real thing--pulled his freight one night and hit the Overland Flyer
for Gotham. His name was Big Ben no longer, for the cards he carried
in his vest pocket read:
BENJAMIN F. VAN BUREN, MINING ENGINEER.
He bought tickets for two at the station, and there is the heart of the
story, as one of the tickets was for Cheyenne Nellie.
The lady in the case is worth a paragraph at the very least, for she
had the reputation of being the best short-card dealer in Texas, and at
a game of bank, whether playing the cards or handling the box, she was
there with the goods and never asked any odds on account of her sex.
She had the long, slim hands of a card player, and if she hadn’t taken
to the pasteboards she might have been a piano player and getting all
kinds of money for hitting up the ivories at swell concerts. She was
soft of voice and soft in manner, and all you had to do to make a lady
out of her was to wrap her in a silk robe and she’d make the horses in
the street turn around and look after her.
On one memorable occasion she went into the smoking car of a Denver
train and calmly lighting a cigarette, smoked it without deigning to
notice the men around her.
The trip was settled in a minute and in this way.
“It’s a long ride, Nell,” observed Ben, “to the place I’m going, and
I’m afraid I’ll get lost or lonely, so if you’ll come along with me
I’ll tog you out like a queen and give you the time of your life. Will
you carry my brand for the trip?”
“How big is your bank roll?” she asked, with an eye to the practical
side of the proposition.
“Twenty-seven hundred, and two thousand to draw on if I lose out.”
“That’s enough for a starter. What are you going to do--short-card ’em
or bank ’em?”
“Anything and everything including stud, and if I get the big bundle
we’ll hike for that place across the big pond where the real games are.
What’s the name of it--I forget now. I had it written down somewhere,
but I guess I’ve lost it. It begins with an M I think, and there was a
fellow at the show the other night who had it in his song about how he
broke the bank there.”
“Oh, you mean Monte Carlo.”
“Yes, that’s it. We’ll go there and I’ll put you up against the game,
for you always were hell when it came to a no-limit play.”
One night stop-over in Chicago to see a show, and then, twenty-four
hours later, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Van Buren, of Portland, Oregon,
registered at the Waldorf-Astoria.
“Kind of like a theatre, ain’t it?” remarked Ben, as they sat in the
palm room after dinner. “Looks like Romeo and Juliet where the gal is
on the gallery and the fellow with the skin-tight pants is asking her
to come down and talk it over.”
Men who are supposed to know say that New York is the loneliest place
in the world, that is, if you don’t know anyone, and that a desert
island is a center of population compared to it if you are not in
right. On the face of it that looks like a good argument, but it is
going to be disproved right here. Go to a big and fashionable hotel and
register, then sit around and be a bit conspicuous, look like ready
money, and above all, easy money, and you’ll draw people like a Jack
rose draws bees. They’ll find you out just as easily as the ferret
gets to the timid rabbit--by going after you--and unless your heart is
covered with callous spots and your pockets are fastened with safety
pins, when you come to count up at night you’ll find you are short a
bit of change. In this world, you know, things are not always what they
seem, and the fellow who looks the wisest and talks the loudest isn’t
the smartest any more than the man with the retreating forehead is the
stupidest. The one with the cranium of a cocoanut may have spent all
of his life developing the instinct of the hunter and the cunning of
the fox, and that queer-shaped thing on top of his shoulders is the
sign which he has hung out and which says as plainly as if the words
were printed on his forehead: “Come on, boys, I’m easy; come and get my
change.” I know all about this and speak from experience, for I used to
sit in a poker game with a Dutchman who looked like a pinhead, and when
the rest of us walked home he used to take a cab, because he had all
the money, and his name was Schneider, too. What do you think of that?
So before a week had gone by, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin F. Van Buren were
nodding and saying “How do you do?” and “Good morning” and “Good
evening” to about twenty or thirty men who made the hotel their
headquarters. Incidentally it was given out that Ben was on here to buy
some machinery for one of his mines in Nevada and that he wouldn’t mind
having a little fun with anything that came along so long as the stakes
were not too big for a man of his modest disposition.
The tip went down the line in the usual channels and then one rainy
night a man who said confidentially that he was a banker suggested that
as there was nothing else to do Mr. Van Buren could, if he felt so
disposed, walk around to his hotel where there were two or three other
good fellows, and they might have a little game of draw.
“None of us want to go into big money, you know,” he said,
apologetically, “for it’s simply a game among friends and it’s about
as good a way to pass the time away as I know of. We don’t, as a rule,
play with strangers, but I guess you’re all right, so come along.”
“Look out for a cold deck, Ben,” whispered Nell as he started; “play
light and close to your skin at the go-off, and it won’t hurt to lose a
little at the start.”
Wherever you go or whatever you do in this world, always take a woman’s
tip--not the tip of every woman of course, but when you find one who
delivers the goods at every jump out of the box and calls the turn on
the case card nine times out of every ten, then be wise and attune your
ears to her siren song, even though the notes seem to be a bit cracked
at first and the cadenzas strike you as being skewed and off the key.
There were five in the game, counting Ben, and up against the wall,
like a new kind of decoration, was a Senegambian, whose business it
was to see that the gentlemen had cigars to smoke and wine to drink
without limit. Between deals they talked about business, how stocks
were selling, what chance there was for a flyer in Steel, and if Depew
intended to resign from the Senate or not. The play was light and
reckless and no one there seemed to care whether he won or lost.
“We play two or three times a week,” explained one to Ben, while the
African was getting a fresh pack, “and I consider poker the greatest
thing in the world to take a man’s mind off his business. Is there
any stock in your mine for sale? I wouldn’t mind taking a block if it
looked right. So this is your first visit here? Well, we’ll try and
make it pleasant for you while you stay, but you must reciprocate if we
ever hit your country. Will you show us some shooting?”
It went that way until Ben got to feeling a little easy in his play
himself. But he couldn’t lose. Everything came his way, including
jackpots, and when the silvery chimes of the clock on the mantel
reminded them that it was one o’clock the play came to an end and the
man from the West cashed in a matter of $72.
“It was only a friendly game, Nell,” he said, when he woke her up
from a sound sleep half an hour later. “They are simply a lot of good
fellows and I couldn’t help winning, but they want revenge to-morrow
night and then I’ll get some real money.”
“Three thousand miles is a good long walk, Ben,” she said, “and that’s
a little tune you want to keep humming to yourself all the time. The
easy marks at cards all died during the time of the big wind and only
the fly guys are left. You’re in a strange barn this trip, so don’t
think that everything you see is hay.”
From playing three nights a week they got down to playing every night,
and Ben always came back with a small winning, but he wasn’t getting
the money he was after and it got on his nerves.
“It’s only chicken feed _I’m_ winning,” he complained to her one night,
“and it just about pays expenses.”
“Well, just you keep your shirt on, for I’m in with some nice old dames
who think they are the real ones at bridge, and I’m thinking of getting
a little of that same kind of feed myself--the real killing will come
later. You never want to be in a hurry about those things, you know,
because if you hurry them it’s all off. Get those fellows to play up in
the room some night so I can look them over and see their style.”
“I’m next to their play all right,” he said, “They’ll stand to lose so
much and no more and there ain’t one of them who would bet a thousand
that he was alive.”
“Invite them up, anyway. You’ve been drinking their booze and smoking
their good cigars long enough. You ought to put up for them once in a
while, and if they are all right you will have a few decent friends,
anyhow.”
That’s how it happened that the play came off in No. 723.
It was the smallest kind of a small and inoffensive game, unmarked by
any incident or episode until one of the men, looking his hand over
with unusual care, remarked in the most casual manner possible:
“If I had the nerve I have a hand here that I would like to bet big on.”
“How big?” asked Ben, taking another look at the cards that had been
dealt to him.
“I don’t know much about poker, but I think a thousand would be about
right to start with.”
“Mine looks worth that much to me,” said Ben, with his face like a
mask.
“I’m game; does a check go?”
Over in one corner of the room, with a novel before her, sat Nell. She
was almost directly opposite Ben, and as he looked up he saw the upper
lid of her left eye droop slowly, recover, and then droop again. He
skinned his cards and looked them carefully over. The pips showed four
kings and an ace, pat. It was worth big money in any four-handed game,
and he knew it.
“Does a check go?” came the query again.
“No, I weaken; I thought I had a better hand. You’ve got me beat from
the start.”
It might be made a long story from this point on, but there is not
room here to tell in detail how half an hour later Nell rose from her
comfortable seat in the armchair in the corner, and walking over to
the table manifested a slight interest in the game, and after one or
two more hands had been dealt, thought she would like to play if the
gentlemen didn’t object, which they didn’t. How she played like any
woman would be expected to play, losing angrily and winning sweetly,
until on one of her deals, Ben found himself in possession of a hand
which only needed the ace to make a royal flush. The limit was raised
before the draw, then taken off altogether, and the money began to pile
itself on the mahogany. Then they drew for cards, and when Ben looked
things over he found in his one card draw the ace that made his hand
good.
“Mine is worth $500,” remarked the player opposite him.
“I’ll kiss mine good-bye,” said Nell, as she dropped her pasteboards in
the discard.
“Raise you $500,” put in Ben, looking at the first bettor.
“Five hundred more,” was the third man’s bid.
“It’s too hot for me,” was the comment of the fourth, as he pushed his
cards away from him.
It was raised in jumps of $500 until there was about $11,000 up, and
Ben had been boosting every raise as fast as it came to him.
Then the call was made and the show-down was worth going miles to see,
for the battle at the finish had narrowed down to Ben and one other.
“Take a check for the next bet?” asked the other.
“No,” came the terse answer.
“Then I’ll have to call you. But I’ve got you beaten!”
For answer Ben spread out his invincibles.
For a moment the silence was painful.
“Are they good?” asked Ben.
“You know damned well they are,” came the answer.
Then Mr. Benjamin Van Buren, mining engineer, of Portland, Ore.,
gathered in the oof in the most leisurely manner possible.
“Now you can buy me that new hat you promised me, can’t you, Ben?” said
Nellie.
“I sure can buy you a dozen hats now if you want them.”
Exactly thirty minutes later three men were lined up against the bar
below.
“You can talk from here to the Coast, if you want to,” said one, “but I
tell you the woman did the trick. Didn’t she deal the cards? I tell you
she short-carded us. She’s a gold mine.”
[Illustration: She had one or two fights on her hands, but she always
won out]
TRAGEDY OF A DANCE
It was just a plain unpretentious flat in New York, the kind that is
rented for about $40 a month. You know the style--four or five rooms
and bath and a narrow little space which is dignified by the name of
private hall, and which is supposed to be the real thing in living
apartments. It was furnished in the way in which anyone would expect,
and an auction sale wouldn’t net more than $50 for everything that was
there.
In the front room sat a man who wasn’t as old as he looked, but whose
apparent age was caused by ten hours a day in an attempt to make a
living for himself. For twenty years he had been ground down by fate,
and at the end of it all he had nothing, and he was in debt to the
world for exactly three score of years.
Now at the last mile post he had come face to face with a tragedy.
In one calloused hand he held a telegram. In the other was the
photograph of a girl--good looking in a way, saucy, blue-eyed and
blonde. It had been taken in theatrical costume and that told half of
the story. The other half was in the telegram.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and read again:
“Your daughter died in the hospital here to-day; please advise as to
the disposition of the remains.”
It bore date of a Southern city, and was signed by the manager of a
barn-storming company of show people.
If you read the newspapers you must have read part of the story. You
will read the rest of it here--the part that wasn’t told, because an
ordinary chorus girl isn’t of sufficient importance to take up more
than a very little space in the prints, unless, of course, she does
something so violently tragic and sensational that she rises above the
common herd and becomes at once a figure of almost national importance,
like the young woman who once tried to shoot a senator, or the one who
danced nude before a select company of young spendthrifts, or the one
who made $50,000 in stocks with the kind assistance of a “gentleman
friend.”
Just four months before, the old man’s daughter had been working in a
big dry goods store--a mill that grinds pretty fine sometimes--and one
day she attracted the attention of a man who was putting a show out on
the Southern tour. He saw talent in her, or at least he thought he did,
but if the truth were to be told he fell in love with her, and came to
the conclusion that she would make a better traveling companion than
anyone he had seen so far--this season. He had a code of morals that
was iron clad, but wouldn’t stand investigating. In his eyes they were
all cattle, and like cattle he graded them.
But this isn’t going to be a moral story, because it is the truth.
If you want morality nowadays you will have to go to fiction, where the
man always marries the girl and they live happily ever after. It sounds
nice and leaves a sweet taste in the mouth, but it is a long cry from
the truth except in a few rare cases.
So here’s the picture, about as commonplace as it can be made.
A girl with visions of the stage, a dream of a life of ease and luxury,
imagining that some day she will be a performer of merit; a violent
hatred of the unending routine of the store, and ready at a moment’s
notice to turn her back on the old man in the flat.
Isn’t that the way?
Bring them into the world, care for them and nurse them. Worry over
their little troubles, deny yourself that they may have more; sacrifice
everything for their happiness, and then at the critical moment when
they might become a comfort instead of a care, presto! along comes a
man with a line of talk that would make a cat on a back yard fence
take to cover, and away they go, saying good-by if they happen to
think of it, and forgetting that there are such things in the world as
obligation or gratitude.
But this isn’t really what I started to say. You see, I have a brother
who is a minister, and I am under the impression that he is teaching me
bad habits--that is, if it is a bad habit to sit down and preach about
a lot of things that are wrong when you would probably do the same
things you condemn in others. It’s a case of don’t do as I do, but do
as I say.
It’s a cinch to tell other people to do the right thing, but it’s
another thing to be on the level yourself.
After that little digression I’ll show you this girl on the road
singing choruses with the bunch, and just a bit swell-headed because
she was in a position to call the manager by his first name. That
didn’t help her with the rest of the crowd any, and they called her
names when they were where she couldn’t hear them, while at the same
time there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t have changed places with her
in a holy minute.
She had one or two fights on her hands, but she always won out.
The manager found out she had a figure that would have been worth a
place in the front row of the merry-merry of Weber and Fields when that
firm was at its best. Here was a chance that a good, clever, astute
fellow like him couldn’t very well overlook, and he proceeded to have
her taught a few dances of the kind that are not sanctioned in polite
society, or even on the stage, or which make any pretence to being
legitimate. He was working on the principle that all is grist that
comes to the mill, and he was also looking ahead.
There are, as a rule, a pretty gay lot of boys in those Southern
towns, and they are not averse to paying a good bit of money for a
show after the show, especially if it is the kind that is forbidden.
If the sensuous dance of the Nautch girl can be imitated in all of its
windings, twistings and quiverings by a shapely American girl whose
disregard for clothing amounts to almost contempt--that is, on certain
occasions--there is enough money to make it an object not only for the
performer but the manager.
“I am going to put you up against a proposition that will make the hit
of your life,” was the way he started it.
“That’s me,” she said; “what is it?”
“Why, do a stunt in the altogether for the sports.” Then he took a
couple of extra puffs at his cigar to keep his nerve up.
“The altogether--what’s that?”
She had an idea what it was, but she wanted to get it straight.
“Oh, it’s all the rage down here--you dance without much clothes on.
All the girls are wild to get some of the money, but there’s nothing
doing with them, for your figure will make them look like a lot of
kippered herrings that’s been smoked for a week. You see, we’re in this
business for the coin, and we might as well get it and get it quick. If
we don’t there’ll be a thousand others after it. It’s a case of take it
or leave it and it’s up to you. How about it?”
He stiffened her up so she was willing to make good. He told her she
had enough curves to make the Venus de Medici look like a barn door,
and that she was a peach with the original bloom on, all of which she
believed because it was pleasant for her to hear, and was getting a bit
stuck on herself. It was a modern case of showing Eve all over again
where the golden apple grew, and inducing her to reach up and get it.
The first trick was to come off at Memphis, Tenn., where a lot of hot
sports wanted something so full of ginger that they would have put ice
on the backs of their necks to keep the temperature down below the 100
mark. A committee of two called on him at the stage entrance, and after
declaring themselves asked him if he had anybody with the outfit who
could make good. After the preliminary skirmish it settled down to a
question of price, and the matter was soon arranged, and half an hour
later Daddy’s girl got the tip that she was expected to be on the job
when the clock struck twelve, with a carriage to and from the hotel as
a compliment to her superb figure.
No good hardened old pelter would have halted at this hurdle, and would
have gone at it with a keen relish, but you must know that this was
the first season out for this girl, and when it came to the time that
she was to let go all that kept her from appearing in the costume that
Mother Eve is supposed to have worn in the Garden of Eden, she promptly
lost her nerve.
“I don’t think I can do this thing, Jim,” she remarked to the manager
as they were leaving the theatre together. “It didn’t seem so bad at
first, but now I don’t quite like the idea of it. I never did anything
like this before, you know.”
“Of course I know,” he answered quickly, “but you want the money, don’t
you? Do you want to be a piker all your life? Why, you’ll get more for
a stunt like this than you can make in a month doing anything else.
Just think of that.”
He was keen enough to see, however, that she was inclined to quit at
any moment, but there was no proposition an old seasoned campaigner
like him couldn’t handle, and when they went into the hotel cafe
together he had framed things up to his own satisfaction.
“I’m going to blow you to a bottle of wine to-night, and while we’re
waiting for it we’ll have a cocktail.”
He figured on dulling her sense of morality with drinks, and he went at
it in the most businesslike manner possible.
Before the wine a cocktail with a cherry, then another cocktail. Three
pints of extra dry, most of which she lapped up simply because it was
champagne and was expensive, and then she was in a mood that was at
once mellow and reckless.
“Come on,” he said, when the last drop had been drained. “Come on, the
wagon is waiting and if you make a hit you won’t need to bother about
those new dresses you wanted last week, for here is where you get next
to a real gold mine. Why, there ain’t a girl in the show that wouldn’t
go to the deuce to get this chance.”
She assented, but through it all she had a hazy idea that it was wrong
and that she ought to back out. But just think of almost three pints
of wine seething and bubbling inside of her while she is trying to
discriminate between right and wrong. I tell you it’s impossible, for
when the corks pop often enough it’s hell let loose, and a girl has to
protect herself in the breakaway every time, with the odds against her.
And now, a big room, carpeted, with palms on pedestals here and there,
giving it an air of luxury, and a platform at one end. Fifty men, young
and old, seated in chairs that were lined up like a regiment were
waiting expectantly. The smoke from many cigars and cigarettes filled
the air, and the monologue man who was trying to interest them with
funny stories knew he was up against it and that he was only filling in
time until the big show should be ready. He told everything he knew,
but never a smile was cracked, and when he came to a finish he walked
off angrily.
The three musicians began a new tune with mournful cadences, but with
a swing that suggested sinuous movements. The two violins wailed out
the minor chords, and the piano trailed the bass. Somewhere from behind
came the sharp snap of a man’s fingers and the lights went down and the
theme of the music was changed.
“The Dance of the Dawn, gentlemen,” came a voice from out of the
darkness and the fifty straightened up in their seats expectantly.
A shape crept out upon the stage and moved in time to the music.
Then the lights gradually began to go up a little at a time until at
last the face and figure of the dancer were visible. She was clad in
transparent gauze, with Turkish trousers and a bolero to match, and her
swayings were artistic and graceful. But there was no reason in them.
They were mechanical and lifeless. She moved by instinct and intuition
and the impression the dance sought to convey was lost. The manager
himself worked the cymbals which punctuated the finish of each measure,
and at the final crash the stage was once more shrouded in darkness.
Lights up and then the second announcement:
“The Dance of Nature.”
That soothing music was born in the brain of a Calcutta idealist who
knew how to put the tip of his finger on the pulse of the senses. Three
second-rate performers ground it out, but with all their mediocrity
they couldn’t kill its charm, even though they dulled it somewhat.
Here was the real thing at last, and fifty pairs of eyes were
glistening in anticipation.
The moment’s wait seemed like an hour, and then a girl’s voice broke
what seemed to be a spell:
“Oh, I can’t, Jim, I can’t.”
“You’ve got to, it’s too late to back out now.”
“I won’t, I tell you, not for anybody.”
The next instant the nude figure of the girl was catapulted out upon
the platform--a figure which dropped to its knees and then tumbled over
on its face and lay there in a quivering heap sobbing violently.
A tall man with snow-white mustache rose slowly from his seat in the
second row. He turned around to face the rest, and then said, as calmly
as if he were in his own house: