LUCK TURNS
Before the advent of the tin-horns, who invaded the Yukon at the time of
the big rush, a "limit" in a poker game was a thing unknown. "Table
stakes" did not exist, nor did a man mention the amount he stood to lose
when he sat in a game. When a player took his seat it was understood
that he stood good for all he possessed of property, whatever or
wherever it might be. If the play on any hand ran beyond his "pile" all
he had to do was to announce the fact and the other players would either
draw down to it, or if they wished to continue the play, the pot,
including the amount of the "short" player's last bet was pushed aside
until the last call was made, the "short" player only participating in
the portion of the pot so set aside. If, in the final show-down his hand
was the highest he raked in this pot and the next high hand collected
the subsequent bets.
Stud poker was the play most favored by Brent, and when he sat in a game
the table soon became rimmed with spectators. Other games would break
up that the players might look on, and they were generally rewarded by
seeing plenty of action. It was Brent's custom to trail along for a
dozen hands or more, simply calling moderate bets on good hands, or
turning down his cards at the second or third card. Then, suddenly, he
would shove out an enormous bet, preferably raising a pair when his own
hand showed nothing. If this happened on the second or third card dealt
it invariably gave the other players pause, for they knew that each
succeeding bet would be higher than the first, and that if they stayed
for the final call they would stand to lose heavily if not be actually
wiped out. But they knew also that the bet was as apt to be made on
nothing as on a good hand, and should they drop out they must pass up
the opportunity to make a killing. Another whim of Brent's was always to
expose his hole card after the play, a trick that aggravated his
opponents as much as it amused the spectators.
The result was that many players had fallen into the habit of dropping
out of a game when Ace-In-The-Hole sat in--not because they disliked him
personally, but because, as they openly admitted, they were afraid of
his play. Many of these spent hours watching his cards. Not a man among
them but knew that he was as square as a die, but every man among them
knew that his phenomenal luck must sometime desert him, and when that
time came they intended to be in at the killing. For only Brent himself
believed that his luck would hold--believed it was as much a part of
himself as the color of his hair or his eyes.
Among those who refused to play was Johnny Claw, from whom Brent had won
ten thousand dollars a month before on three successive hands--two cold
bluffs, and a club in the hole with four clubs showing, against Claw's
king in the hole with two kings showing. Unlike the others who had lost
to him, Claw nursed a bitter and secret hatred for him, and he
determined that when luck did turn he would profit to the limit of his
pile.
Johnnie Claw was one of the few old timers whom men distrusted. He was a
squaw-man who had trapped and traded in the country as far back as any
man could remember. With the coming of more white men, and the
establishment of saloons along the river, Claw had ceased his trapping,
and had confined his trading to the illicit peddling of hooch, for the
most part among the Indians of the interior, and to that uglier, but
more profitable traffic that filled the brothels and the dance halls of
the Yukon with painted women from the "outside." So Claw moved among his
compeers as a man despised, yet accepted, because he was of the North,
and of the civilization thereof a component part.
Brent's luck held until the night before Thanksgiving, then the
inevitable happened--he began to lose. At the roulette wheel and the
faro table he lost twenty-five thousand dollars, and later, in a game
of stud, he dropped one hundred thousand more. The loss did not worry
him any, he drank a little more than usual during the play, and his
plunges came a little more frequently, but the cards were not falling
his way, and when they did fall, he almost invariably ran them up
against a stronger hand.
Rumor that the luck of Ace-In-The-Hole had changed at last spread
rapidly through the camp, and late in the afternoon of Thanksgiving day,
when the play was resumed, spectators crowded the table ten deep. Men
estimated Brent's winnings at anywhere from one to five millions and
there was an electric thrill in the air as the players settled
themselves in their chairs and counted their stacks of chips. The game
was limited to eight players, and Camillo Bill Waters arriving too late
to be included, promptly bought the seat of a prospector named Troy,
paying therefor twenty-thousand dollars in dust. "We're after yer hide,"
he grinned good-naturedly at Brent, "an' I'm backin' the hunch that
we're a-goin' to hang it on the fence this day."
"Come and get it!" laughed Brent. "But I'll give you fair warning that I
wear it tight and before you rip it off someone's going to get hurt."
Cards in hand he glanced at the tense faces around the board. "I've got
a hunch that this game is going to make history on the Yukon," he
smiled, "And it better be opened formally with a good stiff round of
drinks." While they waited for the liquor his eye fell upon the face of
Johnny Claw, who sat at the table, the second man from his right. "I
thought you wouldn't sit in a game with me," he said, truculently.
"An' I wouldn't, neither, while yer luck was runnin'--but, it's
different, now. Yer luck's busted--an' you'll be busted. An' I'm right
here to git my money back, an' some of yourn along with it."
Brent laughed: "You won't be in the game an hour, Claw. I don't like
you, and I don't like your business, and the best thing you can do is to
cash in right now before the game starts."
A moment of tense silence followed Brent's words, for among the men of
the Yukon, open insult must be wiped out in blood. But Claw made no move
except to reach out and finger a stack of chips, while men shot sidewise
glances into each other's faces. The stack of chips rattled upon the
cloth under the play of his nervous fingers, and Kitty, who had taken
her position directly behind Brent with a small slippered foot upon a
rung of his chair, tittered. Claw took his cue from the sound and
laughed loudly: "I'll play my cards, an' you play yourn, an' I'll do my
cashin' in later," he answered. "An' here's the drinks, so le's liquor
an' git to goin'." He downed his whiskey at a gulp, the bartender
removed the empty glasses, and the big game was on.
The play ran rather cautiously at first, even more cautiously than
usual. But there was an unwonted tenseness in the atmosphere. Each man
had bought ten thousand dollars worth of chips, with the white chips at
one hundred dollars, the reds at five hundred, and blues at a
thousand--and each man knew that his stack was only a shoestring.
After five or six deals Camillo Bill, who sat directly across the table
from Brent tossed in a red chip on his third card which was a queen.
Claw stayed, the next man folded, and Brent, who showed a seven and a
nine-spot raised a thousand. The others dropped, and Camillo Bill saw
the raise. Claw, whose exposed cards were a ten-spot and a jack,
hesitated for a moment and tossed in a blue chip. Camillo Bill's next
card was an ace, Claw paired his jack and Brent drew a six-spot. With a
grin at Brent, Claw pushed in a blue chip, and without hesitation Brent
dropped in four blue ones, raising Claw three thousand. Camillo Bill
studied the cards, tilted his hole card and glanced at its corner, and
raised Brent two thousand. Claw, also surveyed the cards:
"Yer holdin' a four-straight damn high," he snarled at Brent, "but I've
got mine--my pair of jacks has got anything you've got beat, an' Camillo
hain't got no pair of queens or he'd of boosted yer other bet. I'd ort
to raise, but I'll jest stay." And he dropped five blue chips into the
pot. Camillo Bill paired his ace with the last card, Claw drew a deuce,
and Brent a ten spot. Camillo Bill bet a white chip, Claw stared at
Brent's cards for a few moments and merely called, and Brent laughed:
"Here's your white chip, Bill, and I'll just lift it ten thousand--I'm
that much light in the pot for a minute."
Camillo Bill called after a moment's deliberation, and Claw sat staring
at the pot. He had just two blue chips left before him. "I ain't got ten
thousan'," he whined, "I figger I've got about five thousan' outside
this here stack, an' if I call fer that an' lose I'm busted flat." His
hand pushed the two blue chips toward the pot, hesitated, and was
quickly withdrawn. "Damned if I do!" he snarled, "My jacks-up ain't
worth it--not agin luck like yourn." He turned over his hole card which
was a deuce, and again Brent laughed and flipped his hole card over. It
was the king of spades.
"I haven't got a damned thing, and I never did have. What have you got
buried, Bill, another ace?"
Camillo Bill grinned and shook his head: "Nope, my down card's a king,
too. All I got is them pair of aces. Where's yer guts, Claw?"
Claw glared at Brent as the latter bought a new stack of chips,
scribbled an I.O.U. for ten thousand upon a scrap of paper, and tossed
it across to Camillo Bill. Then clutching his two chips he rose from the
table: "You jest done that to git me!" he growled, "I ain't got no show
in this game--if you can't beat me yerself you'll run me up agin a
better hand till I'm busted, if you lose money doin' it!"
"You've got it doped right, Claw," said Brent, evenly. "I told you you
wouldn't last an hour, and if you'd have listened to me you'd have been
eight thousand better off. Your hour isn't up yet, we've got plenty of
time to get the rest of it."
"You'll raise hell gittin' the rest of it!" muttered the man, and as he
walked toward the bar, Troy, who had sold his seat to Camillo Bill,
slipped into the vacated chair.
The incident served to liven the game up, and thereafter red and blue
chips outnumbered the white ones in nearly every pot.
There was no thought of stopping for supper, and when the game broke up
long past midnight Brent had lost three hundred thousand dollars. He
turned to Kitty, who had never left her post at the back of his chair:
"Come on, girl, let's go find something to eat and some fuzzy water," he
smiled. "They sure had my number, tonight, but I'll go after them
tomorrow."
Brent ordered and drank three glasses of whiskey, while waiting for the
meal to be served, and after it was over, the girl leaned back in her
chair and studied him as she sipped her champagne.
"You're different than you were a year ago," she said.
Brent laughed: "Sure, I was a poor man, then----"
The girl straightened in her chair and interrupted him abruptly, "And
you'll never amount to a _damn_ until you're a poor man again!" she
exclaimed, with such feeling that Brent stared at her in surprise.
"What! What do you mean?"
"I mean just what I said. A year ago you were _some man_. Folks say
you're a mining engineer--educated in a college. What are you now?
You're a gam., that's what you are, and the hooch is putting its mark on
you, too--and it's a shame."
"What in the world is the matter with you, Kitty?" The man stared at her
in surprise, "The hooch don't hurt me any--and I only play for the fun
of the game----"
"No you don't! You play because its got into your blood, and you can't
help playing. And you'll keep on playing till you're busted and it'll be
a good thing when you are! Your luck has changed now, and they'll get
you."
"I'm still playing on their money," retorted Brent a little nettled at
the girl's attack. "If they clean me out, all right. They'll only win
the half million I took out of my two claims--the rest of it I took away
from them. Anyway, whose business is it?" he asked sullenly.
"It ain't nobody's business, but yours. I--I wish to God it was mine.
Everybody knows the hooch is getting you--and that is just what they all
say--it's a shame--but it's his own business. I'm the only one that
could say anything to you, and I'm--I'm sorry I did."
"They're right--it's my business, and no one else's. If they think I'm
so damned far gone let them come and get my pile--I'll still have the
claims, and I'll go out and bring in another stake and go after them
harder than ever!"
"No you won't--they'll get the claims, too. And you won't have the
nerve, nor the muscles to go out and make another strike. When you once
bust, you'll be a bum--a has-been--_right_."
"I suppose," sneered Brent, thoroughly angry now: "that I should marry
you and hit out for the claim so we could keep what's left in the
family--and you'd be the family."
The girl laughed, a trifle hysterically: "No--I wouldn't marry you on a
bet--now. I was foolish enough to think of it, once--but not now. I've
done some thinking since that night you tossed that sack of dust on the
board. If you married me and did go back to where you were--if you quit
the cards and the hooch and got down to be what you ought to be--where
would I stand? Who am I, and what am I? You would stick by your
bargain--but you wouldn't want me. You could never go back outside--with
_me_. And if you wouldn't quit the cards and the hooch, I wouldn't have
_you_--not like you are now--flabby, and muddy-eyed, an' your breath so
heavy with rot-gut you could light it with a match. No, that dream's
busted and inside of a week you'll be busted, too." Setting down her
glass the girl quitted the table abruptly, leaving Brent to finish the
bottle of champagne alone, after which he sauntered down to Cuter
Malone's "Klondike Palace" and made a night of it, drinking and dancing.
The week that followed was a week of almost unbroken losses for Brent.
In vain, he plunged, betting his cards more wildly, and more recklessly
than ever before, in an effort to force his luck. But it only hastened
the end, which came about midnight upon the Thursday following
Thanksgiving Day, at the moment he looked into the eyes of Camillo Bill
Waters and called a bet of fifty-thousand: "That's good," he announced,
as Bill showed Aces-up. "And that just finishes me--I held the claims at
a million--and that's the last of it."