While waiting for a boat at Donelsville to take me to New Orleans,
I fell in with a fellow who proposed a game of cards to pass the
time until the boat arrived. We went into a saloon and sat down
to play a game of poker. He brought out an old deck of marked
cards (which I recognized the minute I saw them). We began to
play. I knew the fellow took me for a sucker, so I let him play
me with "his cards" until I got a chance to down him, which I did
for all he had, amounting to about $80. About this time some one
announced that a boat was coming, so I proposed to quit, but Mr.
"Gambler" did not want any quit in his, so long as he was loser
and he had a sucker. I knew he had but little (if any) money left,
so I quit and started for the landing. The boat had arrived, and
was just about ready to leave, when an officer stepped up to me
and said, "I have a warrant for your arrest." "The h--l you have!
What have I done?" "You have swindled a gentleman out of his money,
sir," says he. "All right, sir; I will go with you." He took me
before a magistrate and there was the fellow who had played the
marked cards on me. The Justice wanted to know how I had swindled
him. He said: "He put up the cards on me in a game of poker, and
he is a gambler." You ought to have heard that old fellow give it
to me. He said: "How dare you, sir, come in this place and rob
our respectable citizens out of their money? I will teach you a
lesson that you will not soon forget." He was going on in this
strain, when I stopped him by saying, "Hold on, your Honor; I would
like to say a word." "Go on, sir." "Well," says I, "this man
invited me to play a game of poker with him, and when we sat down
to play he brought out this old deck of marked cards on me, and I
happened to know them as well, if not better than he did. He took
me for a sucker, and I beat him at his own game. He calls me a
gambler, but he is much worse; for he attempted to rob me with
those marked cards." "Show me the marks on those cards," said the
Justice; so I walked up and began reading the cards by their backs
to him. He watched me as I read the cards, until I called a ten
spot and turned it over; then he grabbed it up and examined the
back, and said: "Hold on; that will do; this is the same deck
those d----d rascals have been playing on me; for the other night
this ten of hearts fell in the spit, and here is the mark on it
now. They have been swindling me for the last six months." Then
turning to me, he said: "You are dismissed; but I will fine this
rascal $50 and costs, and send him to jail if he does not pay it
immediately." I thanked the Justice for his just decision, and
took the next boat to New Orleans.