Tales of the Road

by Charles N. Crewdson

"The next town I was booked for was Broken Bow, which was then off the main line of the 'Q,' and way up on a branch. To get there I had to go to Grand Island. Now, you boys remember the mob that used to hang out around the hotel at Grand Island. That was the time when there were a lot of poker sharks on the road. When I was a bill clerk in Chicago I used to meet with some of the other boys from the store on Saturday nights, play penny ante, five-cent limit, and settle for twenty-five cents on the dollar when we got through—I was with a clothing firm, you know. I had always been rather lucky and I had it in my head that I could buck up against anybody in a poker game. I had no trouble finding company to sit in with. In fact, they looked me up. In those days there were plenty of glass bowls full of water setting 'round for suckers. My train didn't leave until Monday morning and I had to Sunday at Grand Island.

"We started in on Saturday night and played all night long. By the time we had breakfast—and this we had sent up to the room—I was out about forty dollars. I wanted to quit them and call it off. I thought this was about as much as I could stand to lose and 'cover' in my expense account, but all of the old sharks said, 'By jove, you have got nerve, Jim. You have the hardest run of luck in drawing cards that I ever saw.' They doped me up with the usual words of praise and, after I had put a cup of coffee or two under my belt, I went at it again, making up my mind that I could stand to lose another ten. I figured out that I could make a team trip and 'break a wheel' to even up on expenses.

"Well, you know what that means. The time for you to quit a poker game (when you have money in your pocket) is like to-morrow—it never comes. By nightfall I was dead broke. Then I began to think. I felt like butting my brains out against a lamp-post; but that wouldn't do. I ate supper all alone and went to thinking what I'd do.

"I wasn't a kitten, by any means, so I went up to my shark friends and struck one of them for enough to carry me up to Broken Bow and back. He was a big winner and came right up with the twenty. They wanted to let me in the game again on 'tick,' but then I had sense enough to know that I'd had plenty. I went to my room and wrote the house. I simply made a clean breast of the whole business. I told them the truth about the matter—that I'd acted the fool—and I promised them I'd never do it any more; and I haven't played a game of poker since. The old man of the house had wired me money to Grand Island by the time I returned there and in the first mail he wrote me to keep right on.

"Business was bum with me for the next three days. I didn't sell a cent. One of the boys tipped me on an Irishman down in Schuyler who had had a squabble with his clothing house. I saw a chance right there and jumped right into that town. I got the man to look at my goods. He looked them all through from A to Z, but I couldn't start that Hibernian to save my life.

"He said, 'Well, your line looks pretty good; but, heavens alive! your prices are away too high.' Then he said, picking up a coat: 'Look here, young man, you're new on the road and I want to figure out and show you that you're getting too much for your goods. Now, you put down there, here is a suit that you ask me $12 for. Just figure the cloth and the linings, and the buttons, and the work. All told they don't cost you people over seven dollars. You ought to be able to—and you can—make me this suit for $10. That's profit enough. You can't expect to do business with us people out here in Nebraska and hold us up. We're not in the backwoods. People are civilized out here. Your house has figured that we're Indians, or something of that kind. You know very well that they sell this same suit in Illinois, where competition is greater, for ten dollars. Now I won't stand for any high prices like you're asking me. I'm going to quit the old firm that I've been buying goods from. I've got onto them. Now I'm going to give my business to somebody and you're here on the spot. Your goods suit me as far as pattern and make and general appearance go, and I'll do business with you, and do it right now, if you'll do it on the right sort of basis.'

"Well, there I was. I hadn't sold a bill for three days and I felt that this one was slipping right away from me, too. I had come especially to see the man and he had told me that he would buy goods from me if I would make the price right. So I lit in to cut. I sold him the twelve dollar suit for ten dollars. He took a dozen of them. It was a staple. I didn't know anything about what the goods were worth, but he had made his bluff good. I sold him the bill right through at cut prices on everything. The house actually lost money on the bill. I have long since learned that the only way to meet a bluffer is with a bluff. This man had laid out a line of goods which he fully intended, I know now, to buy from me at the prices which I had first asked him for them, but he thought he would buy them cheaper from me if he could.

"Many a time after that, when I had got onto things better, has this old Irishman laughed at me about how he worked me into giving him a bill of goods, and enjoyed the joke of it—Irishmanlike—more, I believe, than he did getting the bill at low prices.

"Well, my nerve was gone and I thought the only way I could do business then was by cutting the stuffing out of prices. I kept it up for a few days—until I received my next mail at Omaha. Whew! how the old man did pour it into me. He wrote me the meanest letter that a white man ever got. He said: 'Jim, you can go out and play all the poker that you want to, but don't cut the life out of goods. You can lose a hundred and fifty dollars once in a while, if you want to, playing cards, that will be a whole lot better than losing a hundred and fifty every day by not getting as much as goods are worth. Now we're going to forget about the hundred and fifty dollars you lost gambling, instead of charging it to your salary account, as you told us to do. We had made up our minds because you were starting out so well and were keeping up prices, to charge this hundred and fifty dollars to your expense account. We were going to forget all about that, Jim; but if you can't get better prices than you have been for the last week, just take the train and come right on in to the house. We can't afford to keep you out on the road and lose money on you;' and so on.

"I was scared to death. I didn't know that the Old Man in the house was running a bigger bluff on me than the Irishman to whom I made cut prices on the bill.