, was an old trainer -friend of mine from the St. Louis track who had been chased into the -show business by a long run of hard luck. I took him out to look over my -bunch, and when he came to the Fonso colt he laughed. - -"'Where did you get that world-beater?' he asked me. - -"'Oh, that's a Fonso colt that I picked up down the line at a sale a -while back,' I told him. - -"He didn't exactly call me a liar, but he looked as if he wanted to. -Then I told him all about the colt. Like most trainers, he had the blood -and breeding bug pretty bad under his bonnet, and he tried to throw it -into me that I wasn't giving the colt a fair shake. Told me a lot of -stuff that I already knew about some great racehorses that couldn't get -out of their own way as yearlings, and tried to convince me that this -Fonso thing of mine was liable to fool me up a whole lot as a -two-year-old. - -"'Well, he doesn't get oats at my expense until he's ready to race,' -said I. 'If you think his chances at next year's stakes are so devilish -big, he's yours for a quarter of a hundred.' - -"'I've got you,' said my friend with the show. 'I'll take him along, -anyhow. It's worth that much to a man to be able to say to himself as he -smokes his pipe after his work's done that he's got a Fonso colt of his -own. And I'll bet you an even $100 that I get one race out of that -swayback, anyhow, before he's two years older.' - -"I didn't take him. I was disgusted with my hundred dollars' worth of -Fonso, and I was glad to get the $25 that my friend in the show business -gave me for him. He took the mutt away with the show, and I forgot all -about that sentimental purchase of mine for a couple of years. - -"I hadn't any killing luck during those two years. In fact, the game -went against me pretty strong. Most of the string that I had in training -went wrong or showed themselves platers, and when the boss decided to -quit racing I was up against it completely. I had two or three platers -of my own that made their oats money and a little more, and these I -raced on the St. Louis track, pulling down a purse once in a while, and -getting second money often enough to keep me in coffee and sinkers. When -the St. Louis game closed down at the end of September, a number of us -that had small strings struck out for the bush-meetings in nearby -States. I shipped my three to a metropolis on the banks of the Missouri -River where a State fair was about to be held and where $200 purses were -offered for running races. I figured my three lobsters to be as good as -any for the bush-meetings, and I calculated on getting one or two of the -purses at this State Fair. - -"I got into the town--they call it a city out there--with my horses -three days before the State Fair was to begin. On the day that I got -there a circus that had been exhibiting in the town for two days wound -up its season and started East for its winter quarters. I saw the -boarded-up wagons passing through the streets on their way to the -freight depot. I was watching the dead procession when my circus friend, -the man on whom I had worked off my no-account Fonso colt, picked me out -of the crowd and came up to me. The circus moving out was the one he had -been attached to when last I saw him and sold him the colt. - -"'Hello,' said I, 'how many stakes have you pulled down with that one up -to date?' - -"He dug his hands into his pockets and grinned but made no reply. - -"'Have you still got that colt?' I asked him. - -"'Yep,' said he. - -"'Going to take him along with you to the show's winter headquarters?' I -inquired. - -"'Sh-sh-sh!' said he. 'I'm not going along with the show. I quit 'em -here. Season's over. I've got some business here next week, anyhow. I'm -going to race that Fonso on the Uncle Tom circuit, beginning with the -State Fair here.' - -"Of course, I couldn't do anything else but prod him, and I did. - -"'Fact,' said he, seriously. 'Got him entered in the first race on the -card--mile.' - -"'I've got one in that myself,' I told him. 'Shall we fix it up between -us?' I added, just for fun. - -"'You might do worse, at that,' said he, sizing me up out of the tail of -his eye. 'I'm going to win in a walk.' - -"Then I hooted him a good deal more, of course. He let me get through, -and he then took me off into a corner and told me some things. - -"'That plug like to have broken my heart ever since I got him,' he said. -'I've had him in four or five times already at the bush meetings, but he -was never one, two, three, until the last time, when he took it into his -head to run when they got into the stretch and was only beaten a nose by -a pretty fair bush plug. This was two months ago. The trouble with this -Fonso colt you sawed off on me is that he's a sulker. He's got the speed -in his crazy-shaped bones, but he won't let it out. Well, between you -and me--and I put you next because I know you want a dollar or so as bad -as I do--I'm confident that with a douse out of a pail and a bit of a -punch with a needle just before post time, he can beat anything out this -way. He's out at the Fair grounds now, and I worked him a mile in .48 -this morning. He roars like a blast furnace, but his wind is all right, -nevertheless. He's still as ugly as ever, if not uglier. I put you next, -because it might be a good thing for you to scratch your nag out of that -first race and cotton to your cast-off. There'll be a big price on -account of his wheezing and his ragged looks.' - -"'How did you enter him?' I asked. 'As a Fonso?' - -"'Not on your natural,' said he. 'Any old thing's eligible, and I simply -told 'em I didn't know the mutt's breeding, that I had him along with me -in the show, and just had an idea he might run a little.' - -"Well, son, the winter was beginning to loom up, and I wasn't ulstered -and swaddled out for it. I went out to the Fair grounds with my friend -and looked over the Fonso freak. My friend called him Star Boarder, -because he'd been eating circus oats and hay for two years without ever -doing a lick of work to pay for his fodder. The colt had, of course, -filled out and lengthened, but he was still as homely a beast ever I -clapped an eye on. We had him led out on the six-furlong track, and an -exercise boy who weighed about 145 pounds took him over the course at -top speed. The nag did it in 1.21, and the performance tickled me. The -colt had a crazy, jerky, uneven stride, and seemed to go sideways, but -he certainly got over the ground lively with that weight up. I saw the -chance, and I needed the coin. - -"'Can he keep that gait up for the mile?' I asked his owner. - -"'He wants four miles,' he replied. 'His roaring is a bluff.' - -"'Count me in, then,' said I. 'He'll walk in that race. I'll scratch -mine out.' - -"We went along the line and looked over the other horses, especially the -twelve that were entered for that first race, and, although there were -some good-lookers in the bunch, they had been campaigned heavily for -months, and were a jaded lot. I scratched my pretty fair horse out of -that first race. Then I sold the poorest nag of my three platers to a -banker in town for a stylish saddle horse. Got $400 for him. I wanted -the money for betting purposes. - -"There was a big crowd out at the Fair grounds on the day the racing -began. Four books were on, all of them run by representatives of big -gambling houses in town. My friend had the Fonso colt taken out of his -stall and slowly trotted around the track about three-quarters of an -hour before the first race, that in which the horse was entered. The -gathering crowd in the stand laughed over the horse's awkward, climbing -gait and clumsy appearance. That's what we wanted 'em to do. We wanted -the price, or the horse would have been kept in his stall. - -"Only seven of the field originally entered for the race went to the -post. Now, I didn't have anything to do with conditioning Star Boarder, -and I never belonged to the syringe gang, anyhow; I kept strictly away -from the paddock and the barns before the race, because I didn't want to -see anything. But the way that Fonso colt, with all his clumsiness, held -his head up and pranced around as he was going to the post, with a -pretty fair boy that I brought along with me from St. Louis on his back, -by the way, was certainly great. Dope makes a horse about as perky as -three drinks of whisky makes a man who's been off the booze for a long -while. The trouble is that the dope doesn't last so long in a horse as -it does in a man, and I was pretty anxious for a prompt start, so that -the dope in this homely cast-off of mine wouldn't die out. - -"The betting on Star Boarder opened at 15, 6, and 3. There was an -even-money favorite, a horse that had pulled down a number of mile -purses at St. Louis, a 2 to 1 shot, and the others slid up to the nag my -friend and I wanted to have win; Star Boarder being the rank outsider at -15 to 1. I put my $400 down on him with the four booked all three ways, -$200 to win, $100 for the place, and $100 to show. In the morning my -friend handed me $200 of his savings from the circus business to bet. I -played his coin $100 to win and $100 a place. I had hardly got the money -down before I heard a big whoop of laughter from the stand, and I rushed -out to see what was the matter. Star Boarder was running away. There had -been a false break, and the fool plug had kept right on going. He had a -mouth like forged steel, and the boy couldn't do anything with him. I -stood and damned Fonso and all his tribe to the last generation, and I -could see my friend in the paddock shaking his fist and grinding his -teeth. - -"'Oh, well,' said I to myself, 'it's all off, and it serves you bully -good and right for not racing your own plugs and letting these con and -dope grafts go to the devil.' - -"The horse went the full length of the course before he was pulled up, -and then he was roaring and wheezing like a sea-lion. The crowd laughed, -and the books gave the post-time bettors all the 60 to 1 against Star -Boarder that they wanted--which, of course, was none. - -"I went back to the paddock then, while the horses were gyrating at the -post, and found the brute's owner. I laid him open. - -"'To blazes with casting up!' he said. 'Isn't the last of my cush on the -skate, too?' - -"I felt like ten cents' worth of dog's meat when I slunk back to the -stand to see 'em get off. After fifteen minutes' delay at the post--the -starter was a farmer--and Star Boarder blowing like a sand-blast and the -foam standing all over him from that little six-furlong sprint, away -they went in a line, Star Boarder in the lead! Star Boarder at the -quarter by a length! Star Boarder at the half by a length! Star Boarder -at the three-quarters by two lengths! Star Boarder in the stretch by -three lengths! And if that dog-goned, knock-kneed, bone-spavined, -no-account maiden Fonso colt didn't just buck-jump under the wire by six -clear lengths of open daylight, you can feed me hay and carrots until -the next spring meeting and I'll only say thank you kindly, sir! - -"I can't, as I say, make out whether that was a case of ringing or not. -Anyhow, it was up to the State fair people to make the holler if any was -coming, wasn't it? They didn't. The Rube bookmakers did, but they -weren't sustained, and they had to dive into their satchels. Star -Boarder is over in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, to-day, pulling an old -lady around in a phaeton, and still holding down the distinction of -being the homeliest son of one of the handsomest sires in the history of -the American stud." - - - - -HARD-LUCK WAIL OF AN OLD-TIME TRAINER. - - - _He Salts a 100 to 1 Shot Away for a Good Thing and Is Steered Off._ - -"Washington, as I remember it, was a pretty nice old jogger of a town," -said an old-time trainer who got in at Bennings, the race-track near -Washington, a few days ago with a well-known string of horses in -preparation for the spring meeting there. "I'd like to have a look at it -again by daylight. Got in this time after dark and came right out here -before sunrise. First time I'd hit Washington for five years--since the -fall meeting at St. Asaph in 1894. I surely would like to have another -look around Washington. But I guess I'll have to pass it up. I'm not -hunting for bother nowadays." - -The paddock in which he stood is only a few minutes' run by train from -Washington. It seemed odd, therefore, that he did not step on a train -and run over to Washington, since, as he said, he hankered for another -sight of it. He was asked about this: - -"Well," he replied, "I'm waiting for five fellows that I used to know -over in Washington to die. When they've all cashed in, maybe I'll have a -chance to look around Washington again. But I understand that they're -all alive and on edge now, and I don't exactly feel like running into -them. I know that I'd never be able to square myself for a thing that -happened down at St. Asaph during that fall meeting in 1894, so what's -the use of stacking up against the bunch and wasting wind? - -"I had a small string of dead ones at that St. Asaph meeting. I didn't -get oats money out of them. That year was the frost of my life, anyhow. -I started in around the New York tracks in the spring with a bundle of -three thousand or so that I had hauled down by backing 'em out on the -coast during the winter meeting, and I began to melt before the leaves -commenced to show up on the trees. There was nothing doing for me. I -couldn't get down right. Nearly a dozen good things that pals of mine -with strings had got into the pink of it to send over the plate at long -prices wound up among the also rans and the crimp those things took in -my wad was something ridiculous. I only handled a few horses during the -summer meetings that year on the metropolitan tracks. They were all -crabs and did no good. So I had to plug along by shying a ten or twenty -into the ring when I heard of something that looked nice. I couldn't -even make this clubbing game go through. The books got two out of three -of my slips of the green, and I got to wondering how it would feel to -drive a truck. They certainly had me down that year. - -"When the fall meeting at Morris Park wound up I had $200 and a -headache. I was figuring on how I could take this down to the winter -meetings in the South and run it up to something worth while, when the -owner of the bunch of dead ones I spoke of came along and asked me to -take 'em down to St. Asaph and try to get a race or two out of them. I -knew they were lobsters, all of these horses, and I was ugly enough to -tell the owner that when I wanted a job handling cattle I'd go down to -West street and get one, with a sea voyage to Glasgow or London thrown -in. There wasn't a horse in the lot that could beat my old aunt in -Ireland over the plate for money or marbles; but I decided to take them -down to St. Asaph anyhow, just for the sake of keeping on the inside of -the game and finding out if there was anything going on that would -enable me to run that small shoestring of mine into a tannery. So I took -them down to that Virginia clay course across the Potomac and fixed them -up the best I knew how. They wouldn't do. St. Asaph was getting some -good horses straight from the Eastern tracks then and my platers were -never in the hunt--never one, two, six, in fact. Worse than that, the -books began taking my little $2 and $5 bets away from me right from the -getaway, and I could see a winter ahead in New York with all the -trimmings cut out. I met a dozen or so of pretty square chaps in -Washington, business men that liked to see 'em run and that used to ask -me occasionally what I thought. I landed most of them right on several -dead good things without ever getting a dollar on myself from want of -nerve, my pile was so low, and they made good, all right, when these -things went through. But I was bunking up with such a hoodoo that I -sloughed off even this rake-off, and when the thing happened that I am -going to tell you about I only had $70 left out of the cozy cush I had -started in the season with. - -"Now, I've been at this game, on both sides of the fence, for more than -twenty years, and, if any man is, I'm dead next to the fact that the -horse game is hard and craggy. I never yet was guilty of looking upon -the running game as something easy. Yet I'm bound to admit that I often -get what you can call, if you want to, a hunch on a horse. Something -that a plug does in his running, even if he doesn't get near the money, -takes my eye, and from thinking about it I get a hunch on him. I don't -get a hunch like this every day, or every week or month, for that -matter, but I've noticed that these hunches of mine have gone through -nine times out of ten during the past twenty years or so. Well, there -was a horse called Jodan that had run in two or three six-furlong -sprints at Morris Park that fall, and I had liked his work. He was out -of the money in both of those races, but I liked the way he went at his -work. That horse Jodan looked to me like he had it in him. These two -Morris Park races had been captured, one, two, three by good ones, and I -could see when I had a chance to look Jodan over in his stall that he -was short of work. The string to which the horse belonged had a poor -trainer, and I knew that a good trainer could get some six furlong races -out of Jodan. I had a hunch on Jodan, and I fixed it in my head that if -ever the horse got into the hands of a good trainer and was brought -around right for the six-furlong distance, he'd get a piece of my money, -no matter what company he was up against. - -"Well, along toward the close of the St. Asaph meeting Jodan turned up -at the track with another trainer handling him--a man who had as good a -knack of conditioning horses as ever I met up with, and an old chum of -mine. I rubbed up with him before he had been on the track fifteen -minutes, and asked him what he was going to do with Jodan. - -"'I am going to try him out in the first three-quarter event I can -squeeze him into,' he told me, 'and I wouldn't be surprised to see him -get a piece of it. His right fore-leg is a bit bum, but if it holds -together I don't see why the fellows I know shouldn't get a bite off a -real good thing in Jodan. He's got a turn of speed, and I've got him -dead right. The only thing that worries me is that swollen knee, and I'm -doing my best at patching that up.' - -"I told him of the hunch I'd had at Morris Park on Jodan, and he told me -to stay with it, and he'd attend to his end of it to help me out. - -"'There'll be all kinds of a price on him when I send him to the pump,' -he said, 'and I'll let you know in time just how he is.' - -"Well, that hunch just grew and grew on me. The Washington chaps that I -had met and pushed along with the good things that I didn't have the sap -to play myself heard from me on the Jodan question. I told them that I -had him up my sleeve and to stand by. They had never heard of the horse -and they almost side-stepped when I told 'em he was as good as any of -them over a three-quarter route--that he had never been got right. There -were a lot of six-furlongers down at St. Asaph then that could negotiate -the distance in .15 flat, and they couldn't see where a horse that they -had never heard of had a look-in with that kind. I held my ground, -however, and they said that when it was to come off they'd throw a -little bit of a bet at the bird, just because I said so. - -"A couple of days later Jodan's name showed up among the entries for a -six-furlong sprint, and I had another chaw with his trainer. - -"'He's good,' he told me. 'Stay with your hunch. He ought to do.' - -"The race was to be run on a Saturday. I looked up my Washington friends -and told them confidently what Jodan was going to do with a bunch of the -best three-quarter runners in training. Four or five of them couldn't -help but give me the hoot on the proposition, and they said they weren't -going over to the track, anyhow--too busy closing up the week's -business, and so on. They couldn't see where Jodan figured with the lot -he was to meet. I went around to the rest of these Washington fellows on -the Friday evening before the race and told them again about Jodan. -They, too, were all going to be too busy with the Saturday wind-up of -business to take in the races that day, but five of them gave me $10 -each to put on Jodan for them. None of them had any confidence in the -thing, though. - -"The Jodan race was the first on the card. There were fourteen entries, -and not a horse was scratched. The track was deep in dust, and I knew -then Jodan liked that sort of going. It looked like a cinch. I knew that -the bookies would be dead to Jodan, but I didn't think they'd take the -liberties they did with him. The favorite opened up at 2 to 1, and he -was played down to 6 to 5 in no time. Then there were four or five shots -in it ranging from 3 to 1 to 15 to 1, when the rank outsiders were -written in all the way up to 150 to 1. Jodan, my mutt, stowed away for a -good thing, opened up at 100 to 1 and stuck there. I went out to the -stable where Jodan was quartered to find his trainer, but I couldn't dig -him up. He was mixed up with the bunch in the paddock or in the stand. -So I decided that it wasn't necessary for me to see him, anyhow, before -putting my money on Jodan. I had seen him the night before, when he -whispered to me that Jodan was gorgeous, and that he was going to play -him to win, no matter if the books laid 1000 to 1 against the horse. - -"So I traipsed around to the ring to put down my money and that of my -friends on Jodan. As I say, Jodan's price all over the ring was 100 to -1, and no takers. I had the five tens the Washington chaps had given me -and the last fifty spot I had on earth in my mitt, ready to shoot around -and plant it in $10 gobs on Jodan before the price could be rubbed, thus -standing to win $5000 for myself and $5000 for the Washington fellows, -with my share out of their winnings for putting them next. I was the -very next man in line to plant my first ten with one of the books, when -I felt a hard pinch on my right arm, and I wheeled around suddenly to -swat the duck that had given it to me. It was my friend, the trainer of -Jodan. He nodded me over to the little vacant space. - -"'You were just going to take some Jodan, weren't you?' he asked me. - -"'That's what,' said I. 'He'll turn the trick, won't he?' - -"'No,' he replied shortly. 'I've been trying to find you for the last -hour to tell you. The mutt's got another twist during the night somehow -or another, and now it's about twice its right size. Stay off. He can't -do it. He's not limping much, but I can't see how he'll go a quarter -with such a leg. It'll be a miracle if that hard-luck skate finishes at -all.' - -"This was a hard fall for me, I'm telling you that. I had been building -on it for one of my cinch hunch things, and to hear that it had gone -rank took the nerve out of me. Of course, in a dismal kind of way, I was -glad my friend the trainer had put me next to the state of things in -time to keep me off the dead one for my whole fifty and the fifty of my -friends in Washington, but that wasn't much salve for the hurt I got -when he told me that Jodan couldn't possibly do it. With Jodan out of it -I felt certain that the 6 to 5 favorite would come in all alone, and so -I put the whole bundle down that way $120 to $100. It made me glum to -think of the difference between that and $10,000 to $100. - -"Then I went up to the stand to see the lot file past on their way to -the post. My horse, the favorite, was just a-prancing and looked to me -like a 1 to 10 thing with Jodan out. But my trainer chum had put me on -right. Jodan's knee was as big as your hat, and he had his limp along -with him. One of the stewards noticed this and made a bit of talk about -not allowing Jodan to race, but when he was told that Jodan always went -to the post with a bum knee, even after his warming up, he closed up and -Jodan went around to the pump with his field. - -"They got off the first break. The people in the stand were down on the -favorite almost to a man, and the yelp they let out when he shot to the -lead from the first jump was a heap noisy. My poor old Jodan plug was -almost left at the post, but his boy got him going all right, and I was -rather surprised to see him quickly join the rear bunch. By this time, -at the half, the favorite was just buck-jumping five lengths out in -front of the first division. Then the hind ones began to move up, and I -stood by to see Jodan get shuffled out of it. But he didn't shuffle. He -passed right by the rear gang and nearing the three-quarters he was at -the saddle-girths of the front division and going like a cup defender in -half a gale. - -"'You'll chuck that in a minute, my boy,' I thought, with my mind on -Jodan. 'Three-legged races look all right on paper, but they don't go -through.' - -"I lost the colors when they turned into the stretch, but I saw that the -favorite was still a good two lengths in front. The track was so deep in -dust that I couldn't make out the others until they were well into the -stretch for the lope to the wire. Then when they were all settled down -to their barrels in the flying yellow dust, I saw one of the front -divisionites behind the leader shoot out around on the outside and bend -down to it. Say, I closed my lamps down tight. That horse coming on the -outside like a black devil, with his bit almost crunched into flinders, -was Jodan. I opened up my eyes when they were about sixty yards from the -wire. In the middle of the whirlwind of dust I saw the favorite -faltering, with Jodan a neck away and going like as if his distance was -only a quarter of a mile and he a-covering it there in the stretch. Then -I pulled my glasses away from my head, sat down, shut my eyes again and -shook hands with death for a few seconds while the Indians all around me -were howling 'Jodan!' 'Jodan!' - -"'Jodan wins!' they yelled when the horses got under the wire, and I -opened up my eyes just in time to see Jodan with open daylight between -him and the favorite. That was a three-legged miracle, all right. I was -in a daze, but I had a picture in my head of five fellows in Washington -that had treated me right waiting for the race train to get in so that I -could hand them each a thousand. I couldn't stand for that, and I had -too many different kinds of heartbreak warping me out under my vest to -feel like trying to explain the thing to them. So I walked over to -Alexandria and caught the afternoon train for Richmond, after leaving my -bum string in the hands of another trainer. From Richmond I went on down -to New Orleans, where I had some luck--never enough luck, though, to -square the game up with me for that win of Jodan's, which made me feel -old and tired for a long time afterward. - -"If I outlive those five Washington fellows, or they take it into their -lids to go to the Klondike together, maybe I'll have another look around -under the shadow of that big dome yonder. But I don't want to meet them. -Explaining's too hard work, and the circumstances of that St. Asaph -happening, which occurred as I've spieled it, were 'agin' me!" - - - - -STORY OF AN "ALMOST" COMBINATION. - - - _It Paid $2,000 to $2, and Looked Like a Winner Until the Last Jump, - But----_ - -There was a period of prolonged, nerve-racking excitement one afternoon -last week in a demure and retiring Harlem poolroom that doesn't draw any -color line. A colored sport was threatening to tear the place loose from -its foundations and to fire a volley over the ruins--in a purely -figurative sense, that is to say. Literally he didn't commit any breach -of the peace at all. But he had a combination ticket in his clothes for -a couple of hours that practically made all the rest of the people in -the place forget what they were there for. He was as black as that -overworked one-spot of spades. He was known to his envied intimates only -as Mose, and the very large checked suit of plaid that he wore had a -certain cake-walk suggestiveness, as did his huge red necktie, his -patent leathers with blue polka-dotted uppers, and his three large -yellow diamonds, two of them on his fingers and the other screwed in the -middle of his shirt bosom with crimson horizontal bars. He was a "spote" -all right. - -He entered the poolroom alone, looked up at the board, and then dug a -bit of paper, obviously a telegram, out of his Oxford cloth Newmarket -overcoat. A man who was rude enough to look over his shoulders saw that -the telegram was a night message and that it bore the New Orleans date. -It contained the names of five horses, with the initials of the sender. - -"He's a po'tuh on uh Pullman," vouchsafed the sport to the privileged -character who had looked over his shoulder at the despatch. "An' he's uh -babe, yo' heah me! He knows 'em lak he knows uh blackin' brush. Ah's uh -gwine tuh mek uh combinashun on de hull five. De ticket 'll win in uh -walk." - -After sizing up the house betting on the New Orleans races for a few -minutes, he walked up to the counter where the combination tickets -exuded from the lightning calculator. Just at that moment there was -nothing doing at the combination counter. The sport produced his -telegram, cleared his throat, and began. - -"Ah's got de hull five babies," he said with a grin to the ticket -writer. "An' ah's uh gwine tuh tek 'em all tuh win. Doan' want none o' -'em fo' place or show. Dey's all got tuh come in all alone." - -"Shoot 'em out," said the ticket writer. - -The sport named the five horses that he knew were going to win the New -Orleans races. They were, in the order of the races, Mint Sauce, Russell -R., Deyo, Benneville and Donna Rita. - -The ticket writer executed his bit of lightning head work, with frequent -glances at the board to get the prices on the runners, and then he -looked up at the sport with a grin. - -"Huntin' for a hog killin', ain't you?" he asked. "Goin' to put us out -o' business? It figures a thousand to one. How much do you want on it?" - -"Two dolluhs," replied the sport and he passed up the money. The ticket -writer pencilled the names of the horses down on the ticket, placed the -figures "$2,000 to $2" at the bottom of it, and handed the bit of -pasteboard to the sport with the remark: - -"You're a good thing. Come again." - -"Yo' all kin do yo' hollern' w'en de hosses run," was the sport's -good-natured reply, and then he went to the extreme outer row of seats -in the pool room and sat down to wait for $2,000 to accrue to him on an -investment of $2. - -Along toward 3 o'clock the betting came in on the first race at New -Orleans. The horse Mint Sauce that the sport had in his combination -ticket was the odds-on favorite, although he had been at a good price in -the house betting. The queer crowd of players surged up to the counters -to put their money down on things they liked, that figured all right in -the dope books; but the sport kept his seat. His speculation for the day -was over. He was simply waiting for his $2 to grow to $2,002. - -Then they were off at New Orleans, as the telegrapher announced with a -bored air, electrifying the crowd into silence. It was a six-furlong -race, and there was nothing to it but Mint Sauce all the way. At the -three-quarters, when the telegrapher announced that Mint Sauce was third -and just galloping, the sport leaned back in his seat with an -it's-all-over expression, snapped his fingers a couple of times for -luck, and said: - -"It's uh cake-walk fo' dat baby. Ah'm on right so far." - -"Mint Sauce wins by two lengths," announced the operator, and the -announcement was received with silence. Poolroom crowds don't play -favorites as a rule. - -"Mah nex' is this heah Russell R.," said the sport, gazing at his ticket -again, "an' Russell R. he's dun got tuh win. Ah feels uh leetle -squeenchy uhbout he all, but Russell R. he'll buck-jump in." - -The betting came in on the race a few moments later, and Russell R. was -at a long price. Several horses in the race were at much shorter prices. -The sport didn't look worried a little bit over this. - -"Russell R. he's dun got tuh win," he said, and that was all there was -about it. - -"Off at New Orleans," announced the weary looking operator again, and -then he began to call off the way the race was being run. It looked bad -for the sport's ticket until the telegrapher had carried the nags along -to the three-quarter post and then Russell R., who hadn't been anywhere, -got his first call, joining the bunch as third at that stage of the -journey. - -"Sadie Burnham in the stretch by a length!" announced the telegrapher. -"Lomond second by a length, Russell R. third," and then the sport began -to root for his horse. He swayed back and forth in his wicker rocking -chair, moaning, "Come, yo' Russell hoss! Yo' heah me uh-talkin', -hoss--come, yo' Russell--or yo' doan' git no oats--ketch him, yo' baby, -an' yo' pa'll treat yo' right"---- - -"Russell R. wins, by a head!" announced the telegrapher. - -"Oh, yo' wahm thing, yo' Russell!" suppressedly exclaimed the sport, his -finger-snapping suddenly stopping and an upturned crescent grin -spreading over the whole area of his chocolate countenance. - -It seemed that some of the less important sports must have been "riding" -Russell R. too, for their exultant "Uh-huhs!" rang around the room. The -colored sport dearly loves a long shot. - -"De nex' on mah piece o' pas'e-boa'd," said the sport, ransacking -through his pockets again for his ticket, "is dain'jus. Ah doan' lak dis -heah hoss Deyo, but Ah ain't uh-playin' whut Ah laks, but whut's dun -sent tuh me. So Deyo she's dun got tuh win, too." - -It was after 4 o'clock by this time, and the poolroom was filling up -with young fellows turned loose from the down-town offices. Many of -these late arrivals had straight tips in the form of telegrams on the -third race at New Orleans and they almost overwhelmed the ticket -writers. When the betting came in on that race Deyo was at a long price, -much longer than the house betting had quoted the nag, and the sport -looked a bit anxious over this. His worried look disappeared, however, -when the second line of betting came in, showing that Deyo was being -backed down some on the New Orleans track. - -"Dey's sumthin' uh-doin' on that mule," he said, and the telegrapher -began to call off the race. It was something easy for Deyo, who beat the -favorite by three lengths. The sport didn't have to snap his fingers or -sway in his chair at all. Deyo was in front all the way. Three-fifths of -the $2,000 to $2 ticket was won. - -By this time the sport was the cynosure of a good many pairs of eyes. -The possibilities of the ticket he had in his pocket were whispered -about, and a number of the real things in the sport line edged over and -asked to have a look at the ticket. - -"It's a alimpey-boolera," they said, and they rubbed the back of it for -luck. Then a lot of them went up to the combination desk and got -combination tickets for the remaining two horses that appeared on the -colored sport's ticket. By the time the betting came in on the fourth -race it was known all over the room that the sport had a $2,000 to $2 -ticket with three of the horses already over the plate. The sport -enjoyed it all with becoming modesty. - -"Dis heah hoss, Benneville, will now step out an' run seben fuhlongs fo' -me," he said, referring to his ticket again. "Ah doan' know mahse'f jes' -how good dis heah Benneville is jes' now, but dis is his day tuh win by -uh block." - -Benneville came in an odds-on favorite, and won by three open lengths. -The sport again was relieved of the necessity of rooting. - -"Ah'n dun rode dat one mahse'f," he said grinning, and he found himself -in the middle of a crowd of sports of his own color. - -"Look uh-heah, nigguh, doan' yo' all remembuh me?" a lot of them -inquired of him as they crowded around him. - -"Remembuh nothin'," said he impartially. "Ah doan' mek it mah bizness -tuh remembuh nobody." - -"Hey, what does your ticket call for in the next?" was a question that -fifty men threw at him as he sat in state in his wicker rocker. - -"De nex' skate on de list," he replied, spelling out the letters on his -ticket, which was being rubbed a good deal for luck by all hands within -rubbing distance, "is de maiuh Donna Rita. Ah wouldn't give $2 fo' Donna -Rita mahse'f, de way she's bin un-runnin', but Donna Rita's dun got tuh -walk in all by huhse'f dis time," whereupon he returned the ticket to -his pocket as if it already represented $2,002. - -The sport had got down Donna Rita into his combination at a long price -in the house betting. When the first line of betting came in from New -Orleans, however, Donna Rita was seen to be the favorite for the race, -with a big field to beat. - -"Donna Rita's lak gettin' money in uh lettuh," said the sport, and every -man in the room that heard these words of wisdom from the lips of the -man with the magical combination ticket in his pocket, played Donna Rita -to win. So here was the sport, enthroned like any monarch of Dahomey, -with the crowd surging around him. One of the white sports, waving a -roll as big as his fist, elbowed his way through the crowd surrounding -the colored sport and flatly offered him $500 for his ticket, after -looking at it and seeing that Donna Rita, much the best horse in the -next race, had her name inscribed there. It was a temptation, but the -sport was game, and stood pat. - -"Dis heah ticket ain't fo' sale," he said. "De two thousan's good enough -fo' this coon." - -Another man offered him $800 for his $2 ticket. The offer was declined. -There wasn't a man in the crowd that wasn't rooting for the sport's -ticket to wind up all right, and to make their rooting more effective -they played Donna Rita to win the last race almost to a man. The less -important sports were keeping close to their brother in hue. They wanted -to be in at the finish--perhaps to help the sport to celebrate. At post -time there was hardly a man at the betting counters. They were all -hovering near the sport for luck. - -"Off at New Orleans!" shouted the telegrapher, who knew about the -sport's ticket by this time, and there was a note of unusual excitement -in his voice as he called off the race. "Donna Rita in the lead!" - -"Oh, yo' babe, Donna!" shouted all the "spotes" in unison, and "stay -right theah, yo' nigguh!" shouted the one particular sport. - -"Donna Rita at the quarter by five lengths!" called out the telegrapher, -and the poolroom might have been taken for an Emancipation Day festival. -"Donna Rita at the half by five lengths!" - -"Ef yo' lubs yo' man, come uhlong!" moaned the sport in ecstasy. - -"Donna Rita at the three-quarters by three lengths, Kisme second, Virgie -O. third," droaned the operator. "Donna Rita in the stretch by a head!" - -The sport rocked to and fro and groaned. - -"Virgie O. wins by a nose!" announced the telegrapher. - -That settled the combination. The sport's followers fell away from him -like autumn leaves from wind-tortured trees. - -"They ain't nothin' in this horse-racin' game, is they?" the frequenters -of the poolroom said to one another as they slouched out, and the -grating tones of the cashiers counting bills soon echoed through the -deserted room. - - - - -"RED" DONNELLY'S STREAK OF LUCK. - - -_He "Runs a Shoestring into a Tannery," and Then Gets the Cold Shoulder - from the Lady Fortune._ - -A party of turfmen in Washington for the Benning meeting were talking -the other evening of the remarkable streak of luck which has enabled -Billy Barrick to run a borrowed shoestring of $200 up to an amount which -is now said to approximate $100,000 in the last six weeks. - -"Barrick's double-ended luck, both at faro bank and horses," said one of -the bookmakers in the party, "is a whole lot out of the common. Luck is -a full-bred sort of an affair, and it does not often run along hybrid -lines. What I mean to say is that the man who has a huge run of luck at -one game almost invariably falls into the doldrums and goes all to -pieces when he switches to another game. The luckiest men I ever knew on -the turf, for example, were the unluckiest card players, and most of -them stubbornly spent a good many thousands of their pony winnings -before they found this out. Barrick seems to be an exception. He has got -into the current, and he could probably get away with the money at -fan-tan or Cingalese pool while he's in his present shape. I'm a bit -afraid of him just now myself, and when I see his commissioners bearing -down on my book I'm sorely tempted to rub the whole slate until I get a -chance to rubberneck and find out what they're after. If I were dealing -faro bank, so weird has his luck at tiger-bucking been lately, too, that -I believe I'd make it a thirty-cent limit when I saw him coming. But -he's an exception, as I say. It's the man who sticks to the one game -that drives the swaggerest dog-cart and wears the whitest gig-lamps in -the long run. - -"I remember a chap out in St. Louis who ran a shoestring of five cents -up to pretty close to six figures in the summer of 1895. He bucked more -games in doing it, too, than Barrick has thus far, but he couldn't go a -route, and they ate him up when the whisky got into his head in such -quantities that he saw treble without having a focus on anything. His -name was Red Donnelly, and he had charge of the bookmakers' -paraphernalia in the betting ring of the St. Louis fair grounds when the -Lady Fortune beamed upon that nickel of his and invited him to bask for -a time in her domain. He was a loose-jointed spraddle-shaped sort of a -young chap of 25 or so who had been hanging around the St. Louis tracks -from his early boyhood. He learned so much about the horses that he -could never win anything on them when he played in the ten-cent books -made by the railbirds. He handicapped them down to the sixteenth of a -pound, and the horse that he put his dime on consequently got beaten, as -a rule, by a tongue. He had been holding down the job of a dog-robber -for the bookmakers for two seasons before he struck his lead on that -nickel. He came out to the track one day, early in June, 1895, with the -solitary nickel reposing in the depths of his trousers' pockets, salted -there to pay his fare back to the city. He got to pulling the five-cent -piece out of his clothes and looking at it longingly by the time the -first race was due. He wanted to get down on a race, but there were no -five-cent books. The bottom sum accepted by the railbird books was a -dime. Red strolled out to the barns and got to pitching nickels with a -pack of idle stable boys. The luck was with him from the jump, and when -he accumulated a dollar in nickels he exhibited symptoms of a man -suffering from chilblains. His reason for getting cold feet was that he -had a good thing in the fourth race, and by the time he had acquired the -dollar the betting had begun on the fourth race. - -"Red hurtled himself into the ring with his dollar and saw that the -price offered against his good thing, the old nag Hush, was 60 to 1. -Donnelly needed a bundle of cigarettes and a few drinks pretty badly, -but he was game when it came to sticking to his good things, and he -slapped his twenty nickels down on Hush with a bookmaker he knew. He -took good-naturedly the mocking hoot which the booky gave him for -handing in twenty pieces of that kind of metal, and catapulted himself -out to the rail just as the horses went away from the post. The race was -really something silly for Hush, in the unwieldy field of nineteen -horses. Hush led all the way, and pranced under the wire first in a big -gallop, pulled double. The boy had Hush up in his lap all the way. - -"Red had some difficulty in collecting his $61. The bookmaker knew him -well, knew of his taste for rum, and knew also that few of Red's rare -dollars ever found their way to the humble shack of the man's infirm old -Irish mother. - -"'I believe I'll just pinch this out on you, Red,' said the booky to -him, 'and pass it along to the old lady when I go in to-night. It won't -do you any good.' - -"'Come to taw,' replied Red. 'I want to put thirty or forty cents down -on the next race. I got another good thing in it.' - -"The bookmaker reluctantly passed Donnelly the $61. Red carefully folded -the dollar bill and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he -invested the $60, in $10 clips, with six books, on Dorah Wood, in the -next race, at 15 to 1. It was a canter for Dorah Wood, and Red knocked -the bookmakers silly--they all knew him well from his working around the -place--by socking it to six of them for $150 each. A committee of safety -was immediately formed around Donnelly, but he couldn't be held down. He -tossed a quart of wine under his waist-line, purchased a package of -cigarettes made in Turkey for forty cents, and looked over his dope-book -carefully. Then he strolled into the ring and bet $900 on Minnie Cee in -the last race. Minnie Cee was at 3 to 1, and it was something ridiculous -for her. She won on the bit, and Red was $3,660 to the good on that -nickel that he had salted away in his homespuns for the return trip to -town. - -"When Red turned up to collect, Barney Schreiber--he's a big-hearted -Barney--had him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck. Barney announced -to all of us that he was going to collect for Donnelly, and what Barney -said went with us, for we all knew Red's propensities. Donnelly put up a -weak growl, but he knew 'way down deep in him that Schreiber could and -would take care of the cash better than he could or would. Barney -pinched $3,500 of the wad, inserted it in a separate compartment of his -wallet, and handed Red $150. - -"'I'll just let you have a little change, Red, said he, 'and if you -think you can run that up into a tan-yard, go ahead. But I'm a-going to -handle this for you the right way. You're not tied enough in your ways -to have such a vast sum on your person all at one and the same time.' - -"Donnelly didn't demur much. The $150 was a huge sum itself for him, and -he, of course, knew that Schreiber would do the right thing with the -main bunch. As a matter of fact, Barney deposited the $3500 the next day -to the credit of Donnelly's old mother, and Schreiber and the old woman -were the only people who knew anything about that end of it for a long -time afterward. - -"We all gibed and roasted Red about the delirium-tremens finish we -foresaw for him, and when he didn't turn up at the track at all on the -following day, necessitating the turning of his dog-robbing work over to -another man, there was a lot of talk about the tremendous barrel-house -toot Red must have gone on down the levee way. That's where we were -camping out. When we picked up the papers on turning out the following -morning we found a scare-head story in one of them relating in great -detail and elaborate diction how one Mr. John S. Donnelly, a gentleman -well known on the Western turf, had swatted Ed McGuckin's faro bank, -over in East St. Louis, to the tune of $16,000, playing steadily without -meals from 7 o'clock on the evening of Monday until 11 o'clock on -Wednesday night, when Ed turned the box on him and announced that it was -all off for the present. We all shouted 'fake!' when we saw that, but a -couple of us hopped into a cab and crossed over to McGuckin's place to -see if there was anything in the yarn. Well, there was everything in it. -We found Ed holding his fevered brow and mumbling deep, dark things -about damned vagabonds slipping into his layout and running shoe tongues -up into leather factories. We expressed our sympathies with Ed, for -which we came perilously near being kicked, and then we went back to St. -Louis to hunt up Red. We went over the barrel-house route with a -fine-tooth comb, but no Donnelly. Then we decided to drive out to his -mother's little old shack. Our route from the levee out there took us -through the down-town district, and we both saw Red on the street at -once. We drew up alongside the curb, and called him. He was cold sober, -and he had $16,210 in bills in his inside waistcoat pocket. We asked him -where he was going, and he nodded in the direction of the swellest -tailoring establishment in St. Louis. We went along with him, and it was -one lovely sight to observe the fabrics Red picked out wherewith to -ornament his long, lithe person. He ordered a dozen suits, and then we -went with him to the haberdasher's. He was all for green and yellow -neckties, pink-striped shirts, and that sort, and we let him have his -way. Then he became sleepy. We threw it into him pretty hard about that -big bundle of money he had on him, and he finally consented to come -along to a bank with us and deposit $14,000 of it in his name. We tried -to hold out for having it put in his mother's name, but he wouldn't -stand for that. After leaving the bank Red's eagle eye caught sight of -the shiny things in a jeweler's window, and he decided then and there -that he couldn't go to sleep without having the third finger of his left -hand made conspicuous by a three-karat blue-white stone, for which he -coughed $500. That left him with about $1500 in his clothes, and we -dragged him then into the cab and drove out to his mother's little old -shanty. The old lady had her little talk with Barney Schreiber about the -$3500 by that time, and the to-do she made over her 'bye Johnnie' was -worth the ride to see. When we told her about the other bunch that Red -had copped and that we had plunked it into the bank for him, the -quantities of corned beef and cabbage which she threw into the pot for -the dinner which she wanted us to remain to share with her and her -phenomenal son were amazing. - -"Well, Donnelly astonished us all for a couple of weeks by his -extraordinary conduct. He would ride out to the track in a hack, with a -gilt-stamped cigarette in his face, attend to his job as usual around -the betting-ring--that is, he'd supervise, for he quickly accumulated a -staff of worshiping touts and hangers-on--and then he'd go up into the -grand-stand to exhibit his cake-walk clothes and look at the races. He -didn't put a bet down on a horse for two weeks. He remained pretty sober -all the time, too. We joshed him about the frigid pedals he had suddenly -got, but he only passed along with the remark: 'I'm letting 'em run for -O'Flaherty. Nothin' doin'.' - -"We waited for the crash, but it didn't seem to come on schedule time. -One afternoon he called me aside and showed me his bank-book. It showed -an additional deposit of $5000, making the total $19,000. - -"'When did you pick up that new roll?' I asked him. - -"'Went up against the wheel at Terhune's last night, and yanked it out -in three hours,' he said. - -"'When did you learn to play roulette?' I asked him. - -"'Last night,' he replied. - -"Along toward the end of June Donnelly turned up at the track one -afternoon with a light in his eye. He went out into the paddock and -spent three-quarters of an hour looking at a horse and by that time the -third race was due. Red came into the ring and spread $1000 around on -Madeira at 10 to 1. It was a maiden two-year-old race, but Madeira -romped in two lengths to the good. That night Red, still moderately -sober and level-headed, had $29,000 to his credit in the bank. We began -to figure with a new brand of dope on Donnelly's game and to consider -the possibility of his becoming a real fixture. A lot of owners with bum -skates tried to work them off on Donnelly at big prices, but he only -passed them the cold-storage smirk. This gave us an additional line of -thinks with regard to what we thought was his increasing shrewdness. -Besides, you see, Red began to be right good to us. He told us all very -soberly one afternoon that he had a good thing, but that he didn't want -to hurt his own ring, so he'd send his money to the out-of-town -poolrooms. The good thing was David, who won the last race in a walk at -15 to 1, and Red cleaned up $15,000 on that. - -"Right at this point, Schreiber and some other people got at Donnelly -and tried to induce him to either invest a part of his money--he had -almost $50,000 then--in a string of useful horses, to be put into the -hands of a competent trainer--or to have the whole bundle properly -invested in some sort of annuity, tie-up scheme whereby, when Red's -streak of luck fizzled out, he wouldn't have to go back to buying -cigarettes by the cent's worth. The man was too bull-headed, though, to -listen to anything like this. He did, however, buy his old mother a fine -house and install her in it, and the old lady had stiff black silk -dresses and poppy-ornamented bonnets galore in which to go to mass. - -"Meanwhile Red was going up against all kinds of games around town every -night, and it honestly appeared as if he couldn't lose. Craps, stud -poker, draw, wheel, red and black, mustang, bank--all seemed to be right -in Donnelly's mitt. A lot of us used to turn up where he was bucking -things every night, and, following his play, we always got the good end -of it. He didn't know much about any of the games, and the idiotic -things we had often to do in order to consistently follow his play made -us gag, but nine times out of ten them came out right. One man in our -party, a bookmaker, who determined to copper all of Red's play at the -different games, on the theory that Donnelly's luck had to turn some -time or another, almost went broke before he came into the fold and quit -coppering. - -"All of this time Donnelly had simply been nibbling at the red stuff. By -the time his great luck was a month old, however, the booze had nailed -him, and he got to throwing in the hooters early in the morning. A man -can't drink in the morning and hang on either to luck or judgment. Red -came into the ring palpably drunk one afternoon and spread around -$20,000 on Strathmeath at even money. None of us wanted to take the -money, for if ever there was a rank in-and-outer, that horse was -Strathmeath. But Red was insistent and a bit ugly, and we accommodated -him. Strathmeath ran third, beaten out by two dogs. That night Donnelly -dropped $20,000 more at faro. Then he didn't go to bed for five nights, -and at the end of that time he had about $6000 left. I never saw luck -drop away from a man like it did from Red Donnelly. For instance, he was -whacking at a bank one night, stupefied with hooters of half rye and -half absinthe, and he shut one eye so he wouldn't see double and fixed -it on the nine spot. He played the nine open for $100 a clip, and lost -it twelve straight times. The frowns of the Lady Fortune got his nerve, -and he began to play favorites at the track. The favorites went down to -inglorious defeat, one after another, for days. - -"Some of the right kind of people, including Schreiber, got hold of Red -when he had only the $6000 left, landed him in a fix-up ward, and -sobered him up. When he came out Donnelly was set up with an interest in -an express business. I don't believe he ever saw the inside of the -express office more than half dozen times, except to draw what was -coming to him. He was at the track all the time the races lasted, and -when the season closed he put in his time down on the levee. He never -had a day's luck after his big streak up to the last hour of his death, -somewhat less than a year after they came his way with a whoop and a -rush. - -"When the goddess smiles upon you, you want to stroke her hair, chuck -her under the chin and be good to her, for she rarely acts amiable twice -to a man who treats her favors wantonly." - - - - -AND "RED BEAK JIM" TOOK THE TIP. - - -_Plunge Made by a Hackman on the Suburban Handicap Won by Kinley Mack._ - -"We'll get Red Beak Jim to hike us down in his caloosh," said the main -guy of the four. The four were job holders in one of the New York city -departments, and they were talking about ways and means of reaching the -Sheepshead track for the Suburban. - -"Good thing," said the three others. "Go on and ask Jimmy for a figure, -down and back, for the bunch. Hey, and don't let him dicker you out o' -your gilt teeth. Jimmy's a robber." - -So the main guy of the four sprinted after Red Beak Jim. He found him -with the major portion of his countenance immersed in the collarette of -an open-faced malt magnum. - -"Hey, Jim," said the main guy, "hitch 'em up and bring 'em around about -noon. Down to the Bay and back. There's four of us. What d'ye say to the -note for $10 for the job?" - -Red Beak Jim removed the mammoth piece of glassware from his face long -enough to remark: - -"Nothin' doin'." - -"Ain't, hey?" said the main guy. "The old caloosh's fallen apart at -last, hey?" - -Red Beak Jim sat the beer-glass down and wiped off his mouth with the -back of his coat-sleeve. - -"It'll be jugglin' around when you're yelling for ice at any old price a -hunnered," said he. "Nope, I'm 'ngaged f'r th' Bay." - -"Say, you've got your fingers crossed or your suspenders," said the main -guy. "Give you fifteen for the job." - -"Goin' t' take three down," said Red Beak Jim. "Ten a head. Sorry I -didn't ask 'em fifteen. Trucks is chargin' ten a head." - -"Ten a head," said the main guy, sarcastically. "What in, zinc money? -Hey, pull around, Jim, or you'll lose a wheel. Ten a head? Get away with -that hasheesh. Give us a figure." - -"You've got it," replied Red Beak Jim. "Ten per, round trip. I'm a good -thing at that. But I'm 'ngaged." - -"So's me little sister," said the main guy. "All right, work your edge. -What's ten a head to us, at that? Hey, we got the baby to-day, Jim, and -you want to put some braces under that old caloosh. We'll have two ton -o' money coming back. Bring 'er around, then, at noon. Say, you ought to -get a pair o' knucks and a sandbag. You're too good on the clutch to -push a caloosh around. Have 'er there prompt at noon, now, Jim." - -"Sure," said Red Beak Jim, and he was there at noon, all right, with the -hack all varnished up and dusted off, and the pair looking fit to reel -off a mile in five minutes, on the bit. The four were inside, stirring -their pieces of ice around with the spoons, when Red Beak Jim pulled up. -He jumped off the seat and stuck his head in the door. - -"At the pump, gents," said he. - -They yanked him in to have one before the start, and they all got him -over into the dark corner. Then the main guy addressed him. - -"Jim," said the main guy, "we're handing this to you because you're all -right--from the heels down. On the level, though, Jim, we pass this -along to you because it's right. It's prepared. It's a nightingale in -the woods, and it'll be singing when all the rest of 'em are still -trying to find out where the wire is. Horse of the century? Nix. Not for -these little Willies. The black, let 'er sleep wonder? Not. We stay out -there. The Whitney thing with the Frenchy name? Hoot, mon. Pass this -squad by. Nope. We got it right, Jimmy. And we're handing you the forty -bucks now so's you can plant it right. Here's the forty--and say, you -want to remember that you're paid, see? Well, you get over the fence -somehow--let a kid take care o' your two goats and the caloosh--and you -put the whole forty on Kinley Mack. See? Got that chalked? You put the -forty on Kinley Mack, and part o' the two ton o' gilt we'll have on the -come-back 'll belong to you. Kinley Mack's going to stand 'em all on -their heads and twist 'em round. Don't say we didn't put you next. -Uneeda win. Well, you win. Nothing to it. Kinley Mack. Ain't that right, -you ducks?" - -"That's right, all right," said the other three, all together. - -Red Beak Jim emptied the flagon thoughtfully. - -"I got mine at that game," said he finally. "They made a bum o' me -before you people was through playin' jacks. They can run f'r Hogan. -These"--salting away the two twenties the main guy had handed him--"will -do f'r me. I don't want t' git rich fast, nohow. I'd booze meself -foolish. Much 'bliged, gents, but I can't see no Kinley Macks or Billy -Bryans, f'r that matter, wit' a spy-glass." - -"All right," said the main guy, disgustedly. "But when the ring's around -Kinley Mack, and they're paying off the wise people on him, you want to -muffle the bleats you'll have coming, see? Don't say we never dished you -up a hot one. You're a sport, Jimmy, and so's a tadpole. You'll never -butt in among the first six. All right. Come on, you people." - -They clinked the pieces of ice against the sides of their glasses once -more, and then they climbed into the hack and were away in a row, to a -good start. - -At each of the seven places at which they stopped for ice, with -trimmings, on the way down to the Bay, they announced to friends that -they met that it was only going to be a one horse race. - -"Run on a fast track, hey?" said the main guy to everybody he knew at -the stops. "Say, that's his graft. That's his main plant. A race-horse -can run on any old kind of a track. Say, you get tied up with this horse -of the century business and you smoke stogies for a few months. -Ethelbert, the horse of the century, hey? Say, d'je ever happen to hear -of Salvator and Tenny and Hanover and Lamplighter and Henry of Navarre -and Sir Walter and Raceland and Hamburg and a few old two-dollar mutts -like that? Did, hey? Well, say, do they butt in? Say, Hamburg could've -run backward as fast as this horse of the century that you people have -all got the bug about. Kinley Mack! Kinley Mack! Hey, fellers?" - -"Thash ri'," said the other three, and then they climbed into the hack -again. - -When they got down to the track entrance and alighted the main guy of -the four, still mindful of his duty toward struggling fellow men, made a -final appeal to Red Beak Jim. - -"Jim," said he, "how about taking our steer, hey? This is the good thing -o' the year. It's going to be a long summer. Going to put that forty on -Kinley Mack?" - -"I'm goin' t' take a nap after I have a smoke," replied Red Beak Jim, -filling his pipe. - -The four walked away with an air of disgust, while Red Beak Jim grinned -after them. - -Each of the four had a one-hundred-dollar note wherewith to back Kinley -Mack off the boards. The temptations of the first three races, however, -collared them, and when the slate went up for the Suburban they each had -a fifty-dollar note wherewith to play Kinley Mack, the good thing. When -the horses were at the post for the third race, the main guy, who -happened to be standing close to the fence that separates the -grand-stand crowd from the people in the cheap field, saw Red Beak Jim, -with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, leaning against -the rail. He called the hackman, and Red Beak Jim approached the fence -with a grin. - -"Thought you'd get on, anyhow, hey?" said the main guy. - -"Naw, I jes' crep in t' see 'em run an' hear th' hard losers tell how it -was they lost," said Red Beak Jim. "Nothin' doin' wit' me." - -"Ain't going to put those forty on Kinley Mack, hey?" asked the main -guy. - -"Not if I'm awake," said Red Beak Jim, and the main guy walked away from -the fence with an expression of commiseration on his face. - -The horses were still at the post for the third race when the main guy -was approached by a horseman he knew. The horseman was chewing a straw. -He looked very wise. - -"Cashed yet on Imp?" the horseman asked the main guy. - -"Hey?" asked the latter, bending his ear. - -"Only a canter for that one," said the horseman, in a low tone, -temporarily removing the straw from his face. "Just a little exercise -gallop for the black filly." - -"Say, is that right?" inquired the main guy. "Is she so good as all that -to-day?" - -"Surest thing you know," said the horseman. "She'll give 'em all a -fifty-pound beating or I don't know a hoof from a currycomb. I'm only -spinning this along to the people I've got some use for. That's the -reason I dip it up for you." - -"But say," whispered the main guy of the four, "I got it straight as a -ramrod on Kinley Mack." - -The horseman smiled benignly. - -"On this track?" said he. "That one wouldn't beat a fat man on this -track. He wants slop and slush. I'm only telling you, that's all. You -splurge on Imp, and it'll be all yours." - -"I always was stuck on that darned old mare, anyhow," mused the main guy -of the four, as he walked off in search of the other three. "She sure -can rip the air when she's ripe. Got a thunder of a notion to switch to -her at that. That fellow ought to know. He's been handling 'em long -enough. Kinley Mack only a mudder, hey? Had kind of a hunch that way -myself, but I didn't want to own up. Last week, before I got this Kinley -Mack thing, I was sure going to play Imp, and I'd feel like a nickel's -worth of lard if she'd go out and spread-eagle 'em now that I've got -this Kinley Mack thing." - -He stood still for a moment with his hands in his pockets, oblivious of -the jostling crowd, and then he slapped his thigh. - -"I've got the hunch--it's Imp!" he muttered. "Lemme find the fellers and -put 'em next." - -He found the other three. They were putty when the main guy told them -what the horseman had said. They'd always liked Imp, anyhow. - -Their four fifty-dollar notes went on Imp straight, when the slates went -up. They all stood together and rooted for the black mare when the -horses got off. When Kinley Mack romped in, an easy winner, they didn't -say anything at all. They didn't even look at one another. They avoided -one another's gaze, thrust their hands deep into their pockets and -studied the jockeys as they dismounted. When the first numbness had -passed the main guy of the four led them to the bar and they drank the -longest one of the day in silence. They looked up into their glasses as -they twiddled their spoons, but they didn't look at one another. - -There was $17 still left among the four--not enough for any sort of -celebration or doings when they got back to town. So the main guy -gathered up the $17 in silence and put it all on a horse at 10 to 1 in -the fifth race, with the idea of running the shoestring into a tannery. -The 10 to 1 shot was never in the hunt at any stage of it, and they were -all out. Silently they wended their way out of the gate. - -Red Beak Jim was sitting on the seat of the hack, with his legs crossed, -smoking a pipe. He looked interested when the four came along. - -"Youse people must have all kinds," said he. - -They climbed into the hack without a word. - -"D'je play that one?" inquired Red Beak Jim, picking up the lines. - -"Ask me aunt," growled the main guy. - -Red Beak Jim clucked at the horses, and they moved off in good style. - -The hackman pulled the horses up alongside the step in front of the -first roadhouse. - -"Hey, don't get too glad all of a sudden," growled the main guy to Red -Beak Jim. "Who told you to do that?" - -Red Beak Jim disposed of the lines and stepped down without making any -reply, while the four watched him gloomily. Then he grinned, hoisted up -the right-hand front flap of his livery coat, dug into his right-hand -trousers pocket and pulled out a wad about the size of a healthy -cantaloupe. - -"I'll ask youse gents to split a couple o' quarts on me," said Red Beak -Jim. "I got 8 to 1 f'r me forty." - -They gazed at him and his wad with their jaws dropping. - -"Did you play Kinley Mack?" they gurgled in unison. - -"That's the one youse people said, ain't it?" inquired Red Beak Jim. "I -t'ought I'd take a little flyer on him, jes' f'r luck." - - - - -THE GAME OF RUNNING "RINGERS." - - -_And How He Got a Horseman Without Much of a Conscience into Hot Water._ - -"No Man alive can afford to lose the friendship even of a yaller dog. -Not even an ornery yaller dog can you afford to have agin' you at any -stage of the game. The dog'll get back at you one time or another, -sooner or later, and take a mouthful or two out of you, if you haven't -had sense enough to keep him on your staff of friends." - -The man who used to make a business of putting ringers over the plates -at the outlaw race-tracks had passed from the reflective to the -confidential mood. Perhaps the rings which he made on the cherry table -with the bottom of his glass suggested circular race-tracks to him. -Perhaps the prancing of the fox-terrier pup in the back room made him -think of horses kicking up at the post. But, whatever the cause of it, -his burst of confidence was unusual, and the other men at the table -listened to him attentively. - -"My yellow dog was a yellow man--that is, the one I'm thinking about -just now," he went on. "He took a hunk out of me down at Alexander -Island, Va., near Washington, about five years ago. He had me out. All -he had to do was to count ten on me and take the pot, and he knew it. He -worked the edge. I didn't blame him a bit then, and I don't now. But it -was hard money to lose. When I get hold of the right end of a bulge on a -man that I've got it in for, I don't hesitate to work it myself--but I -always feel a bit sorry for a man that I get up into a corner, all the -same. This yellow man felt sorry for me. He showed it. He was about as -sympathetic a yellow man as ever I saw on the occasion I'm going to tell -you about. But he wouldn't let go, for all that. He needed the money, of -course, but then he wanted to get back at me, too. - -"'I'se dun got de aige on yo' all, boss,' he told me, 'an I'm sure -a-gwine t' wuk it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.' - -"You see, I had employed this yellow man as a stable hand when I first -got my string of ringers together and took them out. He was all right -for the first few months of the winter campaign, but then he began to -get jagged on me with a heap of regularity. He got mixed up with that -gin that they keep on hand in Maryland for the Afro-American trade, and -it spoiled him for me. He was no use whatever after the gin took hold of -him. I warned him a lot, but it did no good. I was a little bit afraid -of the job, for he knew a good deal about my string, but I finally -decided that I'd have to take a chance and fire him. I turned up at the -track stable one morning--this wasn't more'n a million miles from -Baltimore--and I found my yellow man Lem sulky and ugly drunk, and the -string chewing on their stalls. I gave him a boot and a hist out of the -stable and told him not to come back. - -"'This yellow man'll probably queer me,' I thought at the time, 'but I -can't go along playing 1000 to 1 shots like him for favorites. If he -peaches--well, there are other States besides Maryland.' - -"I was rather surprised that he didn't come back when he got sober. But, -nope, he didn't come back at all. I got another stableman and during the -following week, the last of the meeting, I pulled off three good painted -things with as good as 15 to 1 around two of 'em, without yellow Lem -turning up to pester me at all. I thought of him a good deal. Every time -I got one of my plugs at the post I stood by to see the yellow man walk -into the judges' stand and give me away. I'll bet I lost ten pounds -worrying about that darkey and what he might do during that last week in -Maryland. I felt as light as a snowball when I got my string out of that -State and over at the Alexander Island track, near Washington. When I -got 'em all safe over there, says I to myself, 'This yellow ex-man o' -mine is probably back in Thompson street, with his carcass full of gin -by this time. So I'll just cut out the worry about him.' - -"Well, I started in at the preliminary work of pulling off a real swell -thing at Alexander Island. It was about as easy to enter a horse down -there as it is to go broke up here, and I put the best one of my lot in -the overnight races for a week. I entered him as a half-breed from a -Warrenton farm--a maiden six-year-old. It went through easy, the -overnight entering did, and I began to lay my horse up for a price. The -horse had done a mile in 1.40-1/2 and he had the whole bunch down at -Alexander Island outclassed by 212 pounds. The plug had belonged to the -best of the Western selling-plater division as a three- and -four-year-old and he had been in a few stakes at that. I got him as a -five-year-old and he surely was a meal-ticket for me. He wasn't painted -a bit--you didn't have to dye 'em at Alexander Island. If Hanover had -been an outlaw you could have stuck him into any old race down there and -they'd never have got next. - -"I had a boy along with the string who'd been chased off the Western -licensed tracks for funny work, and what that boy didn't know about -riding like as if his life depended on his winning, and forty wraps on -his mount all the time, wasn't worth knowing. Say, he had six separate -and distinct bridle welts on both of his forearms that he got in pulling -horses. He was invaluable, that boy. When we were out to win he never -made anything but a nose finish of it even if our horse was up against -the worst set of outlaw dray-plugs in training. Oh, that boy knew his -gait all right! I did the best I could to keep him from going to Joliet -for pocketpicking in Chicago a couple o' years ago, but it was no use. -He's still doing his bit. - -"Well, I had him sail this good nag of mine over the course in seven -races the first ten days of the meeting. The horse was a bit too likely -looking, and there was only 5 to 1 against him in the first race. He -finished fourth. The boys in the ring quoted 8 to 1 around him in No. 2 -race, and he finished sixth in a field of seven. And so on. He was in -the ruck in most of the races, and he finished the last two of the seven -a rank last. By that time you could have written your own ticket if you -wanted to play him, which is what I was waiting for. My boy complained -that during the last three races he had all colors of trouble in holding -the horse in. - -"'You'd better open the watermelon quick,' said he to me after the -seventh race, 'or I'm liable to lose him and win the next time out.' - -"And so I had the pie counter all spread out for his next time out. It -was a six-furlong race, which was my horse's distance. Two of the cracks -of the outlaw brigade were in the race, and they both opened up at even -money. Then one of 'em was played down to 1 to 2 on. It was a -twelve-horse race, and my nag opened up the rank outsider with any -amount of 100 to 1 quoted around him. I didn't want to be too chesty and -spoil my dough, and so I only took $50 worth of it, scattering it around -in $10 gobs. I reckoned that $5000 would be a good-enough pulldown on -the race, and I didn't want to take any chances on being shut out of the -game down at Alexander Island. I put a few of the boys I knew next to -what was going to happen, told 'em not to go it too strong or they'd -queer me, and they mixed up $5 all over the ring on my 100 to 1 horse, -that should have gone to the post at 1 to 100. They broke the price down -to 30 to 1, but that didn't make any difference to me, for I had picked -up all I wanted of the 100 to 1. - -"When they went to the post I picked out a spot on the rail some -distance away from the grand stand to watch the race. I felt pretty -good. I knew it was going through. My horse had worked the six furlongs -in 1:16 flat the afternoon before, and I knew that he was easy money. -The only thing I was afraid of was that he would get away from the boy -and beat the bunch by eight blocks, thus bringing me into the judges' -stand on suspicion. I was thinking of all these things when I heard a -voice behind me. - -"'Aftuhnoon, Cap,' said the voice. 'How's yo' all tuh-day?' - -"I looked around. The voice belonged to Lem, my fired yellow stable man. -Lem was sober, and got up as if for a cake-walk. He had business in his -eye, too. - -"'Hello, there,' says I, kind of coddingly. 'How're you cutting it?' - -"'Oh, tol'able, boss--tol'able,' he replied. - -"'Where are you working?' I asked him. - -"He smiled blandly in my teeth. - -"'I'se a-wukkin' yo' all dis aftuhnoon, boss,' said he. 'But I ain't no -hog. Jes' half o' de rake-down'll do me. Mus' hev dat much, fo' sure. -Jes' nachully need dat much.' - -"'What the devil are you talking about?' I asked him, but I knew he had -me where he wanted me. - -"'Well, yo' see, boss, it's jes' dis-a-way,' he replied. 'I'se a-gwine -tuh quit rubbin' dem down an' take tuh speculashunin' m'sef. I'se -a-gwine tuh staht fo' San Francisco tuh see whut all I kin do with de -bookies out da-a-way, an' jes' nachully needs de coin tuh go on out an' -begin wuk on 'em. Dis yeah's uh good one yo' all's pullin' down tuh-day, -an' I was trailin' yo' w'en yo' all put yo' bets down. Yo' stan's tuh -win $5,000 on de ole hoss, an' yo'll win it. I'll take ha'f o' dat, -boss, an' go on out tuh de coast tracks with it.' - -"I think I must have been looking pretty hard at that yellow man when he -slung me this spiel. Oh, he had me all right. It was my looking at him -so hard that made him get off the rest of the speech: - -"'I'se dun got de aidge on yo' all, boss, an' I'm sure a-gwine tuh wuk -it laik uh mean nigguh. But yo' dun me dutty, Cap.' - -"As I say, I knew he had me, but just out of curiosity I shot this one -at him: - -"'S'pose, you yellow devil, that I don't cough up a red of it? What -then?' - -"He grinned and rolled his eyes over toward the judges' stand. - -"'I'd jes' nachully be obleeged tuh do de bes' I could fo' de -proteckshun o' de spoht o' racin,' he replied. - -"The horses were still making false breaks at the post and it was too -late for me to hop into the ring and lay enough down to win $2,500 for -the yellow man and still have $5,000 to the good myself. It was a sore -game, that, but I had to stand for it. - -"'All right,' I said to the darkey, 'you've turned this trick and you'll -get the $2,500. But you want to go West with it, as you say you are, or -I'll get a night doctor or two on your trail. Chop away from here and -I'll see you after the race.' - -"'I knows yo' will, boss,' said the yellow man, giving me that -triumphant grin of his, and he turned and went down the rail to take in -the race. Race, did I say? Oh, it wasn't a race. My horse got away from -the post three lengths to the bad, and he trailed after the bunch -dismally all the way around to the stretch turn, but I never had a -quake. I could see, if nobody else could, that my boy was ripsawing the -horse's mouth, and I knew it was all right. At the stretch turn the boy -let out a couple of links and the nag joined the front bunch. The boy -drew it fine, as I had instructed him, and won by a short head, and it -was funny to see the wise guys from Washington who had scattered all -kinds of Government-earned money all over the ring turning mental -flipflaps of despair. I watched to see if there'd be any holler about -anything when the boy weighed in, but there wasn't, and the race was -confirmed all right. I went around and did my own collecting, and -several of the poor devils of bookies had to go out of business after -the rest of the boys that I had put on to the thing came along and -cashed their tickets. I found my yellow man waiting for me on the -outside of the ring, and when I got him into the shadow I gave up the -$2,500. I saw that he got a ticket and started for San Francisco the -next day. I felt so sad when I heard a few months later that in an -attempt to learn how to smoke hop out there, to add to his jag -repertoire, he had died in a Chinese joint after hitting up thirty-six -pills. I felt so sad." - -The ex-ringer operator was plunged in meditation for a while, the others -remaining sympathetically silent, and then he resumed in another strain. - -"Next to the worst jolt I ever got--and the worst was the time down in -Maryland when one of my plugs with two whitewashed barrel spots and a -whitewashed forehead star got rained on at the post, practically out of -a clear sky, and the spots got washed out, and I had to get out of the -State of Maryland over fences--next to that jolt, the way one of my boys -threw it into me at a county fair meeting in West Virginia was pretty -bad. I had tongue-hammered that kid pretty hard two or three times at -that meeting for winning when his mounts weren't due to win and I didn't -want 'em to win, and he got sulky. I tried to coddle him up a bit, for I -had a real good one to pull off on the last day of the fair, and I -thought I had him all right on my staff again. The real good thing was a -horse of mine that I had entered in the final race, which the jays down -there called a mile race for the 1:55 running class.' 1:55! I had a -skate with me down there that could just common canter a mile in 1:45, -and he could have done it in three seconds better if pinched at any -time. I had had the plug lose three or four races during the fair -meeting, and he wasn't as good as Chinese money in the estimation of the -West Virginians by the time the race that he was going to win came -around. My boy was to have the mount, and our mutual confidence seemed -to be restored by the time the good thing was booked to happen. But he -had an ice-pick up his sleeve for me all the time." - -"'Didn't try with the horse, and lost, eh?' asked one of the ex-ringer -worker's listeners. - -"'Oh, no, it wasn't that,' was the reply. The horse won by a tongue, and -the boy gave him a beautiful tight ride to keep him from winning further -off. But he put every grafter that he knew, and he knew 'em all at the -fair meeting next to what was going to happen, and made split terms with -all of them. That is, he put 'em on, on condition that he was to get -half of each man's winnings on the race. Now, I had figured on picking -up $8,000 or $10,000 easy on that good thing, and I had lain awake -nights making plans to meet possible hitches. It certainly wasn't -treating me right, the way that boy did. I thought I'd get as good as 25 -to 1, anyhow, at the first betting. I intended to take a mess o' that -and then wait for the betting to go up, for I confidently expected, and -had a right to expect, that the nag's price, in view of what the farmers -down there thought of him, would go up to 50 or 100. - -"When the betting on the race opened I was on hand with my wad. Say, I -couldn't get within twenty feet of a one of the twelve bookies doing -business. I never saw such a scramble, even in the 50-cent field at -Sheepshead. Of course, I thought they were all getting aboard of the -favorite, and so I drew back, knowing that if they were playing the -favorite my plug would be going up in price all the time. Then I noticed -a lot of the educated money, the coin of the grafters that I knew around -the grounds, going in, and I wondered if they were Rubes enough to play -a favorite in the last race on get-away day. So I drew close to the -bookies' stands--as close as I could get--and then I found that they -were all writing my horse's name. Nothing but my horse. Not a horse in -the race but my horse. It was a staggerer, that was. Of course, I -thought of my miffed jockey right away, and I knew he had done it. When -I finally was able to get up to the bookies, I found that my plug's -price had been played down from 20 to 1 to 9 to 10 on, and I was so -disgusted that I stayed off altogether, although I knew my horse was -going to win. He did win. The boy couldn't peach because his rake-down -had been too big, but he showed me $3,500 in bills an hour after the -race, got off twenty feet and told me all about it, and then bolted. I -haven't seen him since." - - - - -EXPERIENCES OF A VERDANT BOOKMAKER. - - -_Wherein It Is Shown That, When There Is "Something Doing," a Bank-roll - Is Liable to Be Wrecked._ - -"I heard somewhere the other day," said one of a party of turfmen who -were dining together after the McGovern-Erne fight, "that Billy -Thompson, the ex-Duke of Gloucester, is trying to cook up some scheme -whereby the legal authorities of New Jersey 'll relent and permit him to -start the old Gloucester merry-go-round again. I don't think he'll make -it stick, if the story is true, but if Gloucester ever is started again -I know a man who'd be very liable to burn the barns down some dark -night. I don't think he'd let the Gloucester mud-lark and snow bird -race-track operate while he lives. - -"In 1880 this man I'm talking about--he had passed up a good grocery -business to play the races a year before--had nursed together a wad of -about six thousand dollars, and this gave him a bad case of the Sandow -vest. He was so chesty over having all that money that he concluded he'd -try a whirl on the block. There was only winter racing going on when he -got that smoky notion into his hat, and that was at Gloucester. As you -fellows know, they used to run 'em there in snow up to the saddle -pommels, and the plug that could make out the best without going over -the fence, or that didn't become crazy from snow blindness, always -yanked down the money at Gloucester--that is, if he was meant to win. - -"This ex-sugar-and-tea guy was a dead verdant one at the bookmaking game -when he went on the block at Gloucester, but he kept his ears open and -his mouth shut, and he had quite a streak of luck, besides, from the -go-off, so that at the end of his first week at laying odds he found -that he'd averaged a clean-up of about $200 a day. You couldn't see him -then without sending up your card, he was so vast and heap-much. He was -thinking of going down Dixieway to make a bid on the Belle Meade farm, -and, by the end of his third week on the block, when he had run his -$6000 into a bit more than $10,000, he was probably the haughtiest -gazabo on this side of the Rocky Mountains. - -"One day--it was at the beginning of his fourth week at bookmaking--a -duck who had a string of good ones--of their kind--chasing the -Gloucester will-o'-the-wisp for the poolroom purses, invited himself to -take dinner with the ex-grocer with the streak of luck. After they had -stored the feed away at the high-riding bookmaker's Philadelphia hotel, -the man with the string leaned back in his chair and sprung what he had -in mind. He mentioned the star sprinter of his string. - -"'You know, of course,' said he confidentially, to the ex-grocer, 'that -that nag can eat up any horse down here at three-quarters of a mile. -He'd never be beaten at that distance if we let him out every time he -went to the post to race. But, of course, if I'd let him win every time -out, there would never be any price on him. He'd be a 1 to 20 shot every -time he got a lead-pad on, and I'm not going down the line on that kind -of prices. Neither am I running my string over at Gloucester for -hygienic reasons. Perceive?' - -"The new bookie perceived. - -"'Well,' this oily geezer went on, 'that horse is entered in a -six-furlong sprint to-morrow, as you know. He'll probably be an -even-money favorite. He'll lose.' - -"'He will, hey?' said the new man on the block, suspicious like. 'That's -darned good of you to tell me. But you're not telling me that for your -health, either. He's going to lose, eh?' - -"'Yep, he'll lose,' repeated the smooth owner. 'Now, you're a pretty -nice young fellow, ain't you? I like you. Understand?' - -"'Um,' said the ex-grocer. 'What's your graft, anyhow?' - -"'Well, as I say, that skate of mine is going to lose,' said the -confidential owner once more. 'Now, you see this thousand-dollar -William, don't you? Well, I want you to take a thousand-dollars' worth -of my horse to win for my account, see, when you make your book on that -race. He may be as good as 2 to 1, but he's going to lose anyhow. You -see, I just want to pick up an honest dollar or so. You take this $1,000 -of the suckers' money for me on your book, and your reward 'll be in -knowing what's going to happen. You can hunch up the price, see? Is it a -go?' - -"Now, this looked like a pretty good thing to the groceryman. It looked -like taking candy from a child. If that owner's horse wasn't going to -lose, it looked like a cinch that he wasn't going to risk any -thousand-dollar bills on the game. So the new bookie told the owner that -he was on, took his $1,000, and figured on the pounding he was going to -give the talent the next day. He chuckled to himself when the other -books only laid even money against the sprinter when the betting on the -race began the next afternoon. - -"'They wouldn't do a thing but fall over themselves to lay a long price -if they knew, like I do, that the favorite is going to kerflop,' mused -the ex-groceryman--he wailed me the whole spiel afterward--and he laid 2 -to 1 against the sprinter's chances on his slate. The other bookies over -his way looked as if they thought he was wheely, but he only exulted -whole lots inside of him. - -"'You are wise people,' he thought, 'but this is where I get the big end -of it.' - -"Within three minutes after he had started his slate he had taken in the -horse owner's $1,000 worth of his horse at 2 to 1. The handicappers just -battled to get at his book at their figures. Said he to himself, 'I'll -just tap myself on this watermelon,' and by the time the horses went to -the post he had taken in $5,000 of the public money at 2 to 1 on that -horse that was going to lose, and he knew that he'd be just $5,000 to -the good. - -"Of course you chaps are next. When the horses got away the skate that -the ex-grocer had laid his whole $1,000 against walked in on the bit, -fifteen lengths to the good in a buck-jump. He was under twenty wraps -all the way from the flag-fall. - -"The new bookie paid out his $10,000, bought a clay pipe and an -eight-cent package of punk tobacco, and went out of business, and he's -been out of business ever since. It took him about a week to get -contiguous to the fact that the men who collected his $10,000 were the -smooth owner's commissioners, but when he went gunning the owner had -removed his string from Gloucester, and was taking a little winter -cruise in a felucca in the AEgean Sea. But if Gloucester ever starts up -again, and there's a conflagration, I'll know how it started." - -"There's another chap that I know of who's been smoking unfragrant -tobacco in a pipe for a good many years on account of an outlaw track -deal," said one of the other turfmen at the table, "but he wasn't a new -man at the game. He was an old-timer--so much of an old-timer that it -was up to him to know that, once having made a tool of a man or a boy in -the racing business, it is never the part of wisdom to throw him -overboard on the presumption that he's a dead one. Turf followers, as -you fellows all know, have a habit of resurrecting themselves at -inopportune moments when it seems that they are so deeply buried that -they'll never struggle to the top of the ground again, and when they do -run a shoe-tongue into a tan-yard they are more than liable to get hunk -with former pals who have cast them aside in the hour of adversity. Now, -it is a particularly dangerous thing for any man connected with racing -to do business with a jockey. I never heard of a bit of jockey-tampering -that didn't get out sooner or later, to the disadvantage of the man that -did the corrupting. I guess we all know of cases in which jockeys, after -being ruled off for crooked work, have become exacting pensioners on the -hands of the men responsible for their downfall for long stretches of -years. The story I have in mind is of a jockey who, while he wasn't set -down through following the directions of the bookmaker he did business -with, was treated with characteristic meanness by the latter when he was -up against it owing to an accident; and the way this jock got even with -his former tamperer was unique. - -"You all remember the boy Kelley? He wasn't exactly a boy at the time -this thing happened--he was a man of twenty-two or so, which probably -accounted for the fact that when he was riding at Guttenberg he had most -of the other jockeys faded; give me a rider with a man's hand on his -shoulders every time for my horse. Now, the morale of Guttenberg wasn't -like unto that pervading a theological institution, but Kelley the jock -wasn't any worse than his neighbors. He was like all the rest of the -people mixed up with the weird game at the Gut. It was a poor jock at -the Gut who didn't have a bookmaker on his staff, and Kelley wasn't a -poor jock by fifty good pounds under the saddle. It used to be an off -day with Kelley when he didn't put up a ride in accordance with this -bookmaker's orders. All of the jocks at the Gut did similar things, and -they were stood for. The hectic flush of humiliation didn't mantle the -alabaster countenances of the Gut stewards to any huge extent when the 1 -to 5 shot was beaten a furlong. Kelley was enabled to throw big money -into his bookie's satchel, because, being such a top-notch rider of -outlaws, most of his mounts went to the post favorites; so that when he -snatched a horse it meant the good of the books, and of his bookmaker in -particular, for the latter would of course lay the longest price in -their judgment against one that he knew was going to run like a mackerel -along a dusty road. Kelley profited fairly well at the hands of this -bookmaker, and on his side he was absolutely loyal in his crookedness. -He invariably delivered the goods. He had the knack of making it appear -to the people with the field glasses that he was riding like a fiend, -when in reality he had his horse pulled double, and when he was -following orders he could permit the favorite under him to be beaten out -by a tongue on the wire in a way that would raise the hair of the folks -in the stand. - -"Well, one day Kelley was dumped from a horse he was riding when the -track was slippery and broke his leg. He had been improvident and -extravagant, like most of the jocks of that day, so that when the -accident put him on the flat of his back he found himself broke. What -was more natural than that he should send to the bookmaker whose orders -he had been following for a long time for assistance? He wrote to the -bookie and asked for the loan of $100. The bookmaker ignored the -request. Then the laid-up jockey sent a friend to the bookmaker. The -latter made some remark about not coughing up for the oats and keep of -dead ones--figuring, you see, that Kelley's injuries were such that he -wouldn't be able to get back to the riding game until the close of the -meeting. So the jockey had to stave off doctors' and other bills as best -he could, and I guess that he set his teeth down pretty hard and did -some robust thinking while his leg was healing. - -"A couple of months after this accident Kelley, somewhat pale, turned up -in the paddock at the Gut one morning and announced that he was fit to -ride again. His services were immediately in demand, and Mike Daly got -him to ride his horse Gloster in the first race on the card. Gloster was -the best horse in the race and was certain to be favorite. The bookie, -who had used Kelley before his accident and afterward turned him down, -got to Kelley by the underground process, through an agent, with the -inquiry as to whether a little business couldn't be done on Gloster. -Kelley, with all the good nature in life, sent word that there could, -certainly; that he could get Gloster beaten by an eyelash. - -"The betting opened and Gloster was the favorite all over the ring at -odds of 1 to 2 on. Then Kelley's bookmaker began to shoot the price -up--first to 3 to 5 on, then to 4 to 5 on, then to even money, and then -right up to 6 to 5 and even 7 to 5 against. The way that bookie hauled -in the money on Gloster was a caution. It seemed that every plunger and -casual bettor in the inclosure wanted a piece of Gloster at Kelley's -bookmaker's odds--all the rest of the pencillers still held Gloster at 1 -to 2 on--and the bookmaker took in thousands of dollars on the horse. -When they were still whacking him with Gloster bets he became somewhat -nervous and sent his agent to Kelley again for reassurance. Kelley told -the agent again that Gloster wasn't going to win. - -"'He's taking in billions on Gloster,' said the agent to Kelley. - -"'Let him handle the whole mint on the nag,' replied Kelley. 'Gloster -will just about get the place--maybe.' - -"In the meantime the judges, who occasionally made a bluff at getting -haughty and virtuous, got next to the big odds that one -bookmaker--Kelley's bookmaker--was offering against Gloster, and, -naturally enough, they became suspicious. Five minutes before the horses -were due to go to the post, therefore, they called Kelley into the stand -and asked him squarely if there was anything doing by which Gloster was -going to get beat. - -"'If Gloster doesn't win this race,' replied Kelley, 'you can rule me -off for life.' - -"Kelley had put every man, woman, child and dog that he knew at the -track on to the fact that he was going to win by a Philadelphia block on -Gloster, and the bookmaker who had turned him down when he was on the -flat of his back with a broken stilt in the middle of winter got the -play of all of them. Dollar bets and $1,000 bets all looked alike to the -bookmaker. He took all the money that came along without rubbing. He -thought he had a corked-up good thing. - -"When the bugle sounded and the horses emerged from the paddock, the -bookmaker, with his glasses in his hand, was leaning against the rail, -and he looked up with a grin to catch Kelley's eye as the jockey rode by -on Gloster. He caught Kelley's eye, but there was no responsive grin. -There was, instead, a dirty sneer on Kelley's drawn, pale mug, and, as -he caught sight of the leering bookie he drew Gloster up for just an -instant and spat viciously in the direction of the man who had treated -him with such ingratitude. - -"The bookmaker saw in that instant that he was ditched. His face went -white, and he clutched the rail, and he was still digging his -fingernails into the rail when, a few minutes later, the victorious -Gloster, who had won by about half a furlong, was led into the paddock, -with Kelley walking alongside of him. When that bookie got through -paying off the Gloster bets he had taken in he was out of business, and -when the story of how it all came about leaked out, there wasn't a man -in the game that didn't say that the bookie got all that was coming to -him." - - - - -THE MAN WHO KNEW ALL ABOUT TOUTS. - - -_And the Evaporation of His Resolution to Have Nothing to Do With Them._ - -"Touts," said Busyday, oracularly, to his companion on a train bound for -the Bay on Suburban day, "are the derned nuisances of the racing game. -You want to watch out for them. If by chance you should get separated -from me in the crowd, don't you let any of the sharp-eyed, soft-voiced -ducks talk you into playing this or that one. Just you stick to those -selections I wrote out for you on that piece of paper. They're the -logical winners. A friend of mine, whose brother is a bookmaker, -handicapped 'em for me, and I'm going to play every one of 'em myself. -That's the only way to win; stick to your selections, and don't let -yourself be touted. The man who listens to touts smokes a pipe. -Understand?" - -"Uh, huh," replied Busyday's friend, who was from Busyday's native town -out West. He had never seen a horse race in his life, whereas Busyday -was an old-timer and learned at the game, having seen three Handicaps -and two Suburbans ran. - -"They make kind of a lukewarm effort to keep the touts off the tracks," -went on Busyday, disparagingly; "but the touts are too smooth for 'em, -and they're always around, looking for good things like you, old man. -All you've got to do is just to flout 'em from the jump, as soon as they -edge up to you, and they'll shoo-fly instantly, rather than take chances -on being spotted by the Pinkerton people. Tell 'em to go to the devil, -that's all." - -"Uh, huh," answered Busyday's friend and guest, once more. - -It came to pass that Busyday and his visiting townsman were separated -before they had got off the train. The car was jammed, and in the -confusion of getting off they made their exits by different doors. -Busyday frantically yelled out his friend's name as soon as he found -himself alone on the platform, but, of course, he got no reply. His -friend was engulfed in the crowd. - -"I s'pose I ought to have held hold of his hand, like a fellow does when -he takes his sister's kids out for a walk," he reflected. "This is -blasted mean luck from the go-off. The touts'll get hold of him now, -sure as shootin', and they'll strip him. Good thing he's got his ticket -back to the little old slab of a town where we used to play shinny -together." - -Busyday roamed around the grand-stand and the betting ring for ten -minutes before the slates went up for the first race, trying to catch -sight of his friend, but it was no use. His townsman wasn't visible -anywhere. Then a sudden swirling and eddying in the betting ring told -him that the prices were up for the first race. - -"I'll have to pass the old boy up until I get this bet down," said -Busyday to himself, pulling out of his pocket the slip of paper that the -handicapper had given him the evening before. "Let's see, what one of -'em have I got to win this? Oh, yes; Peaceful--good name, but it doesn't -sound as if a horse with a name like that could run much. I'd rather -have a horse called Lightning Express, or Cyclone, or Helen Blazes, or -something like that, run for my money. S'pose, though, this handicapping -chap knows what he is doing, and so I'll just put my first ten on -Peaceful to win. Hey? How's that?" - -There was a soft, persuasive buzz right in Busyday's ear. - -"D'ye notice all the suckers breakin' their necks t' land on that -Peaceful dead one?" were the words that formed the buzz. - -Busyday jerked his head around suddenly, and he found within four inches -of his ear the countenance of a young-old man with red hair, a freckled -skin, and a pale-blue, shifty eye. - -"Dead one?" echoed Busyday, the red-haired, young-old man smiling -amiably in his face. - -"Libster," said he of the pale-blue, shifty eye, looking entirely -disinterested. "Out-and-out libster. Crab. Run about a dozen sprints, -and still a merry maiden. And look at the chancts th' mutt's had to win! -Leads th' percession into th' stretch every whirl, and then chucks it. A -proper dog, Cap. That's on the dead. Worst quitter on th' grounds." - -"Um," said Busyday, stroking his chin and wondering why his handicapper -had picked Peaceful. - -"I got th' baby," buzzed the freckle-faced, young-old man, after a -silence. - -"Hey?" asked Busyday. - -"For a pipe," said the shifty-eyed one. "Say, I don't git out o' me -Waldorf bunk at 3 o'clock every mornin' for me health." - -"Is that so?" inquired Busyday, just for the sake of saying something. - -"Not on yer dinner pail," said the aged youth with the shifty eye. "I -light out fer th' tracks t' watch 'em at their early mornin' works. I'm -a railbird, all right, but I know where th' dough is. I seen this baby -that I'm tellin' you about do the five-eighths in a minute flat th' -other mornin', an' if he ain't a moral fer this, here's my lid an' you -can eat it," whereupon the shifty-eyed one removed his 50-cent straw hat -and offered it to Busyday. - -"What's the name of this wonder?" inquired Busyday, trying to work up a -superior smile. - -The aged youth bent over, placed his mouth within a quarter of an inch -of Busyday's ear, and whispered: - -"Stuart. He'll walk." - -"Oh, well, then, I'll waste a ten-spot on Stuart," said Busyday, trying -to say it languidly, as if he didn't take much stock in himself or -anybody else. Then he plunged into the vortex around one of the -bookmakers' elevated chairs, got his feet trod upon, his hat jammed down -over his eyes, and his ribs treated to an all-hands elbow massage, and -finally succeeded in passing up his ten-dollar bill on Stuart to win. - -"Stuart, thirty-five to ten," droned the bookmaker to the sheet-writer, -and then Busyday found himself beaten to the outskirts of the crowd. - -"You on?" he heard in his ear, and, turning, he saw the freckle-faced -one smiling up at him. - -"Yep--dropped ten on it," replied Busyday. "Kind o' liked Stuart myself -when I saw him entered." - -Then Busyday steered for the lawn to see the finish of the race. He was -trying to get some sense out of the list of owners' colors on his -program, so as to be able to distinguish his horse as they raced under -the wire, when a calm man next to him, with a pair of field-glasses to -his eyes, mumbled: - -"They're off!" - -There was a big shout all around. - -"Lady Uncas out in front," said the calm man coolly. "She'll curl up. -She seems to be staying, though, at that. Nope, she's collared. Stuart's -nailed her. He walks," and the calm man put down his glasses as the -horses galloped past the sixteenth pole. - -Stuart came in all alone, and Peaceful was back in the ruck. - -"I had my suspicions about that Stuart horse right along," said Busyday -to himself. He had never seen the horse's name until the evening before. -"Don't know why, but I kind o' liked him. Probably because the Stuart -were a pretty swift bunch," and he chuckled to himself over his humor as -he made his way to the bookmaker's line to cash. - -"Somethin' easy--like findin' it, hey?" he heard buzzed into his ear as -soon as he put his foot into the betting ring, and there was the -old-faced young man, grinning complaisantly up at him. - -Busyday handed to the shifty-eyed one, who stuck to him right up to the -paying-off line, buzzing learnedly all the time about the race just ran, -a $10 bill out of his $35 winning. - -"Th' next," said the red-haired wiseacre of the rail when Busyday had -fought himself away from the cashing crowd, "is what you might call a -one-hoss race. A one-hoss race, right." - -"Lambent, of course?" said Busyday, looking at his piece of paper with -the selections on it. Lambent was his handicapper's selection. - -The freckle-faced screwed the whole left side of his face up into one -prodigious wink. - -"Not this cage," said he. "Try the next. Lambent?" and he put one large, -white, freckled hand over his face, as if to hide his confusion, and -grinned through his fingers. - -"Well, Lambent figures to win, doesn't she?" asked Busyday weakly. - -"Who, Lambent?" and the shifty-eyed smiled some more. "I'm goin' t' -match her in a sweepstakes against me old aunt, and back me aunt off th' -boards fer a hog-killin'. There's on'y one in this. Skinch. You can tap -on it." - -"Which one?" asked Busyday in a wabbly tone. - -Again the aged youth bent over until his mouth was within a quarter of -an inch of Busyday's ear. - -"Swiftmas," he replied. "Been saved up for a good thing, right. If he -don't buck-jump in, here's me lid," and once more he extended his -half-dollar straw hat for Busyday's mastication. - -"Well," said Busyday to himself between his teeth as he made his way -through the jostling crowd to one of the bookmakers' stands, "I guess -I'm a weak and erring brother, all right, but danged if I don't play -that redhead once more, anyhow," and he got $40 for his $20 on Swiftmas -to win. Swiftmas won by a head. - -"They were too foxy t' win too far off," Busyday was informed by means -of a buzz in his ear, by this time well known, as he was elbowing his -way again to the cashing line. "Boy drew it fine so's not t' spoil th' -price next time out." - -The freckle-faced old youth got $15 out of Busyday's $40 winning, and -then he looked Busyday over carefully and inquired: - -"How about me?" - -"You'll do," replied Busyday, candidly. "Name the next." - -"His Nibs, the Prince of Melbourne," whispered the freckle-faced, and -Busyday glanced at his handicapper's selections. It was the Prince of -Melbourne there, too. - -"He can't lose," said the shifty-eyed. "Just a pleasant airing fer him. -Nothin' to it. W'en you put yer coin down, you might as well stay right -here so's t' be foist in line. Put a bunch on." - -"I've got some of their money," mused Busyday, "and I won't pass it all -back to 'em in a lump." - -He got $75 to $30 on Prince of Melbourne to win, bought three cigars for -a dollar and a pint of wine, and then suddenly wondered where his -townsman was. - -"No use trying to look him up, though," he reflected, "in this jam of -Indians. Poor old chap, I s'pose he's smashed flatter'n a pancake by -this time, without the price of a bottle of pop," and he reproached -himself a good deal for not having hung on to his guest when they left -the train. He was aroused from his reflections by the yowl, "They're -off!" and by the time he got out to the lawn the horses were coming down -the stretch. - -"His Princelets, with his mouth wide open," he heard the crowd yell, and -then his chest expanded, and he muttered to himself: "I always did have -a soft spot for that derned old plug!" For the moment he forgot that the -Prince of Melbourne happened to be a two-year-old. - -"Oh, w'en I pick up a good one as I go along I like t' put me fren's -on," buzzed the freckle-faced in his ear, as he made for the paying-off -line. Notwithstanding the fact that the Prince of Melbourne's name -appeared on his handicapper's list of selections, Busyday very -cheerfully gave up one-third, or $25 of his winnings, on the -two-year-old to the red-haired youth. The latter soaked the bills away -in his white-and-brown-striped trousers, and then he remarked, in an -offhand sort of way: - -"Well, this is where you pass me up, ain'd it, so?" - -"Well," said Busyday, "I came down to play Banastar, and I think I'll -have to stay with that hunch, if you're agreeable." - -"Cert'nly," said the shifty-eyed, with an expression more of sorrow than -of anger on his lined face. "Go ahead. Help yourself. Have all th' fun -that's comin' t' you." - -"Why, what's the matter?" inquired Busyday. "Ain't Banastar the play?" - -"And he looks like a duck with a purty good top-knot on him, at that," -said the freckle-faced, dreamily, paying no attention to Busyday's -question, and apparently addressing empty air. - -"What's the matter with Banastar?" repeated Busyday. - -"I'm not queerin' yer fun, Cap," went on the shifty-eyed. "You come down -wit' th' Banastar bug in yer nut, like all the rest, and I'm not -a-switchin' you." - -"Look a-here," said Busyday, "what the dickens are you giving us, -anyhow? Don't you think Banastar'll win the Suburban?" - -"Cap," said the aged youth, spitting dryly and for the first time -looking Busyday squarely in the eye, "there's a mare in this bunch -that'll run things around all the Banastars from here to Hoboken an' -back. She kin fall down, an' win. She kin take naps between poles an' -walk. She's a piperino, if ever one was pushed up fer geezers to nibble -at. But I'm not a-switchin' you, un'stand?" - -"Mare, hey?" said Busyday, looking over his program. "You mean that -Imp?" - -"Ain't it?" said the freckle-faced. "Well, I guess yah. She win th' last -time out with' 126 up, eatin' peanuts down th' stretch, from a bunch -purty near as good as this. Banastar? Cap, I ain't no hog, an' you've -passed along what coin was a-comin' to me. I'll lay you 2 t' 1 Banastar -won't git one, two, t'ree." - -"Dog-goned if I know what to do," mused Busyday. "Here I've been -shouting Banastar ever since the Handicap, and I promised my wife -faithfully that I'd play Banastar. Say," addressing the freckle-faced, -who stood by sorrowfully regarding him, "is this Imp fast enough, that's -what I want to know? Won't Banastar beat her on speed?" - -The aged youth held up one thumb vertically and indicated with the -forefinger of his other hand. - -"De Empire State Express," said he. - -Then he held up his other thumb. - -"Steam roller," said he. "Take yer pick." - -Busyday made a sudden dive for a bookmaker's line. - -"Which I may remark, in strict confidence," he said to himself as he -tugged at his wad and counted out five twenty-dollar bills, "that there -may be softer marks between here and High Bridge than myself; but, -confound that freckle-faced tout's red head, I'm just a-going to slide -along with him and play Imp at that, Banastar or no Banastar!" and ten -seconds later the bookmaker was taking Busyday's five twenties and -droning out, "Six hundred to $100 on Imp to win." - -Busyday was lighting the last of his three-for-fifty cigars over in a -corner of the betting ring when the well-known buzz reached his ears -again. - -"On?" inquired the buzz. "Good and hard?" - -"Yep," said Busyday. "Hundred." - -Imp's win is turf history. As Busyday handed the tout two crisp $100 -bills the freckle-faced remarked: - -"An' you ain't th' on'y collect I make on this, Cap. I got a hayseed on -th' mare fer $300, an' I had him on all th' rest o' them good things, at -that." - -"Well, so long, Red," said Busyday. "I'm getting back to town to dinner. -Next time I come down I'll give you my trade if I see you around." - -Then Busyday went up into the stand to take a final look around for his -townsman. He didn't see him, and he started for the gate. Just as he got -outside the gate he saw his fellow townsman and guest stepping into a -hack. His fellow townsman and guest looked pretty jaunty, but Busyday -didn't notice it. - -"Hey, there, old man," he called after his friend, and the latter looked -around. - -"Oh, here you are," said Busyday's friend, with an expensive cigar stuck -at an angle of forty-five degrees in one corner of his mouth. "Trimmed?" - -"Nope," said Busyday. "I landed on a few little good things that -occurred to me after I got to looking at the program, and I win 'bout a -thousand. Poor old jay, I suppose they put you out o' business, eh?" - -"Not by a long sight!" said his friend. "I ran into a freckle-faced, -red-headed duck as soon as I got in the grounds. I lost that piece o' -paper you gave me with the whadyoucallem--selections--on it, and so I -played what this red-headed chap told me to. Copped out 'bout $2800, -altogether. Had $300 on Imp to win the big race." - -Then Busyday knew to whom the freckle-faced had referred when he spoke -of a hayseed. - - - - -A "COPPER-LINED CINCH" THAT DID GO THROUGH. - - -_Narrative of the Red-Haired, Freckle-Faced Tout Who Had a Good Thing up - His Sleeve._ - -When the first line of betting on the fifth race at Gravesend was -chalked up shortly after 4 o'clock in the Harlem street poolroom on -Wednesday afternoon last, the red-haired, freckle-faced tout gave one -swift glance at the figures, clutched his armful of "dope" books and -sped over to a corner of the room where two flashy, well-fed looking -chaps sat tilted back in chairs, smoking and unconcernedly waiting for -the running of a race at Latonia in which they had a good thing. - -"Here's the soft spot o' your life," said the red-haired, freckle-faced -tout, pulling a chair up alongside the two unconcerned-looking chaps. -"This'll be like pullin' th' milk teeth out o' a fox terrier's face. -This is a real dill pickle. Are you two comin' out into th' garden, -Maud, or are you goin' t' let this one get away from you." - -"Back t' your dray," said one of the unconcerned-looking chaps. "Another -stiff, hey? T' your dray!" - -The red-haired, freckle-faced tout pulled his chair closer to them. - -"But this is th' hand-made, copper-coiled mash," said he, earnestly. -"It's on'y onct in a while that you get them people that lays th' -figures out o' line like they are on this one. This is th' mellow goods. -Just send a few aces along on it, that's all. It's 100 to 1." - -"Now you stawp, Red!" said the other unconcerned-looking man. "You -stawp, you rude thing!" - -"He'll come home on th' bit," said "Red." "Lemme show you where he's -been landin', an' you can see if he's any 100 t' 1 toss. Lemme pass you -th' line, an' if you don't take none o' it, then I'm on a cattle boat by -way o' Glasgow," and the red-haired, freckle-faced tout opened up one of -his dope books and started to show the pair of flashy looking chaps -where Rolling Boer had finished in his previous races. - -"Go take a sail with yourself, Red," put in one of the easy-looking -chaps. "Nothin' doin'. Rolling Boer, hey? Not with Fenian bonds, good -when Ireland's free. Rolling Boer, you say, Red? When did they get that -one out o' the cavalry? Rolling Boer, 'll still be jogging down the -stretch when you're in bed, Reddy. Say, it's a wonder you don't dig up a -live one 'casionally. Stop trekkin. Winter'll be coming on soon, and -you'll be nix the price of a doss. Rolling Boer! To the woods!" - -The red-haired tout mopped his face with a frayed blue polka-dotted -handkerchief. - -"Sey, what's half a ten spot to you people?" he said in a tone of -entreaty. "The one you're waitin' f'r'll be 'bout 1 to 4 on, an' this is -sunshine money, at 100 to 1. You people know how they stan' them 1 to 4 -things on their heads out in Latonia. Say, take me spiel on this, won't -you, f'r a fi'muth? Look where he got off th' last time out, an' where -he finished! If you can't see him t' win, take th' 20 to 1 third. It'll -be a shame t' spen' t' money--but take it won't you?" - -The two complaisant-looking chaps turned away from the red-haired tout -and began a conversation between themselves. The tout looked very warm, -and an expression of despair crossed his weazened features. He mopped -his face again with his blue polka-dotted handkerchief and slunk away. -He sided up to one of the board-markers and said, out of the corner of -his mouth: - -"Say, get an ace down on Rolling Boer f'r me, will you? It's a skinch." - -The board-marker grinned. - -"I'm all out, Red," he replied. "Pushed me last ace up on the last -whizz, an' didn't get a whistle f'r it." - -"This super's good f'r a deuce in any hock shop--I've had it in f'r -three," went on the red-haired tout, appealingly, pulling out an old -silver time-piece and trying to pass it to the board-marker. "Lemme have -a buck on it, an' I'll pass you back five f'r it after th' ring's around -Rolling Boer. How's that?" - -"I'm all t' th' gruel, didn't I tell you?" replied the man with the -chalk, with some asperity. "I got a ticker o' me own. You're puffin' -secon's, Red. Rolling Boer couldn't beat me little sister skippin' -rope." - -The red-haired tout walked away with an expression of deep misery on his -face. - -"They think they are wise t' th' ponies, hey?" he muttered. "It's bean -bag they ought t' be playin'!" - -He dug a quarter, two dimes and a nickel out of his change pocket and -looked at the coins dismally. - -"It's me feed coin," he mumbled, "but maybe I can get some piker t' go -along with f'r another four bits." - -He walked over to a shabby-looking chap who was slouching around with -his hands in his pockets. - -"Say, you got a bundle on you?" the red-haired tout inquired of the -shabby-looking man. - -The shabby-looking man dug a fifty-cent piece out of his left-hand -waistcoat pocket. - -"That's all I was huntin' f'r," said the tout, displaying his coins. -"Let's put th' two pieces t'gether an' nail 'em f'r $50 each." - -"On what?" inquired the shabby-looking man without any apparent interest -whatsoever. - -"On a pipe," said the red-haired tout. "Rolling Boer. He'll make 'em -dizzy and stroll in with his head a-swingin' an' his tail a-swishin'. Do -you come in with me f'r the half?" - -The shabby-looking man put his fifty-cent piece back in his left-hand -waistcoat pocket. - -"You'll be fallin' out o' bed in a minute, Red," said the shabby-looking -man. "Not for me. I need the beers--ten of 'em." - -"Yes, you're a sport right, I think nix," said the red-haired tout, -walking gloomily away. "You're a dead game, with the copper on." - -His eagle eye caught sight of a fat man with some three parts of a jag -sitting at the "dope" table, alternately puffing at a ravelled cigar and -nodding sleepily. This jagged man had on one side of his head a straw -hat that looked as if it had been rained on and then sat on. The -red-haired tout went over to him. - -"Say, your lid's on the pork all right, ain't it?" he said amiably to -the jagged man. "Been scrappin' with a cable-car?" - -"Fade away--fade away," said the jagged man, sleepily. "Do a -disappearing stunt." - -"I'll tell you what I'll do with you," said the red-haired tout, edging -over confidentially to the jagged man. "I'll pass you this cage o' -mine--on'y bought it three days ago, and coughed a two-spot f'r it--f'r -that one o' yours an' half a buck t' boot," and the red-haired tout -removed the pretty fair-looking straw hat he was wearing and pushed it -over to the jagged man. The jagged man took his ravelled cigar from his -mouth and grinned broadly. - -"Say," he said to the red-haired tout, "you gimme th' -tizzy-wizzy--hones' yo do. Me wear a No. 2 lid? Say, do your fadin' -stunt--fade away." - -The tout picked up his hat, put it on, and walked away. - -"Now they've hammered Rolling Boer down to 80 to 1, hey?" he said, -looking up at the second line of betting. "B'jee, I'd climb a porch t' -yank out a couple t' put on that one." - -He was disconsolately biting his nails and looking around to see if -there was any way out for him before the bunch of two-year-olds at -Gravesend went to the post. - -"They're at the pump at Gravesend!" announced the board-marker. - -Just as the announcement was made, a little man with a straw-colored -mustache and a red, white and blue band around his straw hat mounted the -stairs, passed the spotter sitting at the door with a nod, lit a fresh -cigarette, and walked up behind the red-haired tout. - -"Thay, Red," he said, "what'th good in thith?" - -The red-haired tout wheeled like a man who's been touched on the -shoulder by a deputy sheriff. - -"You haven't got a minute!" he said, rapidly, to the little man with the -straw-colored mustache. "It's th' baby o' th' year! Gimme three -aces--two f'r you, an' one f'r me, an' in four minutes from date you'll -be lookin' over th' sides of a balloon, chucking off ballast made out o' -money." - -The lisping little man with the straw-colored mustache smiled -indulgently and pulled out a roll, from which he stripped a five-dollar -note. - -"That'th the thmalletht I've got, Red," he said, handing over the note -to the tout. "Thay"---- - -He chopped off the question, however, for the tout made two bounds for -the money-taker's window. - -"Three on Rolling Boer, T. L. M.!" he shouted, giving the initials of -the little man with the straw-colored mustache. "Th' other two on th' -same, just plain R-e-d, Red, and both bets straight." - -The man behind the desk grinned. - -"High-ball mazuma for the house, Red," he said, twisting his mustache. -"That one ain't got a look-in." - -The tout was back at the side of the little man with the straw-colored -mustache who believed in him just as the operator sung out: "Off at -Gravesend!" - -"Thay, Red," said the tout's little man, "which one of 'em did you put -thothe five"---- - -"Rolling Boer at the quarter by a head!" sang out the operator. - -"On that one!" said the red-haired tout, giving his thigh a whack with -his bundle of "dope" books. "It's a pleasant outing for that one! -He'll"---- - -"Rolling Boer in the stretch by a nose!" called out the operator. - -"Thay, he'll curl up, won't he, Red?" said the little man at the tout's -side, nervously. "Did you play him straight or one, two, three"---- - -"Rolling Boer wins by a nose!" shouted the operator. - -It was a bit too much for the red-haired tout. He didn't have any words -handy. So he slammed his "dope" books down on a chair, pitched forward, -turned a cart wheel, and then walked around the room on his hands with -his coat hanging over his head, and a grin of indescribable happiness -all over his freckled features. The little man with the straw-colored -mustache who had believed in Red followed the tout about the room. - -"Thay, what do we win, Red?" he asked. "What prithe wath that horth?" - -"You yank out $240, an' mine's $160," said the red-haired tout, getting -on his feet again. - -"Thay, Red, you're all right," said the red-haired tout's benefactor, -pumping him by both hands. - -The two flashy-looking chaps who had first been tackled by the tout on -the Rolling Boer proposition now walked up behind him with long faces. - -"Say, Red, why didn't you pitch that at us a little stronger, hey?" - -"Get t'ell away from me, you pikers!" was the red-haired tout's reply. - - - - -HE "COPPERED" HIS WIFE'S "HUNCHES." - - - _Wherein It Is Shown That the Feminine Intuition Is Liable to - Occasionally Slip a Cog._ - -"Yes, siree," said the man with the ravelled cigar and the granulated -eyelids who swung precariously from a strap in a car of a returning -Sheepshead Bay train the other evening, "it certainly is funny about -these here hunches that women have, ain't it?" - -"No," said the two seated men he was addressing. - -"Certainly is queer what freaky ideas they get into their heads," went -on the man with the ravelled cigar, ignoring the lack of encouragement -extended to him. "And when it comes to picking out good things on a -race-track, picking 'em out just on hunch, ain't they wonders, hey?" - -"Nope," said the two men at whom he was directing his conversation. - -"It sure beats the Painted Post Silver Cornet Band how they can stick a -pin in a program with their eyes shut and light on a 100 to 1 shot that -wins a-blinking," continued the man with the granulated eyelids, tearing -two or three superfluous wrappers off his ravelled cigar. "Their system -beats the dope and the handicapping all to shucks, don't it?" - -"Nix," replied the two men in the seat. - -"Never had such chance to size up the feminine hunch as I did out at -Morris Park 'bout six or seven years ago," went on the man with the -eccentric cigar. "Told my wife one night during the fall meeting at the -park that I was going to the races the next day, that a shoe clerk I -knew had told me about a good thing that was going to happen--he'd got -it from a trainer to whom he'd sold a pair of shoes--and I was going -after some of it. - -"'Theophilus Nextdoor,' says she to me, 'how dare you deliberately tell -me that you are going to gamble your money away, when I haven't a rag to -my back and the coal not yet put in!' - -"'Can't help it, Clarissa,' says I, 'I've just naturally got to invest -$50 on this good thing. I know it ain't right, but I've got to do it, -anyhow.' - -"Then she let out on me, and we both got mad. I tried to square it up -with her the next morning, and at the breakfast table I read her the -names of the horses that were going to run in the race in which I had -the good thing the shoe clerk had given me. When I came to the name of a -horse called Jodan, she dropped her coffee cup with a clatter and stared -at me. - -"'Jodan,' said she. Isn't that short for Joseph Daniel?' - -"'Yes'm, I guess so,' I said, not knowing whether it was or not, but -anxious to stroke her the right way. - -"'Is that the horse you are going to invest your money on?' she asked -me, breathlessly. - -"'No, it's another one,' said I. - -"'Well, you might just as well stay home, then,' said she, positively. -'You'll lose your money. Jodan will win. I dreamt all night last night -of my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who was lost at sea when I was a -little bit of a thing, and if Jodan is short for Joseph Daniel, as it -must be, then Jodan will win.' - -"'But that's plain superstition, and races ain't won that way,' I said -to her. - -"'I don't care one bit, so I don't,' she said to me. 'You will simply be -throwing your money away, and I need so many things, if you invest it on -any other horse than Jodan.' - -"I tried to argue with her, but it was no go. She told me that her lost -Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy had once won a full-rigged ship race from -Shanghai to Boston, and was a pretty speedy old cuss in more ways than -one, and that any horse named after her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy -couldn't lose. I told her that, while I didn't know anything about this -Jodan horse, I didn't think he could beat the good thing my shoe-clerk -friend had given me, but she wouldn't listen to me. The last thing she -said to me before I left the house was: - -"'If you are determined to be a horrid, vulgar, disgraceful gambler, you -play Jodan. You'll be sorry if you don't.' - -"Stubborn, when they get an idea into their heads, women, ain't they?" - -"No," said the two men in the seat near the strap-clutching man with the -ravelled cigar. - -"Well, by jing, I got to thinking about my wife's queer hunch on that -Jodan horse on my way out to the track, and the more I thought about it -the weaker I became on that good thing my shoe-clerk friend had given -me. - -"'Women have got something away ahead of sense or reason,' says I to -myself on the train on the way out, 'and I sure would feel almighty -cheap and no-account if my wife happened to be right about her Uncle -Joseph Daniel McGeachy and this Jodan horse. I sure would. I've got a -good mind to put a little money on that Jodan horse anyhow, derned if I -haven't.' - -"I was still undecided about it when I got out to the track. That's the -edge the bookmakers have got, ain't it--the people that have real good -things and then wabble when it comes to sticking to them?" - -"Nope," said the two men in the seat. - -"Well, sir, when the prices were marked up for that race in which I had -the good thing, blamed if Jodan wasn't chalked up at 100 to 1. My good -thing horse was the second choice at 5 to 1. I stood there looking at -the prices, getting pulled around and butted into, and I had the -dingedest time making up my mind what I was going to do that you ever -heard of in your life. - -"'If my wife's hunch is right,' I thought, 'and that Jodan horse wins at -100 to 1 without my playing him, I'll never hear the last of it as -long's I'm on top of the ground. She'll be telling me morning, noon and -night, that she gave me a chance to win $5000, and that I didn't have -enough gumption to take it. And if the good thing my shoe-clerk friend -gave me wins at 5 to 1, I'll be sore on myself for throwing away a -chance to pick up $250 if I don't play it.' - -"I walked out onto the lawn so's I could have more room to make up my -mind. Then I wheeled around suddenly and dived into the betting ring. - -"'By cracky!' says I to myself, 'I'm doing this little gamble myself, -and, feminine hunch or no hunch, I'm going to play that good thing my -shoe-clerk friend gave me, and nothing else.' - -"So I went to the first bookmaker I saw and got a $250 to $50 ticket on -my good thing." - -Here the man with the granulated lids sighed heavily and looked -genuinely distressed. - -"Say, it's the dickens, ain't it," he said, after a pause, "how these -things happen?" - -The two men in the seat to whom he had been addressing his conversation -exhibited a certain suppressed interest as to the outcome. - -"Of course Jodan just walked in that day, at 100 to 1?" said one of them -finally, with a grin that clearly indicated his belief that he had the -result discounted. - -The man with a ravelled cigar struck a match and lit the same for the -eighteenth time. - -"Not on your zinc wedding did Jodan walk in!" he said, puffing away -without removing his eyes from the match. "My good thing spread-eagled -'em from the jump, and won, pulled up, by eight lengths. Jodan was last. -It sure is odd about these feminine hunches, ain't it?" - -"Blamed if it ain't," said one of the men in the seat. - -"I carried a twelve-pound lobster home to my wife that night and told -her it was a fair replica of her Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy horse, and -she told me that she just wouldn't believe that Jodan hadn't won until -she saw the paper the next morning, so there now! She caved, though, -when I uncovered the $250 and told her that she couldn't get that -cerise-silk-lined tailor-made dress quick enough to suit me, and she -said that she might have known that no horse named after her Uncle -Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't have any more luck than to go and get -himself lost at sea, could win anything. - -"Well, a month or so after that I went down to Washington on a little -matter of business, and took my wife along with me. There was horse -racing going on near Washington then, at a track called St. Asaph, -across the Potomac in Virginia. - -"'Clarissa,' said I to my wife one morning, after I'd got all through -with my business in Washington and was ready to come back to New York, -'I think we'd better stay over to-day and go to the races at St. Asaph. -A man that I met in the shooting gallery down the street gave me a good -thing last night, and I think I ought to see to it. It's going to come -off to-day.' - -"Of course she told me again that I was going to rack and ruin, and -never would make anything of myself, but I told her that I just -naturally had to go over to St. Asaph that day and play Jodan. - -"'Jodan!' she almost screamed at me. 'Theophilus Nextdoor, how can you -have the hardihood to stand there and tell me that you are going to -waste your money on that horrid beast, when both of us are absolutely in -need of new fall outfits?' - -"I told her that I'd see to the fall outfits, but that I sure couldn't -get away from that Jodan good thing. - -"'Why,' I said, don't you remember how wild you were about this same -Jodan horse only a little more than a month ago?' - -"'I just don't care one bit if I was,' she replied. 'I know and you know -that any horse named after my Uncle Joseph Daniel McGeachy, who didn't -have any more luck than to go and get himself lost at sea, cannot win, -and I should think you would be ashamed of yourself to stand there and -tell me to my face,' etc., etc. - -"Well, she wouldn't go along with me to the track over at St. Asaph -across the Potomac, and so I went alone. The man I had met in the -shooting gallery had told me so earnestly about this Jodan horse that I -couldn't fail to be impressed by his words, and when I found that my -wife was so opposed to Jodan's chances was more than ever determined to -play him, for I'd learned something about the nature of the feminine -hunch, don't you see? - -"It like to've carried me off my feet when I saw the price on the -blackboards against Jodan. Jodan was quoted at 150 to 1. The favorite -was at 3 to 5 on, and all of 'em, the whole fourteen in the race, were -at shorter prices than Jodan. I clutched the $50 that I had intended -playing on Jodan, thinking that he'd be about 10 to 1 or something like -that, and I just thought and thought and thought over the thing. - -"'By jimminy!' said I finally, after standing over in a corner alone for -a while, thinking, 'my wife may be right about Jodan, and all that, but -I came over here to play Jodan, and I'm going to play him or just bust, -win or lose!' - -"Then I went over to a bookmaker, got a $1500 to $10 ticket on Jodan to -win. 'Take that hay out of your hair, pal,' the bookmaker said to me -when I passed my money over--and went up to the stand to see the race, -thinking all the time what a serious matter it is to take a chance on -playing against the feminine hunch. - -"Jodan, after being practically left at the post, came out of the clouds -in the stretch, and won the derned old race on the wire by a nose from -the favorite, and when I hired a rig and packed those $1500 over to my -wife the way she warmed up to her one and only Theophilus was sure a -caution. - -"The feminine hunch," concluded the man with the ravelled cigar and the -granulated eyelids, "is all right when you copper it, but it won't do to -play it open. Am I right?" - -"No," said the two men in the seat, and then the rush to get off the -train began. - - - - -A RACE HORSE THAT PAID A CHURCH DEBT. - - -_He Was Thought to Be a No-Account Cripple, but He Proved Himself to Be - "All Horse" When Called Upon._ - -"A friend of mine who came here from Chicago for the Bennings meeting -was telling me about that Jim McCleevy mule," said an old-time owner of -thoroughbreds who is wintering a string of jumpers and breaking a bunch -of yearlings out at the Bennings track. "That makes a queer story, and -there are some strange things connected with the thoroughbred game, at -that. This McCleevy horse wasn't worth a bag of moist peanuts at the -beginning of the present racing season. He couldn't beat a fat man. He -had never been in the money. He was a legitimate thousand-to-one shot in -any company. He was the candidate for the shafts of a brick cart, when -by some odd chance he passed into the possession of a nice young woman -who was going to school somewhere in the State of Iowa. The girl's uncle -was mixed up some way or another with the turf, and he bought the -McCleevy plug for a joke, paying a few dollars for him. In a spirit of -fun he wrote to his niece that he had bought Jim McCleevy in her name, -and that the horse belonged to her and would be run in her interest. The -young woman didn't know the difference between a race-horse and a -chatelaine bag. She was an orphan, and struggling to get an education -for herself. Her ambition was to take a course at a woman's college, -but, up to the time of this incident, which lasted throughout the spring -and summer, her hope of putting this ambition over the plate was pretty -shadowy, and it looked like it was up to her to get a job teaching a -country school in order to support herself. But she wrote to her uncle -that she accepted the gift of the no-account racer with gratitude, and -inquired if the horse could not trot right fast, for, if so, she might -be able to dispose of him to some well-to-do farmer in her neighborhood. - -"Jim McCleevy was attached to the string of a good trainer, who saw at -once that the horse had been underestimated, that he had been badly -handled, and that it would be worth the effort to try to make something -of him. He spent two or three weeks monkeying with the skate and fixing -him up, and then he sent him out one morning with a lummux of a stable -boy on his back and put the watch on him. Jim McCleevy breezed a mile in -1:44, fighting for his head at the finish, and two days later he was -slapped into a selling race at a mile and a sixteenth, with light -weight, a bum apprentice lad up, and all kinds of a price, for there -were some good ones in the race, which was at the Harlem track, in -Chicago. The girl's uncle scattered a few dollars around the ring on the -mutt, all three ways, and McCleevy came home on the bit. That was the -beginning of McCleevy. He was put into a couple of races a week at a -mile and more, at the Harlem and Hawthorne tracks, during the entire -racing season at Chicago, and he won race after race, no matter how they -piled the weight penalties up on him. When he didn't win he broke into -the money, and as there was always a good price on him, seeing that -almost every time he raced he was pitted against horses that seemed to -outclass him, the uncle of the girl who owned him got some of the money -every time. He parleyed the money that he won for his niece on Jim -McCleevy's first race, and he got it back and a bunch besides every -time. The fame of Jim McCleevy spread around Chicago, and a Chicago -newspaper man went down to Iowa to interview the young woman who owned -the horse. She told him, artlessly, that while she abhorred -gambling--well, she certainly did enjoy the prospect of being enabled to -complete her education. Her uncle deposited between $8000 and $9000 in -her name, the amount he had won for her in purses and bets on Jim -McCleevy, at the wind-up of the racing season, and the horse, which -developed quite a bit of real class, still belongs to her. - -"Odd, isn't it, that an underestimated race-horse should hop out and not -only give a nice girl that had never so much as has stroked his sleek -neck a chance to fulfil her ambition for an education, but win her a -start in life that'll probably make her one of the eligible girls in the -State of Iowa? But I recall a queerer one than that--how a cast-off crab -suddenly developed into a race-horse and paid off a mortgage on a -church. - -"That happened out at Latonia four years ago. I was racing a few of my -own out there at the time, and saw the affair from the beginning to the -wind-up. I'll have to duck giving the names, for the good man who -profited by the sudden development of the nag he accidentally became -possessed of is still the pastor of a flock that congregates in a pretty -little debt-free, brick and stone Roman Catholic church on the outskirts -of Cincinnati. - -"There was an old trainer hanging around the Latonia barns at that time -who was in hard luck from a whole lot of different points of view. I'd -known him on the metropolitan tracks years before, and he had been, in -his day of prosperity, a good fellow and a horse-wise man, if ever one -chewed a straw. When his health went back on him, however, six or seven -years ago, and he couldn't personally attend to his work--he ran an open -training stable--it was all off with him. The strings that he had been -handling were taken away from him by the owners and put in other hands, -and he went up against the day of adversity with a rattle. He had a few -horses of his own, but these proved worthless, and most of them were -finally taken away from him to pay feed bills. On top of it all he -developed locomotor ataxia, and when I got out to the Latonia barns, -four years ago, he could barely move around. How he contrived to exist I -don't know, but I guess the boys chipped in a dollar or so every once in -a while for the old man. The only horse that he had left when I reached -Latonia with my little bunch was an old six-year-old gelding that was a -joke. Well, call him Caspar. The mention of Caspar's name made even the -stable-boy grin. Caspar looked a good deal like Diggs, that camel horse -that's pulling down the purses now in New Orleans. He was all out of -shape, with a pair of knees on him each as big as your hat; of all the -bunged up, soured, chalky old skates that ever I looked over, this -Caspar gelding was the limit. Yet he had been a pretty good two-year-old -and a more than fair three-year-old. He had won four races as a -two-year-old, and six as a three-year-old, but he was campaigned and -drummed a heap, and when the old man shot him as a four-year-old Caspar -could just walk, and that's all. He was a cripple from every point of -the compass. He was chronically sour and sore, and he was as vicious and -ugly as the devil, into the bargain. He never got anywhere near the -money as a four and five-year-old, and he hadn't been raced at all as a -six-year-old, when I first clapped an eye on his rheumatic old shape. -But the old man was a sentimentalist in his way, and he couldn't stand -the idea of selling a horse that he had taken care of as a baby to some -truck driver to be overworked and abused. So he hung on to Caspar, fed -him, nursed him and took care of him generally, just as if the old plug -was making good for all of this attention. Caspar was a standing gag -around the Latonia stables. - -"'Wait'll I joggle Caspar under the string by four lengths in the -Kentucky Derby!' a monkey-faced apprentice jockey would say solemnly to -the other kids, and then they'd all holler. - -"Well, about a month after I struck Latonia--it was then getting on -toward midsummer--the old trainer in hard luck who owned Caspar took to -his bunk, not to get up any more. He only lasted two weeks. Two days -before he died he sent for an old Irish priest that he had known for a -number of years. The priest was the pastor of that little brick and -stone church on the outskirts of Cincinnati that I spoke about. The old -trainer had been a good Catholic all his life, and he received the last -offices of his faith. Then he said to the priest: - -"'Father, there's a crabbed, battered-up old dog of mine over at Latonia -that I'll make you a present of. He's worth about one dollar and eighty -cents, but he was a good racing tool when he was young, and I've never -felt like turning him loose to hustle for himself. He's crippled up -some, but you might get him broken to harness, so that he could haul -your buggy around. I wish you'd take him and see that he doesn't get the -worst of it. Caspar was pretty good to me a few times when I was up -against it.' - -"When the old man turns up his toes and dies the kindly priest came over -to the barns to see if he could get any assistance in the way of putting -our old hard-luck pal under the ground. He got it, of course, and enough -for a tombstone besides. While he was at the stables the father thought -he might as well have a look at the piece of horse-flesh that had been -presented to him by the old man. So one of the trainers escorted him to -Caspar's stall. - -"'Could he ever be made any good for driving purposes?' the priest asked -the trainer, who smiled. - -"'He'd kick a piano-mover's truck into matchwood the first clatter out -of the box,' replied the trainer. - -"'I'll just let him stay over here for awhile until I decide what to do -with him,' said the priest, and he went back to Cincinnati and buried -the old trainer. - -"Well, a couple of mornings later a fresh stable-boy who had just got a -job in one of the barns put a bridle and saddle on old Caspar and took -him for a breeze around the course just for fun. It was just at dawn, -and a lot of us trainers were watching the early morning work of the -horses. It struck me when Caspar passed by the rail where I was standing -that the old devil looked mighty skittish, and was doing a lot of -prancing for a hammered-to-death skate, with bum knees and all sorts of -other complaints. About a minute later there was a yawp all along the -rail. - -"'Get next to that old Caspar!' a lot of the trainers shouted. I looked -over toward the back-stretch, and there was the old skate with his head -down, eating up the ground like a race-horse. We all jerked out our -watches just as he flashed by the five-furlong pole and put them on him. -It was amazing to see the old mutt make the turn and come a-tearing down -the stretch. If he didn't do that five furlongs in 1:02, darn me. All of -our watches told the same story, and there was no mistake about it. When -he passed the judges' stand Caspar wanted to go right ahead and work -himself out, but we all hollered at the boy to pull him up. The kid -stopped the old gelding with difficulty. Caspar wanted to run, and he -had a mouth on him as hard as nails. - -"We got together and talked about Caspar. We were dumbfounded, and -didn't know what to make of that exhibition of speed. Then a trainer who -was, and still is, noted throughout the country as the most skilful -horse-patcher that ever got into the game spoke up. - -"'The old devil's just come back to himself, that's all there is about -it,' he said. 'There are a lot of sprints in his old carcass yet. All he -needs is some patching. If he'll run like this work he's just done in -five-furlong dashes, there's a chance for a slaughter with him. I'm -going to ask the father to let me handle him and see if he can't be -oiled up.' - -"The trainer went over to Cincinnati that same morning and saw the -priest. - -"'Father,' said he, 'I don't want to get a man of your cloth mixed up -with the racing game, but I think I can do something with that old -racing tool, the old man bequeathed to you.' Then he told the priest -about Caspar's phenomenal work that morning. - -"'Bless me!' said the good man, 'I fear it would not be seemly for me -to'---- - -"'Oh, that end of it'll be all right, father,' said the trainer. 'If I -find I can do anything with the old rogue I'll shoot him into a dash -under my own colors, and you won't be entangled with the thing a little -bit. It won't cost you anything to let me try him out, and if I find -that he'll do I'll get my end of it by putting down--er--uh--well. I -won't lose anything anyhow.' - -"Well, when he left the kindly man of the cloth he had the permission to -see what could be done with old Caspar. "'Let me know how you progress,' -the priest had asked him. - -"The trainer seeing a chance to make a killing--and we all vowed -ourselves to secrecy about the matter--went to old Caspar. He was a -nag-patcher, as I say, from the foot-hills, and the way he applied -himself to the reduction of Caspar's inflammations, and to the tonicking -up in general of the old beast, was a caution to grasshoppers. And it -came about that early morning's work of Caspar's that had surprised us -so was no flash in the pan at all. The old 'possum had somehow or -another recovered his speed all of a sudden, in addition to a -willingness to run, in spite of his infirmities. At the end of two weeks -Caspar, as fine a bit of patched-work as you ever saw, was ready. The -trainer went over to Cincinnati and told the father so. - -"'Well,' inquired the priest. - -"'He's going to run in a five-furlong dash day after to-morrow,' said -the trainer. 'And he'll walk. It is a copper-riveted cinch--er-uh--I -mean, that is, Caspar will win, you see. It'll be write your own ticket, -too. Any price. In fact when the gang sees his name among the entries, -they'll think it's a joke.' - -"'My son,' said the father, with a certain twinkle lurking in the corner -of his eye, 'gaming is a demoralizing passion. Nevertheless, if this -animal, that came into my possession by such odd chance, possesses -sufficient speed to--er'---- - -"'Oh, that's all right, father,' said the trainer and he bolted for it. - -"As the trainer had said to the priest, there was an all-around chuckle -the following afternoon when the entry sheets were distributed and it -was seen that Caspar was in the five-furlong dash the next day. For a -wonder, not a word had got out about the patching job that had been in -progress on the old horse, nor about his remarkable work. The stable -lads and railbirds who were on kept their heads closed and saved their -nickels for the day of Caspar's victory. - -"Well, to curl this up some, the field that we confidently expected -Caspar to beat was made up of nine rattling good sprinters--one of them -was so good that his price opened and closed at 4 to 5 on. Caspar was -the rank outsider at 150 to 1. We all got on at that figure, the bookies -giving us the laugh at first, and only a few of them wise enough to rub -when they suspected that there was something doing. The trainers', -railbirds', and stable-boys' money that went in forced the old skate's -price down to 75 to 1 at post time. A number of us took small chunks of -100 to 1 in the poolrooms in Cincinnati--wired our commissions over. The -old horse favored his left forefoot a trifle in walking around to the -starting pole, and that worried us a bit, for he'd been all right on his -pin the night before. We didn't do any hedging, however, but stood by to -see what was going to happen. All of us, of course, had enough down on -him to finish third to pull us out in case he couldn't get the big end -of the money. - -"It was a romp for Caspar. If I'd tell you the real name of the horse -you'd remember the race well. Caspar, with a perfect incompetent of a -jockey on his back, jumped off in the lead, and was never headed, -winning, pulled double and to a walk, by three lengths. The bookies made -all colors of a howl over it, but their howls didn't go. They had to -cough. It was the biggest killing that bunch of Latonia trainers, -including myself, had ever made, and there wasn't a stable boy on the -grounds that didn't have money to cremate for months afterward. - -"After the race the trainer who had patched old Caspar up for the -hogslaughtering--he was close on to $15,000 to the good, and he didn't -have me skinned any, at that--hustled over to the priest's house. - -"'Father, the plug made monkeys of 'em,' is the way he announced -Caspar's victory. - -"'Truly?' said the priest. - -"'Monkeys,' repeated the trainer, and then he pulled out a huge new -wallet that he had bought on the way to the priest's residence. He -handed the wallet to the father. 'When I was here, a couple o' days -ago,' said the trainer, looking interestedly out of the window, 'I had -along with me a fifty-dollar bill that, feeling pretty prosperous that -morning, I intended to hand to you to be distributed among the poor of -the parish--used to be an acolyte and serve mass myself, a good many -years ago, when I was a kid. Well, I forgot to pass you the fifty, you -see, and so I invested it in--er-uh--a little matter of speculation, to -your account, so that it amounts to--er-uh--well, I understood there's a -bit of a mortgage on your church, you know." - -"The priest opened the wallet and counted out seven one thousands, one -five hundred and one fifty-dollar bill. The trainer had put the $50 down -on Caspar for the priest--without the father's sanction or countenance, -of course--at 150 to 1. - -"'Well,' went on the trainer, anxious to talk so as to save any -questions as to the nature of his speculation, 'it certainly would have -done your heart good if you could have seen that old nag cantering down -the stretch'---- - -"'It did,' said the father, with a smile. 'It is no sin, I conceive, for -even a man of my cloth to watch noble beasts battling for the supremacy, -there being, I take it, nothing cruel in such contests. I saw the race.' - -"Old Caspar was wound up by that race. He went to the paddock as sore as -a boil, all of his old infirmities breaking out with renewed strength, -and he was turned out to grass and died comfortably two years ago. If he -could have known, it might have cheered his declining days to realize -that he had paid off the mortgage on a nice little brick and stone -edifice of worship on the outskirts of Cincinnati." - - - - -A SEEDY SPORT'S STRING OF HORSES. - - - _How the Incredulity of a Lot of Bookmakers Was Turned Into Gasping - Astonishment._ - -A mixed party of turf followers in Washington for the Bennings meeting, -and Washington men about town, had a cafe talk the other night about -some things that have happened in former years on running tracks, -legitimate and outlaw, in this neighborhood. - -"When the outlaw track over at Alexander Island, across the Potomac, was -running a few years back," said a New York player, "I came down here -from the wind-up meeting in New York one fall to see if there was -anything in the game in these parts. Then, as now, I was playing, and -not laying. So this Alexander Island happening that I'm going to tell -you about didn't bother me any, bad as it knocked a lot of the books. - -"I got here before the Alexander meeting began. A couple of days before -the game was to be on, while I was in the Pennsylvania avenue -refreshment headquarters of the boys who came here from New York and -other tracks to write the tickets, a seedy-looking chap, who looked as -if the elements had conspired to make him smoke a bum pipe in the game -of life for a long time previously, walked in and edged around to the -back room where the bookies were figuring on the amount of fresh money -they were about to begin taking out of the national capital. The -tough-looking man had a horsey look and a horsey smell about him, and as -soon as I saw him I knew that he followed 'em in some kind of a -hanger-on capacity. He walked over to a table where a number of the -bookmakers were seated. - -"'Say,' said he, leaning his hands on the table and addressing the party -in general, 'you people are sports, ain't you?' - -"The looks the bookies gave the shabby-looking man were intended to -convey to him the idea that they weren't publicly posing as hot tamales, -anyhow. The man got no reply. - -"'You're going to make books across the way, ain't you?' the -up-against-it-looking chap asked, with an inquiring look all around. - -"'Well, what if we are?' asked one of the bookies, just for the -good-natured sake of breaking the silence. - -"'Well,' said the down-at-the-heel sport, 'I've got a couple o' nags -that have been running for the past six weeks over at the Maryland -outlaw. They haven't been one, two, six in any race over there, and I've -gone broke paying entrance fees for 'em. Maybe they'll be able to do -better over across the way at Alexander. I want to chuck 'em in a couple -over there, anyhow, for luck. But I owe $30 feed bill to the Maryland -outlaw people, and I can't get my plugs away from there until the -thirty's paid. Now, you people are sports, and so'm I. What I want to -know is, will you people cough up the thirty for me as a loan, so's I -can get that pair o' mine down here?' - -"The bookies listened to the man with gradually increasing smiles, and -when he finished they gave him the laugh in chorus. - -"'Stop your kidding,' said one of them. 'I can get all the outlaw -racehorses I want for $2 a head.' - -"They all chipped in with a crack at the doleful-looking sport, who -appeared to be rather a guileless sort of chap for a man with a short -stable of racers. - -"'They're a good pair, all right, and one of 'em's on edge, too,' he -persisted. 'He worked six furlongs in 1:21 flat a couple of days ago.' - -"The bookies all looked at the man as if he were demented. - -"'One twenty-one flat for a six-furlong route!' exclaimed one of them. -'Why, look here, my friend, you're not smoking hard enough to suppose -you can win down here with a skate that does well when he works six -furlongs in that time, are you? Don't you know that there's a whole -bunch over there now that can go that route in 1:16 or better?' - -"'Well, they've got a chance, anyhow,' said the shabby man. 'Do I get -the $30 to get 'em out o' hock?' - -"The bookies all turned their faces the other way, then, and when the -man with the pair of hocked nags saw that it wasn't any use he dug his -hands into his pockets disconsolately and shambled out. - -"On the day that the meeting opened I saw the shabby man in the betting -ring. I was behind him when he handed one of the bookies a $5 bet on one -of the horses entered in the second race of the day. The bookmaker had -belonged to the party that gave the laugh to the shabby man when he -asked for the $30. - -"'Playing 'em, eh' said the bookie, smiling at the run-down-looking man. -'Couldn't get your pair away from the Maryland outlaw, I suppose.' - -"'Yes, I dug up and got 'em out,' said the man. 'They're here now. The -one you just gave me a ticket on at $100 to $5 belongs to me.' - -"'Oh, is that so?' asked the bookmaker. 'Well, I hope you win. But -you've got a couple of 3 to 5 shots to beat, you know.' - -"'I got a chance,' was all the man said, walking away. - -"I took a look at his horse, the rank outsider in the race, when he went -to the post with the others. He was a six-year-old gelding, and he -looked rank and broken down. A boy that the shabby man had brought along -from the Maryland outlaw was on the horse. It was a mile race, and the -horse was twelfth in a field of twelve. I saw the gloomy-looking, shabby -man in the paddock after the race superintending the rubbing down of his -nag. He seemed to be a whole lot in the dumps. - -"The same horse was entered in the fourth race on the next day's card. -It was a field of crack outlaw performers, and his horse was again the -extreme outsider at 40 to 1. I saw the shabby man walk around putting -down $2 bets here and there on his plug, and I felt sorry for him. The -bookies simply smiled commiseratingly at him. The hard-looking man's -horse finished ninth in a field of nine. - -"'Why don't you cut it out?' asked one of the bookmakers of the man with -the tough appearance. 'You're wasting your stake.' - -"'I got a chance,' was the reply. - -"The man got out his other horse on the following day. He got 50 to 1 on -him for the six-furlong race, and his plug, another rank and no-account -looker, finished last. This was the horse that could work six furlongs -in 1:21. The seedy man's confidence in his pair of skates seemed rather -pathetic to me. - -"After each of his horses had been in about half a dozen races each, -always finishing last, the both of them, and the seedy man putting twos -and fives down on them right along until the bookies felt like not -taking his money, I thought he'd take a tumble and quit the game. But on -the eleventh day of the meeting his 'mile racer,' the six-year-old -gelding, was entered again. He went to the post with a field composed of -the cracks among the outlaws. I happened to be close to the seedy man -when he went around according to his custom, putting down small bets on -his horse. He seemed to be rather better fixed than usual that day, for -he had quite a bundle of fives with him. - -"'What do I get on my horse?' he asked the first bookie he struck. - -"The layer grinned, for he knew there were eight or ten good ones in the -race, three or four of them quoted around even money. - -"'I've got 75 to 1 hung up about him, and all you want of it,' said the -bookie. 'You can write your own ticket, in fact.' - -"'Hundred to 1?' asked the seedy man. - -"'Why, sure,' replied the bookmaker. And he took $5 of the 'owner's' -money at 100 to 1. Just out of curiosity I followed the seedy man in his -tour of the books and I saw him put down $70 in $5 bets on his horse to -win at 100 to 1. It struck me then that there was to be something done -on the seedy man's horse. But I wasn't capping the bookies' game, and -I've got a fad for minding my own business, anyhow, and so I kept off -the race and went into the stand to watch it. I had a hunch to play the -seedy man's horse for a good wad, but I reflected that if I got on and -the good thing went through the bookies 'ud be suspicious about such a -well-known player as I was being in on it, and in the investigation the -seedy man might be cut out, and I didn't want to knock him. But I surely -was a whole lot interested in the way that race was to come out. - -"I took a good look at the seedy man's horse as they filed past the -stand to the post. He looked much better and pretty nippy at that for -such a rancid outsider. The same boy that had ridden the horse in his -first race at Alexander Island and landed him nowhere was up. It was a -mile race. - -"The favorite, a horse called Walcott--4 to 5 on in the betting--got off -on the right foot with a jump and started to tiptoe the field. At the -quarter he led by three lengths, with the second choice, a good outlaw -named Halcyon, beginning to set sail for him. The rest of the field of -thirteen were all strung out, the seedy man's horse 'way in the ruck. -But I kept my glasses on that horse all the way, and I could see that at -the half he was under the devil's own pull. The boy had half a dozen -wraps on him and I felt then, even if the favorite was still a good four -lengths in the lead, and going easily, that there was but one horse in -the race, and that horse the seedy man's. It was a watermelon just -opening, but I suppose I was the only man at the track that happened to -have got next to the game. The judges didn't observe, of course, that -the seedy owner's horse was under twenty wraps, for they looked upon him -as a dead one and paid no attention to his running. - -"At the far turn Walcott, the favorite, was still three or four lengths -in front, Halcyon, the No. 2 choice, having fallen back, beaten out. -They were all in a bunch behind the leader, and all going mighty well at -the head of the stretch. All the time I had my glass focused on the -horse belonging to the shabby man. Walcott seemed to be just galloping, -as I say, at the head of the stretch, when I saw the jockey suddenly sit -down on the shabby man's horse and start to ride a-horseback. It was -pretty, I tell you, to see that old six-year-old hop out after the -galloping favorite and chase him down the stretch. The old horse, -without a bit of whipping or spurring--the boy had simply given him his -head--pumped up like an express engine, and the favorite was taken out -of his gallop and extended, under whip and spur, before they were half -way down the stretch. Passing the stand, Walcott and the seedy man's -horse were nose and nose, the latter gaining at every jump. Walcott was -beaten a head on the wire by the rank outsider in a pretty finish. - -"The stewards had the seedy man in the stand immediately and then called -the boy up. It was an astonishing reversal of form, and action seemed to -be called for. The seedy man's story was straight, however. He had given -his horse a half pint of whisky before the race and he supposed that was -responsible for the win. Doping horses was all right at Alexander, and -so the stewards couldn't kick about that. The stewards touched upon the -ringer question, but the seedy man was such a simple kind of duck, and -his story was so connected about past owners of his two horses and their -life-long careers on the outlaw tracks, that the stewards finally -declared the race all hunk and the bets stood. - -"I saw the shabby man cash his $70 worth of 100 to 1 tickets. He didn't -gloat any over the bookies who had grinned in his teeth before the -race--just collected his money quietly, saying: 'Well, I had a chance, -didn't I?' The bookies were confident that the seedy man had a mighty -valuable pair of ringers on his staff, and that one of them had just won -the mile race in the beautiful, finely-drawn nose finish, but they -couldn't welch on their bets. With his $7000 the seedy man took his -string of two away the next day. - -"I ran across him last summer at the St. Louis Fair Grounds' racing. He -was no longer a seedy man. He was covered with gig lamps, and he had it -in every pocket. Said I to him: - -"'D'ye remember that neat 100 to I thing you pulled off in Washington a -few years ago? There was some quality in that old outlaw of yours that -got the money.' - -"He looked at me with a broad grin. - -"'Outlaw be damned,' said he. 'That horse was one of the cracks out of -the West, on licensed tracks. He was a bit of paint. He had done a mile -in 1:39-1/2 twice--round miles--and he was as game as a wild turkey egg. -Me and my pardner pulled down $20,000 or so, running him as a ringer all -over the country. I was going to open my six-furlonger in Washington -that time, but $7000 was enough. My six-furlonger was a crack from -Frisco. He was dyed, too. Six furlongs in 1:14 was a common canter for -him. The Willie Wises back in the East are not so many at that, are -they?'" - - - - -THIS TELEGRAM WAS SIGNED JUST "BUB." - - - _It Referred to Nothing Calculated to Disturb Domesticity, but It Came - Near Wrecking a Happy Home._ - -When the senior partner of a young two-handed firm of patent attorneys -reached the firm's office in West Broadway on Monday morning last his -eye caught sight of a telegram addressed to his junior partner on the -latter's desk. As the junior partner was in Washington and wasn't due -back in New York until 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the senior -partner opened the telegram. It was a night message from St. Louis, and -it read as follows: - -"Hammer Jim Conway. Punch him your limit. Don't let anything scare you -out. He's easy. Bub." - -The senior partner scratched his head over this. - -"Conway--Jim Conway," he muttered to himself. "Now, who the dickens can -Jim Conway be, I'd like to know? We've got no client named Jim Conway, -and we're not fighting any infringement case in which a Mr. Conway is -the defendant. Darned funny telegram, this is." - -The senior partner turned the message upside down and every which way, -but the longer he looked at it from various points of view the more -puzzled he became. - -"Mighty belligerent sort of an affair, too," he mused. "Now, what has -this Jim Conway done to my partner that he needs to be punched for it? -And who's this Bub? Bub! That's a deuce of an undignified name for a man -to put on paper. Great Scott! I wonder if my junior partner has gone in -for prize fighting at that Jersey athletic club he belongs to? Perhaps -he's been matched to box some fellow member named Jim Conway, and this -Bub chap down at St. Louis is wiring him encouragement. Nope, that can't -be right, either. My junior partner has been taking on fat at an -alarming rate lately, so that he can't be training for a boxing -contest." - -He took a few turns up and down the office, holding the telegram out at -arm's length. - -"I hope the boy don't get into a serious mix-up with this Jim Conway -fellow, whoever he is," he muttered nervously. "I don't believe the lad -has done anything that he'd be ashamed to have me know about, and yet -it's blamed queer that he should be getting telegraphic despatches from -people by the name of Bub, urging him to employ physical force for the -subjugation of a chap with such a Boweryesque sort of name as Jim -Conway. The question is, what's the boy done to Conway, or Conway to -him, that it should be necessary for one or both of them to resort to -fisticuffs? Now, if the boy were to get mixed up in a brawl with this -Conway there'd be the deuce to pay. It 'ud get into the papers, and it -might have a serious effect upon our tidy and growing practice. I wish -that junior partner of mine were a bit more level-headed. He's too -clever and industrious and promising to have anything whatsoever to do -with folks who travel under such names as Conway and Bub, and I'm going -to give him a mild little personally conducted talking to when he gets -back from Washington this afternoon. Why, I wouldn't have him get into a -street fight, or a fight anywhere else for that matter, for big -money--not only for the sake of the firm, but for his own sake. He's -pretty handy with his maulies, and all that, but this fighting business -is not the thing for gentlemen, not by a long shot. I just wish I could -find out who this Conway duffer is, anyhow." - -The young woman who manipulates the typewriter for the firm came in just -then. - -"By the way, Miss Bringlunch," the senior partner said to her, "have we -any person of the name of Jim Conway on our list of correspondents?" - -"No, sir," she promptly replied. "We've got a Conners, Coleman, Coulter, -Conneff, Curran--lots and lots of C's--but no Conway." - -"So I thought," said the senior partner. "Er--by the way, did you ever -happen to hear Mr. Barlock refer to a person by the name of--er--Bub?" - -The young woman smiled as she tied her black sateen apron in the back. - -"I've heard him call the newsboys who come into the office with papers -Bub," she replied. - -"Er--yes, yes," murmured the senior partner, "so have I. But this is a -St. Louis Bub. Well, no matter." - -The senior partner dived into the mass of papers on his desk, but he -couldn't get the bloodthirsty telegram to his junior partner out of his -mind. He was puzzling over it still radiant when his junior partner's -young wife came along toward 11 o'clock in the morning. She wanted to -find out the exact hour her husband was due back from Washington. - -"He'll be here a little after 4, I guess," said the senior partner. -"Er--by the way, Mrs. Barlock, does Jack number among his friends or -acquaintances anybody by the name of Jim Conway?" - -"Jim Conway?" repeated the junior partner's wife, with a finger at her -lip. "Why, no, not that I know of. I never heard him say anything about -a Mr. Conway. Why?" - -"Oh, nothing," said the senior partner, in a constrained sort of tone, -putting away the message from St. Louis for the fiftieth time. - -The wife of the junior partner suddenly looked alarmed. - -"That telegram!" she gasped, noticing the senior partner's furtive -manner of slipping the despatch into his pocket--"is anything wrong with -Jack? Has the train been wrecked? Has the"---- - -And she started to her feet in great agitation. - -"Calm yourself, calm yourself," said the senior partner, also rising and -smiling reassuringly. "There's nothing the matter. Train wrecked? Why, -the idea! How did you ever get such a notion"---- - -"But that telegram that you handle so mysteriously," said the junior -partner's wife, not yet over her alarm. - -"What telegram--this?" said the senior partner, taking the night message -from St. Louis from his pocket. "Why, this is an ordinary--er--business -telegram addressed to Jack from St. Louis, and it's"---- - -"Let me see it, please, if it's for Jack," said the junior partner's -wife, holding out her neatly gloved hand, and the senior partner could -do nothing else but pass it over. - -"'Hammer--Jim--Conway. Punch--him--your--limit. -Don't--let--anything--scare--you--out. He's easy. _Bub_.'" the junior -partner's wife read, slowly and distinctly, her eyes widening at each -sentence. "This, then, is the Mr. Conway that you spoke of. Mr. Topknot, -what is the meaning of this? What in the world is the"---- - -"You can search me," said the senior partner desperately. "Er--that is, -it's all as mysterious to me as it apparently is to you. I've been -bothering my head about it all the morning. I wouldn't have worried you -by showing it to you, but as long as you asked to see it, why, of -course"---- - -And the senior partner coughed behind his hand and looked dismal. - -The junior partner's wife paced up and down the office with the telegram -in her hand. - -"Why, it looks as if Jack had an enemy named Jim Conway, and that he -intended to fight him, doesn't it?" she exclaimed beseechingly to the -senior partner. "I'd just like to know who this horrid, nasty ruffian -who signs himself Bub is, that's all. My Jack fighting a man with such -an awful, 'longshoremanish name as Jim Conway! Why, that name sounds -like the names of the roustabouts we read of in the papers who attack -their poor wives with cotton hooks and throw burning lamps at them. And -goodness gracious sakes alive! the very idea of Jack Barlock ever -dreaming of lowering himself by getting into difficulties with such--oh, -I don't know what to think of it all; indeed I don't!" - -And she strode up and down the office again in great agitation. - -"Now, now, now," put in the senior partner comfortingly. "We don't know -anything about the contents of the message, and it may be that this Mr. -Conway is--er--why, the fact is, come to think of it, it may be a -message in code. Jack's got a code of his own, you know, and maybe -he"---- - -The wife of the junior partner was looking at him so suspiciously, -however, that he couldn't go on. An expression just a trifle harder than -was exactly becoming gradually stole into her face, and she walked over -close to where the senior partner sat in his revolving chair. - -"Ah," she said in a hard tone, "I begin to see. You are trying to cover -up something--you men always stick together in these affairs. It may be -that this Mr. Conway is married, and that Jack--great heavens! if I only -thought it! If I even dreamed that such a thing could be--after all the -sacrifices I've made for Jack--living away from mama all this -time--and"---- - -Then she reduced her handkerchief to a wad about half an inch in -diameter and began to dab at the corners of her eyes. - -"My dear girl," said the senior partner, "I give you my solemn word that -I know no more about that message, nor about Mr. Conway, than you do. I -never heard of Mr. Conway in my life before I opened that telegram. My -dear Mrs. Barlock, I am sure you are exaggerating the importance of this -despatch. There is no reasonable ground whatsoever upon which you can -base any--er--accusation against the boy, and, as I say, it is -possible--in fact, it's more than probable--that this message is in -Jack's private code, and that"---- - -"I--don't--believe--any--such--boo-hoo"----And the lovely young matron -began to rock herself to and fro and to dab at her eyes unremittingly. -"It's just as plain as day that Jack has done some wrong to this poor -Mr. Conway, and this friend of Jack's in St. Louis, named Bub, has heard -that Mr. Conway is looking for Jack, and he has sent him this telegram -to warn him to be on his guard--and--boo-hoo--who would ever dream that -my Jack would get himself involved in such an awful"---- - -Her feelings overcame her again at this point, and she was unable to -proceed. - -"Mrs. Barlock," said her husband's senior partner, severely, rising and -confronting her, "I am surprised at you--I am, indeed. I was certainly -of the opinion that in a matter of this sort you would at least give -your husband--a most considerate husband--the benefit of the doubt; that -you would at any rate give him an opportunity to explain himself. How do -we know what he is to Conway or Conway to him?" And the senior partner, -growing eloquent, declaimed as if he were speaking of Hecuba instead of -the mysterious Conway. "Is it not more than likely that you are doing -him a grievous wrong by even so much as imagining for a moment that this -extraordinary telegraphic communication from--er--this Bub--person has -any reference whatsoever to--er--uh--domestic or family affairs? Wait -until Jack returns, my dear Mrs. Barlock, and I've not the least doubt -that he will explain everything to your entire satisfaction, and"---- - -"Oh, yes, explanations--explanations!" exclaimed the junior partner's -wife, giving her eyes a final dab and rising. "You'll telegraph him on -the train to have some sort of an explanation ready, and then he'll come -in here with a deeply aggrieved countenance--just as if he had had no -part at all in endeavoring to break up this poor Mr. Conway's home and -tell me hypocritically that I've wronged him and all that. I know you -horrid men and the way you stand by each other through thick and thin, -no matter how wicked you know each other to be. I shall be back here at -4 o'clock, when Jack is due, Mr. Topknot, and notwithstanding the way he -is treating me, if there is any possible way I can prevent him from -meeting this Mr. Conway and having a disgraceful altercation with him, I -shall do it. And I promise you that I shall be able to detect very -easily whether he is telling me the truth or not when I demand him to -explain this terrible business." - -Saying which, the junior partner's wife pulled her veil down and swept -out of the office with the general air of a deceived wife in a play. - -"Huh! it'd naturally be thought I'd know enough not to make such an -egregious ass of myself as to show her that telegram!" growled the -senior partner to himself. "There'll be all kinds of a bobbery around -here this afternoon, I suppose, and if this Conway matter proves to be -something that Barlock wouldn't want his wife to know about--and I've no -doubt now that it will prove just that way, the young idiot!--why, he'll -be sulky with me, and there'll be little or no work done on those new -cases, and--oh, it's a devil of a mess all around, that's what it is!" - -For all of which, however, the senior partner had his work to do, and he -pitched in and was up to his ears in it until about half-past 3, when -the junior partner's wife, with tightly pursed lips and an air of -ominous calm, arrived at the office with her mother, a handsome, -haughty, uncompromising-looking woman with a great mass of white -pompadour hair and an expression of unyielding austerity. The junior -partner's wife and her mother replied to the senior partner's courteous -greetings with unusual stiffness, plainly indicating their joint belief -that he was in league with the absent junior partner in his nefarious -doings, or that he was at any rate attempting to shield the young man. - -"Shall I turn on the electric fan, madam?" the senior partner politely -asked the junior partner's wife's mother. - -"I am quite cool enough, thank you," said the junior partner's wife's -mother, snappily. - -"Shall I fetch you a glass of iced water?" he asked the junior partner's -wife. - -"You are very kind, but I am not in the least thirsty," she replied in a -tone which seemed to convey the idea as plainly as words that she feared -he might put something in the water that wouldn't do her any good. - -The senior partner turned to his work. Thus the three sat in unbroken -silence for fully fifteen minutes, when the sound of a blustery, -cheerful voice was heard in the office boy's anteroom, and a few seconds -later a tall, broad-shouldered, frank-faced young man entered the -office. When he saw his wife he made for her with both arms extended. - -"Why, hello, there, Patsy!" he said. "I didn't know you'd be waiting for -me, or I'd have come a-running--why, what's the matter here, anyhow?" - -The junior partner's wife had shaken herself loose and averted her face -when her husband had attempted to fold her in his arms. He stared at her -for a moment, and then he stared at his mother-in-law. - -"What's up, mom?" he asked his wife's mother. "What have I been and gone -and done now, I'd like to know? Did I leave the water running in the -bathroom before starting for Washington, or have you lost my bull-pup -again, that you all look so queer--or what the deuce is it all about?" - -Neither of the women vouchsafed him any reply, and he turned to his -senior partner. - -"I say, Topknot, look here; are you in on this?" he said to his senior -partner, who was twiddling his thumbs and looking very much confused. -"Did I rob a bank in my sleep last week, or have the papers come out and -accused me of being a member of the Ice Trust, or"---- - -"My boy," the senior partner interrupted, judiciously rising and taking -the mysterious telegram from the inside pocket of his frock coat, "the -telegraphic message which I have in my hand, and which, I regret to say, -I opened this morning, knowing that you would not be back in New York -until late in the afternoon, has been the occasion, owing to its -somewhat mysterious contents, of the seeming"---- - -"Let's see it, Topknot," said the junior partner, reaching for the -telegram. - -He spread it out and glanced over its two lines. By the time he got -through reading it he was in a frenzy of excitement. He jerked his watch -out and looked at it. - -"I've just got time," he muttered to himself, hastily. "I'll just about -be able to make it. Patsy, you stay here with your mother until I get -back. I'll be back in twenty minutes or half an hour. Tell you all about -it when I get back," and he was out of the office door and down the -steps like a boy breaking out of a little red schoolhouse for recess. - -A vacant cab happened to be passing just as he got outside, and he -hailed the driver and darted into the vehicle. - -"Drive like the devil to ----'s!" he shouted to the driver, and in -something under three minutes he had rushed into the upstairs poolroom -about four blocks from his office. - -The second line of betting was in on the second race at St. Louis, and -the horse Jim Conway was the rank outsider at 60 to 1. The junior -partner crowded his way up to the counter and laid down a ten-dollar -note. - -"Gimme Jim Conway," he said to the man behind the counter. - -"Conway, $600 to $10," said the money taker, and he had no sooner -finished the words than the instrument began to click. - -"They're off at St. Loo!" sang out the operator. "Rushfields in the -lead, Cathedral second." Pause. "Cathedral at the quarter by two -lengths, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the half by three -lengths, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral at the three-quarters by -a length, Rushfields second." Pause. "Cathedral in the stretch by a -neck, Rushfields second by a neck." Longer pause. "Jim Conway wins, -easy, by three lengths!" - -"Whoopee-wow!" The yell went up from the long-shot players in the room -who had taken a chance on Jim Conway. - -The junior partner stood around with a broad grin on his face while he -waited for the race to be confirmed. Then he collected, bounded -downstairs, hailed another cab, and in exactly seventeen minutes from -the time he had left his office he was back there again. He was greeted -with the same frigidity as characterized his original welcome. He still -wore his broad grin, and he walked over to his desk, raised the lid, and -began to dig into his pockets. He produced first one fat roll of bills -and then another, and he slammed each roll down on his desk as if it -were so much shavings. His wife and his wife's mother and his senior -partner watched his performance with open mouths, as did the office boy -who stood in the doorway. When the junior partner had made a pyramid of -bills on his desk about as big as a fair-sized derby hat, he turned to -his wife and asked her, still grinning: - -"Did you read this telegram, my dear?" holding the message out in his -hand. - -"I certainly did," she replied, "and you would oblige me greatly if you -would"---- - -"And who do you think this Jim Conway was, Patsy?" he interrupted. - -"I hadn't the least idea in life," she replied, without any sign of -relenting, "nor have I at the present moment. I intend, however, to find -out who Mr. Conway is at the earliest possible mo"---- - -The junior partner fell into a revolving chair, stuck his legs out in -front of him as far as they would reach, and roared so that he must have -been heard all over the building. He roared so loud and long that the -performance was infectious, and his wife and his wife's mother and his -senior partner, notwithstanding the fact had begun to dawn upon them -that they were in a foolish position, had to smile in spite of -themselves. When the junior partner was able to splutter he managed to -gasp his explanation in short sentences. Bub was a friend of his in St. -Louis who followed the races out there, and who had promised to tip him -off on the first good thing at a long price that was to be put over the -plate at the St. Louis meeting. Bub had kept his promise, and the junior -partner was $600 to the good. That was all. - -"And if you don't go out and corner the foulard dress goods market -to-morrow, Patsy," the junior partner concluded, addressing his wife, -"on the strength of what our four-footed pal, Jim Conway, has done for -us, why"---- - -When they had gone, the office boy, in sweeping out the office, picked -up the telegram, that had slipped to the floor while the junior partner -was laughing. - -"Now, w'y couldn't I ha' got a piece o' dat!" said the office boy, -disgustedly as he read the telegram. "I bin pickin' dat skate ev'ry day -f'r de las' two weeks, and I knowed dis mornin' w'en I seen de St. Loo -entries dat he'd win in buck-jump." - - - - -STORY OF A FAMOUS PAT HAND. - - -_A Game in New Orleans That Makes Modern "Big" Poker Games Seem Tiny by - Comparison._ - -"The shrinkage in the value of poker winnings that get talked about -nowadays," said the New Orleans turfman at the beach dinner, "is -mournful, that's what it is. A few days ago a man told me that -So-and-so, a gilded youth from up the State somewhere, had recently -swooped down upon a gentleman's poker club in New York, and had removed -himself from the scene of play, after a five-hour seance, with $8500 in -winnings. The man who told me this leaned back, after he had sprung the -$8500 climax, and waited for my eyes to protrude. He looked a bit miffed -and sulky when they didn't protrude. - -"'Why, durn it all,' said he, 'I believe you affect your cold-blooded -way of taking things. To see you twiddle your thumbs a man 'ud suppose -that you had no more sense than to imagine that an $8500 winning at a -short poker sitting was the most ordinary thing in the'---- - -"'Easy, easy,' I had to put in, for he was heating himself unduly. Then, -to bring him around to good nature again and to convince him that I -wasn't attitudinizing, I was compelled to spend a half hour or so in -unwinding a bit of a reel of the days when there were poker giants in -this country. He wasn't quite willing, at the finish, to acknowledge -that the winner at draw of $8500 was a poker pigmy, but when I happened -to mention the occasion when Phil Cuthbert of St. James's parish -dropped, in a two-handed game at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans, a -little bundle of $400,000"---- - -"He told you, of course, that you were smoking," interrupted the New -York man. - -"No, he didn't. He asked me if it got into the New Orleans papers. I -told him that in 1868 the New Orleans papers were too busy roasting the -carpet-baggers to devote any space to such a minor matter as a $400,000 -poker game at the St. Charles Hotel, where draw games approximating that -in size were generally going on at any old hour of the day or night. -There was some rhetoric, I admit, in that 'approximating' statement, but -I wanted to set this New York man right. As a matter of fact, a $50,000 -game of draw was not at all uncommon in the St. Charles's private poker -parlors. After Phil Cuthbert had dropped that mound of $400,000 on one -hand, the New Orleans papers did announce that Mr. Philip Cuthbert, the -well-known planter of St. James's parish, was about to start on a -gold-prospecting tour in the mountains of Honduras; but they were -generous enough not to mention, if they knew it, that, with four aces in -his hand, he had lost $400,000 to Mr. Joseph Lescolette, shipper, of -Havre, Pernambuco, and New Orleans." - -"Lost $400,000 on a hand consisting of four aces, am I to understand you -said?" asked the New York man. - -"The statement was to that general effect," replied the New Orleans -turfman. - -"Suppose you just lead up to that gradually by telling the story." - -"Well, in order to do that, I've got to plead guilty to having been a -table arranger and sweep-out boy at the St. Charles at the time the -thing happened," said the horseman from New Orleans. "However, having -achieved greatness since, I see no reason why I shouldn't be willing to -acknowledge that. Besides being table arranger and sweep-out boy, it was -one of the functions of my job at the St. Charles to sort o' stand by, -as sailor-men say, when games were on in the private parlors, and run -errands for the gentlemen playing. There was plenty of high poker play -to be had at any of the first-rate New Orleans clubs at that time--too -much of it, in fact, for the club games became so open, owing to the too -generous distribution of visitors' cards by the club members that many -of the high-playing men of the town abandoned club poker playing -altogether. When they felt the hunch to get into a game of draw they -adjourned to the St. Charles, where, in the seclusion of a private -parlor, they enjoyed freedom from the neck-craning gaze of onlookers, -and freedom also from that bane of the genuine lover of a game of draw, -the chap who stands behind one's chair and keeps up a running commentary -of approval or disapproval. - -"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. - -"I had the buck when it came my turn to deal again, and so it was a -jackpot. I was wishing myself well out of it, and had cold feet, if ever -a man did, though I was afraid to say so with so much of my opponents' -money in my clothes. My hands probably trembled a little as I dealt that -round, and even this fact probably caused them to suspect that I was -monkeying with the deck and to watch me narrowly. The man on my left -opened the pot for the size of it, and all stayed. When I picked up my -hand and saw that I had given myself a clean, pat flush, ace on top, it -made me pretty nervous, and before I stayed I did a heap of considering. - -"'The best thing you can do, young fellow,' said I to myself, 'is to -stay out of this jack altogether, or else throw that straight of yours -face up in the center of the table, proving your squareness to these -cutthroats, and let them play the jack out among themselves. If you -don't do one of these things, you're going to get hurt in just about -three minutes.' - -"Then I considered some more. Here I had a fine and probably winning -hand that I had come by perfectly on the level, and it would be rank -cowardice to throw it away, and mighty poor poker, besides. - -"'I'll be damned if I do any such thing just to convince these chaps -that I'm not a thief,' was my final conclusion; and with that I made it -twice the size of the pot to draw cards. They all glowered I tell you -what, but they all stayed, every one of 'em. They not only stayed, but -they bet and raised each other like the devil, and forced me to -out-raise all of their raises every time it came around to me. - -"Jim Cathcart, whose beady eyes had been blazing ever since I doubled -the value of the pot to draw cards, was as bad-looking a man as I want -to see when, finally, the man at my left called my last big raise. There -had probably been some signals in knee-rubbing under the table, for the -other two cowboys followed the lead of the first and called me in turn. -When it got around to Cathcart he slammed his bundle of greenbacks into -the pile with an oath. - -"'Podner,' said he, looking hard at me with his little red eyes, 'some -o' your work here to-night has been so cut-an'-dried lookin' as to -excite a whole lot of doubt about your bein' on the level; an' if you -happen to have anythin' in that fist o' your'n this time that'll top -these here three aces o' mine, then, by hell, you havin' dealt this mess -yourself, there won't be no manner o' question but that you're a damned -proper crook.' - -"Was I scared? Well, the hand just fell out of my paw, face up on the -table, I was so scared! I was so paralyzed with fear that I simply -couldn't move or say a word, and, what's more, I'm not a particle -ashamed to own up to it. When the cards fell out of my hand Cathcart -reached over and spread them out with his left hand. - -"'Well, by hell, you are a crook, ain't you?' he snapped when he saw the -value of the hand that beat his own good one, and as he spoke he whipped -out the big gun on the right side of his belt. I was blind with terror, -and when I heard the loud report of a gun I gave it all up and figured -that I was already three-quarters of the way over the Big Divide. - -"When I opened my eyes a second later I saw Cathcart staring at the -door, his right arm hanging limp at his side. His gun had fallen on the -table without being discharged, and his left arm was in the air. So were -the six arms of the other three men, and they also had their eyes glued -on the door. I wheeled around to look that way myself. Standing quietly -under the lintel of the door, with his two big guns covering the five of -us, was the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man I had noticed eyeing -us before we started the game of poker. The man was Wild Bill, Abilene's -celebrated Marshal. The shot I had heard when I had given the whole -thing up was from one of Wild Bill's unerring guns. It had pinked -Cathcart in the right shoulder just in the nick of time, causing the gun -with which he had intended to shoot me to fall from his hand. - -"'Slope for your camp, son,' said Wild Bill to me quietly, still -covering the four men. Well, for all I know, he might be covering them -yet. I do know, though, that I was out of that room like a cat out of a -bag, and the way I cut for our camp, over the newly-laid ties, eight -miles away, was a warning to grasshoppers. - -"It was while I was making this little journey, hitting a high place -only once in a while, that I came to the determination that for a man -who could not fight shy of bull-head luck any better than I could, the -game of draw poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for -health and peace of mind; and I haven't departed from that determination -down to the present moment of time." - - - - -CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS. - - -_Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Professional Sharpers Who - "Work the Liners."_ - -An Englishman who travels a good deal was generalizing at one of the -clubs last night on the subject of the card sharpers who devote -themselves exclusively to the ocean steamers. - -"It's a marvel to me," he said, "that the American steamship people, or -the police, or somebody, can't drive these sharpers off the American -steamers. It's nothing short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong -somewhere. Can't be collusion, I don't suppose, or"---- - -"Oh, come now, stow that, mate," said an American who does a bit of -traveling himself. "If they're not worse, and more of them, on the -English transatlantic steamers, I'll turn British subject, take the -Queen's shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks from -Dahomey to"---- - -"Humbug! We don't fight naked blacks. We only subdue them, that's all. -Punitive expeditions, you know. But about these card sharpers on the -American ships. Why, it's simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to -mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of it is, the cads get -themselves up like gentlemen, so how's a man to know"---- - -"Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man," put in the -American. - -The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen will when compelled -to admit that the universe is not entirely an open book to them. - -"Well, yes, I did," he admitted gamely. "Not very hard, though. I think -twenty guineas would about cover it. But it wasn't the money so much. It -was the way the thing was done--positively beastly, I say. Man was -introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an American I know -well. Good fellow, too. Man had been introduced to him by somebody else, -and so on, so that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he -came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst of it was, I myself -presented the chap to any number of fellows I knew on the ship, and all -of 'em got bit more or less, and all of 'em looked at me reproachfully -when it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper, just as I -looked reproachfully at the man who"---- - -"Sort of endless chain, wasn't it?" put in the American. - -"Well, if you want to put it that way," said the Englishman. "And worse -still, the man got my guineas at my own game. If it had been poker, now, -I wouldn't have minded so much, for I never could master that queer -game, and I don't believe there's anything in it, anyhow. But nap! Chap -beat me clean at nap, that I've been playing ever since I was at Harrow. -Odd, too, that I beat him easily at first and had all the luck, and was -probably fifty guineas ahead of him. Then suddenly the luck changed, you -see"---- - -The American smiled. - -"What the deuce are you grinning at? The luck changed, as I say, and, by -Jove, the fellow positively couldn't lose. If my daughter hadn't become -ill on the fourth day out, I dare say I might have lost quite a bit of -money, and"---- - -"Unquestionably you would have," put in the American. "So that in one -respect your daughter's illness--which I trust was not serious--was -really a blessing to you. It's queer to me that no Englishman I have -ever met in ocean voyaging is able to perceive that when he is playing -at cards with a stranger who permits him to win easily and heavily at -first, it is time for him to make his devoirs, more or less respectful, -to the stranger, and proceed to take a constitutional on the main deck, -henceforth abjuring cards with said stranger. Now, an American is able -to see into that game right away. If he is playing with a friend, and -the friend is a winner from the go-off, as we say over here, all well -and good. The American voyager who is up to snuff puts his friend's -initial winnings down to the chances of the game. But when he gets into -a game with a stranger, and the stranger simply shoves money from the -outset over to his side of the table--well, do you know what the -American of to-day does under those circumstances? He simply awaits the -moment when the luck begins to change, and then he has an imperative -appointment with his wife in the cabin. He thus picks up quite a bit of -cigar money from a man who he instinctively knows is a sharper." - -"Fancy now," said the Englishman. "If I had only known that"---- - -"But you didn't know, and, as I say, I never came across the Englishman -who did. Why, the ocean voyaging card sharpers have become so well aware -of this little shrewd habit of American passengers with whom they sit -down to a game that of late years they have altogether abandoned that -old, old trick of permitting their victims to win with ease at the -outset. They only work that trick nowadays on Englishmen. Fact is, I -think there ought to be a rule on all transatlantic steamships, English -and American, absolutely prohibiting British subjects from playing cards -at all aboard ship." - -"Tommyrot!" said the Englishman. - -"Not so much so as you might imagine," said the American. "Of course, I -don't mean that literally, and yet I don't know but what, after all, it -might be a good thing. I have watched the wake of a steamer on the trip -across the Atlantic fifty-two times--that is, I have made twenty-six -round voyages--and I suppose that on these voyages I have seen as many -as a thousand men plucked at cards. I will venture to assert that 80 per -cent. of them were Englishmen. So you will perceive there is some -justification for what I said about your countrymen playing cards aboard -ship. - -"I've seen some clever men of your country badly done by the ocean-going -card sharpers, too. At the time your Lord Lonsdale came to the United -States--Violet Cameron incident, you know--he was a pretty young man, -even if he did at that period of his life stand in urgent need of a -guardian with a heavy club. Well, amid the newspaper uproar over his -landing in this country with the Cameron, the fact did not come out that -Lonsdale was plucked of $12,000 on the trip over by Ned Turner, one of -the most notable of the older clique of steamship sharpers. But it's a -fact, all the same. I was not only a board the steamer at the time, but -I was one of a number of men who endeavored to pound some sense into -young Lonsdale's head while the plucking was going on. But he was a -stubborn chap and would listen to no one, and even when he was quite -convinced that Turner was a sharper, at the end of the voyage he stood -for his big loss like a little man, and became genuinely angry at some -of his English friends aboard who recommended him to stop payment on the -checks he had given Turner to cover the greater portion of the plucking. - -"I think Turner had it in mind to do Lonsdale when he got aboard at -Liverpool. Turner had been working the ships for fifteen years, in spite -of the efforts of the steamship companies to keep him off their vessels, -and at this time he was a man of 40 or thereabouts. Lonsdale was pretty -liberal in the use of wine at this time, and it was at the buffet that -Turner, who was a fine-looking insinuating and accomplished man, found -young Lonsdale on sailing day. The two men struck up a friendship from -the very first day of the voyage, and it was Lonsdale himself who first -suggested, as he afterward acknowledged--for he was a manly fellow--the -poker game. Lonsdale had only recently learned the hands in poker--which -is about all any man ever learns about it, if the truth were told--and -he had the poker initiate's enthusiasm for the game to an exaggerated -extent. Before going any further, I ought to say that Turner always -maintained afterward that in his play with Lonsdale he was perfectly on -the level. - -"'The young fellow insisted on playing,' said Turner, 'and he couldn't -play any more than my aunt in Connecticut. I played with him, because -that's my business. But I didn't have to play crooked--and I don't admit -that I ever did play crooked, understand--to get his $12,000.' - -"Well, at any rate young Lonsdale and Turner started the game on the -first day out, and kept it going almost until the steamer passed Fire -Island. Of course Turner beat him right along. He made no effort to let -Lonsdale win from him at first. He simply played poker and raked in the -young man's money and checks. A lot of us aboard knew Turner, and those -of us who had met Lonsdale in England got him aside on the second day -out and diplomatically put it to him that he was engaged in a pretty -difficult encounter--that, in brief, Turner was a professional player of -cards. For our pains we were told that we were too confoundedly -officious, that he was more than 7 years of age and knew what he was -about, and all the rest--you know the talk of a boy; and this boy was -flushed, too, you understand. - -"At any rate, when the steamer was drawing near this shore Lonsdale -decided that he had had enough--not that he would not have gone on -playing for another seven days, had the voyage been protracted to that -extent, but he had to get ready to land. Several of us were in the -card-room when the last hand was played. Turner won the hand and -Lonsdale scribbled a check on his American banker for the amount the -hand represented. Then he looked up at Turner for a minute and said: - -"'Some of my friends here estimate you a little unkindly, Mr. Turner.' - -"'How's that?' inquired Turner, looking not a whit surprised. - -"'Well,' said Lonsdale, 'they maintain that your skill at cards affords -you something better than a livelihood.' - -"'I never denied that,' said Turner coolly. - -"'In playing with me on this voyage you have employed skill alone?' - -"'At your suggestion, I have played draw poker with you for seven days. -I understand draw poker, and I have $12,000 of your money. Do you want -it back?' - -"You see, that was a magnificent bluff on Turner's part. The young chap, -he knew, would not welch. - -"'Oh, if you choose to be insulting'----said Lonsdale, flushing hotly, -and he rose from the card-table and left the room. - -"Well, a couple of elderly Englishmen aboard who knew Lonsdale and his -father before him went to him then and told him that it would be -perfectly proper and right for him to stop payment on the checks he had -given to Turner, who, they told him in so many words, was nothing short -of a swindler. - -"'Mind your own damned business,' said Lonsdale. 'I'll do nothing of the -sort,' and that was the end of it. It must be confessed that you folks -over there have a wonderfully game fashion of sticking to a bad -proposition; but I, for one, think it is pure vanity. Turner was kept -off the ships of all the lines after that, and I don't know what became -of him. - -"How they contrived to keep Turner off the ships unless he really wished -to remain off is something that I can't explain, for it is simply a -plain statement of fact to say that the steamship companies have always -found, and probably always will find, it impossible to prevent the card -sharpers from running on their boats. They have often tried it. They -tried it on one notable occasion, as I remember, with George McGarrahan, -in 1881. McGarrahan was the Nestor of the steamship card sharpers, and -all the steamship companies knew him. The president of one of the most -prominent transatlantic lines sent for McGarrahan--who, by the way, has -since died in New York--and told him that he would not be permitted to -travel henceforth on the vessels of the line. - -"'The deuce you say!' replied McGarrahan. 'How are you going to stop -me?' - -"'Refuse to give you passage,' answered the president. - -"'You will, will you?' said McGarrahan. 'Well, if you do that, I'll get -enough damages out of your line to make it unnecessary for me ever to -touch a card again as long as I live.' - -"His position was correct in law, as the president of this line found -out upon investigation. The steamship company, you understand, is not -the regulator of the habits of its steamers' passengers. If the -passengers don't know any better than to play cards with sharpers, that -is their own lookout. And a steamship company cannot decline to sell -passage to a man because it claims he is a short-card player. It -devolves upon the company to prove that the man is a card sharper, and -the steamship people know that this is practically impossible, for no -man who is done at cards by one of these men on an ocean steamship is -going to rise in his seat and make announcement of the fact to the -world. - -"Observation tells me that there are not nearly so many of these men on -the ships now as formerly. The short-card players who make a business of -traveling have found the trains much more profitable, since the officers -of the steamers got into the habit of going quietly among the voyagers -of a card-playing turn and warning them of the danger of getting into -games with such and such men. That was the system, and a pretty -effectual one, too, adopted by the steamship companies to squelch the -ocean card sharpers. The result has been that the sharper can now only -make a general campaign of all the big steamers--and the big steamers -are the only steamers they consider worth working--before the officers -know them, and then their game is dead practically. So that they find it -more profitable to take to the swell trains on the swell runs, making -the same trip rarely, and thus preventing their countenances from -getting too familiar to the railroad people." - -"How the deuce do you know all this?" inquired the Englishman. - -"Well," replied the American, "you may be pretty certain that I haven't -dreamed it. Besides, I figured it that you required some consolation for -the loss of your twenty guineas. Didn't you?" - - - - -THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER. - - - _That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner - Ought to Know._ - -"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a whole lot," said one -of the men in the back room of an uptown cafe. - -The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in the lap of his master -and wagging his stump of a tail foolishly. His master was a squat, -thin-faced man of the all-aged class; that is, he might have been -anywhere from 30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners of -his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up he looked like -ready money. He lapped the dog's clipped ears one over the other and -looked reminiscent. - -"Well," said he, replying to the other man's remark, "I can't say that -he does look dead wise and smooth to the naked eye. He's not one of -these here fresh sooner dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows -the first clatter out o' the box. He's no trick mutt, anyhow. I raised -him from a pup, and I never taught him any of the jay tricks that these -pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts go through. What he don't know about -standing up in a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub -and waltzing on his front feet and playing 'possum, and all that kind o' -dinky work, would fill a big book. But if any of you people think you -can give him any points on the value of hands in a game of poker, then -you need a new dope cook, and that's which." - -"Poker?" said another of the party, incredulously. "Say, shoot it in -light. Your yen-hok's overworked." - -"That's what I said--poker," replied the fox terrier's owner, firmly. -"I'm putting you next now, because I don't make it a business to do pals -in a poker game. He's the best poker dog on the American continent, that -mutt. Can't begin to figure on how many times he's won me out, and for -how much. He's sulked on me two or three times at critical junctures in -games of draw, and given me the wrong tips, just to get square with me -for something or other, but that was when he was young and sassy and -disposed to work his edge on me. He's been tipping me off right now for -seven straight years, and--well, I've got a dollar or two scattered -around," and the owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a -25-cent cigar. - -"Didn't have a bit o' trouble teaching him the game, I suppose?" asked -one of the men at the table. - -"Well," replied the fox terrier's owner, striking a match on his -diamond-incrusted match safe, "I can't say that teaching him the hands -was altogether a snap. At first he used to get the kings and jacks mixed -once in a while, and then he had a habit, when he was learning the game, -of getting the eights and tens twisted, too. But I broke him of those -defects after a while. It wasn't so much trouble teaching him the value -of the hands in poker as it was to fix up a sign manual by which he -could express himself and tip me off on the hands held by the other -fellows. But patience was my long suit in teaching that dog the game of -poker, and in less than a year after I showed him the first pack of -cards he ever saw, he was able to put me onto the worth of every hand -around a table without any of the marks falling to the scheme. His -method of communicating such information to me during the progress of a -game is a bit involved and intricate, and we've got a lot of little code -signs that would require too much elaboration in the explaining, but -I'll just give you a little idea of the way the thing works. - -"Suppose I'm sitting in a four-handed game. The dog is nosing around the -room, not in any ostentatious kind of way and not getting himself -noticed at all by the other three in the game. A hand is dished out. The -dog noiselessly rubbernecks behind the chair of the first player on his -route. The first player, we'll say, has got a pair of sevens, and I've -got my eye on the dog. The dog quietly gapes twice, to indicate that -player No. 1 has a pair, and then blinks both of his eyes seven times in -rapid succession. See? Of course I know then that No. 1 has only got a -pair of bum sevens. I pretend to scan my hand, while the dog quietly -gets behind the chair of player No. 2. We'll say No. 2 has three queens. -The dog passes his right paw over his right eye three times. If it's -three kings, left paw over his left eye three times. If it's three -bullets he puts his left paw at his nose and holds it there for a -second, and, if three jacks, his right paw at his nose. Savvy? And so -on. He's got the whole manual and code worked out to a stretch finish. -If No. 3 has got a pat flush he closes his left eye and keeps it closed -until he sees I'm noticing him. If No. 3 has got a pat full house he -shuts up his right eye in the same way. - -"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. - -"The game they dub poker out there isn't poker at all, in my opinion. -It's a hybrid sort of affair, full of fancy moves that must have been -chucked into the original game by early California vaqueros with such a -taste for embellishment that they had to tack gilt fringe on to their -pants and to encircle their hats with silver cable. Whatever they call -it, it's not American draw poker by a darned sight. The kind of poker -that I was raised on--the real thing, the article of draw that we play -on this side of the Alleghanies--doesn't take any more account of the -joker, for instance, than it does of the card case; but out in -California they think a man's plumb blind crazy if he registers a kick -over having the joker in the deck. I'd as lief play old maid or grab for -corn-silk cigarettes as play draw poker with the joker mixed up in it; -but out there I had to take the game as it was served up, and, as -between poker with a joker and no poker at all, I, of course, accepted -the lesser of the two evils and played. But I got dumped on the game for -about 2,000 miles of coast line, and that, too, by people who didn't -have to count themselves because they were so many at the game. The -trouble was that I played the game of draw that I was brought up on and -they played their crossbred game, and the result was just about as queer -as it would be to see a baseball pitcher chucking up a Rugby football to -a cricket batsman with a fence picket in his hands. - -"I'll not forget my first run-in with this poker-joker idea. This was my -first visit to the slope, you know and, although I'd often heard vaguely -that young 'uns, playing draw for beans or tin tags, once in a while -shoved the joker into the pack for the fun of the thing. I, of course, -never dreamed that rational adult human beings in any quarter of the -earth could have the nerve to inflict such a dismal outrage upon the -noble game of draw as to slap the joker into a poker deck. But I found -out different the very first game of draw that I sat into out in San -Francisco. - -"It was a four-handed game, and I was the only Eastern man in the bunch. -The other three fellows were business men who belong to the Native Sons' -organization, which accounts for the weird brand of poker they played. -They played what was taught 'em in their youth out there; didn't know -any better, and thought, and no doubt still think, that their game is -right. - -"I was banker, and dished up the first hand. It was 25 cents ante and $5 -limit. I gave myself two rattling good pairs, kings up on tens. All of -the other fellows stayed, and the man on my right made it a couple of -dollars more to draw cards. This let two of 'em out of it, but I thought -my two pairs were good enough for a $2 raise, and so I played with the -raiser. He drew one card, and so, of course, did I. It was his bet, and -he came at me on the double with the limit. I'd caught another king, and -had as neat-looking a full house as a man needs to have in any kind of a -game. - -"'Five more'n you,' said I, and we shuttled the limit back and forth -until we each had about $50 in the pot. Said I to myself, 'I've got you -beat, my boy, for the percentage of the game is 'way against your -holding fours against my full hand, especially on the first clatter out -of the box, and, even if you've filled those two pairs of yours--which -you probably haven't, for the percentage is plumb against you--you -certainly haven't got aces on top.' Now, that was good poker reasoning, -the kind of reasoning that has kept me necktie and peanut money ahead of -the game anyway for twenty years or so, and I gave him the raise-back -just as often as he threw it at me. - -"'Finally,' said he, 'we are getting out of our depth and beyond the -breaker line, ain't we? I've got you man-handled, but you junipers from -the East never can feel the hunch when you are licked, and so I'll skate -in my little five and call you.' - -"We each had about $80 in the pot then. - -"I spread out my three royal gentlemen topping the pair of tens, and was -just about to make some good-natured crack about getting a hoe to scoop -in my winnings on the first hand, when he spread out his hand and raked -in the pot with a smile. His hand consisted of a pair of aces up on a -pair of sixes and the joker. - -"'What the dickens are you doing there?' I asked him when he raked in -the pot. 'Can't you see it's a misdeal? I forgot to take the joker out -of the deck.' - -"'Misdeal nothing,' he said, still smiling. 'You had a good hand all -right, but aces beat kings, you know, anywhere from Tuolume to Tucson.' - -"'Yes,' said I, 'but you've only got aces up, and I've got a full hand, -kings up, and it's a misdeal, anyhow'---- - -"Well, they all looked at me like they thought I ought to be in a -lunatic asylum. - -"'Misdeal?' said my friend who had swiped the pot. 'What the deuce are -you giving us, anyhow? I caught the joker on the draw, and it just -filled my hand--three aces and a pair of sixes. Don't an ace-full beat a -king-full in that desolate Atlantic coast region you hail from?' - -"'You mean you call the joker an ace?' said I, the thing beginning to -dawn upon me. - -"The three fellows gazed at me as if they were trying to find out if I -was drunk or not. - -"'Why, do you mean to say,' said the man I had played with, 'that you -don't know that in poker the joker is any old thing you choose to make -it--that, when you get it either on the deal or on the draw, you can -call it anything you want to call it to eke out a pair, flush, full -house or anything else? Tell you what, old man, you need sleep. You've -been working too hard. Turn in and have a long night of it.' - -"I couldn't help but laugh. - -"'Well,' said I, 'you people may call this joker-jiggling poker, but -somehow or another it suggests tag and I-spy and little girls singing -"London Bridge is falling down" to me. Why in the devil don't you play -poker with a pinochle deck and be done with it? Come on, and we'll build -card houses, or what's the matter with playing casino for chalk or -pin-wheels?' - -"'Why, don't you benighted people back East use the joker?' - -"'Yes,' said I, 'we do. We always give the joker in a new deck to babies -in arms to cut their teeth on.' - -"Another queer kink in the slope game of draw is that straights don't -go. I've been catching occasional pat straights and drawing to 'em all -my life, and I think the straight is one of the prettiest plays in -poker. In playing straights, if the chap across the table draws one -card, you've got the fun of trying to figure out whether he's drawing to -a couple of pairs or bobbing to a straight or a flush, and it's -interesting work. If he stands pat, it's up to you to determine by the -mind-reading process whether he's simply bluffing or actually has a pat -straight or full hand or flush in his paws. - -"Well, out on the coast they've heard occasional rumors of such things -as straights being played somewhere or another in the game of draw, but -you won't meet one coast man in a hundred that knows precisely what the -straight consists of and what the chances are of a man's getting a pat -straight or of filling a one-ended or double-ended straight. As for -playing straights, they've never even dreamed of such an absurdity. I -found that out in the second game of draw I got into out there. - -"It was in Portland, and another four-handed game, the other three -fellows being business men also. We played along for a while without my -running into any snags sticking out of the coast game, and then I got on -the deal four cards that had in them the making of a corking good -straight, capable of being filled at either end, from nine up to queen, -so that either an eight or a king on the draw would have fixed me all -right. I decided to draw to it just for luck, although all three of the -fellows were in and had stood a rise before the draw. When I caught my -king I was glad I had decided to draw to my straight. A king-high -straight is a pretty good mess of cards in any man's game of draw as we -know draw back in these parts. - -"There was a heap of betting on that round, and, of course, with that -clipper-built straight of mine, I wasn't going to let any of 'em put it -on me. I met every raise and stuck so persistently and confidently that -the whole three of them began to regard me as the main guy so far as -that deal was concerned and look a bit afraid of me. The last time I -raised it they kind o' exchanged looks, and the man at my left called -me. The other two men followed suit, and there was a general laying down -of hands. The man at my left had three eights, the fellow next to him -aces up on treys, and the man at my right three sixes. I projected my -right arm to sweep in the good-sized pot after spreading out my -king-high straight. - -"'Hold up, there!' they all yelled at me at once. 'What's all this? What -are you trying to do--hypnotize us?' And the man who had laid down his -three eights made a reach for the pot. - -"It was now my turn to think the whole three of 'em looney. - -"'Is there so much smoke in here,' said I, 'that you three people can't -perceive that I've got a king-high straight?' - -"'Straight?' said the man with the three eights. 'Straight be damned! -You've got one king up on nothing. How old are you, anyhow--seven? -Straight? Listen to him!' And the three of 'em gave the hoarse hoot in -chorus. I asked 'em to get around me and pinch me, because I wanted to -find out if I was dreaming or not, but they were too busy leaning back -in their chairs and roaring like so many wild asses of the woods to pay -any attention to me. That's what I got for not inquiring beforehand into -the kind of draw I stacked up against in Portland. - -"The next poker knock I got was down in Santa Barbara. I got into a game -of draw with three hotel clerks, all good fellows, but all addicted to -the nursery poker they play out there, and again I forgot to nail 'em up -against the wall and make 'em exude information about the kind of game -they purposed playing. We got along all right for an hour or so, and at -the end of the time I was comfortably well ahead of the game. It kind o' -tickled me, too, when I caught the joker on the draw three or four times -and beat 'em out on their own game-- which is a silly game, and about as -brainy as bean-bag, all the same. I also kept away from my inclination -to draw to straights, and, having made this much progress, I really -didn't think I was in for any more rude and costly surprises in the -game. That's where I did the leap-year figuring. - -"I gave myself a neat mess of clubs--four of them--with the ace for a -capstone. I have always been lucky in bobbing to flushes, and this -looked good. Two of the other fellows drew two cards each, and the other -man asked for one. I gave myself another club, and tried to look gloomy -and depressed. An ace-high flush has always been good enough for me on -this side of the continent, and I bet it for all it was worth. The three -hotel clerks evidently thought they were pretty well fixed, too, and, -although there was nothing frantic about the betting, it was nice and -smooth and even, and the pot grew in a way that suited me down to the -ground. When it got so large on five-dollar raises as we thought it -ought to be there was a general suggestion for a call and a show-down. -Two of my fellow players had threes, small ones, and the other two pairs -that we wouldn't stay with very long back in this neck of the woods. -Well, I flashed my ace-high flush of clubs on them, and was just about -to say something about easy money when the man with the best threes -scooped in the pot. - -"'Must have left your specs at home, my boy,' said I, thinking he was -only fooling. 'Pass that pile over.' - -"'For why?' said he. - -"Then I looked him over and saw that he was serious. - -"'For why?' I repeated. 'Well, the instructors at whose feet I sat to -learn what is learnable about the game of draw poker always taught me to -believe that a flush is better than threes.' - -"'Yes,' said he, 'but didn't you draw a card?' - -"'What the devil difference does that make?' I inquired. - -"'Oh,' said he patronizingly, 'I see you're a bit new at the game. You -see, you can't draw to flushes. You've got to hold 'em pat.' - -"Well, that was the worst jab I had yet received, but I had to stand for -it, on the 'do-as-the-Romans-do' principle. - -"In San Diego I got into a game with some fellows who were so warm that -they wouldn't play anything but jack-pots. At the start-off of the -game--the first hand--none of the four of us could open it. It went -around three times, and on the fourth deal I caught a pair of queens. -Two of the other fellows stayed. I caught another queen, and played the -hand for all it was worth. When I was called I showed down my hand, and -had 'em both beat. - -"'Foul hand,' said they. 'You didn't have openers,' and they looked at -me suspiciously. - -"'The dickens you say!' said I. 'I went in with a pair of queens and -caught another one--there they are.' - -"'But you needed aces,' said they, all at once. 'It went around four -times, and jack-pots are progressive, of course. D'ye mean to say you -didn't know that? Sorry, old man, that we'll have to split the pot.' - -"'Are they always progressive out here?' I asked. - -"'Always,' they answered, and that settled it. The pot was split." - - - - -THE PROPER TIME TO GET "COLD FEET." - - -_Few Gamblers Perceive "the Psychological Moment" For Quitting Play and - Retiring Rich._ - -An old man whose mind is still alert, and the movements of whose tall, -somewhat stooped body are as free and spry as those of many a man fifty -years his junior, is Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in -this country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the statesmen with -a penchant for gaming who lived in Washington fifty, forty, and thirty -years ago, when it was deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land -to try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above board. Martin -is now verging upon 80 years of age, and even to the present generation -of Washingtonians his white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His -age does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is about as wide -now, he says, as it was back in the fifties. He had a great deal of -money at one time in his career, but most of it went by the board. He -had the caution to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years -ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. He has passed most of his life -in Washington, but before and after the war of the rebellion he had -adventures in many parts of the United States where gaming was at its -highest. He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about the -statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the national life of the -country before the war, and the local newspaper have published many of -his reminiscences of this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets -into his stride and the company is congenial he talks well and -entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of the well-known -young American turf plunger who, after having beaten the English racing -game to the tune of $150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly -that, only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad. - -"Another example of the chance taker who has not mastered the fine -science of quitting," was his way of summing it up. "That seems to be -the most difficult point in the gambling business--to know just the -right time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself. I wish I -had. Any fool can go on playing when he is away ahead of his game, but -it takes a man of unusual strength of character, perception and -foresight to knock off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that -it begins to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a 'psychological -moment.' I don't know of any business in life in which the psychological -moment plays a greater part than it does in gambling. Most of this -country's old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or, -worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of one of them -leaving not enough money behind to have his body put into the ground -that I don't recall the time when he had tens or hundreds of thousands. -The gambler by profession has many a psychological moment in the course -of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of them. He goes on -dabbling at a percentage that his common-sense tells him is against him, -and that he has only temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds -himself broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn't break off -when he was on top of the wave. I have known a few professional gamblers -who knew just when to quit. Some of them are still alive, old men like -myself, and they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left good -sums of money behind them. - -"I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best known of the New Orleans -gamblers before the war, win $60,000 in an afternoon's play at faro. -This was in Memphis. He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he -returned with all of the money and he began to buck the king. He played -it open every time and the king lost eight straight times in two deals. -That cost Plantagenet $20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken -off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the eighth straight -losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He was frank enough to admit that he -had cold feet. - -"'While freely acknowledging that I am more or less of a d--d fool,' he -said coolly, 'I strive for the reputation of knowing when I've got -enough, even of a good thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If -the box were only depleting me gradually but surely I don't doubt that -I'd go until I was all up. But I can see legible handwriting on the wall -from as considerable a distance as my neighbors, and when I'm on top, as -I am now, well and comfortably, and eight straight kings range -themselves against me on the left hand side of the layout, that's the -kind of a signal I'm waiting for, and I pass. I'll bet any man on the -side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that the next king out of the box wins, -but no more faro. - -"Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was standing by when -Plantagenet made this little talk. - -"'You are wise in your generation, George,' said he. 'Now, it is about a -10 to 1 shot against the king losing again. Consequently you can afford -to give me at least 2 to 1 on that proposition. I'll bet you $2,500 to -$5,000 that the king does lose the next time out.' - -"'Taken,' said Plantagenet, covering Wooton's money, and the crowd -gathered round to watch the dealer riffle the cards. The box was fully -half out before a king showed, and it showed on the losing side--nine -straight. Wooton pulled down the side bet. - -"'Which I may remark,' said Plantagenet with the greatest coolness, -'that this ninth consecutive lose of the king simply confirms and makes -good the hunch I had to quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go -a bit further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper and -sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck your bank now with -dummy chips representing all of my winnings and the roll I originally -started with, and that, although I shall play as carefully and as -cautiously and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really -represent money, I shall lose every stack within two hours.' - -"Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the latter knew that -Plantagenet would try to win with the dummy chips even though he would -be $1,000 loser if he did. - -"'Go ahead and prove your case,' said Wooton, and a dealer who was off -duty was called upon to deal. Plantagenet kept cases himself and played -his own particular system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton -stood by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular game. -Plantagenet's luck had deserted him, and he lost two bets out of every -three. It seemed impossible for him to get down right, and he lost -steadily. He had played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes -and Wooton hand him the $1,000. - -"'That's the way it would have been had I been playing with money,' said -Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed with him. Plantagenet was one of the men -who knew when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren around -him, in the early seventies, he left more than $500,000 to be -distributed among his heirs. - -"Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a professional gambler, but who -outdid most of the famous professional gamblers of the South in the late -fifties in the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning humor, -was another man who knew when to quit. I saw him win $32,000 in one -night at bank in the rooms of the old Crescent City Club. Then he curled -up all of a sudden and cashed in. He wasn't a quitter in the ungenerous -sense, but he used to say that the little angel, supposed by the sailors -to sit aloft and watch out for Jack Tar, had a habit of informing him, -when he was bucking another man's game, just the proper time to pass it -up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him. On this occasion -Joe Randolph, a heavy player from Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not -pressing his luck--for quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets -out of five. - -"'All right, Randolph,' said Baker after he had cashed in. 'I'll let you -make five $10 bets in my behalf on the deal now running and I'll bet you -an even $2,000 that I (or you) lose four out of the five; this, just to -show you that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is good.' - -"Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with more than an even -chance in his favor, and he lost, for every one of the five bets lost. -Baker would quit when he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he -was away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in a four-handed -poker game with friends in one of the parlors of the old St. Charles -Hotel between the hours of 6 and 9 o'clock one evening. He had -practically an unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering -the size of the game--$200 limit--but he yawned and pushed his chair -back with the simple statement that it wasn't his night. The next night -he lost $2,000 more to the same three friends, and again he resumed his -seat. On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four hours' play, -but he gave no sign of quitting. - -"'Isn't it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms and forsake us -again, Baker?' asked one of his friends in the game, jokingly. - -"'No,' said Baker, 'I'm going to stay along to-night. I'll begin to win -soon, and then you can all stand by.' - -"He began to win on the very next deal and at 2 o'clock in the morning -he had not only retrieved his losses on the week's play, but he had all -the money in the crowd. Baker was possessed of a species of intuition -that was something extraordinary. I don't know what else to call it but -intuition. I never saw him take a daring chance that he did not win out -on it--chances that no professional gambler would dream of taking, and -diametrically opposed to all of the rules of percentage in games of -hazard. One night he walked into 'Don' Haskell's Madrid Club in St. -Louis--this was in the fall of '59--and stood and watched a few deals -out of the box at the $500-limit faro table. Then he reached over and -bought five yellow--$100--chips from the dealer. He put them all on the -ace and coppered the card. The ace lost, and the dealer put five yellow -chips on the top of the original five on the ace, and waited for Baker -to haul them down. Baker absent-mindedly made no move, to take the chips -until the dealer reminded him of them. - -"'Let them stand, with the ace coppered,' said Baker. - -"'But it's $500 limit, Mr. Baker,' said the dealer. - -"'Let it stand, Jack,' said 'Don' Haskell, coming up behind Jack and -addressing the dealer. 'Let it stand as long as Mr. Baker wants to make -play with the ace coppered, and we'll see if we can't commit assault and -battery on his "intuition."' - -"Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then waited for the turns on -the ace. The ace was only half a dozen cards below, and it lost. The -dealer ranged ten more yellows beside Baker's pile. - -"'Let them stand, ace coppered,' said Baker, scanning the cases for a -few deals back carelessly. - -"'Don' Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer and the other -players at the table neglected to put any bets down in their interest in -Baker's peculiar play. There was only one more ace left in the box and -it came out a loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside -Baker's pile--$4000--and he and the proprietor waited for Baker to haul -them down. Baker leaned back and lit a cigar, leaving the $4000 in -yellows to stand. - -"'I'll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you're willing, -"Don,"' he said quietly to Haskell. - -"'The longer the better,' said Haskell, and the dealer began to slip -them out. The first ace was way down in the center of the box, and -Haskell looked a bit chagrined when it came out a loser. - -"'Eight thousand, eh?' he said, looking over the stack of yellows on the -coppered ace. 'One more whirl at it, Baker--that'll be about all I can -stand to-night if you take it down.' - -"The ace came out on the losing side again--a thing that no professional -gambler would have bet on had he been offered 5 to 1 on the -proposition--and Baker cashed in $16,000. He would have let it run again -had Haskell been able to stand it, but the 'Don' had enough. Baker stood -by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again and then he put $500 -on it to win. It won and he took the boat for New Orleans with $16,500 -of Haskell's money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned Ripley -and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans trio of tiger buckers, broke -the Madrid Club's bank roll wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker -was the man who started Haskell in business again. - -"When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often to have a sudden -feeling that it was time for some strong bucker on the other side of the -table to cash in and quit, but of course it was no part of my business -to make any such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Washington, -in the winter of '66, when the outcast son of a rich tobacco man of -Richmond came along and whacked my box for $12,000 in a single night's -play at $200 limit. I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that -since his father had run him out of Richmond he had had more than his -share of hard luck. In fact, he had often been hungry, and I had often -given him a $5 or $10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had -started in on my box with a shoestring--where he got it I don't -know--and, as I say, he got me to the tune of $12,000 before I turned -the box on him for the night. The man in whose interest I was dealing -was very wealthy and a generous man. He knew the young chap's father. He -came to me after the young man had left with his winnings and said: - -"'You'd better hunt up that boy and tell him that he'd better not play -any more. He's had his run of luck, and he's got enough to give himself -a start. I don't want the money back. If he handles it right it'll do -him more good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense into -the lads' head.' - -"That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat of a man whose -bank had been raided. I hunted the young fellow up that morning and told -him about it. He was full of hifalutin' talk about wanting to give the -proprietor of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing. - -"'He can take care of himself,' said I to the boy. 'He knows your -father, and I dare say he's clipped your father's bank roll for a good -deal more than $12,000 on occasions when your dad has visited Washington -and gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple and fine -linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor in Richmond with a high -head and a proper countenance. That'll be better than walking into -Richmond in need of a Russian bath.' - -"The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn't keep his promise to -me to stop. He came in that night, and in half an hour's play he ran his -$12,000 up to $15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of -final warning. He paid no attention to me, though. Then he began to -lose, and in three hours he was flat broke. He went out with a wild -light in his eye, and the next morning he was found dead in his little -boarding-house room, with a bullet in his brain. - -"It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence hates a quitter, -but that doesn't apply to gambling. The knowledge of when to get cold -feet, and the gentle art of doing the same, are valuable assets for any -man who tries to buck another man's game." - - - - -CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER. - - - _And They Got Him the Whole Length of the Missouri, Until He Went - Against Another Game and Won Out._ - -"A man hunting for poker trouble could get a-plenty of it on the Big -Muddy stern-wheelers around the latter sixties and the early seventies," -said Joe Reilly of Sioux City. "There weren't many regular poker sharks -working the Missouri River boats in those days like there were on the -Mississippi steamers, but just the same the men that traveled on those -weather-boarded, lop-sided old sand-bar wagons on the Big Muddy all knew -how to play poker some, I'm a-telling you. Cato Bullman found this out -when he went up against a whole lot of different men's games on the old -'Gen. W. T. Sherman' in 1872. - -"Bullman was pardners with Nate Stillwater in running a big general -store in Yankton, and both of 'em were making a mint of money at the -time I'm going to tell you about. They'd ha' made more, I guess, if -Stillwater hadn't drank too much whisky and Bullman hadn't played too -much poker. Now, all in all, Stillwater handled his whisky pretty well, -and at such times as he found it was getting a half-Nelson on him he'd -leave it off for a spell and attend to business, so that his end of the -dissipation of the firm of Stillwater & Bullman wasn't half as bad as -Cato's. Cato loved to play poker so much that he'd knock right off in -the middle of selling a bill of goods to a gang of freighters to go off -somewheres and sit in a game. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, even -if it was darned poor business policy, if Cato ever won. But he never -did. He had no license ever to touch a pack of cards. In the first -place, he was a yap at cards, and any American kid that knew how to play -old maid could have hopped out of the back of a prairie schooner and -beaten Cato out of his boots at the game for money, marbles or chalk. In -the second place, Cato was a natural born hoodoo. If he was drawing to -three aces, and the other fellow was taking five cards, the other -fellow'd beat Cato out and have plenty to space. So that it was just -about up to Cato to holler murder and take to the brush whenever anybody -flashed a pack of the pasteboards on him. But he didn't see it this way. -He went right on playing poker and getting soaked for his share of the -profits of the firm. Cato appeared to be just stone-blind to the fact -that the foxy people that didn't do much of anything else around Yankton -except to play cards were in a fair way to fix themselves with meal -tickets for life at his expense, and as he was pretty near seven foot -high and built in proportion, none of us felt like trying to kick any -sense into his fool head. - -"Anyhow, in the summer of '72 Bullman started down the river on the old -'Gen. W. T. Sherman' for St. Louis to buy goods. He had $10,000 in -greenbacks along with him. Before he went aboard the boat Stillwater, -who wasn't much more'n five foot high, ranged himself alongside Cato's -big carcass, and says he: - -"'Cato, this here v'yage you're about to embark on is a business trip -and nothin' else. It ain't no jamboree and it ain't no poker picnic. -There's some smooth people gits aboard these here mud ploughs down below -at the landings, and in their hands you'd be nothin' but a great big -moon-eyed jayhawker, which you are. So throughout this here journey -you'd best git 'way up on top o' the boat and sit on a pile o' planks -just abaft the pilot-house and smoke your pipe. You're not to play no -poker at all, you hear me? When you git stuck on a sand-bar you can fish -over the side for bullhead catfish, but you don't play no poker. If, -when you git back here, I hear that you've been playing poker, I'll -mangle you up a heap; now you hear me a-talkin'.' - -"Cato reached down, picked up his partner by the scruff of the neck, and -held him out at arm's length. - -"'I ain't a-goin' to play no poker, old man,' says he to Stillwater. -'Won't touch no cards at all till I git back. Kind o' lost my knack at -the cards lately, anyhow,' as if he ever had any knack at 'em. 'And you -want to let the red-eye alone while I'm gone, too,' Cato finished, and -then set his little partner down. Then Cato went aboard the boat. As I -was going along down to St. Louis myself, Stillwater calls me aside and -says to me: - -"'Jest keep an eye on that big galoot on the way down, and if he gits -restless and shows an inclination to get tangled up with a poker deck, -jest bat him over the head with a capstan bar.' - -"But I wasn't making any rash promises like that. Well, Cato was all -right the first day out, and he followed his pardner's instructions and -sat around on deck smoking his corn-cob pipe and feeling his big wallet -occasionally. He kept as far away as possible from the little deck-house -where a game was started going before the boat pushed out into the -stream, but the rattle of the chips was bound to reach his ears -occasionally. On the second day some stockmen got aboard that Cato knew, -and Cato took a few drinks with 'em. Then they invited Cato into a -little game. Cato looked at me kind o' guilty like, and then shook -himself together like a man does that says to himself, 'It's nobody's -danged business but my own.' So he sits into the game with the stockmen. -They were only going down a few landings, and when they got off they had -$2000 of Cato's money. I never in my life before or since saw such -hoodoo luck as Cato had in that game with those stockmen. He didn't get -a pair more'n once in a hundred hands, and if he did get a pair and -happened to better it in the draw he'd give a hoot that 'ud wake up the -owls ashore and then bet like an Ogallala Sioux with four aces and a -dirk knife. It was just simply painful to watch Cato in that game, and -no mistake. When the stockmen got off some of them actually looked so -sorry for Cato that I kind o' thought they'd offer to give him his money -back. But they didn't. - -"'I'm kind o' out o' luck lately,' says Cato to me after the stockmen -had got off with his $2000, 'and I b'lieve I'll just draw in now and -wait for a hunch. No good buckin' agin' a streak o' bad luck, is there?' - -"Well, I told him that if my 10-year-old boy down in Sioux City wasn't -able to play poker any better than he, Cato, could before he put on long -trousers and suspenders I'd send him up to a lumber camp until he became -of age. But Cato didn't pay any attention to me, and when an awkward, -overworked-looking man, dressed like a farmer, got aboard a couple of -landings below he struck up an acquaintance with him. This farmer-like -looking man had a pretty keen pair of eyes in his head, as I noticed, -and he had besides that yokelly way of finding out about other people's -business. So it didn't take him long to dig it out of Cato that Cato was -going down to St. Louis to buy a stock of goods. The three of us were -sitting on the hind rail, whittling, when this farmer-like looking man -turns to Cato and asks him: - -"'Ever play key-ards?' - -"Cato looked at me again and hesitated. - -"'Oh, wunct in a while,' says he, finally, and in a pair of minutes they -were in the middle of a poker game. The stranger asked me to sit in, of -course, but I could see that he wasn't over-anxious to have me in the -game, and I never played poker on steamboats, stern-wheel or side-wheel, -anyhow. - -"Cato's hoodoo luck followed him right along in his game with the -overworked-looking man, who seemed to me to have considerable of a job -covering up a natural sort of deftness he had in handling a pack. The -two played for three or four hours, the stranger announcing occasionally -that he was going to get off at the next landing, so's to screen himself -from the inference that he was getting cold feet, probably. He was about -$1000 ahead of Cato's game when the boat was nearing his landing. - -"'Hev to make it a jackpot naow,' said he, when the old stern-wheeler -began to wheeze and snort a little preparatory to stopping at the -landing. - -"He dealt the jackpot hand himself and each man had $100 in the center -of the table. It was to be sweetened for $100 each time the deal passed. -But it didn't pass. Cato opened the pot for $100 and his Reuben-looking -opponent stayed. The betting swayed back and forth until each man had -$1000 up, and then the farmer-like looking man called Cato. Cato had -three eights. The other man had three tens. The other man stuffed the -bills from the center of the table into his overalls, shook Cato quite -effusively by the hand, and went ashore. - -"'Got enough?' says I to Cato when the old sandbar-bucker was once again -under way. - -"'Say,' says he to me, 'ye can't never jedge a man by his looks, can ye? -That man knows a hull heap more'n you'd think, don't he?' - -"'Got enough, Cato?' I repeats, for I wanted to pin him to the question -in hand. - -"'Well, I shorely am out o' luck, and no mistake,' was as far as he -would commit himself. - -"The next day a man who looked like members of Congress out my way used -to look got aboard. He was dress in a long black broadcloth coat and -wore a big black slouch hat, and he carried himself like a man that -amounted to a good deal. He was amiable in his manners, though, and he -hadn't been aboard more'n half an hour before he happened to fall into -talk with Cato. Cato was a little sore about the loss of his $4,000, but -this legislator-like looking man was so entertaining and sprung so a lot -of good stories over the jug of good stuff which Cato brought out of his -stateroom that Cato appeared to forget his troubles for the time. - -"'Monotonous work, this steamboat traveling, isn't it?' says the -statesmanlike-looking man to Cato after a while. 'I've only four hours -traveling to do, and yet I've been dreading it for a week. What do you -say to a little game of dime-ante. You play, of course?' - -"Cato scratched his chin. - -"'Durned if b'lieve I can any more," said he ruefully, and then, like -the innocent big dogan that he was, he tells his new friend how he has -already lost $4,000 on the trip down, and that he feels like hanging on -to his remaining $6,000. - -"'Oh, but only a little dime-ante game, you know,' says the man who -looked like a member of Congress, and his eyes opened up a bit, I -noticed, at the mention of the $6,000. - -"'O. K.,' says Cato. 'Jest to pass the time,' and down they sat. I was -asked in, but I told the statesmanlike-looking man that I had left my -specs up in Yankton and therefore couldn't see the hands well enough to -play. Well, the dime-ante and the dollar limit that they started in at -lasted just until Cato got a whopping big hand, which happened to be -given to him by the man that looked like an M. C. - -"'Say,' says Cato then, looking a heap excited, 's'posin' we jest take -the limit off'n this here game, anyhow, fur a little while?' - -"'Why, certainly,' says his opponent genially, and Cato walks right in -and wins $500 clean on that hand of his. He gives me a look out o' the -tail of his eye that says, 'Well, what do you think of me now,' and the -game goes on. - -"Well, the M. C.-looking man begins to win quite a good deal then, and -he, like the farmer-looking man, brought the game to a jackpot finish as -the boat approached his getting-off place. - -"'Fur how much?' inquired Cato, who was about $1,000 out already. - -"'Oh, about $50 and $50 sweeteners,' said the man across the table. - -"'No, we won't, either,' says Cato. 'We'll each put in $1,000, an' no -sweeteners. That's jest as good fur you as 'tis fur me.' - -"'Exactly,' says the distinguished looking man playing with him, and -Cato dealt the hands. Neither man had openers. Then the other man dealt -'em. Cato opened it on jacks up on treys, and caught another jack in the -draw. The boat snorted and wheezed preparatory to being made fast. Cato -bet a flat $1,000 on his jack full, and the M. C.-looking man, looking -kind o' impatient to get ashore, win or lose, calls him. Cato lays down -his jack full with a grin at me--and says his friends across the table: - -"'You do indeed, my friend, appear to labor under a blanket of -ill-fortune,' and he spreads out his four nines and gathers in the pot. -Then he hurries ashore, after shaking the crestfallen Cato warmly by the -hand. - -"'Got $3,000 left now, haven't you, Cato?' says I then, for it began to -look to me as if word had been passed down the whole length of the -Missouri River that Cato Bullman was traveling on one of its steamboats -with money. 'Better let me keep that $3,000 for you.' - -"'No, I'm durned if I do,' says Cato. 'Might as well lose it all now, -devil take it,' and he gnawed on his fingernails, thinking about what -kind of a story he'd put up to his partner, I guess, when he got back to -Yankton broke. - -"Well, Cato did lose it all, or close on to all of it. He foregathered -with a man that got aboard at Omaha, and said he was a civil engineer -for the Union Pacific Railroad. The civil engineer got $1,800 of Cato's -greenbacks, and then got off. Twenty miles below Omaha, at a little -handing, a gappy looking hog raiser that Cato had met before climbed -over the rail, and Cato thought he saw a chance to recoup his drooping -fortunes. The hog raiser relieved Cato of $1,000, and had an important -engagement to look at some fancy hogs at the next stop. This left Cato -with $200. - -"'Convinced that you're a damphool yet, Cato?' says I. - -"'Dang'd if I don't begin b'lieve I am,' he owns up. - -"'How about those goods you were going to buy in St. Louis?' I asked -him. - -"'I dunno,' he said, mournful like. - -"Well, when we got to Leavenworth, Kan., the wheezy old Sherman tied up -for twenty-four hours for repairs to the machinery. Cato was pretty -gloomy. We went ashore and put up at the old Planters' House. On the -night we struck Leavenworth I walked Cato around to sort o' relieve his -mind. We were strolling down Shawnee street when we both saw a pretty -much lighted up place into which a lot of well-gotten up men were going. -When we came up to the place we heard the rattle of the chips and click -of the marble and the choppy talk of the keno men, and then we saw that -it was Col. Jennison's famous Bon Ton gambling joint, running wide open -and full blast. Cato made for the door. I grabbed him by the sleeve. - -"'Come out o' that,' says I. 'You've only got $200, which won't more'n -get you back to Yankton. Haven't you been enough of an idiot already?' - -"'I got a hunch,' says Cato, releasing himself from me and starting -again for the door. - -"'Hunch!' says I, but he was already inside. - -"Well, Cato goes up to the faro table where the big men of the town seem -to be playing bank, and says I to myself, 'Joe, you'll have to dig up to -send this crazy man back to his pardner in Yankton.' - -"Cato bought $200 worth of chips, tapping himself, and began. Gentlemen, -he couldn't lose. He scattered his chips over every card on the table, -and he couldn't lose. He won eight bets out of ten. He let his money lie -on cards four times over, and won every time. He didn't use a copper, -but played every card wide open. There didn't seem to be a split in the -box for Cato. In less than twenty minutes he had won over $3,000. There -was a $500 limit on the game. Cato asked to have it removed. When the -limit was taken off, Cato made three $1,000 bets running, and won every -one of them. Then he came off his perch and got down to $200 bets again, -playing 'em like a veteran, and just simply unable to lose, gentlemen. -The rest of the men at the table quit playing just to watch Cato. Once -in a while Cato'd play the high card, just to see if his luck was -holding. The high card came out every time he did it. They switched the -dealer three times. They switched the lookout half a dozen times. They -tried different boxes. They changed tables. They did everything. But, -gentlemen, Cato Bullman was playing faro, and he couldn't lose. I was -proud of the big duffer. In an hour he was $18,000 ahead of Col. -Jennison's bank. They sent across the way to get Col. Jennison who was -playing a quiet little game of poker in the Star of the West saloon. -Col. Jennison came over to the Bon Ton and sat down to handle the box -for Cato himself. Cato soaked Col. Jennison every bit as hard as he had -soaked all of Col. Jennison's dealers. Col. Jennison was game, but, when -at the end of three hours, Cato was still going right ahead winning like -a cyclone, he turned the box over with this little remark: - -"'Gentlemen, the game is closed for the night.' - -"When Cato cashed in he had just $35,200. I took him by the arm and -walked him down to the hotel and got him into his room. Cato went to the -basin to wash his hands. When he turned around to me again he looked -into the barrels of both my guns. - -"'Cato,' says I, 'I'm sorry, but I'll just trouble you to hand over -every cent of that $35,200 you've got, right away now, darned quick, or -I'll blow the whole top of your head off.' - -"Cato didn't demur a little bit. He plunked the money down--most of it -was in $1,000 and $500 bills--on the table. - -"'I don't suppose I've got enough sense to pack it around, fur a fac',' -said he. - -"When we got to St. Louis I handed Cato $10,000 to buy his goods with, -and expressed the $23,200 to his address in Yankton. - -"'Well,' said his little pardner, Stillwater, when Cato got back to -Yankton, 's'long as you won, you big clod-hopper, I don't s'pose I need -to mangle you up none. But if you had lost!'" - - - - -FINISH OF AN EDUCATED RED MAN. - - -_He Was Too Handy with the Pasteboards, Wherefore He Arrived Prematurely - in the "Happy Hunting Grounds."_ - -"It happens more or less frequently," said a traveling Inspector of -Indian Agencies, "that an educated buck Indian degenerates in the long -run into a bad proposition. I'm thinking particularly of an educated -Oregon Indian, about a three-quarter blood, who got the big-head so bad -after he had been polished off mentally back this way that he never -mixed up with his people when he returned from the East. He was a -Umatilla. He was first sent to Carlisle, and when he had finished there -he was passed on to Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, to take the law course -there. It was in view that he was to become the attorney for his tribe -upon the conclusion of his Blackstone-thumbing. He squeezed through the -law at Johns Hopkins, and then he was told of the nice fat thing that -awaited him out among his own people. He turned the proposition down -cold. He said flatly that he had no intention whatever of mixing up with -his own bunch at all any more. He likewise remarked that he knew his -gait, and that he intended to follow it. - -"A couple of months after he quit Baltimore he turned up at The Dalles -in Western Oregon and settled down to the career of a short poker -player. Where he had picked up the game it would be hard to say; but he -certainly was a daisy at it. There wasn't a kink in the game that he -didn't have the hang of. Now, The Dalles isn't any bad man's camp; it is -a very beautiful health resort in the Cascade Mountains, on the south -bank of the Columbia River; there wasn't a hard character in the place -until this educated buck established his headquarters there; and it -suited his game to a T. He made it his business to nail young tourists -who didn't have any more sense than to sit into a poker game with a -stranger, much less an Indian, and an educated Indian at that; and he -just stripped them in sets of fours for several years. He was a -splendid-looking buck and he dressed as men dress who've got the money -to tog themselves out right back this way. When he was engaged in the -act of getting a new victim he knew how to throw much cordiality and -some grace into his manners; but ordinarily he was a sulky, morose, bad -Indian. 'Way down in the deeps of him he was a rank coward, for he never -tried to twist his tentacles about a man who he thought would make a -stand, much less a scrap, upon discovering that he was being done; he -always picked out palpable lily-livers who looked, to his shrewd eye, as -if they would stand for anything rather than mix it up with him. - -"It did not take the square people of The Dalles long to get next to the -fact that this educated Indian, who had coolly taken up his abode among -them, was a cheat and a swindler, and that his sole occupation consisted -in fleecing pulp-headed young tourists. They talked a great deal of -giving him the razzle-dazzle and chasing him out, but somehow or other -this suggestion never came to a head. The men at The Dalles who had the -interest of the place at heart would point the swellerino buck out to -young strangers who looked as if they might be likely victims of the -Indian short-card fleecer, and tell the young goslings just where and -how the buck stood. It may sound incredible, but even after being warned -in this fashion a whole lot of the young addlepates fell into the buck's -mesh and got themselves done to a proper turn by him. They were able to -take care of themselves, they would reply chestily to their warners, -and, just to prove it, they'd take a hack at the Indian's game. When -they got through they'd be smoking punk tobacco in pipes while the -Indian would be blowing the smoke of perfectos in their faces, and -they'd stand for their craggy end of it without a whistle. The buck was -6 feet 3 inches high and weighed 235 pounds, and he looked like a -macerator from the high ridges. So he was never called by any of his -Dalles victims, even when they knew the details of how they'd been -plucked. One poor little devil of a rich man's son from Omaha whimpered -one night when the Indian had removed about $800 from him by dealing -from both ends and the middle of the deck, and he said to the buck -piteously: - -"'I just hope you've played fair, that's all.' - -"The Indian reached over and struck the pollywog with all of his force -on both sides of the face with his two open palms, leaving the blood-red -welt marks of his fingers on the lamb's fair cheeks. The whining victim -drilled for his life up the hotel stairs to his room, and the Indian -looked after him sardonically. There wasn't a man about that didn't know -that the Indian had scandalously cheated the lad, but not a one of them -said a word. There was a keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired -man, a stranger, standing at the hotel desk reading a just-arrived -letter, when the thing happened. His face flushed angrily when he saw -the burly Indian slap the undersized fool of a boy, and he turned to the -hotel clerk and remarked: - -"'Is this the real thing here? Does the gang stand for that kind of work -on the part of a mud-hided raw-meater?' There was plenty of contempt in -the way the stranger spoke. - -"The clerk shrugged his shoulders. 'We can't undertake to cut in on any -of the plays of our guests,' he replied. 'We just board and lodge 'em, -that's all. If they're jays enough to mix up with grafters, it's their -game, and we're not asking for any rake-off, one way or the other.' - -"The stranger muttered something about a chicken-livered population, and -strolled out. He took his train an hour or so later. - -"At certain seasons of the year, when there wasn't must doing in his -line at The Dalles, owing to periodical scarcities of pluckable -tourists, the Indian would hit up Baker City, Pendleton, and other -Oregon towns in search of good things, and a couple of times a year he -included Olympia and Walla Walla in his itinerary. He sung somewhat -smaller in those places than he did at The Dalles, but by keeping his -eye skinned for men liable to call the turn on him and working quietly -he generally succeeded in pulling apart at least one jelly-fish in each -of the towns he took in on these off-season tours. - -"About three months after he had left the marks of his fingers on the -lamb's face at The Dalles--this was in the fall of '92--he turned up one -day at Walla Walla. He strolled around the hotel corridors with an eye -to business, and along toward night he met with a young fellow named -Hellen, whose father, a wealthy Chicago man, had recently foreclosed a -mortgage on a big ranch about sixty miles from Walla Walla. The son, a -rather raw young chap, had come out to look the ranch over, and the -Indian got next to him as soon as he struck the town. The buck was an -expert billiard player, and he suggested a game of pin billiards to the -young Hellen chap. He played off on the youth, and soon got him to -betting on shots. After losing about a dozen $5 bets on shots, the -Indian socked it to the young man from Chicago by betting $300 that he -could execute a certain difficult shot. It looked like board and lodging -to the young man that the Indian's $300 would spin into his clothes, so -he put up $300. The Indian made the shot with consummate ease and took -down the pot. - -"'Fluke!' said young Hellen. 'I'll go you another $300.' - -"The buck got this bunch, too, without half trying. It would naturally -be thought that the tenderfoot would have smelt a rat by this time. But -he didn't. He had plenty of money, and probably he considered it piquant -to lose his coin to a swagger-looking, educated Indian. Anyhow, the two -were playing poker in the card-room of Walla Walla's stag hotel half an -hour later. - -"There were plenty of men in that card-room who knew that the Indian was -a short-carder, but men out that way aren't garrulous, and they pay a -heap of attention to the job of minding their own business. The youth -from Chicago was the merest mutt in the hands of the Indian, and he lost -from the jump. He would stand pat on a full house, and the buck, drawing -three cards, would still beat him after sky-scraping betting. A number -of onlookers at the game may have seen the little side-plays of the -Indian, but they only grinned at each other over the hopeless imbecility -of the young man from Chicago. - -"Finally the Indian, perhaps losing some of his dexterity from the -drinks he was steadily absorbing, over-stepped himself. He filled two -pairs from the discard and he did it clumsily. The young man with whom -he was playing saw the move. - -"'I say, there,' said he, 'what are you doing there, you know?' pointing -to the discard. 'Didn't you--er--didn't you make a mistake and take a -card out of that pile?' - -"The Indian, who was about $1,600 to the good, had cold feet, anyhow, -and so he threw his hand face downward on the table and glared at the -Chicago boy. The Chicago boy quailed. - -"'Er--well, maybe I made the mistake myself'--he started to say, when a -big voice cut in with: - -"'No, you didn't son. You didn't make any mistake at all. You're up -against the real thing in the way of a mud-skinned short-riffler, that's -all.' - -"A keen-eyed, big-framed, prematurely gray-haired man was the speaker. -As he spoke he reached down from behind the Indian's chair and got two -huge hands around the buck's neck. The onlookers formed a clearing. The -Chicago youth got himself on the outskirts of the bunch. - -"'About three months ago,' said the keen-eyed man, dragging the huge, -half-choked Indian to his feet, 'I saw you at The Dalles leave the -prints of your dirty fingers on the face of a little whiffet you had -just fleeced. I hankered then to confer a few personally conducted slaps -of my own make and manufacture on your coppery jowls, but for some -reason or other I passed the hanker up on that occasion. Well, the slaps -are coming to you now. It's better late than never, and I'm going to -slap you into jerked beef just for luck.' - -"The buck was finally up against the real thing, and he knew it. I'll -bet that his face was whiter than mine is now when the big-framed man, -who had the devil of anger lurking in his eyes, suddenly loosed his -right hand from around the Indian's neck, and, still clutching him by -the left, swept the loose arm back for the momentum and brought his -heavy palm smack against the buck's left cheek with a noise that sounded -like the explosion of a charge of blasting powder. The slap rattled the -Indian's teeth and made his big head joggle from side to side like the -head of an automaton. Clutching the Indian's throat again then with his -right hand, the big-framed man repeated the slapping performance on the -Indian's right cheek with his left hand, and left a welt there that -might have been made by a cat-o'-nine tails. The buck was too dazed, in -the first place, by the suddenness of it all, to make a move: in the -second place, he was too cowardly. The big-framed man--he was an expert -mining engineer from Nevada, and his name was Varus Pryor--slapped the -Indian's face, first with his right and then with his left, for three -minutes, with all his might, and then, getting behind the buck, -proceeded to slap him into the street. With first one hand and then the -other clutching the collar of the Indian's coat, he slapped him out to -the front door of the hotel. Then he gave the buck the knee in the small -of the back, and hoisted him across the pavement to the middle of the -street, where the Indian spun around and fell for a moment. - -"'I don't care what the Indian Bureau says about it,' said the keen-eyed -man, standing in the doorway of the hotel. 'God Almighty never intended -that white men should stand for such alligators as that copper-mugged -swindler, and'---- - -"'Stand clear, pard, he's going to plug you!' shouted a man from a -second-story window of the hotel. - -"The Indian, pretending to be hurt, and only half risen to his feet in -the obscurity of the middle of the street, had got his gun out, and the -yell from the second story reached Pryor just in time. As it was, the -buck planted a ball in the front door of the hotel, only two inches -above the big-framed man's head. By that time Pryor's gun was working, -and he drilled six holes forty-eight hundredths of an inch in diameter -plumb through the swindling Umatilla's chest. Forty-five minutes later -he was acquitted by a coroner's jury on the grounds of self-defense and -justifiable homicide--a two-in-one verdict. - -"This," concluded the traveling Inspector of Indian Agencies, "was the -finish of just one mentally-burnished buck Indian, and I know of several -others." - - - - -THE UNCERTAIN GAME OF STUD POKER. - - -_Story of a Seance at Stud Between Two Oregon Contractors and the Close - Finish Thereof._ - -"Somehow or another, I don't like the game of stud," said a Government -contractor from Portland, Ore. "It's too much of a strain to play stud. -There are too many heart-breaking and headache-producing possibilities -attached to the mysterious card the other fellow has got in the hole. -I'd rather take the chance of guessing what all of his five cards are -than to engage in the perspiring business of trying to figure out the -horrible possible value of the one blind card, especially if the four -cards he has exposed are capable of being amplified into a hand of the -topper kind by the addition of that bit of pasteboard in the pit. I -can't get away from the impression that it's like putting all of your -money in one bet to play stud. Now, there's a good deal to the game of -draw besides mere bluffing. In fact, bluffing is almost an obsolete -feature of the game among the experts at draw poker. The man that plays -his hand in draw will beat the bluffer every time in -year-in-and-year-out play. - -"The folks out my way had the stud-poker fad pretty badly about eight or -ten years ago, but now they've got back to their first love and stick -pretty generally to the game of California draw--which, by the way, is a -whole lot different game from the draw you people back here play. For -example, a man sprung a thing on me last night that he called a pat -straight. I had three aces, but he said his pat straight topped me, and -as he had his gang with him, I had to look pleasant and let him rake in -the money. If a man out on the Slope were to talk pat straight to a -party of aborigines, they'd conduct him to the Alcalde's calaboose and -have him locked up to await a commission's decision as to his -responsibility. - -"But to get back to the period when the stud-poker fad got hold of us -out in Oregon. I was a witness of a heart-disease finish of a game of -that kind a few years back that caused me to decide that ordinary draw -was good enough for my money right along. It was right after the big -fire that ate up the best part of The Dalles eight years ago. As soon as -the building contractors of Portland got word to the effect that The -Dalles was being licked up by the flames, they hopped aboard trains and -made for The Dalles with an eye to business. They knew that The Dalles, -which was chiefly a wooden layout before the fire, would be immediately -rebuilt in brick and stone, and that the contractors who got on the -scene of ruin first would scoop in the bulk of the business. Two of -these contractors were--well, I'll have to side-step on their names, for -they're two of the most prominent citizens out on the banks of the -Willamette, and both of 'em walk up the middle aisle on Sunday as if -they never heard of such a thing as stud poker. Both of them are -Irishmen, which is why neither of 'em could see that he was licked on -this occasion. - -"One of them, we'll say, was Dan Carmody, and the other was Tim Feeney. -Carmody got into The Dalles a few hours ahead of Feeney, and he made -those few hours count. He went around to the business men of The Dalles -who had been wiped out by the fire and asked them what they wanted with -him. They hadn't burned the wires up telegraphing for Carmody to come to -them, but Carmody about convinced them that they had done just this -thing, and he began making estimates for 'em with pencil and pad. He -corralled them in the one remaining hall of the town and told them to go -ahead and just let him know what they wanted of him. Carmody's cyclonic -nerve appealed to their fancy, and they found themselves juggling with -the figures Carmody was putting down on his pad. Three hours after -Carmody struck The Dalles from Portland he had in his inside coat pocket -rough drafts of contracts to build a new stone business block, including -a theater, and also to erect a large, ornate hotel, the cost of both -buildings to be not more than $350,000. Oh, Carmody was a hustler all -right. - -"He had an idea that his friend and business rival, Tom Feeney, would be -down on the next train from Portland, and he went to the station to -receive him. Sure enough, Feeney stepped off the next incoming train. -Carmody had his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat and a big cigar -stuck aggravatingly in his teeth when Feeney ran into him. Feeney's jaw -fell. - -"'When did you get in, Dan?' he asked Carmody. - -"'Three hours ago,' replied Dan, with a grin. - -"Feeney made a funny motion, as if to jump aboard a train that was just -pulling out for Portland, but he came back to his cheerful rival and -asked him: - -"'Anything doing, Dan?' - -"Carmody executed two very shifty jig steps in token of his happiness, -and then reassumed his dignity. - -"'Well, I'll tell you how it is, Tim,' he said. 'These people here are -pretty badly chewed up, y' see. Now, maybe they'll be wanting to rebuild -a few chicken coops and outhouses--I don't know but what they will. Now, -there's a chance for you, Tim.' - -"Feeney didn't look very merry over this. Says he: 'Chicken coops, is -it? And who's going to throw up the new business building and the opera -house, and the hotel, and the like?' - -"Carmody was laying for that question. He drew the two rough contracts -out of his pocket. - -"' Looks as if I'm It over here, don't it, Tim?' he asked Feeney, as the -latter read over the two contracts with a gloomy countenance. 'Nice -work, hey? That's what you get for monkeying around in bed all the -morning, Tim. Why don't you be like me, now? I never go to bed,' etc. -Carmody couldn't refrain from working that nice edge of his, and strung -the dismal-faced Feeney for keeps. Feeney finally walked away, the -picture of dejection, to see if there were any crumbs to be picked up in -the way of rebuilding. He found, however, that all of the business men -that had not already been got by Carmody were disposed to wait awhile -for the disposition of insurance, and he didn't get a smell of the -rebuilding. He walked around the still-smoking Dalles for the remainder -of the day, figuring on how much Carmody was going to make out of his -two big contracts. Carmody himself started in to open wine by way of -celebration, so that by the time the night boat for Portland was ready -to leave her slip he was pretty comfortable. Both he and Feeney took the -night boat and I happened to be going down to Portland on the boat -myself that night. Feeney had taken the bowl himself a bit during the -day to assuage his depression over his lack of success, and he was -pretty mellow when the boat pulled out. Carmody, with about a dozen -quarts under his belt, dug Feeney up as soon as he got aboard, and the -two walked up and down the main deck, arm in arm, Carmody keeping up his -merciless stringing of his friend. Then Carmody heard the clatter of the -chips in a $10 limit game of stud that had already started in the -card-room, and suggested a two-handed game of stud to Feeney, with some -accommodating non-player to deal the cards. Feeney was agreeable, and -Carmody, seeing that I wasn't mixing up with the game in the card-room, -asked me if I wouldn't dish 'em out for an hour or so of stud between -himself and Feeney. It was to be $100 limit and $10 ante. The two men -didn't get up to the $100 limit at all until after they had played for -half an hour, and Carmody was $600 or $700 winner. Then Feeney found -himself with kings up on tens in front of him and a card that he either -liked or elected to bluff on in the hole, while Carmody had three aces -face up and a card in the hole that he appeared to think a heap of, -judging from the way he bet. - -"'These kings of mine,' said Feeney, with the transparent air of a man -making a win-out bluff, 'may not look very pretty alongside those three -bullets of yours, Carmody, but they suit me, at that. You can have a -peep at the blind for $100.' - -"'I wouldn't think of paying so little money for the privilege of gazing -at such a good card as you think you've got, Tim,' said Carmody. 'Now, -having already got you beat on the show-up, I guess I can afford to -charge you another $100 for a glimpse of the other one-spot that I've -got in the pit.' - -"This kind of talk went on for ten minutes, the two men raising each -other back at $100 a clip until there was $3800 in the pot. Feeney -talked and acted like a bluffer all the time, but nevertheless Carmody -began to suspect that, after all, Tim might have something in the hole -to beat him. So when Carmody called Feeney's last $100 raise the latter -knew that his friend with the contracts in his pocket didn't have any -four aces, and he just scooped in the pot before he showed up what he -had in the hole. It was the third king, completing a nice full hand, -that Feeney had in the hole, and the money was his. Carmody turned up a -deuce, that he had tried to make the bluff was another ace, and looked -properly crestfallen. - -"'For a Mulligan that knows so little about business as you, Tim,' said -Carmody, 'you've got a mighty crafty way about you of making it appear -that you're bluffing. We'll try it again, and from now on I'll know that -when you look and talk like you're bluffing you've got the hand.' - -"Both men had been ringing up the steward's boy a good deal, during the -progress of the game, and they were not, therefore, any more sober than -was necessary. On the very next hand Feeney took a big hunk out of his -rival. He had three deuces face up and Carmody had three jacks on top. -Feeney began to bet $100 with so much natty confidence that Carmody -decided that his compatriot was adopting new tactics in bluffing, and, -quite naturally, with his three nice-looking jacks plainly in sight, he -not only stood every raise but raised back the limit every time. - -"'I figure it this way,' said Carmody, abstractedly to himself, when -there was nigh onto $4000 in chips in the center of the baize. 'This -Harp from Connemara across the table can't turn two of these tricks one -right after the other. The percentage of the game is against such a -thing as that. And he's just perky and sassy because he thinks I'm on to -his first exhibited system of bluffing. Tim, another $100, if you want -to feast your Mulligan blue eyes on this other knave of mine in the -hole.' - -"'And $100,' said Feeney, with all the confidence in life. - -"Thus they went on for fully fifteen minutes, until the proportions of -the pot were really alarming, considering that neither of the men was a -millionaire or anything like it. There was $7200 in the middle of the -table when Carmody wilted. He attempted to put his wilt on philanthropic -grounds. - -"'With a drink or two in you, Tim,' he said, 'you're an incautious and -unwise citizen for a man humping along toward 60 years of age'--Feeney -wasn't more than 48, and didn't look that. 'And Mrs. Feeney's been -telling my wife for the past twelve years that she's aching to have a -look at the old sod, but that her man Tim considers himself too poor for -the journey. So I won't be the means of casting gloom around your -household, Tim. I see your $100, and what's the color of that cheap ten -or eight spot you've got in the hole?' - -"Feeney turned over his fourth deuce and hauled down the money. That -sort o' took Carmody's nerve and he had to have several big drinks of -the hard stuff to set him right again. While he was drinking Feeney took -up the end of the stringing that Carmody had abandoned. - -"'How much do you figure you'll pull down from those two contracts, -Dan?' he asked his rival in business. - -"'About $75,000,' answered Carmody quickly, 'which is just about $75,000 -more than The Dalles fire has been worth to you, eh, Tim?' - -"'What's the use of depleting the capital that you've already got in -bank?' asked Feeney, with a twinkle in his eye. 'Just play me stud for -those contracts. I'll say they're worth $60,000, and I'm good for that -if I'm good for a cent.' - -"Carmody studied for a moment. He was already out $11,000 in this poker -game, and he wanted that money back. The idea of playing his contracts -against Feeney's hard cash rather appealed to his imagination, which was -not less active on account of the huge quantity of stuff he had been -drinking. - -"'Well, I'll tell you what I'll do to give you a start in life, Tim,' -said Carmody finally. 'You've got my checks for $11,000. Supposing you -call those two contracts worth $70,000, return me those checks for -$11,000, and say that the two contracts I've got in my pocket are worth -$59,000 as they stand. Then I'll give you a chance to take as big a fall -out of the contracts as you think you can.' - -"That idea suited Feeney to a T, and I stood by to begin dealing again. -The two contracts were pushed into the center of the table by Carmody, -and it was an additional part of my business, besides dealing, to make -note of the changing value of the contracts as the game progressed. - -"Well, the game continued to go Feeney's way, and Carmody just looked at -his contracts as Feeney began to edge them nearer and nearer to his end -of the table. Carmody, while he figured that the contracts were so much -velvet, didn't look happy when Feeney picked $12,000 more out of them, -leaving their value to Dan only an approximate $47,000, but he played on -in the hope of better luck. Finally a queer hand came around. Carmody -caught two queens, an eight and a seven. So did Feeney. This thing made -Carmody mad. - -"'Of all the niggering out I ever saw,' he exclaimed, 'this is the -worst. But it's about time I had the best of it when it comes to pure -bull-head luck.' - -"So he bet the limit that he had a better card in the hole than Feeney. -Feeney came back at him every clip, and when I interposed a remonstrance -over the heftiness of the game, expressing the opinion that both of them -would probably be sorry they had gone into the thing so heavily when the -gray dawn came around, they said they knew they'd be sorry, and went -right ahead. - -"'This is surely the hottest case of a stand-off in a deal in stud that -I've seen yet,' said Feeney, 'and I shouldn't be surprised if we had to -split the pot when the show-down comes. But I'm as good as you, Carmody, -on the four that show, and I'm with you all night if you're going to -keep it up that long.' - -"When my tab of the shifting value of the contracts showed that -Carmody's interest therein was only an even $30,000, Carmody looked up -at the ceiling of the card-room and reflected. - -"'Here,' he said, 'is where I get my contracts back and break even, or -where I have to go into partnership with a slow-witted Irishman on those -buildings at The Dalles. Feeney, I call you.' - -"Feeney turned over a six spot. Carmody's card in the hole was a five. -Feeney was the possessor of a half interest in Carmody's fine contracts -at The Dalles, and that's how it happened that these two builders, who -had always gone it singly and alone, built up The Dalles in partnership. -They got along so well together at The Dalles work that three years -later they went into a general contracting partnership and they've been -getting rich ever since. But it was their stud game on The Dalles boat -that induced me to conclude that old-fashioned draw was good enough for -me." - - - - -THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN. - - - _With the Result That His Clothes Finally Went into a Pot, and Fortune - Scowled upon Him._ - -"When a man arrives at that pitch where he'll bet the clothes off his -back over a jackpot, it's about up to him to let the game of draw alone, -in my opinion," said a traveling special agent of the Treasury -Department. "I'm talking about a game of draw that happened last fall -down in the Territory, on the south bank of the Canadian River, in the -Chickasaw country, between four St. Louis men. They were on their annual -hunting trip down there. They were well-known business men of old St. -Loo, pals of a half a lifetime, and they had been after bear, deer, -feathered game, or any old thing shootable down in the Territory every -year together for more than a decade. They always played poker on these -outings, too, and the bank president always got all the money. The other -three couldn't do anything whatever with the bank president's brand of -poker. They'd been digging at him on these excursions for ten years, -trying every conceivable scheme to get his money, and even playing in -combination against him, but when it came time to strike camp he always -had all the money in the crowd, owned all the camp fixtures, and served -out smoking tobacco to his three chums in a lordly way only when he felt -generous. It made 'em hot, but they had to accept his alms if they -wanted to smoke. - -"The three of 'em determined when the party set out from St. Louis in -their special car last autumn that the bank president wasn't going to -come back from the hunting trip with all the money, even if they had to -leave his bones to bleach on the banks of the Canadian. They declared -together that the bank president's sassiness for the remainder of the -year after eating them up at poker down in the Territory was something -unbearable, and they didn't intend to stand for it any more. - -"They played a little poker in their car on the trip down from St. -Louis, and this gave one of the three conspirators a chance to get hold -of the bank president's two decks of cards. The conspirators carefully -marked these two decks of cards--marked 'em both just the same way--and -then, during the temporary absence of the bank president in another part -of the car, he elaborately explained to his two companions in infamy how -he had done it, the three going over the bank president's two decks in -detail, so as to master the markings. Then the two decks were returned -furtively to the bank president's grip, and the rest of the playing on -the trip down was done with ordinary packs. They never played big on -these journeys, anyhow, but reserved their stiff games for the -bad-weather days in camp. - -"When they got to their point of debarkation on the line, they left -their car on a siding and struck out for their regular camp, about -seventy-five miles from the railroad. They stuck to the bagging of pelts -and antlers for a week or so; then a threatening morning came along and -the bank president suggested poker. - -"'What's the use?' they all demurred, eying the bank president gloomily. -'You always get the whole works, and then you're insufferable for the -rest of the year. We don't think you're on the level, anyhow.' - -"'Oh, I'll give you all a chance this time,' said the bank president, -grinning. 'I won't be hard upon you. Then, you see, the more you fellows -play with me in the game, why, the more you learn about poker, and I'm -sure the instruction you get helps you a lot in your games with the dubs -up in St. Loo. I'm noted, anyhow, for my generosity in giving others the -benefit of my wisdom.' - -"'Well,' said the spokesman and arch-conspirator of the three, 'we'll -play a little game of table-stakes, but checks don't go; this thing of -the three of us writing you checks that keep your large family in -opulence for a year is'---- - -"'All right, let it be table stakes,' replied the bank president -amiably. 'I'm not a man to take bread out of the mouths of the -impoverished,' and with more of such badinage the game started. - -"An ordinary deck was used at first--a deck out of the satchel of the -real estate man, the infamous member of the conspiring trio who had -marked the bank president's cards. The bank president, as usual, had all -of the luck from the jump. He seemed to rake down every pot. The three -glared at him and made all sorts of insinuating remarks about the -phenomenal luck of the bank president that had continued for a dozen -years. The bank president regarded them indulgently, and told them -they'd learn the elementary principles of the game after they'd camped -with him for another ten years or so. - -"After an hour's play the bank president beat the real estate man--the -other two had dropped out--out of a stiff jackpot with a pair of better -threes, and the real estate man simulated great rage and tore the deck -of cards into many pieces. - -"'For heaven's sake, give us another deck!' he exclaimed, passionately, -with a furtive wink at his two companions in crime. - -"The bank president reached back of him, collared his grip, and produced -one of his decks with a bland smile. They surely were scientifically -marked, for this bank president had an eye in his head, and he didn't -get next. - -"'Well, we'll try one of my decks,' said the bank president. 'Of course, -it'll be a shame to plug you with a new musket--none of my decks has -been riffled yet--but maybe my unfamiliarity with the range of the fresh -gun'll give you all a show at me.' Oh, this bank president was arrogant -in victory, all right. - -"Well, he wasn't one, two, three, from then on, of course. It was done -mighty well, and not so as to excite the bank president's suspicions in -the least, but he found himself topped practically every time, and his -face grew long. He was quite heavily in the hole at the end of an hour's -play with his own deck. - -"'Oh, we've got on to your bluffing style of play, that's all,' said the -real estate man complaisantly. 'You just had us scared together for the -past ten years, but you're as clear a proposition now as a mountain -creek. I always thought you were more or less of a counterfeit and a -four-flusher, anyhow, didn't you, fellows?' - -"Of course the other two thought so, too, and the bank president's brow -clouded as, time after time, after he had bet hard on hands that looked -to him to be worth every dollar he ventured on them, he found himself -topped, niggered out. The real estate man increased the bank president's -worry by flashing a nine-high straight against the financier's -eight-high straight, and then the latter did a card-tearing stunt -himself. He ripped his deck into ribbons with a running commentary of -strong talk. - -"'It must be a rank deck that'll permit of a set of amateur skates like -you fellows putting it on me,' he said. Then he dug into his grip again -and produced the other 'phony deck, his three companions warning him -against letting his angry passions rise, and so on. - -"The three conspirators let the bank president pull down a couple of -sizable pots with this deck just for the sake of enjoying his renewed -impertinence, and then they went at him good and hard. At the end of an -hour they had the bank president's supply of ready cash--about -$500--badly wilted. He had only $100 left when it came around the real -estate man's turn to dish out a jackpot round. The bank president was -under the gun, as they say out there of the man who's to the left of the -dealer of a jackpot, and he cracked the pot open for the limit. The -other two stayed, and when it got up to the real estate man he raised it -the limit. This knocked his two confederates out of it--as a matter of -fact the arch-conspirator winked them out of it--but the limit was just -what the bank president wanted with his four bullets. - -"The bank president took one card with a crafty, -I'll-make-him-think-I'm-four-flushing expression of countenance. The -real estate man, with a queen-high sequence flush of hearts remarked -that the bunch he had was good enough for him. Then they got to betting, -and it was no time at all before the bank president had done the apology -act with the remains of his $500. He pulled out a check-book then and -was fumbling around for a fountain pen when the real estate man called -him down. - -"'Not on your life,' he said. 'Agreement was that checks don't go, -you'll remember.' - -"'But this hand'----the bank president started to say. - -"'Makes no difference about that hand,' interrupted the real estate man. -'Agreement was for table stakes.' - -"'But, great Caesar, man,' pleaded the bank president. 'I want to get -some kind of a decent run for this hand. Why, I'd bet the clothes right -off my back on it.' - -"'Well,' said the real estate man calmly, 'we didn't make any -stipulation about clothes and personal possessions, and you can get the -clothes off your back if you want to. But no checks.' - -"'Well,' said the bank president, peeling off a big solitaire ring, -'this stone's worth $400, and I'll raise you that much.' - -"'I see you,' said the real estate man. 'What else have you got that I -can raise against?' - -"'Well,' replied the bank president, 'this watch is worth $300 and'---- - -"'Skate it in,' interrupted the real estate man. 'Raise you $300 then, -your valuation of the ticker.' - -"'Dog-gone the luck,' said the bank president, 'I don't want to call -you. I know I've got you beat. I'd be willing to bet my corduroys, shoes -and hat that I've got you soaked, for'---- - -"'Rush 'em to the center, then,' calmly replied the real estate man. -'Supposing I appraise the corduroys, shoes and hat at $50 for the -bundle. That satisfactory?' - -"'It's got to be,' replied the bank president mournfully. - -"'All right, then, put 'em in the pot and I'll consider that you've -called me,' said the real estate man. - -"The bank president stood up, peeled off his coat and waistcoat and -hunting breeches and dropped them on the blanket that served for a -table. Then he removed his pair of high hunting shoes and placed them on -top of the clothes, and tossed his fore-and-aft cap on the heap. Then he -sat down in his underclothes, picked up his four aces, and said: - -"'Now, dern you, put down your little straight or full and I'll show you -what you're up against.' - -"The wealthy depositors of the St. Louis bank of which he was the head -would have enjoyed seeing his face when the real estate man calmly laid -down his sequence flush and hauled down the pot, togs and all, without a -word. - -"'You're a good thing, ain't you?' said the other two, who had been -taking the play in with a positive knowledge of how it was going to come -out. - -"The bank president looked pretty forlorn as the three sat there and -guyed him. Finally he stood up. - -"'Well,' said he to the real estate man. 'I'll just write you a check -for the fifty you allowed on those togs of mine,' and he started to -reach for the clothes in order to dress himself. The real estate man -held the suit, shoes and hat out of the bank president's reach. - -"'These things ain't for sale,' he said. 'They'll all just about fit -me,' trying on the hat, 'and I guess I'll just hang on to them as a sort -of No. 2 outfit.' - -"'But, great Scott, man!' exclaimed the bank president, 'don't you know -that I haven't got another stitch in camp--that that rig-out's the only -one I brought from the car?' - -"'Too bad,' said the real estate man. 'You hadn't ought to've skated the -togs into the pot, then. Sorry, old man, but honest, I really couldn't -think of parting with these things for any amount of money. I've only -got one suit along with me, too, and only one hat and pair of shoes, and -if they get wet what am I going to do? Got to have a change, you know. I -really feel very deeply for you in your predicament, and so do the other -boys--don't you fellows?--but I need this outfit in my business.' - -"The other two men nodded their heads in grave endorsement of this stand -and the bank president frothed at the mouth. - -"'What the devil do you expect me to do, you blamed idiot?' he shouted -at the real estate man. 'Stand around the tent and shiver, or cut across -the trail in my underclothes for the car to get another set of togs?' - -"'I wish I could think of some plan to help you out, old man,' answered -the real estate man with commiseration in his countenance, 'but I really -couldn't think, under any consideration, of giving up these things,' and -he made the suit, the shoes and the hat up into a neat bundle as he -spoke. Just then one of the other men, who had been prowling outside, -came running into the tent breathless. - -"'Say, fellows,' he exclaimed, 'there's some fresh bear tracks right -over there in the clearing,' and he grabbed his gun. So did the other -two. The bank president made as if to pick up his rifle, too, when his -eye fell on his lack of raiment. By that time the real estate man was -fifty yards from the tent, at a lope with the other two. - -"'Hey, come back here, you confounded cut-throat!' the financier yelled -after the real estate man, who had the bank president's clothes, shoes -and hat slung in a neat bundle over his shoulder. But the three men were -out of voice range in a jiffy. - -"They came back, beaming, along toward nightfall, with the pelts of two -nice young black bears. They found the bank president moping around, -wrapped up in a blanket and sulphurizing the air when they reached the -tent. Then they sat around him in a circle and expressed their sincere -sympathy with him and told him his case was only one more instance of -the awful evil of gambling. After supper and a pipe they all turned in, -leaving the bank president still sulking and uttering terrible -maledictions under his breath. - -"The real estate man and the other two went out early the next -morning--the bank president's clothes along with them--and when they got -back they found the blanketed financier on the verge of apoplexy from -sheer wrath. The real estate man then made a great show of charity by -giving up the togs, and the bank president was in a state of good-nature -by the time camp was struck. The three conspirators united in a letter -of explanation, inclosing all of their winnings, to the bank president -when they got back to St. Louis, and when the bank president got the -letter and his disgorged losings he was most tickled to death and -instantly became as perky and impudent as ever. - -"'I knew you couldn't have done it if you'd played on the square,' said -he, the first time he met them. 'Wait till next year, that's all.'" - - - - -THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS. - - -_Wherein It Is Shown That It Is Easy Enough to Be Cool When Playing with - Another Man's Money._ - -"I happen to know that a considerable number of the most famous -professional gamblers in this country made their reputation with other -men's money," said a Rocky Mountain man of large experience. "These men -have had their names heralded far and wide as the stakers of thousands, -and even hundreds of thousands, upon the turn of a card, and innumerable -yarns have been spun as to their cool, John Oakhurst-like manner of -scooping in a table full of money upon the smashing of a bank, or of -calmly lighting their cigars and strolling out when fortune went against -them. So far as the stories themselves are concerned, some of them are -undoubtedly right; but all of them leave out the very essential fact -that the men were simply players of other men's money--'table touts,' we -call 'em out West. I suppose it is a reasonable proposition that it is a -whole lot easier to risk another man's money at the table than it is to -endanger your own. Of all the men I am telling you about hardly a one -had enough luck at the tables to keep himself warm when putting up his -own coin; perhaps it was owing to the extreme caution of their play -under these conditions and the far greater strain involved in the -hazarding of their own money. They could take another man's money--the -money of a man who probably did not know the difference between 00 and -33 in a wheel layout, but who could afford to venture almost an -unlimited amount of money on a game--and in at least eight cases out of -ten they could run the initial stake into a pile that would mean for -themselves a rake-off or percentage of thousands or tens of thousands; -but in venturing their own money I have seen few of them who were any -good in the matter of keeping their nerve under rein. - -"Back in the sixties Tom Naseby was generally considered the most -dangerous man at a faro table on the Pacific Slope. Bank after bank, -from Portland to San Diego, went to the wall under his system of -play--or lack of system, I ought to say--and at the end the San -Francisco banks shut him out altogether, so that he was compelled to -start a layout of his own. Among Naseby's smashes that were famous on -the coast was that of breaking Byron McGregor's Kearny street -institution to the tune of $150,000; of hitting up Tillottson's $10,000 -limit game in San Francisco for $100,000 and closing the doors, and of -banging Ned Jordan's bank in Portland for $125,000, all within the space -of three months. Yet Naseby told me himself that on none of these plays -was he venturing a _sou marque_ of his own money--that it had all been -handed over to him, the initial stakes for each big play, that is, by -Ralston, the millionaire San Francisco banker, who committed suicide. -Out of each winning Naseby of course got a big cut of the money, for -Ralston went into the thing for the sport of it and was a very generous -man. Naseby, who belonged to the tribe of savers for a rainy day, hung -onto these rolls. Naseby played faro with just about as much skill as a -Zulu wields a war club, and he frankly confessed that his coups were -simply the result of unlimited confidence and unlimited backing allied -to bull-head luck. - -"Frank Burbridge, the most famous poker player that Portland has ever -brought out, was another man who made his reputation as a gambler upon -the strength of the vast winnings he hauled out upon stakes furnished by -wealthy men. Some of these rich backers of Burbridge remained behind the -screen and only received Frank's reports as to how he made out in the -games for which they staked him, but others came out into the open and -sat alongside Burbridge when he was playing with their money--not for -the purpose of watching him, for he was strictly on the level, but just -for the fun of watching the game. One of the big contractors for the -building of the Oregon Short Line, a man worth many millions of dollars, -was one of Burbridge's clients who liked to watch the expert poker -player play the hands. He was constantly staking Burbridge for big games -with dangerous opponents. If Frank won, all right; he got most of the -money himself. If he lost, all right, too; the contractor simply went -into the thing for the mental distraction it afforded him. - -"I was a witness of one of those big games in which Burbridge engaged -with a stake furnished by the contractor. It was played at the old -Willamette House in Portland, and it was a two-handed game. The other -player was a very wealthy Portland man who was said to have made a big -pot of money by simply making the suggestion that he intended to -parallel the Oregon Short Line. This rich man thought he knew how to -play poker until his friend, the contractor of the Short Line who was -Burbridge's staker, put him up against the latter--partly for the -interest of watching the game, and partly, perhaps, for other reasons. -Anyhow, the Portland man had a whole heap of an opinion of what he knew -about poker, and played the game incessantly for pastime. He had never -happened to sit in a game with Burbridge, and Burbridge's backer finally -suggested to the Portland man that he have a try at what he could do -with the man who was known to be the most expert player of poker in the -Northwest. - -"'Oh, he's a professional,' said the Portland man, 'and I don't play -cards with professionals in a contest of skill such as I see you want to -make this. I play with 'em once in a while just to study their games, -but not for big money. I wouldn't trust them under such circumstances.' - -"'Well, you trust me, I suppose, don't you?' said the contractor. - -"'Certainly,' was the reply. - -"'All right, my friend,' said the contractor, 'I'd just like to find out -to satisfy my own curiosity how good you can play poker. I don't amount -to much at it myself, and I don't think you're any better than I am. -Very well. You sit into a game with Burbridge, and I'll deal all the -hands myself, and sit by to see fair play--though Burbridge plays just -as fairly as I would myself under the same circumstances. Does that -proposition suit you?' - -"'Yes,' said the Portland man, 'I'd just like to give Burbridge a whirl -under those circumstances.' - -"So the game was arranged. Four or five of us were invited around to the -old Willamette House to look on while the game progressed. The two men -sat down to the game about 8 o'clock at night. The Portland man--I will -call him Tunwell, which is pretty close to his right name--had -occasionally met Burbridge, who was a very smooth, urbane sort of chap -of thirty, and so they nodded good-naturedly to each other when Tunwell -came into the room. The contractor was on hand with his check-book. The -conditions were simply that the contractor was to deal each of the -hands, and then retire from the table with the remainder of the deck -until the call for cards. Then he was to dish out what cards were called -for, and get away from the table again until the hand was played. The -rest of us were to sit around, with the privilege of having peeps at the -hands. Tunwell was to have the privilege of asking the advice of any of -us as to proper plays, as Burbridge was to be permitted to refer hands -that heavily involved the contractor's purse to the latter--not to seek -advice, but simply to inform him what he intended to do in the play. The -game was to be without limit, and the chips were worth $5, $25, and $50. - -"So the game began. Tunwell soon proved himself a pretty cool man. He -didn't put up a stingy game, but he simply had the proper sort of regard -for the worth of the cards the contractor dished out to him, and he -played them right, as we who were watching the game and had a chance of -seeing both hands soon discovered. Two or three times in the early part -of the game I, for one, thought he was a bit overcautious, but in -general his line of play was away above the average. Tunwell was a big, -gray-eyed man of the type that is jammed full of well-controlled nerve, -and he held himself on this night in additional check because he knew -that he was up against a hard proposition. The play at first didn't -amount to much--fifty or hundred-dollar bets occasionally--and both men -seemed to be sparring for information on the style of each other's play. -Tunwell finally decided upon a bluff. He had a nine high, and he went up -to $500 on it. Burbridge laid down. This was pretty good for Tunwell, -but he had the sense to show no exultation. Now, after making a thing -like that go through, most men would keep on bluffing until called when -on steep and craggy ground, but Tunwell didn't. He resumed the system of -playing for what his hands were worth. This he stuck to for half an hour -or so, when he was $800 ahead of the game and then he made another bluff -on a pair of queens. Burbridge, who had three aces, laid down, and -Tunwell's pile was amplified by $1,000. - -"'That was a cold bluff, Burbridge,' said Tunwell. - -"'Oh, I don't think so,' said Burbridge. 'There was too much confidence -in your eye for that.' Which shows that even a great poker player is as -likely as anybody to get mixed when it comes to studying eyes in a game. - -"After a while Burbridge caught a pat full house, and Tunwell filled a -still better full hand. It was Tunwell's bet, and he went $1,000 on it. -Burbridge laid down--wherein it was plain to be seen that he was a man -who possessed that indefinable thing, the poker player's 'hunch.' - -"Now, all these plays I'm telling you about were simply part of the -warming up. The two men were simply studying each other. They didn't -really begin to play poker until two hours after they sat down. - -"Then the contractor dealt Burbridge a promising set of threes, and gave -Tunwell a neat two pairs, with aces on top. Tunwell filled with another -ace, and Burbridge got nothing worth mentioning in the draw, so that his -three nines didn't look very big to us against an ace full. It was -Burbridge's bet. He was one of those men who lay their cards down on the -table and look up at the ceiling before making a bet. - -"'Five thousand dollars,' said he finally, still looking up at the -ceiling reflectively, and the contractor, who had seen Tunwell's draw, -winced a bit. - -"Tunwell looked at him pretty hard and scanned his hand. He raised him -$5,000. - -"'And $5,000,' said Burbridge, quietly. Now, the contractor was a pretty -game sort of man, but we could see that he felt badly over this. - -"Then Tunwell laid down. Burbridge's bluff worked. Of course, not until -after the game did we tell him what Tunwell held that time, and when we -did he said: - -"'I felt from the first, before I made a bet that he had me beat--but -the bigger a man's hand, the easier it is to bluff him out of the -money.' Queer remark, wasn't it? - -"Tunwell kept his nerve like a major after this heavy fall, and we -couldn't see the slightest sign of faltering in his style of play. The -game went back to the $100 basis, and was comparatively uninteresting -for an hour or so. In the course of the play during this time Tunwell -caught four queens pat--a very remarkable thing--and got 50 only out of -the hands. But unlike what most poker players would do under such -circumstances, he didn't throw down the hand face upward on the table -with an oath. He wasn't that kind of poker player. - -"Just about midnight both men simultaneously decided upon a bluff--and -it's not often that men happen to do this in a two-handed poker game; -when they do, something always drops. Both men stood pat. There wasn't a -pair in either hand. It was a choice experience to note the offhand way -with which Burbridge made the first bet on this pat hand of his. - -"'Ten thousand dollars,' said he, and his backer, the contractor, went -to the window, raised it, and poked his head out for air. - -"'Same, more than you,' said Tunwell, scanning his hand as if it was the -real thing. - -"Burbridge raised him another $10,000 and flicked a bit of ashes off his -collar. Now Tunwell felt that his man was bluffing. - -"'I call you,' said he. - -"'Ace high,' said Burbridge. - -"'Ace high here,' said Tunwell. - -"'Queen next.' - -"'Queen next here.' - -"'Nine next.' - -"'Nine next here.' - -"'Six next.' - -"Tunwell tossed his four that was next on to the table face upward -without the movement of an eyebrow. - -"'Six wins the $60,000,' said he, and the contractor strolled back from -the window. - -"'Better luck next time, Tunwell,' said he, smiling, while Burbridge -drank a glass of water. - -"'There isn't going to be any next time, my boy,' returned Tunwell. 'I'm -no hog.'" - - - - -THE INSIDIOUS GAME OF SQUEEZE-SPINDLE. - - -_And How a Whirl at It Came Near Decimating the Population of a Section - of the Indian Territory._ - -"I don't just recall the name of the cheerful worker who invented that -wise phrase, 'There's a sucker born every minute, and they never die,' -but whoever he was he had something inside his head besides mayonnaise -dressing," said a giant from the Indian Territory, when the talk among a -party of Westerners at a roadhouse the other night switched around to -sure-thing games and cinch propositions. "I don't suppose there ever was -yet a sure-thing game rigged up that didn't get its quota of nibblers, -and even its occasional easy marks, who'd go up against it with their -whole rolls. I'm not speaking so much now of brace games as I am of -layouts that might just as well have the words, 'You lose,' painted all -over 'em, they're such obvious air-tights for the dealers. I suppose -we've all been up against brace faro. That's something that a man can't -heel himself against; the most he can do when he gets next to it that -two of 'em are slipping out of the box at one and the same time is to -'stick up' the dealer at the business end of a .45--if he's quick -enough--accumulate all the money in sight, and back toward the door. - -"But a man who'll lay up alongside of a brace faro layout or a brace -wheel need not necessarily be sucker enough to hand his dust over to a -smooth duck who's dealing a game that has all the scars, moles, tattoo -marks and other perfectly visible Bertillons of a dead open and shut -sure-thing layout. Yet I've seen men who were wise in their own -business--horse-rustling, for instance--go broke against games that -you'd think a ten-year-old would size up correctly without the -assistance of an X-ray apparatus. - -"I'm thinking of the time that Jink McAtee, afterward one of the foxiest -horse-thieves who ever used an upside-down brand in the Southwest, got -interested in squeeze-spindle in Guthrie. It was in Guthrie, in May, -1889, just after Oklahoma had been opened up, that the two Reeves -brothers, Bill and Al, and Arthur Pendleton started an all-round layout -in what was the first two-story shack that had been thrown up in the -town. The two Reeves boys are still running the biggest layout in -Guthrie, but Pendleton is dead. The Reeves-Pendleton brand of faro, as -well as their keno, wheel, stud, and other legitimate games, was -perfectly on the level, but in addition they had a few games in -operation that was plain cases to most of the patrons of the layout of -the sure-thing. The Reeves and Pendleton people didn't club anybody into -stacking up against their sure-thing games. They just started 'em going, -hired a man named Gately to run 'em, and struck the attitude that if -among the sooners and boomers of Guthrie there was people imbecile -enough to want to hit up these sure-thing games, it wasn't their -funeral. - -"The most alluring among these sure-thing games was the outfit called -the squeeze-spindle. You used to run across a squeeze-spindle quite -often down in the Southwest, but so many of the dealers of that game got -shot up and slithered that it has sort o' passed out. It's a lottery -game ostensibly, where the player makes what the dealer calls -'conditional' winnings, and the dealer has to have the assistance of -'boosters' to throw confidence into the suckers. It took a good con man -to run a squeeze-spindle game. The sucker would put up a hundred to win -five hundred; he'd cop the coin 'conditionally'--that is to say, the -arrow that flew around in the middle of the box had to point to another -number of the sucker's selection before the money would be his to walk -away with, and in the event of the arrow pointing to the right number -the player would get twice the sum. - -"Of course the arrow never went the sucker's way twice hand-running, and -equally, of course, it was a game where the dealer got all of the money. -The reason it was called a squeeze-spindle was because the dealer had -only to squeeze a button beneath the table to stop the arrow at any old -point in its flight around the numbers that he wanted to. When a sucker -was up against the game, a 'booster' would prance in with a big roll of -the house's money, treble it on a couple of straight turns of the -spindle, squeezed just his way by the dealer, and then the sucker would -conclude that it was only his lack of capital that caused him to -lose--just as the pin-head who doubles on favorites at the races tries -to convince himself when's he's broke and smoking a punk pipe that he'd -have been able to put all the bookmakers out of business if he'd just -had the capital to keep on with his system. Once in a great while a -squeeze-spindle dealer would let one of his good things get away with a -bunch of money, if he felt reasonably sure that the sucker would come -back at it with the coin later on; and thus the ingenuous little fiction -'ud go around that So-and-So had pasted a squeeze-spindle dealer for his -whole roll, and this would make business. - -"Now, here was a game that you wouldn't think a man with the sense he -was born with would bet twenty cents worth of zinc money on. But this -man Gately, who ran the squeeze-spindle for the Reeves-Pendleton layout -on a salary and commission basis, was a pretty smooth gazzabo in his -generation, and he landed the good things with his layout right along, -and often for sizeable money. He was a quiet, red bearded chap, with a -mighty convincing, persuasive way about him, and a man who'd put up a -fight, too, in a corner. He had free rein in the running of the -squeeze-spindle and two or three other sure-thing devices that formed a -sort of side-show to the main Reeves-Pendleton layout, and the -proprietors pretended that his outfit was really independent of their -plant--that Gately was simply renting space from them and going it -alone. But all Guthrie knew differently. - -"Well, up against this squeeze-spindle plant goes this here Jink McAtee -that I started to tell you about. Jink wasn't then known as a -horse-thief. He had been a sooner--he got in long before the trumpet -call on a thoroughbred Kentucky horse that he was afterward found to -have pinched out of a barn--and he had made a pretty good thing out of -the Guthrie corner lot that he had staked off. He sold it three days -after the dash for $6000, and then he laid back on his liquor with a -whole lot of content. He was a low forehead in looks and manners. He was -the veriest duffer in his attempts to make the Reeves-Pendleton -combination put up their shutters by attacking their square games, and -he lost over $3000 of his corner-lot money at their faro tables. He blew -in another couple of thousand of the bunch at the honkatonks around town -before his little beady eyes fell on Gately's squeeze-spindle, and he -perceived a chance to get all of his money back in jig-time. Gately -pointed it out to him just how easy it was. - -"Before McAtee put a dollar down on the spindle Gately got Jink's eyes -to popping by roping in a booster who pulled $3200 out of the -squeeze-spindle in quicker time than a cayuse could make two jumps, and -when Gately looked chagrined and sorrowful McAtee bit. Gately knew his -man pretty well, and he permitted Jink to not only win $1600 -'conditionally,' right off the reel, but he actually passed $400 of -Jink's winnings over to him. Then he proceeded to wipe Jink out. When -McAtee was all trimmed up, Gately looked sad. - -"'You didn't have quite enough along with you, McAtee,' he said, shaking -his head real mournfully. 'If you'd had another $200 to cover that $1600 -that you'd won and left in the hole, why, you'd had me heading for the -Canadian River by this time.' - -"McAtee ate this spiel of Gately's up as if it was so much lunch on a -counter, and went away filled with the idea that there was riches in the -squeeze-spindle if it was hit right, and with enough money to back up -the plays. So he went to just eleven of his sooner friends and talked -squeeze-spindle to 'em. He put it to them just what a good thing the -squeeze-spindle was rightly hammered. He told 'em how near he'd been to -pulling out his losings, and more besides, through the medium of -Gately's squeeze-spindle at the Reeves-Pendleton layout. They took -Jink's word for it, and they all joined the pool that McAtee organized -to smash that spindle. They got together $2600, and on the afternoon -following Jink's play they walked down to the Reeves-Pendleton plant in -a body. Each man had a rifle along with him. There wasn't anything -remarkable about that. During the first year of Guthrie's existence -every man carried a long-iron over his arm. If twelve men, all with -rifles, were to line up in front of the Reeves-Pendleton layout in -Guthrie to-day there'd be good reason for the people inside to suppose -that they were going to be 'stuck up,' but there was no reason to -suppose anything of the kind when Jack McAtee brought along his eleven -subscribers to his squeeze-spindle-smashing pool that afternoon. Gately -wasn't worried a little bit. - -"'My friends is all got a interest in this, podner,' explained Jink to -Gately, 'and they come along jest t' see th' play.' - -"'Certainly,' said Gately, and then Jink and his bunch began to get -action on the spindle. It all went their way at first. Gately didn't -actually hand them any money out, but he let 'em make 'conditional' wins -until they had their whole $2600 on the layout. Another correct twist of -the arrow would enable Jink to double the money; on the other hand, if -the arrow didn't hit the right number, Jink and his bunch only stood to -lose, as Gately explained, $600 of their 'conditional' winnings. - -"Now, the situation was one calculated to rattle almost any man. Gately -didn't intend that Jink or his twelve stalkers with the long-irons -should get away with any of that money, and it shows that he was a man -of nerve in making up his mind to that idea. He intended to get the -$2600 after a long series of plays, and then take a chance on the Jink -McAtee gang roaring and opening up on him. That's what he intended to -do. But he was a bit rattled and stampeded over the intense way the gang -had of looking upon the plays, and that's how he happened to make a -mistake. He gave his button too short a squeeze, and blamed if the arrow -didn't stop at precisely the number that stood to win Jink and his gang -$2600 of the house's money, in addition to pulling down the $2600 they -had in! - -"Gately saw his mistake almost as soon as he had made it, but a booster -named Gilpin, who was watching the play, was the quicker thinker of the -two. He jumped off a stool upon which he had been standing looking over -the heads of Jink's crowd, and yelled out: - -"'Stand clear, there! Don't shoot!' - -"It was a ruse. Nobody had any idea of shooting. Jink and his gang were -simply flooded with joy over their winning. But when they heard Gilpin's -warning, they all jumped back, and that was Gately's chance to redeem -his bad break. He snatched up the $5200--the rule of the spindle game is -that the dealer must show the same amount of money the sucker has got in -play, and Gately had $2600 of the house's money spread out--and back he -jumped through the door, which led out into an alley. Jink and his crowd -were stupefied. They stood stock still. Gately had gone with their money -and the house's money, and they didn't think of taking after him. They -figured it that the house would make good, perhaps. Anyhow, by the time -they came to, Gately had mazed it through the wilderness of shacks of -which Guthrie was already composed, and Bill Reeves had appeared on the -scene. - -"I had been with Bill in the main layout in the next room, and we heard -the shout of Gilpin. That's what took us in there. Jink made his talk, -which was a pretty hot and threatening one, and he was backed up in it -pretty forcibly by all the rest of his gang. - -"'Well, Gately jumped, that's all,' said Reeves. 'What am I going to do -about it?' - -"'Hand over $5200, quick,' said McAtee and some others of his bunch. - -"'I haven't got anything like that much money in the place,' said -Reeves. 'But I'll give you a check for it on the bank down the way.' - -"They demurred over the check proposition for awhile, but they finally -took Bill Reeves's check for $5200. While they were demurring, Bill -Reeves had a chance to scribble a note to the cashier of the bank, -telling him not to cash the check when it would be presented--to make -some excuse about not having just that amount of money on hand, or -something of that sort. Now, I didn't want to be in that place at all -just then, but there was no way of my getting out. I had come into the -room with Bill Reeves, and I knew that if I tried to mosey away I'd be -called back; that they figured me to have some sort of connection with -the layout, which I didn't. - -"Jink took the check and went over to the bank to get the money. The -cashier turned the check down on the ground that he had just shipped -most of the bank's money to St. Louis. We knew that there was going to -be trouble and a whole lot of it when Jink got back from the bank with -that word, and I don't think any of us expected to last much longer. -Jink came a-loping back from the bank, and when he came into the room -and tore up the check with appropriate remarks his gang all lined up -together, and we figured it that the shooting was going to begin right -then. When the whole situation looked so squally that I had my eye on -the nearest window to drop out of, Arthur Pendleton popped into the -room. - -"'What's all this?' he yelled, for there was a lot of clicking going on -in the room. Jink and his gang thought they saw a final chance of -getting their money. So, smoldering, they told the story to Pendleton. -Pendleton was a shrewd man, a forceful talker, and a diplomat from away -back. - -"'All the money I've got, or that there is in the roll just now,' he -said, 'is $600,' pulling the roll out of his pocket. 'You are perfectly -welcome to that. When Gately comes back, or when you get him, as I wish -you would, you can have the rest that's coming to you out of the roll he -pinched.' - -"Well, the $600 looked like better than no bread to Jink and his bunch, -and they took it and went out after Gately. It was getting along toward -twilight. Reeves and Pendleton figured it that Gately, in pulling down -the roll, had been acting in the interest of the house. They hadn't the -slightest notion that Gately had eloped with the $5200. They thought -he'd plant the money, keep out of sight for a few days until the Jink -McAtee push could be compromised with, and then come back. - -"McAtee's gang beat up every shack in town thoroughly, but there was no -Gately. They whipped the prairie for miles around, but they didn't -spring Gately. Gately had gone. The gang came back to the -Reeves-Pendleton layout, all of 'em pretty ugly. Pendleton got them -bunched, made a speech to them to the effect that if Gately wasn't -corralled within a week he'd make good the whole amount coming to them -out of his own pocket, and soft-soaped them into accepting those terms. -They dispersed. - -"When Gately didn't come back the next day, or give any indication to -his employers where he was, they got worried. - -"'I think Gately has drilled,' Pendleton said to me that day. 'He's an -Iowan, and there's going to be a big conclave and tournament of firemen -in Council Bluffs next week. I'll bet Gately has made for Council -Bluffs. I'm going after him. Come along with me.' - -"I told Pendleton that I hadn't anything to do with the game, but I -wasn't overlooking business propositions, and when he offered me 50 per -cent. of all the money we might reclaim from Gately, I went with him. We -got onto Gately's trail in Council Bluffs, as Pendleton had shrewdly -guessed we might, but he had been tipped off that we were after him, and -he chased over to Omaha. We were right after him, and he jumped for a -town in Southwestern Iowa called Red Oak. We were hot on his trail, and -we met up with him squarely next day in Red Oak. - -"'Let's have the money, Gately,' said Pendleton. - -"'I'll pass you back the house bunch, $2600,' said Gately, 'but the rest -of it I keep,' and he looked as if he meant it, good and hard, at that. - -"'How do you make that out a square deal?' asked Pendleton. - -"'Because,' replied Gately, pretty convincingly, 'it was me that took -the chance. I made a mistake, and stood to lose the house's $2600. If I -hadn't taken a chance, they'd have got the coin. If I'd have won their -$2600, your shack would have been shot into a sieve, and me into the -bargain. It was a case of run. I had to do the running. I earned the -$2600, and I hang on to it.' - -"It struck me that this was pretty square talk, and I told Pendleton so, -and advised him to cut out any idea of getting all the money back from -Gately through the medium of a gun-play. Gately handed out $2600, and -then he told us how he had got away. He had struck across the prairie -for Mulhall, and some of the McAtee gang, in scouring the country -a-horseback, had not only been right behind him, but they had passed -him. He heard them coming from behind, and he thought they had -recognized him in the twilight. He didn't dare to look back, but he -stooped down as if to tie his shoe, and looked at them under his arm -while in that stooping posture. They didn't figure that the man they -were after would be taking things so leisurely as all that, and so they -passed right by him in the gathering gloom, a-hunting Gately. Gately got -to Mulhall, and took the first train up for Omaha. - -"Before we got back to Guthrie, Jink McAtee and several of his pals in -the pool to smash the Gately squeeze-spindle had been given the sudden -chase by the United States Deputy Marshals for some horse-rustling -operation of theirs that had just come to light, and when Jink McAtee -got shot full of slugs by a posse down in the Brazos bottoms, three -years later, the Reeves-Pendleton layout still stood indebted to him in -the sum of $4600 with accrued interest, the balance that Jink and his -push did not pull down in their attempt to stampede a squeeze-spindle -layout." - - ---- - - - -_Nine Splendid Novels by_ WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE - - - -THE PIRATE OF PANAMA - - -A tale of old-time pirates and of modern love, hate and adventure. The -scene is laid in San Francisco on board _The Argus_ and in Panama. A -romantic search for the lost pirate gold. An absorbing love-story runs -through the book. - -_12mo. Cloth, Jacket in Colors. Net $1.25._ - - - -THE VISION SPLENDID - - -A powerful story in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars -against graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates -the story. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Net $1.25._ - - - -CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT - - -A story of Arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter -feud between cattle-men and sheep-herders. The heroine is a most unusual -woman and her love-story reaches a culmination that is fittingly -characteristic of the great free West. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition 50 cents._ - - - -BRAND BLOTTERS - - -A story of the Cattle Range. This story brings out the turbid life of -the frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor with a charming love -interest running through its 320 pages. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Jacket in Colors. Popular Edition 50 cents._ - - - -"MAVERICKS" - - -A tale of the western frontier, where the "rustler," whose depredations -are so keenly resented by the early settlers of the range, abounds. One -of the sweetest love stories ever told. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -A TEXAS RANGER - - -How a member of the most dauntless border police force carried law into -the mesquit, saved the life of an innocent man after a series of -thrilling adventures, followed a fugitive to Wyoming, and then passed -through deadly peril to ultimate happiness. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -WYOMING - - -In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured the -breezy charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the -frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -RIDGWAY OF MONTANA - - -The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics and -mining industries are the religion of the country. The political -contest, the love scene, and the fine character drawing give this story -great strength and charm. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._ - - - -BUCKY O'CONNOR - - -Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with -the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and absorbing -fascination of style and plot. - -_12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. 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The book embraces twelve stories of grim, dark facts -secured directly from the lips of the police and the gangsters -themselves. - -_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_ - - - -THE STORY OF PAUL JONES - - -A wonderful historical romance. A story of the boyhood and later life of -that daring and intrepid sailor whose remains are now in America. -Thousands and tens of thousands have read it and admired it. Many -consider it one of the best books Mr. Lewis has produced. - -_12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. 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Illustrated. $1.00 -net. - - - -THE MIDDLE WALL - - -_The Albany Times-Union_ says of this story of the South African diamond -mines and adventures in London, on the sea and in America: "As a story -teller Mr. Marshall cannot be improved upon, and whether one is looking -for humor, philosophy, pathos, wit, excitement, adventure or love, he -will find what he seeks, aplenty, in this capital tale." 12mo, cloth. -Illustrated. 50 cents. - - ---- - - - -_BOOKS NOVELIZED FROM GREAT PLAYS_ - - - -THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE - - -From the successful play of EDGAR JAMES. Embodying a wonderful message -to both husbands and wives, it tells how a determined man, of dominating -personality and iron will, leaves a faithful wife for another woman. -12mo, cloth. Illustrated from scenes in the play. Net $1.25. - - - -THE WRITING ON THE WALL - - -_The Rocky Mountain News_: "This novelization of OLGA NETHERSOLE'S play -tells of Trinity Church and its tenements. It is a powerful, vital -novel." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - - -THE OLD FLUTE PLAYER - - -Based on CHARLES T. DAZEY'S play, this story won the friendship of the -country very quickly. _The Albany Times-Union_: "Charming enough to -become a classic." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - - -THE FAMILY - - -Of this book (founded on the play by ROBERT HOBART DAVIS), _The Portland -(Oregon) Journal_ said: "Nothing more powerful has recently been put -between the covers of a book." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - - -THE SPENDTHRIFT - - -_The Logansport (Ind.) Journal_: "A tense story, founded on PORTER -EMERSON BROWNE'S play, is full of tremendous situations, and preaches a -great sermon." 12mo, cloth bound, with six illustrations from scenes in -the play. 50 cents. - - - -IN OLD KENTUCKY - - -Based upon CHARLES T. DAZEY'S well-known play, which has been listened -to with thrilling interest by over seven million people. "A new and -powerful novel, fascinating in its rapid action. Its touching story is -told more elaborately and even more absorbingly than it was upon the -stage."--_Nashville American._ 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents. - - ---- - - - -Transcriber's Notes: - - -Both "booky" and "bookie" used throughout text. - - - - - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TAKING CHANCES *** - - - - -A Word from Project Gutenberg - - -We will update this book if we find any errors. - -This book can be found under: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37477 - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one -owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and -you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission -and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the -General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and -distributing Project Gutenberg(tm) electronic works to protect the -Project Gutenberg(tm) concept and trademark. 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