There are many occasions when a shrewd man can get in his work on
gamblers, it matters not how smart they are, provided his conduct
is not suspicious, and his ambition so vaulting that when it leaps
it is not lost upon the other side. I shall never forget the trip
I made down the river from Louisville in the good old _ante-bellum_
days. When we reached the mouth of the Cumberland River, Anderson
Waddell, who is now one of Louisville's wealthiest citizens, and
William Cheatham came on board bound for the New Orleans races.
Charles Burns and Edward Ryan, better known to the sporting fraternity
as "Dad Ryan," were along with me. Both Waddell and Cheatham were
gentlemen of good repute in Nashville, and it was not long before
they proposed a game of poker. Burns and Ryan both sat in the
game, and at the time they were unknown to the gentlemen. The wine
flowed freely, and everybody felt very happy, and I resolved it
was about time for me to go to the bar and procure some cards
similar to those they were playing with. It did not take me long
to run up three good hands, and, sitting down by Ryan, I laid the
cold deck in Ryan's lap. It was not long before the cold deck came
up, and then the boys began to bet lively, each getting in a few
hundred. Then Waddell commenced to smell a rat, and turning to
Cheatham, said, "Hold on, Bill, don't go in any deeper, as I think
this deck of cards does not feel as warm as it did a few minutes
ago."
"Oh, no," responded Bill, "I hardly believe there is anything
wrong."
At last they came to a call; then they knew that they had got the
worst of it, yet they never uttered a word or make a kick, and when
we reached New Orleans they confessed that the boys had made suckers
of them. Poor Bill is now dead, and Waddell, who is still living,
would, if asked, laugh and say that he had long ago learned not to
hunt up poker games on steamboats.