_A Poker Game in Abilene, When Abilene Was Bad, in Which a Tenderfoot
Came Near Crossing the "Divide."_
"I had so much luck in a poker game I once sat into that I've never
played draw since," said a civil engineer who helped to build several of
the railroads west of the Missouri. "It happened in Abilene in the
summer of '70. We had then pushed the road about eight miles to the west
of Abilene. You know what Abilene was in '70. Dodge City was then a
camp-meeting grove compared with Abilene. The men belonging to our
construction gangs were a bad enough lot to make it worth any man's
while to go light on them, but they were cooing doves alongside of the
batch of evil devils who had thrown the town of Abilene together in
anticipation of the building of the railroad. Before we got anywhere
near Abilene there was a pretty fair-sized and comfortably-filled
cemetery plotted out near the town. But when we got close enough to
Abilene to make it practicable for our construction men to put in their
spare time there, drinking 'sumac' whisky and playing cards, between
knock-off on Saturday afternoon and jump-in on Monday morning, Joe
Geddes, the pine-box undertaker of Abilene, had more business than he
could handle, working night and day.
"From the time that we got ten miles this side of Abilene until the
rails were set twenty miles the other side of it, we lost construction
men so fast that the road's employing agents in Leavenworth and Kansas
City had trouble in filling their places. Every Monday morning there was
a round-up of the dead and wounded in the whitewashed calaboose and
hospital in Abilene that reminded the ex-soldier surveyors who were with
me of their war experiences. The construction men got the worst of it,
of course. While they were game enough men, their weapons were their
fists, their knives, and sometimes their picks. But they were not up to
the science of fine gun work, whereas the Abileneites, composed chiefly
of left-over cowboys from the great Texas cattle-trail, whisky-dishers
from the slumped Colorado mining camps, and tin-horners and desperadoes
from everywhere, all knew how to pump lead like lathers spitting nails.
"Although a pretty young man at that time, I was in charge of the
surveyors' gang. Most of the men in my gang were experienced, taciturn
chaps. The experiences they had picked up in bad towns along other
Western lines they had helped to map out had taught them the sense of
steering clear of such towns and of sticking to their tents. I don't
suppose that a man of my gang walked through the streets of Abilene when
we brought the road there--not because they were in any sense cowardly,
but because they had learned in the course of years of frontiering that
trouble, and a whole lot of it, often overtakes men who are least in
search of it in towns like Abilene.
"These old-timers tried to talk me out of my determination to have a
look around in the town where so many of the men of the construction
gangs were being killed off--for I wanted to see what thorough
out-and-out bad men looked like. They told me that if I ever wanted to
see my folks back East any more I'd better not do any monkeying around
in Abilene. But I knew it all in those days, and so, without letting any
of the men in my gang know anything about it, I slipped over to the
chainmen's tents one night and roped in a couple of them to handcar me
down to Abilene. When we reached the town I sent the chainmen back with
the handcar, telling them to return for me in the morning.
"Abilene rather surprised me at first. I at least expected to have my
hat shot off a few times in the course of an hour's rambling around,
and, in fact, I was prepared to do a little impromptu dancing for the
edification of Abileneites, who enjoyed toying with strangers. Nothing
of the sort happened. Instead, the fellows hanging around the whisky
mills and the brace faro layouts good-naturedly took me in hand and
started in to give me a good time. I was a breezy young chap, you see,
and able to hold my own in any public exhibition of the swelled head I
unquestionably possessed at that time. Anyhow, things had not thoroughly
warmed up for the night when I fell in with the gang early in the
evening. It all looked so smooth and easy, and the heavy-artilleried
chaps that I ran into seemed so square and peaceable that I drank a good
deal more sagebrush whisky than I had any right to drink or than I had
ever drank before.
"Around about midnight five of us, including Jim Cathcart, a bad man who
was hanged a few years later for the murder of a Sheriff in Texas,
pulled up at Toole Kingsley's 'Kansas or Bust' saloon and faro bank. The
three other fellows I was with were outlawed cowboys, although I didn't
know it then, and even if I had it wouldn't have made any difference in
the shape I was in. Cathcart suggested a game of draw. He had probably
noticed my good-sized wad of money, and I guess he reckoned on getting
it. I didn't have any more sense than to agree, and, the other three
chaps being willing, of course, we went up to the second floor of
Kingsley's rum and faro honkatonk and waded in. When Cathcart suggested
the game I noticed that a tall, broad-shouldered, very muscular-looking
man, with long hair and a heavy mustache, who was standing with his back
to the bar, eyed us pretty carefully, and at the time I rather wondered
what he meant by it, though I forgot all about him five minutes later in
the intensity of the game.
"'Intense' is not the word to describe that game of poker. I had been
plugging along at the game of draw more or less ever since I was a
growing lad, and after I had begun to shoulder an azimuth I had been an
onlooker at some mighty queer games. But I never saw cards run the way
they did that night. I was just about a fair to middling poker player;
certainly nothing extra, although I was deft of hand and knew how to
riffle cards in a way to bluff fellows not acquainted with my
comparative inferiority as a poker player into the belief that I was
some pumpkins with the pasteboards. But, second-rate player as I was,
and something over two parts loaded as I was, besides, in common with my
four fellow-players, the luck that I had from the very beginning of the
game was positively miraculous. None of the other men had a
half-skilletful of luck. It all came my way. It was embarrassing for a
while, but later on it became dangerous; for I was a total stranger to
these four men and a good deal oilier in manners and speech than they--a
thing that was likely to excite suspicion in towns like Abilene in those
days, especially in the minds of men steadily losing in a game of draw.
"Every man of the four persisted in giving me such massive hands to play
against the utterly no-account hands they dished out to themselves that
I didn't know what to make of it. All four of them were reasonably good
poker players, but they were none of them short-carders--able to stack a
deck; and I had certainly never sat into a squarer game of draw. But my
own luck was absolutely magical. Pat hands were given to me about as
often as pairs were served out to the other fellows. Every time this
happened, and one or more of my opponents determined to find out if I
was bluffing on my pats, I laid down the hands with a little fear
growing within me; for after we had been playing for an hour or so I
noticed all four of 'em snatching glances at me out of the tails of
their eyes.
"After I had continued whacking all four of them pretty hard on their
own deals (rarely dealing myself a hand worth anything) for a couple of
hours, the luck took a peculiar switch, although it stayed with me. I
began to get nothing whatever on the deals of the other fellows, but on
my own deals I fed myself hands that actually smelt of brimstone, they
were so weird and inexplicable. One time I got four eights pat on my own
deal. I drew a card to give the impression that I was either drawing to
two pairs or bobbing to a straight or flush, and won a corking pot. I
was given some bad looks for this. Ten minutes later, when it was my
deal, I was kind enough to give myself a pat full, kings up on sevens,
and, the whole four staying, I rapped them again with all my might,
although the chill of fear was creeping over, in spite of the copious
quantities of fiery red liquor I was getting outside of along with the
others. Once the luck veered around this way, it seemed as if I never
got as much as ten high when the other fellows dealt. So the only thing
I could do was to drop my hands and stay out on their deals. They were
quick to notice this, and it didn't improve my situation any, either.
"This extraordinary luck jumped me on my own deal only once after I had
caught and played those two self-dealt pat hands for all they were
worth. The result was that I was out of the game for quite a little
while, none of the other men serving me with hands fit to draw to.
Meanwhile the four of them played listlessly with me out of it, for I
had a good deal of the money of each, and they wanted it back. I think
all four of them had fully decided in their own minds by this time that
I was crooked and were only waiting for a chance to nail me.
"I had the buck when it came my turn to deal again, and so it was a
jackpot. I was wishing myself well out of it, and had cold feet, if ever
a man did, though I was afraid to say so with so much of my opponents'
money in my clothes. My hands probably trembled a little as I dealt that
round, and even this fact probably caused them to suspect that I was
monkeying with the deck and to watch me narrowly. The man on my left
opened the pot for the size of it, and all stayed. When I picked up my
hand and saw that I had given myself a clean, pat flush, ace on top, it
made me pretty nervous, and before I stayed I did a heap of considering.
"'The best thing you can do, young fellow,' said I to myself, 'is to
stay out of this jack altogether, or else throw that straight of yours
face up in the center of the table, proving your squareness to these
cutthroats, and let them play the jack out among themselves. If you
don't do one of these things, you're going to get hurt in just about
three minutes.'
"Then I considered some more. Here I had a fine and probably winning
hand that I had come by perfectly on the level, and it would be rank
cowardice to throw it away, and mighty poor poker, besides.
"'I'll be damned if I do any such thing just to convince these chaps
that I'm not a thief,' was my final conclusion; and with that I made it
twice the size of the pot to draw cards. They all glowered I tell you
what, but they all stayed, every one of 'em. They not only stayed, but
they bet and raised each other like the devil, and forced me to
out-raise all of their raises every time it came around to me.
"Jim Cathcart, whose beady eyes had been blazing ever since I doubled
the value of the pot to draw cards, was as bad-looking a man as I want
to see when, finally, the man at my left called my last big raise. There
had probably been some signals in knee-rubbing under the table, for the
other two cowboys followed the lead of the first and called me in turn.
When it got around to Cathcart he slammed his bundle of greenbacks into
the pile with an oath.
"'Podner,' said he, looking hard at me with his little red eyes, 'some
o' your work here to-night has been so cut-an'-dried lookin' as to
excite a whole lot of doubt about your bein' on the level; an' if you
happen to have anythin' in that fist o' your'n this time that'll top
these here three aces o' mine, then, by hell, you havin' dealt this mess
yourself, there won't be no manner o' question but that you're a damned
proper crook.'
"Was I scared? Well, the hand just fell out of my paw, face up on the
table, I was so scared! I was so paralyzed with fear that I simply
couldn't move or say a word, and, what's more, I'm not a particle
ashamed to own up to it. When the cards fell out of my hand Cathcart
reached over and spread them out with his left hand.
"'Well, by hell, you are a crook, ain't you?' he snapped when he saw the
value of the hand that beat his own good one, and as he spoke he whipped
out the big gun on the right side of his belt. I was blind with terror,
and when I heard the loud report of a gun I gave it all up and figured
that I was already three-quarters of the way over the Big Divide.
"When I opened my eyes a second later I saw Cathcart staring at the
door, his right arm hanging limp at his side. His gun had fallen on the
table without being discharged, and his left arm was in the air. So were
the six arms of the other three men, and they also had their eyes glued
on the door. I wheeled around to look that way myself. Standing quietly
under the lintel of the door, with his two big guns covering the five of
us, was the tall, broad-shouldered, long-haired man I had noticed eyeing
us before we started the game of poker. The man was Wild Bill, Abilene's
celebrated Marshal. The shot I had heard when I had given the whole
thing up was from one of Wild Bill's unerring guns. It had pinked
Cathcart in the right shoulder just in the nick of time, causing the gun
with which he had intended to shoot me to fall from his hand.
"'Slope for your camp, son,' said Wild Bill to me quietly, still
covering the four men. Well, for all I know, he might be covering them
yet. I do know, though, that I was out of that room like a cat out of a
bag, and the way I cut for our camp, over the newly-laid ties, eight
miles away, was a warning to grasshoppers.
"It was while I was making this little journey, hitting a high place
only once in a while, that I came to the determination that for a man
who could not fight shy of bull-head luck any better than I could, the
game of draw poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for
health and peace of mind; and I haven't departed from that determination
down to the present moment of time."