"'What the devil do you expect me to do, you blamed idiot?' he shouted at the real estate man. 'Stand around the tent and shiver, or cut across the trail in my underclothes for the car to get another set of togs?'
"'I wish I could think of some plan to help you out, old man,' answered the real estate man with commiseration in his countenance, 'but I really couldn't think, under any consideration, of giving up these things,' and he made the suit, the shoes and the hat up into a neat bundle as he spoke. Just then one of the other men, who had been prowling outside, came running into the tent breathless.
"'Say, fellows,' he exclaimed, 'there's some fresh bear tracks right over there in the clearing,' and he grabbed his gun. So did the other two. The bank president made as if to pick up his rifle, too, when his eye fell on his lack of raiment. By that time the real estate man was fifty yards from the tent, at a lope with the other two.
"'Hey, come back here, you confounded cut-throat!' the financier yelled after the real estate man, who had the bank president's clothes, shoes and hat slung in a neat bundle over his shoulder. But the three men were out of voice range in a jiffy.
"They came back, beaming, along toward nightfall, with the pelts of two nice young black bears. They found the bank president moping around, wrapped up in a blanket and sulphurizing the air when they reached the tent. Then they sat around him in a circle and expressed their sincere sympathy with him and told him his case was only one more instance of the awful evil of gambling. After supper and a pipe they all turned in, leaving the bank president still sulking and uttering terrible maledictions under his breath.
"The real estate man and the other two went out early the next morning—the bank president's clothes along with them—and when they got back they found the blanketed financier on the verge of apoplexy from sheer wrath. The real estate man then made a great show of charity by giving up the togs, and the bank president was in a state of good-nature by the time camp was struck. The three conspirators united in a letter of explanation, inclosing all of their winnings, to the bank president when they got back to St. Louis, and when the bank president got the letter and his disgorged losings he was most tickled to death and instantly became as perky and impudent as ever.
"'I knew you couldn't have done it if you'd played on the square,' said he, the first time he met them. 'Wait till next year, that's all.'"
[THE NERVE OF GAMBLERS AT CRITICAL MOMENTS.]
Wherein It Is Shown That It Is Easy Enough to Be Cool When Playing with Another Man's Money.
"I happen to know that a considerable number of the most famous professional gamblers in this country made their reputation with other men's money," said a Rocky Mountain man of large experience. "These men have had their names heralded far and wide as the stakers of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, upon the turn of a card, and innumerable yarns have been spun as to their cool, John Oakhurst-like manner of scooping in a table full of money upon the smashing of a bank, or of calmly lighting their cigars and strolling out when fortune went against them. So far as the stories themselves are concerned, some of them are undoubtedly right; but all of them leave out the very essential fact that the men were simply players of other men's money—'table touts,' we call 'em out West. I suppose it is a reasonable proposition that it is a whole lot easier to risk another man's money at the table than it is to endanger your own. Of all the men I am telling you about hardly a one had enough luck at the tables to keep himself warm when putting up his own coin; perhaps it was owing to the extreme caution of their play under these conditions and the far greater strain involved in the hazarding of their own money. They could take another man's money—the money of a man who probably did not know the difference between 00 and 33 in a wheel layout, but who could afford to venture almost an unlimited amount of money on a game—and in at least eight cases out of ten they could run the initial stake into a pile that would mean for themselves a rake-off or percentage of thousands or tens of thousands; but in venturing their own money I have seen few of them who were any good in the matter of keeping their nerve under rein.