"That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat of a man whose bank had been raided. I hunted the young fellow up that morning and told him about it. He was full of hifalutin' talk about wanting to give the proprietor of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing.
"'He can take care of himself,' said I to the boy. 'He knows your father, and I dare say he's clipped your father's bank roll for a good deal more than $12,000 on occasions when your dad has visited Washington and gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple and fine linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor in Richmond with a high head and a proper countenance. That'll be better than walking into Richmond in need of a Russian bath.'
"The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn't keep his promise to me to stop. He came in that night, and in half an hour's play he ran his $12,000 up to $15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of final warning. He paid no attention to me, though. Then he began to lose, and in three hours he was flat broke. He went out with a wild light in his eye, and the next morning he was found dead in his little boarding-house room, with a bullet in his brain.
"It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence hates a quitter, but that doesn't apply to gambling. The knowledge of when to get cold feet, and the gentle art of doing the same, are valuable assets for any man who tries to buck another man's game."
[CATO WAS JUST BOUND TO PLAY POKER.]
And They Got Him the Whole Length of the Missouri, Until He Went Against Another Game and Won Out.
"A man hunting for poker trouble could get a-plenty of it on the Big Muddy stern-wheelers around the latter sixties and the early seventies," said Joe Reilly of Sioux City. "There weren't many regular poker sharks working the Missouri River boats in those days like there were on the Mississippi steamers, but just the same the men that traveled on those weather-boarded, lop-sided old sand-bar wagons on the Big Muddy all knew how to play poker some, I'm a-telling you. Cato Bullman found this out when he went up against a whole lot of different men's games on the old 'Gen. W. T. Sherman' in 1872.
"Bullman was pardners with Nate Stillwater in running a big general store in Yankton, and both of 'em were making a mint of money at the time I'm going to tell you about. They'd ha' made more, I guess, if Stillwater hadn't drank too much whisky and Bullman hadn't played too much poker. Now, all in all, Stillwater handled his whisky pretty well, and at such times as he found it was getting a half-Nelson on him he'd leave it off for a spell and attend to business, so that his end of the dissipation of the firm of Stillwater & Bullman wasn't half as bad as Cato's. Cato loved to play poker so much that he'd knock right off in the middle of selling a bill of goods to a gang of freighters to go off somewheres and sit in a game. Now, this wouldn't have been so bad, even if it was darned poor business policy, if Cato ever won. But he never did. He had no license ever to touch a pack of cards. In the first place, he was a yap at cards, and any American kid that knew how to play old maid could have hopped out of the back of a prairie schooner and beaten Cato out of his boots at the game for money, marbles or chalk. In the second place, Cato was a natural born hoodoo. If he was drawing to three aces, and the other fellow was taking five cards, the other fellow'd beat Cato out and have plenty to space. So that it was just about up to Cato to holler murder and take to the brush whenever anybody flashed a pack of the pasteboards on him. But he didn't see it this way. He went right on playing poker and getting soaked for his share of the profits of the firm. Cato appeared to be just stone-blind to the fact that the foxy people that didn't do much of anything else around Yankton except to play cards were in a fair way to fix themselves with meal tickets for life at his expense, and as he was pretty near seven foot high and built in proportion, none of us felt like trying to kick any sense into his fool head.
"Anyhow, in the summer of '72 Bullman started down the river on the old 'Gen. W. T. Sherman' for St. Louis to buy goods. He had $10,000 in greenbacks along with him. Before he went aboard the boat Stillwater, who wasn't much more'n five foot high, ranged himself alongside Cato's big carcass, and says he:
"'Cato, this here v'yage you're about to embark on is a business trip and nothin' else. It ain't no jamboree and it ain't no poker picnic. There's some smooth people gits aboard these here mud ploughs down below at the landings, and in their hands you'd be nothin' but a great big moon-eyed jayhawker, which you are. So throughout this here journey you'd best git 'way up on top o' the boat and sit on a pile o' planks just abaft the pilot-house and smoke your pipe. You're not to play no poker at all, you hear me? When you git stuck on a sand-bar you can fish over the side for bullhead catfish, but you don't play no poker. If, when you git back here, I hear that you've been playing poker, I'll mangle you up a heap; now you hear me a-talkin'.'