Story 8.
A Duel at “Poker.”
Nobody on the Diamond Fields quite knew the beginning of the ill-feeling between Dr Gorman and Mr Bowker.
It had existed, as far as any one could remember, from the early days of the Fields, and had been increased and intensified by a hundred matters of grievance. It is only in a small community, where there is not much change of thought, and where a fresh face is not very often seen, that bitter personal hatred can grow luxuriantly, and the rancorous ill-will between those two men had become part of themselves, adding a sort of enjoyment to their lives, and influencing many of their actions. Men knew and counted upon the fact that one of them would oppose the other in every possible way, and those who were on bad terms with the one could always reckon on the support and friendship of the other.
It was as much owing to their being respectively directors of the Long Hope and the New Colonial Mining Companies, as to anything else, that the disastrous litigation, which eventually swamped both companies, broke out and was carried on to the bitter end. It was owing to some one suggesting to Bowker that it was the cherished ambition of Dr Gorman to represent Kimberley in the House of Assembly, that the former first took to politics, and began that distinguished public career which we at the Diamond Fields believed was attracting the attention of Europe, while the latter, who had no more ambition to become a member of the Legislative Assembly than to be a bishop, when his enemy issued his address, at once came forward and began to canvass the constituency on his own account.
That election was memorable in the annals of the Diamond Fields for years, and was fought with a spirit which a journal that made a good thing out of it said was creditable to both parties, and bore witness to the healthy vitality of the Diamond Fields. Money was thrown about with a splendid recklessness, and some men, who had the foresight to put their Kaffir workmen on the register, made a good thing out of the rise in the value of free and independent voters.
There was no other candidate who stood a ghost of a chance while there were two seats, so the fight between the two was only for the honour of being senior member, but it was none the less brisk on that account. Bowker won, and then both parties got up petitions against each other’s return on account of gross bribery and corruption, and succeeded in turning each other out.
From that day they were the prominent leaders in local politics, in fact they helped to form the two parties who became the Guelphs and Ghibbelines of the Diamond Fields.
Bowker was supposed to own the ‘Assagai,’ a satirical journal that had a stormy existence for some months, and the doctor was believed to have found the money for the ‘Knobkerri,’ and to have imported its editor, a broken-down London journalist, whose power of invective, until he matured the incipient delirium tremens he brought out with him, was the terror of Mr Bowker and his party.
When the former journal devoted a series of articles to the doctor’s former life, and to the incidents connected with the suspicious death of his half-aunt, Bowker was believed to have inspired the attack; while the biography of Bowker, giving a graphic account of his being tarred and feathered on the Ovens Gold Field in Australia, in connection with a charge of petty theft, which sent up the circulation of the ‘Knobkerri’ to a figure never before or afterwards reached by a newspaper on the Diamond Fields, was put down to the doctor. Bowker, who achieved a great reputation in colonial politics by his command of language, saying “that he recognised the contemptible handiwork of the medical assassin’s dastardly brain.” The enmity between these two men increased with the prosperity of the Diamond Fields, but did not go down with the shares when the bad times came.
Through good times and bad the feud between them became more bitter. When things were at their worst, the one felt that the other’s bad fortune made up to a certain extent for his own. When things began to mend, Bowker felt that his satisfaction at finding himself on the breast of the wave of returning prosperity was diminished by seeing his old enemy floating in with him. But with Bowker’s shares the doctor’s house property rose in value, and when at length the latter, having become weary of the dust of the Fields, determined to shake it off his feet for ever, and return home, he felt that the knowledge that he was leaving Bowker behind him a prosperous man, who in a year or two would follow him with a larger fortune, spoilt much of his self-satisfaction.
Bowker, on the other hand, heard with considerable chagrin of the other’s intended departure; he felt that in a way he would miss him, and thought that life would be dull now there was little chance of seeing his enemy come to grief, and now it seemed certain on the whole that his career on the Diamond Fields might be summed up as a successful one.
One evening some days before Gorman was to leave Kimberley, he was with some of us in the card-room of the club. We had been playing some mild game of limited loo. We were discussing whether we should go on playing or leave off, no one taking much interest in the game, when Bowker came into the room with a look in his face which showed that he had been taking a fair amount of drink. At that time he was not on speaking terms with Gorman, but for all that, as he came into the room he stared more at him than any one else, and seemed to speak to him when he asked what game we were playing.
“Limited loo! call that a game! No one has got the pluck to play now-a-days. Now I wouldn’t mind having a bit of a gamble to-night, but I ain’t come down to limited loo,” he said with a loud laugh, and a sneer at the doctor.
“What do you want to play?” Gorman said, speaking to Bowker, rather to the surprise of those who were present.
“Well, I’d play a game of poker if any one would sit down who knew how to play, as wasn’t afraid of the game,” Bowker growled out.
“I know how to play, and I’m not afraid of the game either, Mr Bowker,” the doctor answered quietly enough, but with a note in his voice that some of us believed meant mischief.
The rest of us did not offer to join in the play, from the first we fancied it would be a pretty warm game. It was anything but a friendly one, for it seemed to be rather a duel than a mere gamble, and we felt sure that when the two men sat down at the table, each one promised himself that if he could manage it, the other should look back with considerable regret to that little game of poker.
The two men were a great contrast to each other. Bowker was a heavy, coarse-looking, bull-necked man of over six feet high, with a straggling yellow beard growing over his huge red cheeks and jowls. Gorman was a slight, dark man, clean shaven except a twisted moustache, with a pair of sharp black eyes. Both men occasionally played high, though they were not habitual gamblers, and the lookers-on expected to see some sensational playing.
“What do you say to making the blind five pounds?” said the doctor, as he sat down and smiled at his opponent.
“Thought you weren’t afraid of the game! but you know what you can afford,” the other answered.
“Ten if you like,” said the doctor, and then the game began.
For some time the luck ran with provoking evenness; both parties backed their hands with considerable freedom, but after a couple of hours’ play neither had lost or won very much.
It happened that they both had a considerable sum in notes, which first collected before one player and then went across to the other. We watched the money pass from player to player, and waited for the more serious period of the game, when one party would have come to the end of his ready money, and play on credit would have begun. After a bit they increased the amount of the blind to thirty pounds, then to a hundred. First one player would be some hundred pounds to the good, then the other would get a turn of luck which would wipe it out again. For a long time they played without what is called a meet occurring; that is to say, when one happened to hold a good hand, the other generally held nothing.
“Hanged if the rent of Gorman’s buildings mustn’t be going up a bit, since you’re man enough to play that game. What do you put your pile at?” Bowker had said, when the other had suggested the last increase of the blind.
“Gorman’s buildings are worth about as much as twenty thousand pounds’ worth of stock in the Long Hope Company, are not they, Brown?” the doctor said, turning round to a share and estate agent who was looking on at the game.
“Gorman’s buildings would fetch twenty-five thousand to-morrow, and we all know the market price of Long Hope,” Brown answered.
“Well, play away and hold your jaw. I ain’t afraid of you and your damned shanties,” Bowker answered.
After this change of remarks neither party said another word, except about the game. We, as we looked on, realised that there was more than mere gamblers’ greed in the savage hard look in their eyes. They were anxious to ruin one another, rather than to win money; the hatred of a dozen years seemed to find a vent in that game. The amount that Bowker held in the Long Hope Company was known to be about equal to the price put upon Gorman’s buildings, a row of offices near the mine; so the terms on which they met were quite fair. As hour after hour passed the game went on, neither party winning or losing much, but each in turn being to the good. They were both fine players, the doctor the more cautious of the two, while Bowker had on the whole the best luck, which carried him through one or two attempts to win by sheer force of bluffing. As the doctor looked into the mask of red flesh opposite him, he for some time found nothing there to give any clue as to the sort of hand his opponent held; but in the small hours of the morning he began to notice that every now and then the veins in his face would seem to swell, and his breathing would become harder. The luck just then was rather in the doctor’s favour, and after he had won several stakes he was able to diagnose his opponent’s symptoms of intense excitement pretty satisfactorily. When Bowker had a strong hand he would back it without showing these signs, but when he was in doubt, and backing his hand for more than it was worth, they would appear.
“You had better not try that on again, it’s not good for your health, and worse for your pocket, you will find, my friend,” the doctor said to himself, as he dealt out the cards, determined that before long he would utilise the piece of knowledge which he fancied he had acquired.
For some time after that, however, Bowker got hand after hand that there was no resisting, and the doctor’s winnings were reduced to nothing.
It was getting on into the morning, but the club was still kept up, and several members stayed on watching the sensational game played out. At last the doctor took up a hand of three knaves, a king, and an ace, doubled the blind, and then changed the king and the ace, getting a queen and another knave. He had four knaves, but he had the best possible four, for he held a queen and had thrown away a king and an ace. Unless Bowker held a straight flush (that is to say, a sequence of the same suit) he could not hold as good a hand. Bowker had taken one card, and his heavy coarse face showed no sign. The betting went up at first gradually, then by leaps and bounds till it came to a thousand pounds.
There was no limit to the amount that could be staked, but the game of poker played on the Diamond fields only allowed a player to raise the amount at one time to double what had already been staked.
“Make it a thousand, that’s a good bit of your street,” Bowker said coolly enough.
“Two,” said the doctor.
“Four,” answered Bowker.
The doctor began to wonder whether after all Bowker might not have a straight flush, but just then he felt sure that he saw the signs in his face he had noticed before.
“Eight,” said the doctor, and there was an expression in his bright eyes that meant danger, as he looked into the other’s face.
Bowker stared at his hand for some seconds, before, in a husky voice, he said—
“Sixteen. That’s about all your shanties are worth,” he added, seeming to gain courage.
“How much did you say, Brown—twenty-four thousand five hundred? Make it that; that’s the amount of my street and your shares, Bowker,” Gorman said, and we all noticed the tone of malice in his voice, which had kept calm and emotionless all through the play.
For a second or two Bowker did not answer. He looked like an elephant which had received its death-wound, so a man who had just come down from the Zambesi said.
“Twenty-four thousand five hundred. Well, I will make it up to that and go.” Then he stopped, as if he realised he had about got to the end of his tether.
Not only the doctor, but every one in the room, felt pretty sure that he had a bad hand, and that the finish of the game had come.
Every face was turned to Bowker; the lookers-on wondering what he would do, and how he would take his bad luck. For a second he seemed to be trying to think. Then a dazed look came into his face, and he half stood up, and then fell heavily forward, bringing the table down with him. There was a paraffin lamp on the table, which smashed as it fell, and in a second the cloth and table was blazing. There was a rush forward of the men looking on. Bowker was lifted on to a sofa, and a doctor, who on his way home from a case had dropped into the club, seeing it open, began to attend to him.
“By Jove! the place will be burnt down!” some one cried, and some men rushed out of the room to get water, while others tried to put out the fire with rugs.
Gorman stood holding his cards in his hand, looking first at his opponent and then at the blazing card-table.
“Well, how are we going to play this out? This is a damn pretty thing,” he said. He did not care about Bowker’s state of health, nor did he care whether the building were burnt down or not.
“See here, where are his cards? we have got to see this out. Twenty-four thou, is no laughing matter. He never raised, so we had better show our cards. What’s he got?” Gorman said, as he stood with his cards in hand.
The fire was put out. Bowker was on the sofa looking rather bad, but the doctor seemed to be perfectly careless about everything except the stake he felt sure he had won.
“Never mind about the game, man, now; maybe the poor fellow will never get round,” one of the men who was looking at Bowker said.
“Beg pardon, but I do care about the game; it’s all very well his going into a fit, but that don’t alter the fact that we’ve got to play this out. Where are his cards?”
“You want to see his hand, do you? Well, there you are,” some one said, holding up a charred mass which was all there was left of the cloth that had been on the table, or the rest of the cards, except the four knaves and a queen which Gorman held in his hand.
Gorman looked at it for a second, and then with an oath he threw his own cards on to the floor.
“Four knaves and a queen, and I had at first an ace and a king. So I must win with them.”
“The question is, what had Bowker? He don’t look like telling you, and nobody else knows; besides, the game has not been played out. It’s a draw,” said one of the on-lookers, and this speech brought a murmur of consent from the others.
Gorman gathered up his cards and showed them to the company. Then he said no more, but watched Bowker, who seemed to be coming to.
“Look here, what was your hand?” he asked, when the latter seemed to be sensible.
Bowker, however, did not answer the question, and it was some months before he could be induced to talk about that game. Until Gorman left the Fields his mind was a blank on the subject.
The story went, however, that he was induced to tell in confidence the story of that night’s play to a particular friend.
He had held three aces and two kings. Not a very good hand, but one worth backing for a little. Gorman, however, had taken him up, and instead of throwing up his hand, he had determined to bluff. He had originally held a queen, so he knew that Gorman could not hold four of aces, kings, or queens. He could remember getting to the end of his tether, and finding Gorman sticking to him like grim death; and then he could remember no more. It was only after Gorman had left for England that this story was told. Some people shrug their shoulders and laugh when they talk of that fit which Bowker had, and they say that under the circumstances it was the best thing he could have done. But the doctor who attended him knows it was real enough, and so does Gorman, who saw it coming on.