“Yes, they come along soon after, they had to. There was desperate characters here, but the vigilantes made short work of ’em, they didn’t even give ’em time to say their prayers. I tell you, the gambling houses and the dance halls, and all them places was lively in them days. There wasn’t many words over a game, if any quarrels come up, they was settled pretty quick with the revolver or bowie knife.”
“There must have been some high stakes played in those days,” Houston remarked.
“High? well, yes, rather; I’ve seen men sit down to a game worth anywhere from fifty to two or three hundred thousand, and get up without a cent in the world.”
The old man paused to relight his pipe, and having puffed reflectively for a few moments, settled himself with the air of a man who has a long story to tell, and the surrounding miners evidently so understood it, for they shifted their positions accordingly, and prepared to listen.
“Speakin’ of gamblin’,” he began, “puts me in mind of something that happened among the camps on the other side of the range, nigh onto fifteen years ago. A gang of us boys was in Dandy Jim’s gambling hall one night. The place was crowded, I remember, and we was all tryin’ to make our fortunes on the high card. Some of us was dead broke, but them that hadn’t the stuff borrowed from them that had, sure of better luck next time. They was all so deep in the game that none of ’em noticed a seedy-lookin’ chap who come in, kinder quiet like, and set down to the faro table and began to play. I guess I was the only one who noticed him, and at first, I couldn’t make him out, but after a bit, I remembered him as ‘Unlucky Pete.’ That man had a history. When I first saw him, some eight or ten years before that night, he had just come west with his wife, a pretty little woman, and had a good team of horses and a new wagon. He was a reg’lar border character, and whenever a new country was opened up for settlement, him and his wife was the first on the ground, ready to make a run to secure a home. Pete was prosperous, till one night, in a quarrel over a game of cards, he killed his man, and from that time his luck changed. He secured one or two good claims, but lost title to them; he lost his horses, and as fast as he bought other horses, they died or was stolen, and everything went against him. He wandered from one country to another, but bad luck met him at every turn. The last I seen him was some two years before; then him and his wife and two or three babies was goin’ over the country in an old, broken-down wagon. The wheels was held together with wire and ropes, and the canvas top was in rags and tatters; the horses was the poorest, skinniest creatures you ever see, and him and his wife looked off the same piece.
“Well, somehow or ’nuther, I knew him that night, though he looked harder than ever, and had an old slouched hat down over his face. He looked like a man that was pushed pretty close to the wall, and had got down to his last nickel. Well, he set down there to the table, and threw a silver dollar on the high card; then pulled that old hat down clean over his eyes, and never spoke, or looked one way or another. The high card won, and the dealer paid the bet, and pushed the money over to Pete, but he never stirred.
“Well, that high card kep’ a winnin’ till there was a big pile of money there, but Pete, he never stirred, no more’n a stone. The dealer, he got mad and begun to swear, but Pete didn’t move.
“‘Somebody wake that fool up,’ says he, with an oath.
“A fellow sittin’ next to Pete shook him, and then tore off his hat. Well, boys, I’ll never forget that sight, it makes me sort o’ shiver now, when I think of it; there set a dead man at the table before that pile of gold.
“The dealer started to rake in that pile o’ money, but about a dozen revolvers was p’inted at him, and he decided not to be in too big a hurry about it.