Taking Chances Part 23

"'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 a.s.sault 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 a.s.sets 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 carca.s.s, 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 n.o.body'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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed.

But it didn't pa.s.s. 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 ash.o.r.e.

"'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 sh.o.r.ely 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.