_And They Got Him the Whole Length of the Missouri, Until He Went
Against Another Game and Won Out._
"A man hunting for poker trouble could get a-plenty of it on the Big
Muddy stern-wheelers around the latter sixties and the early seventies,"
said Joe Reilly of Sioux City. "There weren't many regular poker sharks
working the Missouri River boats in those days like there were on the
Mississippi steamers, but just the same the men that traveled on those
weather-boarded, lop-sided old sand-bar wagons on the Big Muddy all knew
how to play poker some, I'm a-telling you. Cato Bullman found this out
when he went up against a whole lot of different men's games on the old
'Gen. W. T. Sherman' in 1872.
"Bullman was pardners with Nate Stillwater in running a big general
store in Yankton, and both of 'em were making a mint of money at the
time I'm going to tell you about. They'd ha' made more, I guess, if
Stillwater hadn't drank too much whisky and Bullman hadn't played too
much poker. Now, all in all, Stillwater handled his whisky pretty well,
and at such times as he found it was getting a half-Nelson on him he'd
leave it off for a spell and attend to business, so that his end of the
dissipation of the firm of Stillwater & Bullman wasn't half as bad as
Cato's. Cato loved to play poker so much that he'd knock right off in
the middle of selling a bill of goods to a gang of freighters to go off
somewheres and sit in a game. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, even
if it was darned poor business policy, if Cato ever won. But he never
did. He had no license ever to touch a pack of cards. In the first
place, he was a yap at cards, and any American kid that knew how to play
old maid could have hopped out of the back of a prairie schooner and
beaten Cato out of his boots at the game for money, marbles or chalk. In
the second place, Cato was a natural born hoodoo. If he was drawing to
three aces, and the other fellow was taking five cards, the other
fellow'd beat Cato out and have plenty to space. So that it was just
about up to Cato to holler murder and take to the brush whenever anybody
flashed a pack of the pasteboards on him. But he didn't see it this way.
He went right on playing poker and getting soaked for his share of the
profits of the firm. Cato appeared to be just stone-blind to the fact
that the foxy people that didn't do much of anything else around Yankton
except to play cards were in a fair way to fix themselves with meal
tickets for life at his expense, and as he was pretty near seven foot
high and built in proportion, none of us felt like trying to kick any
sense into his fool head.
"Anyhow, in the summer of '72 Bullman started down the river on the old
'Gen. W. T. Sherman' for St. Louis to buy goods. He had $10,000 in
greenbacks along with him. Before he went aboard the boat Stillwater,
who wasn't much more'n five foot high, ranged himself alongside Cato's
big carcass, and says he:
"'Cato, this here v'yage you're about to embark on is a business trip
and nothin' else. It ain't no jamboree and it ain't no poker picnic.
There's some smooth people gits aboard these here mud ploughs down below
at the landings, and in their hands you'd be nothin' but a great big
moon-eyed jayhawker, which you are. So throughout this here journey
you'd best git 'way up on top o' the boat and sit on a pile o' planks
just abaft the pilot-house and smoke your pipe. You're not to play no
poker at all, you hear me? When you git stuck on a sand-bar you can fish
over the side for bullhead catfish, but you don't play no poker. If,
when you git back here, I hear that you've been playing poker, I'll
mangle you up a heap; now you hear me a-talkin'.'
"Cato reached down, picked up his partner by the scruff of the neck, and
held him out at arm's length.
"'I ain't a-goin' to play no poker, old man,' says he to Stillwater.
'Won't touch no cards at all till I git back. Kind o' lost my knack at
the cards lately, anyhow,' as if he ever had any knack at 'em. 'And you
want to let the red-eye alone while I'm gone, too,' Cato finished, and
then set his little partner down. Then Cato went aboard the boat. As I
was going along down to St. Louis myself, Stillwater calls me aside and
says to me:
"'Jest keep an eye on that big galoot on the way down, and if he gits
restless and shows an inclination to get tangled up with a poker deck,
jest bat him over the head with a capstan bar.'
"But I wasn't making any rash promises like that. Well, Cato was all
right the first day out, and he followed his pardner's instructions and
sat around on deck smoking his corn-cob pipe and feeling his big wallet
occasionally. He kept as far away as possible from the little deck-house
where a game was started going before the boat pushed out into the
stream, but the rattle of the chips was bound to reach his ears
occasionally. On the second day some stockmen got aboard that Cato knew,
and Cato took a few drinks with 'em. Then they invited Cato into a
little game. Cato looked at me kind o' guilty like, and then shook
himself together like a man does that says to himself, 'It's nobody's
danged business but my own.' So he sits into the game with the stockmen.
They were only going down a few landings, and when they got off they had
$2000 of Cato's money. I never in my life before or since saw such
hoodoo luck as Cato had in that game with those stockmen. He didn't get
a pair more'n once in a hundred hands, and if he did get a pair and
happened to better it in the draw he'd give a hoot that 'ud wake up the
owls ashore and then bet like an Ogallala Sioux with four aces and a
dirk knife. It was just simply painful to watch Cato in that game, and
no mistake. When the stockmen got off some of them actually looked so
sorry for Cato that I kind o' thought they'd offer to give him his money
back. But they didn't.
"'I'm kind o' out o' luck lately,' says Cato to me after the stockmen
had got off with his $2000, 'and I b'lieve I'll just draw in now and
wait for a hunch. No good buckin' agin' a streak o' bad luck, is there?'
"Well, I told him that if my 10-year-old boy down in Sioux City wasn't
able to play poker any better than he, Cato, could before he put on long
trousers and suspenders I'd send him up to a lumber camp until he became
of age. But Cato didn't pay any attention to me, and when an awkward,
overworked-looking man, dressed like a farmer, got aboard a couple of
landings below he struck up an acquaintance with him. This farmer-like
looking man had a pretty keen pair of eyes in his head, as I noticed,
and he had besides that yokelly way of finding out about other people's
business. So it didn't take him long to dig it out of Cato that Cato was
going down to St. Louis to buy a stock of goods. The three of us were
sitting on the hind rail, whittling, when this farmer-like looking man
turns to Cato and asks him:
"'Ever play key-ards?'
"Cato looked at me again and hesitated.
"'Oh, wunct in a while,' says he, finally, and in a pair of minutes they
were in the middle of a poker game. The stranger asked me to sit in, of
course, but I could see that he wasn't over-anxious to have me in the
game, and I never played poker on steamboats, stern-wheel or side-wheel,
anyhow.
"Cato's hoodoo luck followed him right along in his game with the
overworked-looking man, who seemed to me to have considerable of a job
covering up a natural sort of deftness he had in handling a pack. The
two played for three or four hours, the stranger announcing occasionally
that he was going to get off at the next landing, so's to screen himself
from the inference that he was getting cold feet, probably. He was about
$1000 ahead of Cato's game when the boat was nearing his landing.
"'Hev to make it a jackpot naow,' said he, when the old stern-wheeler
began to wheeze and snort a little preparatory to stopping at the
landing.
"He dealt the jackpot hand himself and each man had $100 in the center
of the table. It was to be sweetened for $100 each time the deal passed.
But it didn't pass. Cato opened the pot for $100 and his Reuben-looking
opponent stayed. The betting swayed back and forth until each man had
$1000 up, and then the farmer-like looking man called Cato. Cato had
three eights. The other man had three tens. The other man stuffed the
bills from the center of the table into his overalls, shook Cato quite
effusively by the hand, and went ashore.
"'Got enough?' says I to Cato when the old sandbar-bucker was once again
under way.
"'Say,' says he to me, 'ye can't never jedge a man by his looks, can ye?
That man knows a hull heap more'n you'd think, don't he?'
"'Got enough, Cato?' I repeats, for I wanted to pin him to the question
in hand.
"'Well, I shorely am out o' luck, and no mistake,' was as far as he
would commit himself.
"The next day a man who looked like members of Congress out my way used
to look got aboard. He was dress in a long black broadcloth coat and
wore a big black slouch hat, and he carried himself like a man that
amounted to a good deal. He was amiable in his manners, though, and he
hadn't been aboard more'n half an hour before he happened to fall into
talk with Cato. Cato was a little sore about the loss of his $4,000, but
this legislator-like looking man was so entertaining and sprung so a lot
of good stories over the jug of good stuff which Cato brought out of his
stateroom that Cato appeared to forget his troubles for the time.
"'Monotonous work, this steamboat traveling, isn't it?' says the
statesmanlike-looking man to Cato after a while. 'I've only four hours
traveling to do, and yet I've been dreading it for a week. What do you
say to a little game of dime-ante. You play, of course?'
"Cato scratched his chin.
"'Durned if b'lieve I can any more," said he ruefully, and then, like
the innocent big dogan that he was, he tells his new friend how he has
already lost $4,000 on the trip down, and that he feels like hanging on
to his remaining $6,000.
"'Oh, but only a little dime-ante game, you know,' says the man who
looked like a member of Congress, and his eyes opened up a bit, I
noticed, at the mention of the $6,000.
"'O. K.,' says Cato. 'Jest to pass the time,' and down they sat. I was
asked in, but I told the statesmanlike-looking man that I had left my
specs up in Yankton and therefore couldn't see the hands well enough to
play. Well, the dime-ante and the dollar limit that they started in at
lasted just until Cato got a whopping big hand, which happened to be
given to him by the man that looked like an M. C.
"'Say,' says Cato then, looking a heap excited, 's'posin' we jest take
the limit off'n this here game, anyhow, fur a little while?'
"'Why, certainly,' says his opponent genially, and Cato walks right in
and wins $500 clean on that hand of his. He gives me a look out o' the
tail of his eye that says, 'Well, what do you think of me now,' and the
game goes on.
"Well, the M. C.-looking man begins to win quite a good deal then, and
he, like the farmer-looking man, brought the game to a jackpot finish as
the boat approached his getting-off place.
"'Fur how much?' inquired Cato, who was about $1,000 out already.
"'Oh, about $50 and $50 sweeteners,' said the man across the table.
"'No, we won't, either,' says Cato. 'We'll each put in $1,000, an' no
sweeteners. That's jest as good fur you as 'tis fur me.'
"'Exactly,' says the distinguished looking man playing with him, and
Cato dealt the hands. Neither man had openers. Then the other man dealt
'em. Cato opened it on jacks up on treys, and caught another jack in the
draw. The boat snorted and wheezed preparatory to being made fast. Cato
bet a flat $1,000 on his jack full, and the M. C.-looking man, looking
kind o' impatient to get ashore, win or lose, calls him. Cato lays down
his jack full with a grin at me--and says his friends across the table:
"'You do indeed, my friend, appear to labor under a blanket of
ill-fortune,' and he spreads out his four nines and gathers in the pot.
Then he hurries ashore, after shaking the crestfallen Cato warmly by the
hand.
"'Got $3,000 left now, haven't you, Cato?' says I then, for it began to
look to me as if word had been passed down the whole length of the
Missouri River that Cato Bullman was traveling on one of its steamboats
with money. 'Better let me keep that $3,000 for you.'
"'No, I'm durned if I do,' says Cato. 'Might as well lose it all now,
devil take it,' and he gnawed on his fingernails, thinking about what
kind of a story he'd put up to his partner, I guess, when he got back to
Yankton broke.
"Well, Cato did lose it all, or close on to all of it. He foregathered
with a man that got aboard at Omaha, and said he was a civil engineer
for the Union Pacific Railroad. The civil engineer got $1,800 of Cato's
greenbacks, and then got off. Twenty miles below Omaha, at a little
handing, a gappy looking hog raiser that Cato had met before climbed
over the rail, and Cato thought he saw a chance to recoup his drooping
fortunes. The hog raiser relieved Cato of $1,000, and had an important
engagement to look at some fancy hogs at the next stop. This left Cato
with $200.
"'Convinced that you're a damphool yet, Cato?' says I.
"'Dang'd if I don't begin b'lieve I am,' he owns up.
"'How about those goods you were going to buy in St. Louis?' I asked
him.
"'I dunno,' he said, mournful like.
"Well, when we got to Leavenworth, Kan., the wheezy old Sherman tied up
for twenty-four hours for repairs to the machinery. Cato was pretty
gloomy. We went ashore and put up at the old Planters' House. On the
night we struck Leavenworth I walked Cato around to sort o' relieve his
mind. We were strolling down Shawnee street when we both saw a pretty
much lighted up place into which a lot of well-gotten up men were going.
When we came up to the place we heard the rattle of the chips and click
of the marble and the choppy talk of the keno men, and then we saw that
it was Col. Jennison's famous Bon Ton gambling joint, running wide open
and full blast. Cato made for the door. I grabbed him by the sleeve.
"'Come out o' that,' says I. 'You've only got $200, which won't more'n
get you back to Yankton. Haven't you been enough of an idiot already?'
"'I got a hunch,' says Cato, releasing himself from me and starting
again for the door.
"'Hunch!' says I, but he was already inside.
"Well, Cato goes up to the faro table where the big men of the town seem
to be playing bank, and says I to myself, 'Joe, you'll have to dig up to
send this crazy man back to his pardner in Yankton.'
"Cato bought $200 worth of chips, tapping himself, and began. Gentlemen,
he couldn't lose. He scattered his chips over every card on the table,
and he couldn't lose. He won eight bets out of ten. He let his money lie
on cards four times over, and won every time. He didn't use a copper,
but played every card wide open. There didn't seem to be a split in the
box for Cato. In less than twenty minutes he had won over $3,000. There
was a $500 limit on the game. Cato asked to have it removed. When the
limit was taken off, Cato made three $1,000 bets running, and won every
one of them. Then he came off his perch and got down to $200 bets again,
playing 'em like a veteran, and just simply unable to lose, gentlemen.
The rest of the men at the table quit playing just to watch Cato. Once
in a while Cato'd play the high card, just to see if his luck was
holding. The high card came out every time he did it. They switched the
dealer three times. They switched the lookout half a dozen times. They
tried different boxes. They changed tables. They did everything. But,
gentlemen, Cato Bullman was playing faro, and he couldn't lose. I was
proud of the big duffer. In an hour he was $18,000 ahead of Col.
Jennison's bank. They sent across the way to get Col. Jennison who was
playing a quiet little game of poker in the Star of the West saloon.
Col. Jennison came over to the Bon Ton and sat down to handle the box
for Cato himself. Cato soaked Col. Jennison every bit as hard as he had
soaked all of Col. Jennison's dealers. Col. Jennison was game, but, when
at the end of three hours, Cato was still going right ahead winning like
a cyclone, he turned the box over with this little remark:
"'Gentlemen, the game is closed for the night.'
"When Cato cashed in he had just $35,200. I took him by the arm and
walked him down to the hotel and got him into his room. Cato went to the
basin to wash his hands. When he turned around to me again he looked
into the barrels of both my guns.
"'Cato,' says I, 'I'm sorry, but I'll just trouble you to hand over
every cent of that $35,200 you've got, right away now, darned quick, or
I'll blow the whole top of your head off.'
"Cato didn't demur a little bit. He plunked the money down--most of it
was in $1,000 and $500 bills--on the table.
"'I don't suppose I've got enough sense to pack it around, fur a fac','
said he.
"When we got to St. Louis I handed Cato $10,000 to buy his goods with,
and expressed the $23,200 to his address in Yankton.
"'Well,' said his little pardner, Stillwater, when Cato got back to
Yankton, 's'long as you won, you big clod-hopper, I don't s'pose I need
to mangle you up none. But if you had lost!'"