"'Let it stand, Jack,' said 'Don' Haskell, coming up behind Jack and addressing the dealer. 'Let it stand as long as Mr. Baker wants to make play with the ace coppered, and we'll see if we can't commit assault and battery on his "intuition."'
"Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then waited for the turns on the ace. The ace was only half a dozen cards below, and it lost. The dealer ranged ten more yellows beside Baker's pile.
"'Let them stand, ace coppered,' said Baker, scanning the cases for a few deals back carelessly.
"'Don' Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer and the other players at the table neglected to put any bets down in their interest in Baker's peculiar play. There was only one more ace left in the box and it came out a loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside Baker's pile—$4000—and he and the proprietor waited for Baker to haul them down. Baker leaned back and lit a cigar, leaving the $4000 in yellows to stand.
"'I'll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you're willing, "Don,"' he said quietly to Haskell.
"'The longer the better,' said Haskell, and the dealer began to slip them out. The first ace was way down in the center of the box, and Haskell looked a bit chagrined when it came out a loser.
"'Eight thousand, eh?' he said, looking over the stack of yellows on the coppered ace. 'One more whirl at it, Baker—that'll be about all I can stand to-night if you take it down.'
"The ace came out on the losing side again—a thing that no professional gambler would have bet on had he been offered 5 to 1 on the proposition—and Baker cashed in $16,000. He would have let it run again had Haskell been able to stand it, but the 'Don' had enough. Baker stood by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again and then he put $500 on it to win. It won and he took the boat for New Orleans with $16,500 of Haskell's money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned Ripley and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans trio of tiger buckers, broke the Madrid Club's bank roll wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker was the man who started Haskell in business again.
"When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often to have a sudden feeling that it was time for some strong bucker on the other side of the table to cash in and quit, but of course it was no part of my business to make any such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Washington, in the winter of '66, when the outcast son of a rich tobacco man of Richmond came along and whacked my box for $12,000 in a single night's play at $200 limit. I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that since his father had run him out of Richmond he had had more than his share of hard luck. In fact, he had often been hungry, and I had often given him a $5 or $10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had started in on my box with a shoestring—where he got it I don't know—and, as I say, he got me to the tune of $12,000 before I turned the box on him for the night. The man in whose interest I was dealing was very wealthy and a generous man. He knew the young chap's father. He came to me after the young man had left with his winnings and said:
"'You'd better hunt up that boy and tell him that he'd better not play any more. He's had his run of luck, and he's got enough to give himself a start. I don't want the money back. If he handles it right it'll do him more good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense into the lads' head.'