CHAPTER III. A LITTLE GAME OF POKER.
"Well, Ned, how do our fellow-passengers strike you? This is a pretty hard crowd, isn't it?" asked Chance, as his eyes wandered over the mob of men of every nationality, who were jostling one another on board the steamer Umatilla, ten minutes after she had left Victoria for New Westminster.
"Yes, they look pretty tough, most of them," assented Corbett; "but a three-weeks' beard, a patch in the seat of your pants, and a coat of sun-tan, will bring you down to the same level, Steve. Civilized man reverts naturally to barbarism as soon as he escapes from the tailor and the hair-dresser."
"That's what, sonny! And I believe the only difference between a white man and a siwash, is that one has had more sun and less soap than the other."
"Oh, hang it, no! I draw the line there," cried Corbett. "But look, there go the gamblers already;" and Ned pointed to a little group which had gathered together aft, the leading spirit amongst them appearing to be a dark, overdressed person, who was inviting everybody at the top of his voice to "Chip in and take a drink."
"They don't mean to lose much time, do they?" remarked Chance. "And, by the way, do you see that the 'mammoth hustler,' our own colonel, is among them?"
"And seems to know every rascal in the gang," muttered Corbett.
"Come and look on, Ned, and don't growl. You don't expect a real-estate agent to be a saint, do you?" remonstrated Chance.
"Not I. I don't care a cent for cards. You go if you like. I'll just loaf and look at the scenery."
"As you please. I don't take much stock in scenery unless I have painted it myself, and even that sours on me sometimes;" and with this frank and quaintly expressed confession, Steve Chance turned and pushed his way through the crowd to a place behind Cruickshank, who welcomed him effusively, and introduced him to his friends.
Ned saw the artist gulp down what looked like a doctor's prescription, and light up a huge black cigar, and then turning his back upon the noisy expectorating crowd, he leant upon the bulwarks and forgot all about it.
Before his eyes stretched a vast field of blue water; blue water without a ripple upon it, save such as the steamer made, or the diving "cultus" duck, which the boat almost ran down, before the bird woke and saw its danger. Here and there on this blue field were groups of islands, wooded to the water's edge, and inhabited only by the breeding ducks and a few deer. As yet no one owned these islands, and, except for an occasional fishing Indian, no one had ever set foot on most of them. Everything spoke of rest and dreamful ease. What birds there were, were silent and asleep, rocked only in their slumbers by the swell from the passing boat, or else following in her wake on gliding wings which scarcely seemed to stir. There was no wind to fret the sea, or stir an idle sail. Nature was asleep in the spring sunlight, her calm contrasting strangely with the noise, and passion, and unrest on board the tiny boat which was puffing and churning its way through the still waters of the straits.
As for Ned, his ears were as deaf to the oaths and noise behind him as his eyes were blind to the calm beauty beneath them. His eyes were wide open, but his mind was not looking through them. As a matter of fact Ned Corbett, the real Ned Corbett, was just then day-dreaming somewhere on the banks of the Severn.
"Can you spare me a light, sir?"
This was the first sound that broke in upon his dreams, and Ned felt instinctively in his waistcoat pocket, and handed the intruder the matches which he found there.
"Thank you. I was fairly clemmed for a smoke."
"Clemmed" for a smoke! It was odd, but the dialect was the dialect of Ned's dream still, and as he looked at the speaker, a broad burly fellow, who evidently had made up his mind to have a chat, a pouch of tobacco was thrust out to him with the words: "Won't you take a fill yourself. It's pretty good baccy, and it ought to be. I had it sent to me all the way from the Wyle Cop."
"The Wyle Cop!" ejaculated Ned. "I thought there was only one Wyle Cop. Where do you come from, then?"
The stranger's face broadened into an honest grin.
"What part do I come from? Surely you ought to guess. Dunno yo' know a Shropshire mon, when yo' sees un?" he added, dropping into his native dialect, and holding out to Corbett a hand too broad to get a good grip of, and as hard as gun-metal.
Ned took the proffered hand eagerly. The sound of the home dialect stirred every chord in his heart.
"How did you know I was Shropshire?" he asked, laughing.
"How did I know? Well, I heard your friend call you Corbett, and that and your yellow head and blue eyes were enough for me. But say," he continued, resuming the Yankee twang which he had acquired in many a western mining camp, "if that young man over there is any account to you, you'd better go and see after him. They'll skin him clean in another half hour unless he owns the Bank of England."
Corbett's eyes involuntarily followed those of his newly-found friend, and he started as they rested upon Steve Chance, who now sat nervously chewing at the end of an unlit cigar in the middle of the poker players.
"Your friend ain't a bad player, but he ain't old enough for that crowd," remarked Roberts; and so saying he pushed a way for himself and his brother Salopian through the crowd to the back of Chance's chair.
Except for the addition of Chance, and another youngish man who appeared to be at least half-drunk, the party of poker players was the same which sat down to play when the Umatilla left the Victoria wharf.
Cruickshank faced Chance, and the same noisy dark fellow, who had been anxious to assuage everyone's thirst in the morning, appeared to be still ready to stand drinks and cigars. But the little crowd was quieter than it had been in the morning. The players had settled down to business.
"How deuced like Cruickshank that fellow is!" whispered Corbett to Roberts.
"Which?" answered his friend. "There are two Cruickshanks playing—Dan and Bub."
"But is the colonel any relation to the other?"
"I do not know which you call the colonel: never heard him called by that name before; but that's Bub" (pointing to the ringleader of the party), "and that's Dan" (pointing to the colonel). "Some say they are brothers, some say they are cousins. Anyway, I know one is a scoundrel."
"The deuce you do. Which of them?" But his inquiries were cut short and his attention diverted by the action of a new-comer, who just then pushed past him with a curt, "'Scuse me, sir."
"Let him through," whispered Roberts. "I tipped him the wink, and if you let him alone he'll fix them."
Ned was mystified, but did as he was bid. Indeed it was too late to attempt to do otherwise, for the last-joined in that little crowd, a withered gray man, whose features looked as if they had been hardened by a hundred years of rough usage, had quietly forced his way to the front until he had reached a seat at Steve Chance's elbow. It was noticeable that though the crowd was by no means tolerant of others who tried to usurp a front place amongst them, it gave way by common consent to the new-comer, who was moreover specially honoured with a nod and a smile from each of the Cruickshanks.
Steve only seemed inclined to resent the old man's familiarity, and for any effect it had he might as well have hidden his resentment.
"Pretty new to this coast, ain't you, sir?" remarked Mr. Rampike, after he had watched the game in silence for some minutes.
"Yes, I've only been out from the East a year," replied Steve shortly, as he examined his hand.
"Bin losing quite a bit, haven't you?" persisted his tormentor. Steve growled out that he had lost "some," and turned his back on old Rampike with an emphatic rudeness which would have silenced most men.
"'Scuse me, sir, one moment," remarked Rampike utterly unabashed, and half rising to inspect Steve's hand over his shoulder.
A glance seemed to satisfy him.
"Who cut those cards?" he sung out.
"Dan Cruickshank," answered a voice from the crowd.
"Who dole those cards?" he persisted.
"Bub Cruickshank," replied the voice.
"Then, young man, you pass;" and without stirring a muscle of his face he coolly took from the astounded Steve four queens, and threw them upon the table.
For a moment Steve sat open-mouthed, utterly astounded by his adviser's impudence, and when he tried to rise and give vent to his feelings, Corbett's heavy hand was on his shoulder and kept him down.
Meanwhile an angry growl rose from the gamblers, but it was drowned at once in the laugh of the crowd, as without a sign of feeling of any kind, or a single comment, old Rampike slowly pulled from a pocket under his coat-tails an old, strangely-fashioned six-shooter, which he began to overhaul in the casual distrait manner of one who takes a mild interest in some weapon of a remote antiquity.
One by one, as the old hard-fist played with his ugly toy, those who objected to his intervention found that they had business elsewhere, so that when at last he let down the hammer, and replaced his "gun" under his coat-tails, Steve and the two Shropshiremen alone remained near him. Glancing round for a moment, the old man came as near smiling as a man could with features such as his, and then recovering himself he turned to Steve and remarked:
"This ain't no concern of mine, mister, but my pardner there, Roberts, I guess he takes some stock in you and he called me, so you'll 'scuse my interfering, but ef you should happen to play agen with California bilks, you mout sometimes go your pile on a poor hand, but pass four aces, quicker nor lightning, if Bub Cruickshank deals 'em," with which piece of advice the old man retired again into his shell, becoming, as far as one could judge, an absolutely silent machine for the chewing of tobacco.
Chance, now that he had had time to pull himself together, would gladly have had a talk with his ally; but old Rampike would have none of him, and Corbett, in obedience to a sign from Roberts, put his arm through his friend's and carried him off to another part of the ship.
"Let the old man alone," remarked Roberts, "talking isn't in his line. That is my share of the business. I sing and he fiddles."
"All right, as you please; but I say, Mr. Roberts," said Chance, "what in thunder did your partner mean by making me throw down four queens?"
"Mean! why, that Bub Cruickshank had four kings or better. You don't suppose that those chaps are here for their health, do you?"
"Here for their health?"
"Well, you don't suppose that they have come all the way to British Columbia to play poker on the square?"
"Then who are the Cruickshanks?" demanded Chance.
"That is more than I know. Bub Cruickshank is just about as low-down a gambler as there is on the coast; not a chap who pays up and stands drinks when he is bust, like the count and that lot."
"And is the colonel his brother?"
"Some say he is, some say he isn't. But I never knew him regularly on the gambling racket before, though he won a pile of money up at Williams Creek last fall.
"Then you have been in Cariboo," Corbett remarked.
"In Cariboo? Rather! I was there when Williams Creek was found, and for all that had to sing my way out with a splinter in my hand, and not a nickel in my pocket."
"How do you mean 'sing your way out?'"
"I mean just what I say. My hand went back on me and swelled, so that I couldn't work, and I just had to sing for my grub as I went along. Old Rampike had a fiddle and used to play, and I used to make up the songs and sing 'em. Perhaps you've heard the 'Old pack mule.' It's a great favourite at the mines:
"Ted staked and lost the usual way,
But his loss he took quite cōōl;
He was near the mines, and he'd start next day
Riding on his old pack mūle."
"Riding, riding, riding on his old pack mule," sang Chance.
"Oh, you know it, do you? Seems to me it suits your case pretty well. Well, I made that;" and so saying the poet protruded his portly bosom three inches further into space, with the air of one who had done well by his fellow-men and knew it.
"Are you coming up to Cariboo this spring?" asked Corbett.
"No, we haven't dust enough to pay our way so far, more's the pity."
"Why not come with us? I'll find the dollars if you'll lend a hand with our pack-train," suggested Corbett.
"Well, I don't know, perhaps I might do worse; and as to that, if you are taking a pack-train along I daresay I could pretty nearly earn my grub packing. But I must talk it over with Rampike."
"All right, do you fix it your own way," put in Chance; "but mind, if you feel at all like coming, there need be no difficulty about the dollars either for you or your partner. I am pretty heavily in your debt anyway."
"Not a bit of it. Those bilks owe us something perhaps, and if they get a chance they won't forget to pay their score. But I guess they'll hardly care to tackle Rampike, or me either for the matter of that;" and whistling merrily his favourite tune, "Riding, riding, riding on the old pack mule," the Cariboo poet went below for refreshment.