Poker and the Scientific Mind
Barbee, as he himself would have expressed it, was soured on life. At
least for the moment, and after all that is about all that life is, the
instant that it is passing. When Longstreet called to him he grunted
in disgust. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and spat out
the cold stump of his cigarette. It was Barbee's natural way to swing
along with his hat far back, so that he might see the stars. Now his
hat brim was dragged low, and for Barbee the stars were only less
remote and frigid than a certain fickle woman.
'I say, Barbee,' called the professor a second time.
Barbee slumped on without turning, but growled over his shoulder:
'Can't you leave a man alone?'
Longstreet doubted his ears; the boy had been so friendly. He tried
hurriedly and in vain to recall some trifle in which perhaps, being
misunderstood, he had offended. During his mental uncertainty the
natural physical hesitancy had resulted in Barbee's gaining a lead of a
dozen steps. Hence when a white figure flitted out from the shadows to
the boy's side, Longstreet was not near enough to hear the whispered
words; the soft trill of a laugh he caught, to be sure, and immediately
recognized as Mrs. Murray's. Then she had drawn away from Barbee,
called good night and passed on to the hotel, so close to Longstreet
that her skirts brushed him. Barbee stood still watching her until she
disappeared under the porch vines. Longstreet came on to his side
then. They fell into step and again Barbee was swaggering with his old
buoyancy; again his hat was far back, and his eyes were on the stars.
'Hello, old sport,' he said affably. 'Some night, ain't it?'
To know why a man of the type of James Edward Longstreet should be
flattered at being called 'old sport' by one of the type of Yellow
Barbee is to understand human nature; Longstreet was utterly human.
The bonds of environment are bands of steel; the little boy that close
to threescore years ago was Johnny Longstreet had been restricted by
them, his growth had been that of a gourd with a strap about its
middle; he had perforce grown in conformity with the commands of the
outside pressure. Had he been born in Poco Poco and reared on a ranch,
it is at least likely that he would not have been a professor in an
Eastern university. Now that the steel girdles of environment were
stricken off it appeared that the youthful heart of him stimulated new
growth. As for heredity, environment's collaborator, both he and
Barbee were lineal descendants of father Adam and mother Eve. But, be
the explanation where it may, 'the everlasting miracle' was the same,
and the 'old sport' beamed as he would not have done had the University
of Edinburgh bestowed upon him a new degree.
'Let's frolic a few,' suggested Barbee, with a sidelong glance.
'I have some business to attend to,' said Longstreet eagerly. 'I'll
hurry through with it. Then--then I assure you that I shall be glad to
witness with you the--the gaiety of the--of the places of amusement
here.'
He explained what his business was.
'You stop at the store, then,' said Barbee. 'Tell Mexico Pete to have
your grub and truck ready; I'll mosey on up to the saloon and scare up
Tod and tell him about the team. I'll wait for you up there. And,
since we ain't got all night, suppose you shake a foot, pardner.'
When a few minutes later Longstreet reached the adobe saloon of 'Tonio
Moraga, he found Yellow Barbee smoking a cigarette outside the deep-set
door.
'Kind of quiet,' apologized the young fellow. 'But we'll look 'em
over.'
He struck the door open with his shoulder and Longstreet followed him
into a big room sufficiently well lighted by a couple of hanging
kerosene lamps. At one side was an ancient, battered bar; behind the
bar a lazy Mexican in shirt sleeves; at one end Tod Barstow pouring the
cool contents of a pint bottle of some pinkish beverage directly from
the throat of the bottle into his own throat; lounging idly in chairs
of various interesting stages of dilapidation half a dozen men, all
dark-skinned, black of moustache and hair. Barstow's position
necessitated the fixing of his eyes upon the ceiling; all other
glances, ignoring Barbee, centred upon Longstreet. He was smiling and
eager.
'Come alive, gents!' called Barbee genially. 'Stack up alongside the
bar and I'll buy! Moraga,' to the bartender, 'you know me. I got a
real bad case of alkali throat. Roll up, boys!--Say, wait a minute.
Moraga, meet my friend Longstreet.' Moraga showed many large white
teeth in a friendly smile and gave into Longstreet's keeping a small,
moist and very flabby hand. The other men, silently accepting the
invitation, came forward; Barbee introduced them all. Longstreet's was
the emotion of one being initiated into a new fraternity.
They named their poison, in the parlance of the neighbourhood, and
stood to their glasses like so many valiant gunners. Longstreet, big
enough in his views of humanity, to look upon them as so many boyish
souls, beamed. Then he noted that they seemed to be waiting for
something, wondered what it might be, glanced over his shoulder, looked
back at them and understood. They were waiting for him. So he said
hastily, and in their own phrase:
'Same thing.'
Which, of course, brought down to his place on the bar a small glass
and a large bottle. He had never done a thing like this in all the
calm days of his existence, but now the deed came naturally enough. He
poured his glass and even echoed the other remarks of 'Here's how.'
When the fiery liquor arrived in his stomachical regions he realized
with perfect clarity that it was without doubt some newly invented
substitute for whisky; perhaps that jackass-brandy which he had heard
of. His emotion was twofold: he was glad that Helen was at the hotel
and he was determined not to repeat the dose.
'That's the goods,' said Longstreet jocularly, trying to smack his lips.
Barbee led the way to the nearest table and out of the nowhere brought
into the here a deck of cards. Longstreet was on the verge of
applauding when he noted that every one else accepted the act as a
matter of fact, and subsided into himself and into a chair at the same
moment.
'Who'll make it four-cornered?' demanded Barbee. 'Short, but lively
while she lasts. Little old game, name of stud horse?'
Two of the Mexicans, having hesitated and then looked to Barbee, came
forward and deposited themselves carelessly in the two chairs. Barbee
shuffled, cut, shuffled again and put the cards down.
'Cut for deal,' he ordered.
When each of the other men had leaned forward and lifted a sheaf of
cards, Longstreet divided the remainder. The deal went to Barbee. And
what is more, Longstreet understood why; Barbee showed the highest
card, a king. Longstreet straightened in his chair and his interest
grew; he went over in mind what he had learned at the ranch. A pair
beats a stiff, two pair beat a pair, threes beat two pair and so on.
It was simplicity itself and here was he, Professor Edward Longstreet,
measuring his judgment against that of Mexican Mendoza, Mexican Chavez
and Yellow Barbee, cowpuncher. Ready from the flip of the first card
to concede that these gentlemen had had a rather wider experience with
card-playing, none the less he realized the superiority of his
mentality, his greater intellectual training, and fully expected
something more than just an 'even break.' He concealed the faces of
his cards cannily and gave his scholarly brain entirely to a pleasant
task in mathematics.
Through many years of training he was familiar with abstruse problems;
hence it may be forgiven him, if, at first blush, this form of poker
appeared simplicity itself. He reasoned thus: There were fifty-two
cards in the full deck; there were exactly four, neither more nor less,
of each ace, deuce, trey and so forth until one got to the king; there
were, also, just four men drawing cards; each man, if he played his
hand out, could draw five cards. All of this was data; it seemed as
though he had _x_ and _y_ given and was merely to find _z_. His eye,
as the game began, registered zest.
He remembered former instructions: Each man's first card, dealt face
down, was to remain face down until the hand was played out; the owner
of that first card, and no other man, had the right to turn up the
corner and discover what it was. So when Barbee tossed his card to
him, Longstreet wasted no time in peeking at it. It was the ace of
clubs; not a better card in the deck! He lifted his face and beamed;
it was a good start. And this time the emotion registered in his frank
eye was that of a guileless old gentleman who has an ace in the hole.
There was no misreading that triumphant gleam.
Again the cards fell gently from Barbee's practised hand, each of the
four faces up this time. Longstreet's was a king; he nodded his
acceptance and approval. All of the time his brain was busied with his
developing theory of chances: there were four aces, four kings in the
deck, and he already had one of each. There were four players in all;
there were fifty-two cards; it was unlikely that in this hand another
king should turn up. And no other king did; he had the high card. He
smiled warmly.
'The high card bets,' drawled Barbee.
'Oh!' exclaimed Longstreet. 'Yes, to be sure. Let me see.'
His sparkling eye roved about the table. Barbee's exposed card was a
jack, one of the Mexicans had a ten and the other a four. Longstreet
felt both warmed with triumph and yet a little sorry for them. So he
did the kind thing by them and bet only a dollar. The two Mexicans
lifted their brows at him, looked to Barbee, and then with a splendid
show of nonchalance both came in. Barbee chinked his silver dollar
down upon the others and dealt the third card. Longstreet waited
breathlessly.
This time there came to him another king, the king of spades, and his
little exclamation of genuine delight was a pretty thing to hear. But
the next second a look of frowning incredulity overspread his features;
the king of hearts fell to Chavez and the king of diamonds to Mendoza.
Barbee gave himself an ace. But it was not the ace that interested
Longstreet; his newly-born theory of chances was a trifle upset. That
three kings, when there were only three left in the deck, should come
one on the heels of another was a matter for reflection. But evidently
there was no time granted for readjustment of preconceived ideas.
'Longstreet's the only man with a pair in sight,' said Barbee. 'It's
your bet again, Longstreet.'
Longstreet hurriedly bet a dollar. Chavez, with a king and ten in
view, raised the bet four dollars. Mendoza withdrew his hand and his
attention and began rolling a cigarette, never once taking his eyes
from Longstreet's eager face. Barbee tossed in his five dollars, and
Longstreet was brought to realize that if he wished to remain in the
game it was in order for him to add another four dollars to his bet.
He did so without a moment's hesitation. And again he began his search
of the deathless underlying mathematical law of the game of stud poker.
Meanwhile Barbee dealt the fourth card. When the fates had it that a
second ace fell to Longstreet's lot they should have been amply repaid
by the glowing smile that widened his good-humoured mouth. He now had,
and he realized to the full his strategic position in that no one else
could have his secret knowledge, a pair of kings _and_ a pair of aces.
The two biggest pairs in the deck! He looked with renewed interest at
the other cards. Chavez now had two tens exposed; before Barbee lay no
pair at all, just a jack, an ace and a five. There was but one more
card to be dealt. He could therefore count Barbee out of the running.
It remained to him and Chavez, and Chavez had only a pair of tens in
sight.
'Your bet again, Longstreet,' Barbee reminded him. He started and bet
his dollar. Chavez repeated his earlier performance and raised the bet
four dollars. Barbee tossed away his cards; Longstreet noted the act
triumphantly, and nodded in the manner of a father approving the wise
act of a young untried son.
'What you do, _señor_?' asked the Mexican. Longstreet withdrew his
eyes from Barbee and gave his attention to his antagonist, a half-bred
Mexican of low-grade mentality who was offering a duel of wits! He bet
the requisite four dollars.
And now from Barbee's fingers came the last cards, one for Longstreet
and one for Chavez. Longstreet drew a queen and went into the silence
of deep meditation; to Chavez came a lowly seven. Longstreet needed no
prompting that it was time to bet; further he understood that this was
the last round, the final opportunity. He did not wait for the
customary raise of Chavez, but slipped five dollars into the pot and
sat back, beaming.
Nor did the Mexican hesitate. He pushed out to the centre of the table
with slow brown fingers two twenty-dollar gold pieces.
'You--you raise me?' asked Longstreet.
'_Si, señor_. Tirty-fife _pesos mas_.'
Longstreet curbed a desire to warn the man, to insist that he
reconsider. But in the end he kept his own counsel and made his
complementary bet of thirty-five dollars.
'Call you,' he said quite in his best form.
The Mexican extracted from the bottom of his cards the first one dealt
him face down and flipped it over carelessly. It was a ten; he had
three tens, and the professor's extremely handsome pairs of aces and
kings were as nothing. The Mexican's brown fingers drew the winnings
in toward him, Longstreet's fifty-one dollars among them. Longstreet
stared at him and at Barbee and at the treacherous cards themselves in
sheer bewilderment.
It was not that he was shocked at the loss of a rather large sum of
money in his present circumstances; his brain did not focus on the
point. He was trying to see in what his advance theories had
miscarried. For certainly it had seemed extremely unlikely that Chavez
would have had three tens. Why, there were only four tens in the deck
of fifty-two, there were four men playing, there remained in the deck,
untouched, thirty-two cards----
'Deal 'em up,' said Barbee. 'Your deal, old boy.'
'It lies entirely within the scope of conservative probability,' said
Longstreet blandly, his eyes carrying the look of a man who in spirit
is far away from his physical environment, 'that, after all, my data
were not sufficient.'
'Talking to me?' said Barbee. He made a playful show of looking over
his shoulder to the invisible recipient of Longstreet's confidences; at
the moment a door behind him opened and a new face did actually appear.
Barbee's glance grew into a stare of surprise. Then he turned square
about in his chair again and snapped out: 'Deal, can't you?' Longstreet
saw that the boy's face was red; that his eyes burned malignantly.
'Hello, Barbee,' said the man in the newly opened door. He came fully
into the room and closed the door after him.
'Hello, Courtot,' answered Barbee colourlessly.
With an effort Longstreet had withdrawn his analytic faculties from the
consideration of the recent problem that had been solved for him by the
cards themselves; now he was busied with collecting them, arranging
them and getting ready to shuffle. Among the amused eyes watching him
he was conscious of a pair of eyes that were not simply amused, the
eyes of Jim Courtot. He looked up and took stock of the new-comer,
impelled to something more exhaustive than a superficial interest by
that intangible but potent thing termed personality. This man who had
entered the room in familiar fashion through a back door and a rear
room, was of the magnetic order; were he silent in a gathering of
talking men he must have been none the less a conspicuous figure. And
not because of any unusual saliency of physical attributes; rather for
that emanation of personality which is like electricity--which,
perhaps, is electricity.
He was tall, thin, very dark; his eyes were of beady blackness; he
affected the sombre in garb from black hat and dark shirt to darker
trousers and black boots. His face was clean-shaven; maybe he had just
now been shaving in the rear room. His age might have lain anywhere
between thirty-five and fifty. There are men like Jim Courtot, of dark
visages and impenetrable eyes, thin and sallow men, upon whom the
passing years appear to work all of their havoc early and then be like
vicious stinging things deprived of their stings.
'For God's sake!' spoke up Barbee, querulously and nervously. 'Are you
going to shuffle all the spots off? Come alive, Longstreet.'
Longstreet allowed Barbee to cut and began dealing. Jim Courtot, his
step quick but strangely noiseless, came to the table. His eyes were
for Barbee as he said quietly:
'Just a little game for fun? Any objection if I kick in?'
Barbee frowned. Further, he hesitated--and hesitation played but a
small part in El Joven's make-up. Finally he evaded.
'Where've you been all this long time, Courtot?' he asked sullenly.
'The biggest game of six years was pulled off down in Poco Poco last
week and you wasn't there. I heard a man say you must be dead.'
Courtot considered him gravely. Longstreet regarded the man,
fascinated. He did not believe that the man knew how to smile. To
imagine Jim Courtot laughing was to fancy a statue laughing.
'When there's a big game pulled off and I'm not there, kid,' he
answered when he was good and ready to answer, 'it's because there's a
bigger game somewhere else. And I'm heeled to play in your little game
if you think you're man enough to take me on.'
Barbee snarled at him.
'Damn you,' he said savagely.
Jim Courtot drew up his chair and sat down. There was a strange sort
of swiftness and precision in the man's smallest acts. Now he brought
from his hip pocket a handful of loose coins and set the heap on the
table before him. For the most part the coins were gold; he stood
ready to put into play several hundred dollars.
'Heeled, kid,' he repeated. The voice was as nearly dead and
expressionless as a human voice can be; only the words themselves
carried his insolence. 'Please, can I play in your game?'
To Barbee's youth it was plain challenge and, though he hated the man
with his whole soul, Barbee's youth answered hotly:
'I'll take you on, Jim Courtot, any day.'
Thereafter Courtot ignored Barbee. He turned to Longstreet and watched
him deal five cards face down. Then he appeared to lose interest in
everything saving his own hand. Longstreet dealt the second five
cards, faces up. They fell in the order of nine, four, jack, ace and,
to himself, a seven. He did not believe that the new player had seen
any but his own card. Barbee, to whose lot the ace had fallen, placed
his bet. There was bright bitter challenge in his eyes as he stared
across the table at Courtot.
'Ten bucks to start her off,' he said shortly.
Longstreet had supposed it customary to begin with a dollar; in his
mind, however, there was little difference between one and ten.
Therefore he made no remark and placed his own money in the pot. The
two Mexicans tossed their cards away. Courtot, looking at no one, and
without speaking, came in. Longstreet dealt a second round. Now
Courtot had two fours in sight; Barbee had two aces; Longstreet a king
and a seven exposed, but also a king hidden. When Barbee said, 'Twenty
bucks to play,' and said it viciously with a jeering stare at Courtot,
Longstreet began counting out his money. But before he had completed
the slow process the street door opened.
It was Alan Howard. He stood a moment on the threshold, his look one
of sheer amazement. He had come looking for Professor James Edward
Longstreet, eminent authority upon certain geological subjects. Had
anyone told him that he would find his man playing stud poker with
Barbee and two Mexicans and Jim Courtot----
'Barbee!' he cried out angrily, coming on swiftly until he stood over
the table. 'What in hell's name do you mean by steering Longstreet
into a mess like this?'
'What do _you_ mean?' retorted Barbee hotly. 'What business is it of
yours?'
'I mean Jim Courtot,' cut in Howard shortly. 'You know better than to
drag any friend of mine into a game with him.'
Courtot appeared calm and unconcerned.
'The bet's made, gents,' he said briefly. 'Coming in, Longstreet?'
Longstreet looked confused. Before he could frame his answer, Howard
made it for him. And he directed it straight to Courtot.
'I haven't had time to tell Mr. Longstreet about all of the undesirable
citizens hereabouts,' he announced steadily. 'No, he's not coming in.'
'I imagine you'll spill an earful when you get going, Alan,' said
Courtot. 'I'd like to listen in on it.'
Straightway the two Mexicans rose and left the table. Barbee, though
he scorned to do so, pushed his chair back a little and kept his eyes
upon the faces of the two men. Longstreet went from confusion to
bewilderment. Howard considered the matter briefly; then, watching Jim
Courtot while he spoke, he said crisply:
'Mr. Longstreet, you should get acquainted a bit before you play cards
out here. Jim Courtot there, who plans to rob you the shortest way, is
a crook, a thief, a dirty liar and a treacherous man-killer. He's
rotten all the way through.'
A man does not fire a fuse without expecting the explosion. On the
instant that Jim Courtot's hand left his pile of coins, Alan Howard's
boots left the floor. The cattleman threw himself forward and across
the table almost with his last word. Courtot came up from his chair, a
short-barrelled revolver in his hand. But, before he was well on his
feet, before the short barrel had made its required brief arc, Howard's
blow landed. With all of his force, with all of the weight of his
body, he struck Jim Courtot square upon the chin. Courtot went over
backwards, spilling out of the chair that crumpled and snapped and
broke to pieces; his gun flew wide across the room. Howard's impetus
carried him on across the table so that he too fell, and across the
body of the man he had struck. But when Alan got to his feet, Jim
Courtot lay still and unconscious. And, for one, Longstreet thought
that he had seen manslaughter done; the man's look was of death.
Howard picked up his hat and then what few of the scattered coins he
judged were Longstreet's. Then he took the gaping little man by the
arm and led him to the door.
'Miss Helen wanted you,' he said as they passed outside.
'Did you kill him?' Longstreet was shuddering.
'No,' was the cool answer. 'But it looks as if I'd have to some day.
Better not say anything about this to Miss Helen.'
'Good heavens, no!' ejaculated Longstreet. 'Not a word!'