"At certain seasons of the year, when there wasn't must doing in his line at The Dalles, owing to periodical scarcities of pluckable tourists, the Indian would hit up Baker City, Pendleton, and other Oregon towns in search of good things, and a couple of times a year he included Olympia and Walla Walla in his itinerary. He sung somewhat smaller in those places than he did at The Dalles, but by keeping his eye skinned for men liable to call the turn on him and working quietly he generally succeeded in pulling apart at least one jelly-fish in each of the towns he took in on these off-season tours.
"About three months after he had left the marks of his fingers on the lamb's face at The Dalles—this was in the fall of '92—he turned up one day at Walla Walla. He strolled around the hotel corridors with an eye to business, and along toward night he met with a young fellow named Hellen, whose father, a wealthy Chicago man, had recently foreclosed a mortgage on a big ranch about sixty miles from Walla Walla. The son, a rather raw young chap, had come out to look the ranch over, and the Indian got next to him as soon as he struck the town. The buck was an expert billiard player, and he suggested a game of pin billiards to the young Hellen chap. He played off on the youth, and soon got him to betting on shots. After losing about a dozen $5 bets on shots, the Indian socked it to the young man from Chicago by betting $300 that he could execute a certain difficult shot. It looked like board and lodging to the young man that the Indian's $300 would spin into his clothes, so he put up $300. The Indian made the shot with consummate ease and took down the pot.
"'Fluke!' said young Hellen. 'I'll go you another $300.'
"The buck got this bunch, too, without half trying. It would naturally be thought that the tenderfoot would have smelt a rat by this time. But he didn't. He had plenty of money, and probably he considered it piquant to lose his coin to a swagger-looking, educated Indian. Anyhow, the two were playing poker in the card-room of Walla Walla's stag hotel half an hour later.
"There were plenty of men in that card-room who knew that the Indian was a short-carder, but men out that way aren't garrulous, and they pay a heap of attention to the job of minding their own business. The youth from Chicago was the merest mutt in the hands of the Indian, and he lost from the jump. He would stand pat on a full house, and the buck, drawing three cards, would still beat him after sky-scraping betting. A number of onlookers at the game may have seen the little side-plays of the Indian, but they only grinned at each other over the hopeless imbecility of the young man from Chicago.
"Finally the Indian, perhaps losing some of his dexterity from the drinks he was steadily absorbing, over-stepped himself. He filled two pairs from the discard and he did it clumsily. The young man with whom he was playing saw the move.
"'I say, there,' said he, 'what are you doing there, you know?' pointing to the discard. 'Didn't you—er—didn't you make a mistake and take a card out of that pile?'
"The Indian, who was about $1,600 to the good, had cold feet, anyhow, and so he threw his hand face downward on the table and glared at the Chicago boy. The Chicago boy quailed.
"'Er—well, maybe I made the mistake myself'—he started to say, when a big voice cut in with:
"'No, you didn't son. You didn't make any mistake at all. You're up against the real thing in the way of a mud-skinned short-riffler, that's all.'