Having plenty of time and spending money I visited San Jose, towns down
the peninsula, and across the bay—always with an eye to business.
Jewelry-store windows are fascinating to the thief. He must stop and
look over the sparkling plunder. Even in these days of my regeneration I
stop occasionally from habit at a jewelry-store window. Usually there
are others looking, too!
I paused before a jewelry-store window in Oakland one evening, just at
closing time. The clerks were clearing it out for the night. In the
center of the display stood a slim, polished wood pedestal, on top of
which, in a velvet cup, reposed an enormous ruby, the size of my thumb
nail, set in a ring. A placard announced that this pigeon-blood ruby,
valued at three thousand dollars, was to be awarded by some
organization, the name of which I don’t recall, to the winner of a
contest they were holding.
The window was cleaned up, the display put away for the night, but the
ruby was left on its pedestal when the store was closed. I got the next
boat across and found Sanc. We went back to Oakland and got to the store
about eleven o’clock.
“I don’t know anything about rubies, kid, but if it’s left there all
night it’s phony.”
Just then two men came along, entered the store, and, locking the door
behind them, went to the window and got the stone. They disappeared
toward the back of the store.
“It must be genuine, kid. They are putting it away in the ‘box.’”
As we walked away, Sanc said: “The window has a burglar alarm. You can
see the tape around the edges. If I could devise some way to put an inch
hole through the glass without cracking it clear across to the tape, the
alarm would not sound and I could take the stone out with a stiff wire.
To-morrow night I’ll try something I have long thought of.”
The next day he bought at a second-hand store a small machinist’s
hammer, weighing about a pound. One face of it was thick, heavy, and
flat, the other was rounded to a nose about the size of a boy’s marble.
He bought a whipstock of tough, springy wood and made a handle about
eighteen inches long, which he fitted into the hammer.
For several nights we went around to new buildings and into deserted
streets where there were plate-glass windows of a weight corresponding
with the one in Oakland. Sanc used his hammer like a whip, snapping the
noselike face of it against windows till he became so expert he could
make a hole as clean as if it had been done by a bullet, and without
cracking the glass for more than six inches from it.
“Vandalism, they will call it,” he said after destroying probably five
hundred dollars’ worth of glass, “but in reality it is a scientific
experiment and a success.” The impact of the hammer sounded very much
like the breaking of a piece of kindling wood under foot. At last we
were ready, and Sanc, as usual, gave me final instructions.
“Oakland is a tough town to take a pinch in, kid. You can’t fix your
case, and you’ll get the limit if convicted. I’ll take a gun along. You
needn’t. There isn’t much you can do. When the bull is out of the block
and pedestrians are a couple of doors away I will do the best I can. You
stand near by and if anybody gets wise to me, you shout to him: ‘Look
out, he’s got a gun. Let’s get a policeman!’”
At nine o’clock we passed the window. A crowd was admiring the ring. At
ten the pedestrians had thinned out, and half an hour later Sanc’s
chance came.
The store was in the middle of a block. The patrolman was at the corner
going farther away. Everything was exactly right. A passing electric
car swallowed the noise of the breaking glass. Sanc disengaged the
hammer’s nose from the hole carefully with a rasping noise. The hammer
went into his coat pocket, and the wire came from beneath his coat. The
top of the pedestal where the ruby rested was higher than the hole in
the window, and when Sanc lifted the ring on his wire it slid slowly
down and out into his hand. He threw the wire into the street and walked
away. I followed behind and overtook him at the corner. A few blocks
farther away he tossed the hammer into a lot. We sat apart on the train
to the ferry and on the boat across to the city.
In my room Sanc removed the ruby from its setting, which I immediately
took out and threw into a near-by sewer opening. When I returned he was
admiring the stone. “There’s a stone, kid, that, as Shakespeare says, ‘A
Jew would kiss and an Infidel adore.’”
The Sanctimonious Kid’s face wore a serious look the next evening when
we met to go to dinner. “Kid,” he said, “the more I think of this
wonderful pigeon-blood ruby the less I think of it, if you understand
what I mean. It is possible that we put too much faith in the integrity
of the business firm that displayed it so carelessly. I was out to the
park to-day and gave the thing a careful inspection in the sunlight, and
there is a cold, clammy suspicion in my mind that we have been
swindled—in short, I am afraid the thing is a rank phony.
“And the worst of it is there’s not one person in five thousand who
knows a real ruby when he sees it. There are probably three men in San
Francisco who would know, but they are all square business men and we
can’t submit it to any of them. The next nearest man is the buyer for
the big Mormon store, Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution, at
Salt Lake City. I will take a run back there with it and get some one to
have him give an opinion on it. If it’s genuine I can get a thousand
dollars on it. I’ll be gone about two weeks, and this is what I want you
to do while I am away.
“Put on your best clothes, keep clean and neat, and spend your evenings
around the Diamond Palace in Montgomery Street. Go through the whole
block on both sides of the street. Look into every hallway, basement,
empty store, and saloon. Try to locate some place that we can go through
and out into an alley or another street. The getaway’s the thing, and if
you can find one in the block we’ll chance the Diamond Palace some
evening, maybe Christmas Eve.”
He left next morning after giving me strict orders to keep away from the
wine dumps and attend to business. I worked faithfully and soon found
half a dozen places that would serve. My time was now my own, and once
more I began exploring the byways of the city.
The hypos I spent the night with in the city prison had aroused my
curiosity about Chinatown. I put in many nights prowling through the
alleys watching these mysterious people gambling, smoking opium, and
trafficking in their women slaves. There were rumors of strange,
mysterious underground passages below the streets and under the
buildings, but I never saw them and I have since come to doubt whether
they ever existed.
The spots most favored in Chinatown by the hypos and small beggars were
the “cook ovens,” places built in back of Chinese lodging houses where
the occupants did their cooking on the community plan. There were warm
places around the ovens to sleep in, and always a bite to eat for the
asking—no Chinaman refuses to feed a hungry man.
In my experience with the Chinese I have found them charitable, frugal,
thrifty, moral, and honest.
In speaking of the cook ovens I may say that it was there the word
“yegg” originated. It has not yet been locked in the dictionary, but it
has a place in our language and it’s about time its derivation was
settled once and for all. It is a corruption of “yekk,” a word from one
of the many dialects spoken in Chinatown, and it means beggar. When a
hypo or beggar approached a Chinaman to ask for something to eat, he was
greeted with the exclamation, “yekk man, yekk man.”
The underworld is quick to seize upon strange words, and the bums and
hypos in Chinatown were calling themselves yeggmen years before the term
was taken out on the road and given currency by eastbound beggars. In no
time it had a verb hung on it, and to yegg meant to beg.
The late William A. Pinkerton was responsible for its changed meaning.
His business consisted largely of asking questions and necessarily he
acquired much misinformation. A burglar with some humor fell into
Pinkerton’s hands and when asked who was breaking open the country
“jugs” he whispered to the detective that it was the yeggs.
Investigation convinced Pinkerton that there were a lot of men drifting
about the country who called themselves yeggs. The word went into a
series of magazine articles Pinkerton was writing at the time and was
fastened upon the “box” men. Its meaning has since widened until now the
term “yegg” includes all criminals whose work is “heavy.”
Sanc returned in a very hostile frame of mind. “We’ve been bilked, kid.
It was a French imitation. Been on the market ten years. I sold it to
Tom Dennison, who runs the Wasatch gambling house in ‘The Lake,’ for a
hundred and fifty dollars, just enough to pay expenses. If you locate a
few more capers like that you’ll put us in the poorhouse.”
I reported my findings in Montgomery Street, and Sanc after looking them
over carefully pronounced two of the getaways feasible.
“Kid,” he said, “I read in the papers some time ago that a man named
Charlie Rice, in New York City, put on a cheap, black alpaca coat, put
his cap in his pocket, and with a pencil on his ear walked into a bank
and behind the counter where there were twenty clerks at work.
Unnoticed, he picked up twenty-five thousand dollars in bank notes and
walked out.
“That suggested to me that I can walk into this jewelry store some
evening before Christmas when they will have an extra force of clerks
employed, and go behind the counter if I am dressed like a clerk. If I
can get behind a counter you can surely get in front of it. I will put a
tray of stones out for your inspection, and you will walk out with it.
We will go over it carefully now.
“I will walk into the place about seven o’clock some evening, dressed in
a black suit, white shirt, high collar, and black tie. You will go in
directly behind me. You will carry a harmless-looking parcel that looks
like a box of handkerchiefs neatly wrapped and tied. There will be no
bottom in it. I will walk to the back of the store where there are two
or three settees for patrons and visitors. You will stroll about near
by. I will leave my derby hat and overcoat on a settee and try, mind
you, try to get behind the main counter. I am depending upon the fact
that the place will be full of visitors and customers and that there
will be a number of strange clerks and that no one clerk will know all
the others.
“You will follow my movements closely. When I get behind the counter I
will take out the best tray I can get and set it on the show case in
front of you. You will put your bottomless package over the tray, pick
it up, put it under your arm, and walk out. We have two weeks to get
ready. We will go down there separately and look the place over for a
week. When you go in, you rehearse the thing in your mind and don’t
think of anything else for the next ten days.”
We thought and talked of the Diamond Palace only for days and days.
“Kid,” said Sanc, “I heard ‘Rebel George’ who invented the gold-brick
swindle say: ‘The way to sell a brass brick is to bunko yourself first
into the belief that your brick is solid gold—the rest is easy. The most
successful bunko man is the one who bunkoes himself before he goes after
a sucker.’
“I am going to hypnotize myself into the belief that I am a clerk in
that store from the minute I take my hat off till I put it on. You are a
visitor from the minute you go in till you get your hands on the stones;
then, presto, you are what you are. If we can get one of the larger
trays of stones we can get enough money on them to go to Salt Lake or
Denver, and open a small gambling house where, while we can’t be
entirely respectable, we can at least be secure. I am at a stage where I
would like to quit. I don’t feel like going to work as a laborer at two
dollars a day, or as a clerk for fifteen a week. I’m not speaking
disparagingly of them, mind you—fact is, they have more real courage
than we have, working for such wages. But this life of ours breeds
expensive habits of loose, careless spending that are hard to overcome,
and even if I could swallow my objections to being exploited I would
still find it impossible to survive on the pay.
“I didn’t jump into this life I’m leading as I jump into bed, and I
can’t get out of it in one jump. I drifted in by slow degrees, and if I
get out I’ll have to ease out of it by slow stages. A gambling joint
would be the first step away. Then maybe something better after that.
This can all be threshed out later; we must not let our minds stray from
the Diamond Palace.”
Sanc’s philosophy stood up under our bad luck with the near-ruby. “Kid,”
he said later, “this is the season of peace on earth and good will to
men. Who gives to the poor lends to the Lord, but when I give anything
to the poor I am going to have a better motive. However, we are not
givers; we are takers, and our taking should be reasoned out rationally.
We will reverse this ‘giving and lending.’ We will rob the rich and
discomfit the devil; thereby, perhaps, finding favor in the sight of the
Lord. And this brings us to the front door of the Diamond Palace. It’s
one of the city’s show places and visitors are always welcome. We will
visit it.”
And we did. Separately, we made several visits in the evening to
familiarize ourselves with the inside, and to locate the trays of
stones. At night in my room Sanc drew diagrams of the interior and the
show cases. We rehearsed the thing in detail night after night. He made
a neat dummy parcel and drilled me in placing it over an imitation tray
of diamonds; showed me how to place it under my arm securely yet
carelessly and walk out of the store with entire nonchalance.
He bought his black suit, white shirt, and black tie, put them on and
rehearsed his part. We put our rooms in order, cleaning out everything
that might look suspicious, protecting ourselves against a possible
“pinch.” The hotel keys I had made were put away carefully against a
rainy day—or night. Our money was taken from the safety box, changed
into bank notes, and secreted in our clothes.
I asked him about the guns. “No gun for you, Kid. You might get
nervous. Leave yours somewhere. I’ll take mine along.”
Christmas was ten days away. Every evening we dressed for our parts, got
barbered, shined, and slicked up, and walked about the block prepared to
go into the store when it looked right. We made sure every day that the
getaways I had located were still open.
“I could make it now,” said Sanc as we stood across the street the third
evening, “but I’ll wait; it’s getting better every day.”
His last instructions were: “Now, don’t get nervous. If you get your
hands on the ‘junk’ walk out quietly and away. If they ‘tumble’ me up
before I get the tray out you fade away. I’ll do the best I can alone.
If there’s a ‘tumble’ after you get the tray and you are chased, hang on
to it and get into one of the spots you have picked out and when you get
on the other street don’t run; walk briskly direct to the room. If I’m
not there five minutes after you, I’ll be in jail. I don’t like to think
of that, but the pitcher can go to the well once too often, and it’s
better to know beforehand what you are going to do when it breaks. If I
don’t appear you put the stones away safely and wait till I send you
word. Don’t try to connect with me.”
The next evening as I stood looking at the window display Sanc came by,
glanced inside sharply, and snapped his fingers, which was the “office”
to me that he was going in. I went in about three steps behind him. All
I saw was a fine-looking, elderly man in a policeman’s uniform walking
up the center of the store, active, alert. When I passed him my heart
was pounding so with suspense that I was afraid he would hear it.
Sanc walked straight to the back of the big room and sat on a settee. I
strolled about looking at, but not seeing, the wonderful display of
baubles. The place was fairly filled with Christmas shoppers and
sightseers. Beautifully gowned women and distinguished-looking men stood
at the counters inspecting rare stones and costly ornaments. Visitors
idled around and clerks stepped about briskly. Parties of shoppers were
coming in, the place was filling up with people laughing and chatting.
There was a little pucker between Sanc’s eyes as he held his seat, and I
knew something was wrong. Looking closer I saw, facing him and but a
few feet away, an attaché of the place conversing with a party of women.
Sanc was stuck and couldn’t transform himself into a clerk under the
man’s eyes. At last he moved away. Sanc took off his hat, put it on the
settee, stood up, and stepped smartly toward the front, a clerk now, and
I right behind him with my dummy parcel.
Sanc’s unavoidable delay in transforming himself into a clerk was fatal
to our plan. One glance along the show cases that contained the most
valuable stones showed us that they were all out and under inspection by
patrons who came in after we did. Time was precious, worth more than
money. He dared not hesitate. Turning quickly, he crossed the room and
stepped behind the long line of show cases, passed two busy clerks, and
stopped at a case that held a number of trays of small stones.
“Now, here’s something, sir,” he said to me as he reached in and brought
out a tray holding one dozen rings, the best in sight that he could get
at. My parcel was on the show case and he did not wait for me to act; he
placed it on top of the tray and turned away toward the rear of the
store. Shaking with suspense I managed to pick it up and place it
properly under my arm, holding it closely to my side.
On the sidewalk I wanted to run, expecting to hear a hue and cry from
the store. In turning the first corner I looked back. Sanc wasn’t more
than twenty feet behind me. I slowed up for him and we went straight to
the room.
“Another bunch of rotten luck, kid,” he said, peeling off his black
suit. “This town has me hoodooed. I’m gone from it to-night, and you
had better come along. Wrap up that suit and throw it away along with
the shirt and tie. I’ll unharness these ‘rocks.’ We’re lucky if Mary
gives us two thousand dollars on them.”
In an hour he had them out of their settings, which I threw away as
before. He went to his room for his few belongings. I threw mine in a
bag and we met at the ferry where we got a boat to Oakland, leaving
nothing behind us but the hotel keys I had made with such pains and
trouble.
The theft was not reported in the papers. There may be a record of it in
the police archives, for all I know. “I can’t explain their silence,”
said Sanc. “This much is certain, and it’s the worst part of this
business of ours. Some innocent party is going to ride the blame. They
will never figure that as an outside caper.”
The next day we got an eastbound train and in due time found ourselves
in the town of Pocatello, the stronghold of Salt Chunk Mary. Our knock
at her door was answered by a young and pretty Swedish girl, blue-eyed
and fair-haired. In answer to our call for Mary she laughed and her big,
innocent blue eyes danced. “Aye tank you have bad luck. Miss Mary she
bane on big yamboree.”
We went downtown and rented a room. In Pocatello, as in every other
Western town in those days, it was the correct custom and usage for
sporting people to go on a big jamboree once or twice a year. A jamboree
was usually preceded by a run of good or bad luck. If the celebrant got
hold of a bunch of easy money he or she “went on a tear” to celebrate
the good luck. If the luck got too bad, the way to change it was to go
out and get drunk. The length of these celebrations was determined by
the size of the party’s bankroll or the strength of his constitution.
Salt Chunk Mary’s bankroll had no bottom, and her constitution was
flawless. So it followed that her periods of relaxation were somewhat
extended. Being a very positive-minded person, inclining to action
rather than words, her procedure at these times differed greatly from
the ordinary. When she “went on a toot” the town marshal went fishing or
hunting, and her more timid business rivals closed their places and
remained in a state of siege like storekeepers in Chinatown when a tong
war was declared. It was her custom to visit her friends’ places first,
where friendships were renewed and emphasized by much spending and
drinking, and where obligations were acknowledged and discharged
promptly. She poured liquor into the bums, beggars, ragtags, and
bobtails that hung around the saloons till they were legless drunk, and
unable to follow her triumphal march through the town. She never let up
for the want of money, nor because of inability to “carry her licker.”
Her jamboree closed when she had “made” the last place in town and
that was always the joint of some one she held a grudge against.
Sanc and I were fortunate enough to witness the wind-up of one of her
most memorable celebrations. Leaving her hack at the curb, she walked
into her victim’s saloon and ordered all hands to drink. When the drinks
were disposed of and paid for, she put both hands on the inner edge of
the bar and pulled it over on the floor. Out of the wreckage she
gathered an armful of bottles. One of them was accurately hurled into
the mirror, and the remainder at anybody in sight. The boss, bartender,
and saloon bums disappeared out the back way and Mary stalked out the
front. On the sidewalk she threw away her hat, tore up what money she
had left, and crawled into her waiting hack. Inside she kicked all the
glass out, lay down on the back seat, and, with her feet out through the
broken window, was driven home in state while the town stood mute.
We allowed her a couple of days to recuperate before calling. When we
appeared she welcomed us as usual with an invitation to eat from the
bottomless bean pot. Sanc threw her the small parcel of stones which she
examined carefully with practiced eye, and a high-powered glass.
Commercial white diamonds were sixty dollars a carat, wholesale, then,
and when she offered us eighteen hundred dollars we took them,
satisfied.
We jumped to Denver, where Sanc got the dice-game concession in the
“Chicken Coop,” a small gambling house. We had three thousand dollars
between us. Two thousand went into the bankroll and we opened up
bravely. “Soapy Smith,” gambler and bunko man, noted for his high plays
and big winnings and losings, won our two thousand in three successive
plays. Sanc wanted to continue with the balance of our money, but I
refused and stubbornly held on to my last five hundred. We had to quit.
Sanc was a hard loser and followed “Soapy” around town for a week trying
to “elevate” him. He never got away from the bright lights, and Sanc
gave up the notion of sticking him up.
We located a big poker game in a soft spot and decided to “line up” the
players. The biggest gamblers in town sat there nightly and there were
thousands of dollars in sight. After many nights of careful checking, we
were ready to go against it.
Robbery has none of the complications of burglary. It is simple as one,
two, three. You get it or you don’t.
Sanc with a gun in his hand opened the door softly. I was behind him.
The players, six of them, were in the midst of a “big play.” None looked
up. At the opposite side of the table, facing us, scrutinizing his
cards, sat Bat Masterson, the last of the real bad men, the fastest man
alive with a gun, and with a record of twenty killings while marshal of
Dodge City, Kansas.
Sanc closed the door on the absorbed poker players as softly as he had
opened it, and “officed” me to follow him out. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing but this, Kid. Bat Masterson is sitting in the game. He has a
reputation as a killer and he earned it. When he was marshal of Dodge
City bad men rode from the Texas Panhandle and from Deadwood, Dakota, to
shoot it out with him, and he dropped them all. Nobody knows how many;
he probably don’t know himself. He beat them all to the ‘pull’ and even
now, when he is not exactly young, he is the fastest human being with a
gun. All he has left is his reputation, and he would die rather than
lose it to a couple of ‘stick-ups.’ If I had him in a dark street I
wouldn’t hesitate to ‘throw him up’ and he would ‘go up’ too, but he
would never stand for it with others looking on. I could have put the
gun on him, said: ‘Masterson, I know you; I’ll kill you if you bat an
eye,’ and you could have started to gather up their coin. So far, so
good; but if the brim of your hat or the tip of your shoulder had got
between Mr. Masterson and my eye he would have ‘pulled’ on us and I
would have had to let go at him. If I didn’t kill or disable him with
the first shot, he’d have slaughtered the pair of us.
“I’m not afraid of him, but I am not knowingly going to put myself in
the position of killing anybody for his money. When Masterson sits in a
game, he lays a gun on his lap. His life is forfeit to any ambitious
young bad man looking for a reputation. Anybody but a ‘stick-up’ could
kill him and get away with it, if he were fast enough or dirty enough to
shoot him in the back. He has the right to sit with a gun on his lap,
and besides, it gives him just a slight psychological edge on the other
players.
“In short, Kid, I don’t want any of Mr. Batterson Masterson’s money by
the stick-up route. There are a lot of bad men here getting by on gall,
but he has guts and I flatter myself that I’ve been around enough to
know the difference. That’s my philosophy, Kid; you can take it or leave
it,” he concluded.
That was the tribute Sanc, who killed one man and was hanged, paid Bat
Masterson, who killed twenty and died peacefully in his bed at a ripe
and respected old age.
Then came a night when the Sanctimonious Kid failed to show up at the
room. I was worried and made the rounds of the gambling houses, joints,
and hangouts, but failed to find him or anybody who had seen him. My
fears were put to rest later when Soapy Smith, who won our bankroll,
appeared in the “Missouri House” and told with the good grace of a man
who had lost fortunes how he had been “taken” by a “stick-up” man for
fifteen hundred dollars.
“It was the first time in a year I had been off Larimer Street, and it
serves me right,” he laughed. “Anyway, I know him and told him so; and
I’m going to kill him on sight.”
“Soapy,” Jefferson Smith, was a colorful character of the West, the
educated, refined, renegade son of a distinguished Southern family who
turned his wits to crooked ways. When his luck at the faro tables
switched and left him broke, he mounted his box on a corner and sold
nickel bars of soap for fifty cents and one dollar. The fifty-cent bars
were guaranteed to contain a five-dollar bill and the dollar ones a ten.
The bills were wrapped with the soap in plain view of the prospective
purchasers, and when he finished his “spiel” the rush was on.
His “cappers,” “boosters,” and “shills” fought with the yokels for a
chance to get something for nothing and always beat them to the pieces
of soap containing the money.
As a sleight-of-hand man Soapy had no equal off the stage. When the
Gentiles wrested the Salt Lake City government from the Mormons, Soapy
was brought out from Denver and sat as an election judge in the busiest
polling booth in the city. Equipped with a poker player’s “sleeve
holdout” he “went out” with enough Mormon ballots to swing a close
election in favor of a “clean city administration.”
Always a pioneer, he joined the gold rush to the Klondike. He was killed
at Skagway, later, by a bully in the pay of the “Vigilance Committee.”
After the robbery Sanc disappeared, and it was long till I saw him
again. I decided to leave Denver. I owed them fifteen days on the chain
gang, and had no wish to pay by shoveling snow in the streets. I bought
a ticket to Butte, Montana, regretting the money but not caring to “hit
the road” in the dead of winter across half a dozen of the coldest
states in the Union. I did it in after years, but it was from
necessity—not choice.
Butte was never a “Wild West” town in the accepted sense. Cowboys were
seldom seen. Miners and gamblers ruled the town. The miners were
orderly, hard workers, deep drinkers, and fair fighters. They had none
of the cheap, shouldering swagger of the “gold-rush” miner. Nearly
everybody owned a gun, but the bullying, gun-toting, would-be bad men
and killers never flourished in Butte. When one of them got peeved and
started to lug out his “cannon” some hard-fisted miner beefed him like
an ox with a fast one to the jaw, and kicked his “gat” out into the
street where small boys scrambled for it.
The mines were worked by Irishmen and “Cousin Jacks” (Cornishmen), who
settled their differences with good, solid blows and despised the use of
weapons. Gambling flourished and was licensed in Montana by an act of
legislature. The possession of any crooked gambling device was a felony.
Consequently the cheap cheaters and tinhorn, shoestring gamblers never
got a footing there. Many of the faro dealers never made a bet of their
own money, and many professional players were married men, who looked
after their families faithfully, feeding and educating their children
with money honestly and systematically won over the faro layouts.
Everybody gambled. Messenger boys stopped to make a bet. The copper on
the beat would walk in and bet “two and a half to win breakfast money.”
If he won his “two and a half” he went out satisfied. If he lost it, he
got “stuck,” forgot all about his beat, sat down, and “played in” his
bankroll.
The town boasted of an all-night barber shop and a clothing store that
never closed, for the convenience of late-at-night winners who couldn’t
hold on to their winnings till morning.
As I watched a game my first night in Butte, a seedy, torn-out looking
chap stepped up to the layout and made a bet. He won it, and, expertly
shifting his checks about, won a dozen more bets before the deal closed.
“Gimme money,” he said to the dealer, pushing his checks in, “I’m going
to get dressed up this time.” He took off his rusty derby hat and tore
the crown out of it. Putting his hands behind him, he grasped the tails
of his frock coat and with a jerk ripped it up the back clear to the
collar. Money in hand he sought the all-night store, and came back in an
hour, spick and span from head to heel.
I experimented and soon laid a solid foundation for the faro-bank habit
which fastened on me later and kept me broke for years.
Another night a player at the table who had lost steadily for an hour
placed his last stack of checks on a card, saying to the dealer, “Turn
the cards, Sam, that’s the last button on Gabe’s coat.” The cards were
turned and the player lost.
As he was leaving, I looked at him closer, and was sure I knew him. I
got up and stuck my hand out to him. He took it curiously. “You are
George,” I said, “the gentleman who made my fight in the Kansas City
jail the night of my first ‘pinch.’”