_That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner
Ought to Know._
"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a whole lot," said one
of the men in the back room of an uptown cafe.
The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in the lap of his master
and wagging his stump of a tail foolishly. His master was a squat,
thin-faced man of the all-aged class; that is, he might have been
anywhere from 30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners of
his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up he looked like
ready money. He lapped the dog's clipped ears one over the other and
looked reminiscent.
"Well," said he, replying to the other man's remark, "I can't say that
he does look dead wise and smooth to the naked eye. He's not one of
these here fresh sooner dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows
the first clatter out o' the box. He's no trick mutt, anyhow. I raised
him from a pup, and I never taught him any of the jay tricks that these
pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts go through. What he don't know about
standing up in a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub
and waltzing on his front feet and playing 'possum, and all that kind o'
dinky work, would fill a big book. But if any of you people think you
can give him any points on the value of hands in a game of poker, then
you need a new dope cook, and that's which."
"Poker?" said another of the party, incredulously. "Say, shoot it in
light. Your yen-hok's overworked."
"That's what I said--poker," replied the fox terrier's owner, firmly.
"I'm putting you next now, because I don't make it a business to do pals
in a poker game. He's the best poker dog on the American continent, that
mutt. Can't begin to figure on how many times he's won me out, and for
how much. He's sulked on me two or three times at critical junctures in
games of draw, and given me the wrong tips, just to get square with me
for something or other, but that was when he was young and sassy and
disposed to work his edge on me. He's been tipping me off right now for
seven straight years, and--well, I've got a dollar or two scattered
around," and the owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a
25-cent cigar.
"Didn't have a bit o' trouble teaching him the game, I suppose?" asked
one of the men at the table.
"Well," replied the fox terrier's owner, striking a match on his
diamond-incrusted match safe, "I can't say that teaching him the hands
was altogether a snap. At first he used to get the kings and jacks mixed
once in a while, and then he had a habit, when he was learning the game,
of getting the eights and tens twisted, too. But I broke him of those
defects after a while. It wasn't so much trouble teaching him the value
of the hands in poker as it was to fix up a sign manual by which he
could express himself and tip me off on the hands held by the other
fellows. But patience was my long suit in teaching that dog the game of
poker, and in less than a year after I showed him the first pack of
cards he ever saw, he was able to put me onto the worth of every hand
around a table without any of the marks falling to the scheme. His
method of communicating such information to me during the progress of a
game is a bit involved and intricate, and we've got a lot of little code
signs that would require too much elaboration in the explaining, but
I'll just give you a little idea of the way the thing works.
"Suppose I'm sitting in a four-handed game. The dog is nosing around the
room, not in any ostentatious kind of way and not getting himself
noticed at all by the other three in the game. A hand is dished out. The
dog noiselessly rubbernecks behind the chair of the first player on his
route. The first player, we'll say, has got a pair of sevens, and I've
got my eye on the dog. The dog quietly gapes twice, to indicate that
player No. 1 has a pair, and then blinks both of his eyes seven times in
rapid succession. See? Of course I know then that No. 1 has only got a
pair of bum sevens. I pretend to scan my hand, while the dog quietly
gets behind the chair of player No. 2. We'll say No. 2 has three queens.
The dog passes his right paw over his right eye three times. If it's
three kings, left paw over his left eye three times. If it's three
bullets he puts his left paw at his nose and holds it there for a
second, and, if three jacks, his right paw at his nose. Savvy? And so
on. He's got the whole manual and code worked out to a stretch finish.
If No. 3 has got a pat flush he closes his left eye and keeps it closed
until he sees I'm noticing him. If No. 3 has got a pat full house he
shuts up his right eye in the same way.
"This, of course, is only preliminary and it only puts me next to what
the marks around the table have got in their hands before the draw. If
they're too well fixed for me before the draw, of course I drop out of
it there and then. But if I've got a pretty good fist full myself and am
as good as any of 'em before the draw, why of course I draw to my hand.
Just as quick as all the fellows that stay in pick up the cards they've
drawn the dog does his little act all over again and tips me off on
those that have filled their hands. Makes the game dead easy, don't it?
If I wanted to play the scheme to its limit, which would be a fool trick
and probably result in that dog getting himself stuffed and mounted by
some loser getting next to his gag, I'd have too much money. But I never
went into it too heavy. I've let good things take coin off me so fast
that I almost got pneumonia, and me knowing all the time just what they
had in their hands. The Chinese bluffs that some of 'em have put up,
too! Of course I'd only play off on 'em for a while, just long enough to
make them look on me as something easy, and then me and the dog'd waltz
in and chew their manes off close to the hide.
"Yes, siree, that dog's been a sure enough meal ticket for me for a long
while. But, as I told you a while back, he sulked on me two or three
times and gave me the wrong steer when he was young and perky and hot
over something or other, and I got hurt on these occasions, for a fact.
Remember one of those times particularly. I'd been playing for several
nights in succession with three young jays of real estate men out in
Minneapolis and letting 'em take slathers of it off me just to get them
interested. All three of 'em had gobs of the green and I figured on
making 'em all move out to Seattle or somewhere by the time me and the
dog got through with them. The mutt was only a two-year-old then, but he
was playing mighty fine poker, and these three Minneapolis ducks looked
like a fine clean-up. On the afternoon of the fourth night that we got
together in the game I'd got hot over the mutt chewing one of my hats
all to pieces--fox terriers are worse than goats for chewing things
up--and I'd given him three or four good raps over the side of the head.
He didn't like this a little bit--I could see that. He wouldn't have
much to do with me for the remainder of the afternoon and I couldn't con
him into becoming friendly again, either. He just looked at me out of
the tail of his eye, as much as to say, 'I'm going to throw you the
first chance I get,' but of course I couldn't figure that he'd carry his
sulkiness into the game of draw that night, when I intended to begin on
my three good things and crimp up their wallets.
"That night I took the mutt with me, as usual, to the house of one of
the good things, where we played. I couldn't get the dog to be very
chummy with me, though, even after spending a large part of the
afternoon trying to soft soap him. The licking I had given him still
rankled within him, but I figured that he would forget all about it in
the excitement of the game after we got going. I was more than ever
confident that he was all right when he tipped me off right on the first
dozen rounds of hands, during which I picked out most of the winnings.
"I dealt the thirteenth mess myself and when the two beyond the ante man
declined to stay I made it a jackpot, having the buck. I caught three
aces and the pot looked nice for me, even without the mutt to joggle me
along. The man after the dealer opened it, the jay next to him stayed
and so did I, of course. The dealer stayed with a rush and it looked
like a nice, neat jack to win--for it was a $100 limit game and all of
the three good things thought they knew how to play poker. The dog
tipped me off that the man who opened the pot had three fours, the chap
next to him two pairs and the dealer a pair of kings. I drew to my hand,
of course, and when the guy that opened the pot stood pat I said to
myself, 'That's a pretty cold bluff that duck's making, standing pat on
his three fours.' The mutt's tips told me, of course, that I had 'em all
topped and I just lay back and listened to their bets, knocking heaps
off my chip piles and raising 'em right along with all the confidence in
the world.
"I commenced to admire that pot-opener with the three fours who had
stood pat for a bluff when he kept raising it the limit. Between us we
raised the other two out after it had gone around a number of times, and
then that geezer with the three fours sat back to bluff me out, as I
thought. I wasn't a bit worried by the cool, confident look on his mug,
for I knew that that mutt of mine never made any mistakes, and I knew
that I had him beat. When there was $3,800 in the pot I got to the end
of my chips, and, as it was table stakes and we had arranged that no
more chips could be bought during the playing of a hand, I called the
pot opener, at the same time chucking down my three bullets, and was
fixing to haul in the pot.
"'Hold on there a minute,' said the man with the three fours--as I
thought--when he saw me reaching for the pot, 'I've got a nice pat
straight, from one to five,' and he showed the cards up in their order
on the table.
"'The dust is yours,' said I, choking back a lot of cuss words, and just
then I looked behind the chair of the winner and caught the eye of that
dog. If there wasn't a gleam of triumph in his eye, damme! He looked
square back at me for ten straight seconds, as much as to say, 'You
didn't think I'd dish you in the game, did you?' and then he walked over
in front of the fireplace, plunked himself down, and that was the finish
of that four-handed game. I knew that I couldn't get any good out of the
dog for the rest of that night, and I did a sudden watch-studying act,
told the jays of a forgotten engagement, and got out. I had expected to
clean up about $10,000 out of those three jays, and durned if I didn't
quit more'n $2,000 loser on account of that dog, for I had only begun to
win back what I had let them take away from me when the mutt turned me
down. The mutt followed me back to the hotel with a sulky eye, as if he
expected to be clubbed for his little game of crooked steering, but you
can gamble that I cut out the clubbing so far as he was concerned for
good. I had won him back inside of a week or so, and he never did me
dirt on calling the turn after that.
"Me and the dog were covering Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, and that
circuit about three years ago, taking it off easy ones in comfortable
hunks, when I stacked up against a pretty wise one. It was in Knoxville,
where I had got together a playing squad of three young ones that looked
ripe for plucking. I got into 'em pretty fairly after a week's work, and
the mutt was in great form. One of the good things--the one that I got
into the hole worse than any of the others--seemed to be taking a great
interest in the mutt after he had been stacking up, a bad loser, against
our game for ten days or so, but there wasn't a pin-head of suspicion in
his face. He just seemed to like to watch the dog's rubber-necking
antics, and one night, when he was dropping slathers of it to me, he
studied the moves of the dog with unusual intentness.
"'You ought to teach that poodle how to play draw,' said he to me, and I
was beginning to fear he was getting next. But he kept on looking as
moon-faced and easy as usual and losing right along, though I couldn't
help noticing how carefully he watched the moves of the mutt.
"The next night, when we again sat down at the game, I again noticed
that the young geezer had his eye on the dog's moves behind the chairs.
I also noticed that he generally stayed when I fell out after the draw,
and that when he did stay, with me out, he very often took big hunks out
of the other two young fellows. I couldn't quite get next to this, the
duck looked such a Rube. Finally a big jack came around, and I, only
having eight high, kept out of it. One of the other young fellows opened
the pot, the man next to him stayed, and the moon-faced Rube, who had
been watching my dog so carefully, raised the both of 'em before the
draw. It was a good, stiff raise he gave 'em, at that. They stood it and
stayed in. They bet around for fifteen minutes, and then the slob who
had been studying the mutt was called by both of them, and beat them
both out with his queen full on sixes. I thought that was kind o' queer,
especially in view of his earnest study of my poodle, and so I got cold
feet in order to have a chance to think the thing over. Oddly enough,
the moon-faced-looking dub got cold feet at the same time, and was out
on the street with me a little while later. We had walked a block or so,
chinning, when he gives me a dig in the slats, and says he, grinning:
"'Great dog, that, of yours.'
"I turned around and sized him up.
"'Pretty fair mutt,' said I.
"'Only thing about him is,' went on this soft-looking guy that you
wouldn't think knew the difference between sand and slag, 'he wants to
change his code. It took me a week to get next to it, but I had it safe
to-night, all right. I'm only $2,000 ahead on the night's play, which
makes me $500 more than even. You want to teach the mutt new business
before some other duck that looks as much like a dead one as I do comes
along, tumbles to the dog's wig-wag system, and does you out of a good
bundle. By the way,' he wound up, 'what kennel did that one come from?
Where's the rest of the litter? I'd like to have a brother of him.'
Queer how he got onto the game, wasn't it?"
"Yes, very," replied the man who had doubted the fox terrier's
possession of any intelligence.