Taking Chances Part 20

"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'

d.i.n.ky 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 sa.s.sy 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 b.u.m 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ce 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, h.e.l.lo 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. 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.