Taking Chances Part 21

"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-flus.h.i.+ng 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 outcla.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 pa.s.sed, 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 dis.h.i.+ng 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 embarra.s.sing 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 n.o.ble 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 d.i.c.kens 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?'