"'Of all the niggering out I ever saw,' he exclaimed, 'this is the worst. But it's about time I had the best of it when it comes to pure bull-head luck.'
"So he bet the limit that he had a better card in the hole than Feeney. Feeney came back at him every clip, and when I interposed a remonstrance over the heftiness of the game, expressing the opinion that both of them would probably be sorry they had gone into the thing so heavily when the gray dawn came around, they said they knew they'd be sorry, and went right ahead.
"'This is surely the hottest case of a stand-off in a deal in stud that I've seen yet,' said Feeney, 'and I shouldn't be surprised if we had to split the pot when the show-down comes. But I'm as good as you, Carmody, on the four that show, and I'm with you all night if you're going to keep it up that long.'
"When my tab of the shifting value of the contracts showed that Carmody's interest therein was only an even $30,000, Carmody looked up at the ceiling of the card-room and reflected.
"'Here,' he said, 'is where I get my contracts back and break even, or where I have to go into partnership with a slow-witted Irishman on those buildings at The Dalles. Feeney, I call you.'
"Feeney turned over a six spot. Carmody's card in the hole was a five. Feeney was the possessor of a half interest in Carmody's fine contracts at The Dalles, and that's how it happened that these two builders, who had always gone it singly and alone, built up The Dalles in partnership. They got along so well together at The Dalles work that three years later they went into a general contracting partnership and they've been getting rich ever since. But it was their stud game on The Dalles boat that induced me to conclude that old-fashioned draw was good enough for me."
[THIS MAN WON TOO OFTEN.]
With the Result That His Clothes Finally Went into a Pot, and Fortune Scowled upon Him.
"When a man arrives at that pitch where he'll bet the clothes off his back over a jackpot, it's about up to him to let the game of draw alone, in my opinion," said a traveling special agent of the Treasury Department. "I'm talking about a game of draw that happened last fall down in the Territory, on the south bank of the Canadian River, in the Chickasaw country, between four St. Louis men. They were on their annual hunting trip down there. They were well-known business men of old St. Loo, pals of a half a lifetime, and they had been after bear, deer, feathered game, or any old thing shootable down in the Territory every year together for more than a decade. They always played poker on these outings, too, and the bank president always got all the money. The other three couldn't do anything whatever with the bank president's brand of poker. They'd been digging at him on these excursions for ten years, trying every conceivable scheme to get his money, and even playing in combination against him, but when it came time to strike camp he always had all the money in the crowd, owned all the camp fixtures, and served out smoking tobacco to his three chums in a lordly way only when he felt generous. It made 'em hot, but they had to accept his alms if they wanted to smoke.
"The three of 'em determined when the party set out from St. Louis in their special car last autumn that the bank president wasn't going to come back from the hunting trip with all the money, even if they had to leave his bones to bleach on the banks of the Canadian. They declared together that the bank president's sassiness for the remainder of the year after eating them up at poker down in the Territory was something unbearable, and they didn't intend to stand for it any more.