"I piled a couple of dozen of decks of cards within easy reach of Cuthbert and the Frenchman, and, after they had each taken two brandies and sodas apiece, talking the while of everything else on earth besides poker, they began to play. Both of them had their check-books beside them on the table, and the bank was to keep itself, as the saying goes. There was to be no limit. New Orleans men who, in those days, were poker players of the old time sort, didn't ever play with a limit. None of them ever took advantage of this unwritten clause of the game to raise an opponent a million of dollars or so, and therefore out, but they played according to their means, and if any of them was raised a bit too strong by a confident opponent he only had to let out a word to have the raise reduced. I don't suppose more absolutely on-the-level poker was ever played in this country than the game as enjoyed by men of wealth in New Orleans after the close of the war.
"The white chips in this game between Lescolette and Cuthbert were worth $10, the reds $25, the blues $50, and the yellows $100. This was double the usual value of the chips even in big games at the St. Charles, and I could see that both men were out for it—in a perfectly friendly and cordial way, of course, but out for it nevertheless. Lescolette was a scientific, cool, all-around, percentage player of poker. He had made a study of the game just as he had made a study of the fruit trade, and he had very little of the mercurial disposition of his race. Withal, he was a generous man in the game, and never took advantage of an opponent's overgrown confidence. Cuthbert was an uneven player, not a cool-headed man at all. He had no license to play cards for big stakes under any circumstances. In the first place, he drank too much over the game, and, in the second place, he tried to play poker by intuition instead of by mathematical calculation and the study of the other fellow's forehead. He knew poker thoroughly, of course, and he had flashes of genius at it, but in general, as I look back to his work now, I'd call his poker ragged, uneven, and unproductive.
"For all that, Cuthbert had Lescolette's checks to the aggregate of nearly $13,000 after a couple of hours' play. The friends of the two men at the other table knocked off to watch the play at the two-handed table. Lescolette, while he showed no nervousness, indicated by a somewhat deepened earnestness of manner that he didn't relish being $13,000 or anything like it in the hole. After he had dashed off the check that put him that amount out, he sent me to the café for a lunch, and the two men and their friends spent an hour or so over the salads and wines.
"'We'll resume, then?' said Lescolette, and they began play again. It was about 1 o'clock in the morning. Cuthbert had taken three pints of wine to wash down his luncheon, and then a rather heavy swig of cognac. When they resumed there was too much color in his cheeks for a successful poker player. Lescolette had drunk only Apollinaris.
"Cuthbert split open a new deck when play was resumed, and riffled them rather uncertainly.
"'Damn a new deck of machine-burnished cards,' said he. 'Joe, you limber them up and deal this hand.'
"Lescolette took the deck and riffled them for fully two minutes. Then he spread them out all over the table, tossed them about every which way for a bit, straightened them together in a bunch, riffled them again, and passing them over to Cuthbert for the cut, dished them out.
"Cuthbert was one of those poker players who pick up their cards one by one. It is terribly bad form, that, but Cuthbert, with his nervous disposition, was addicted to it. He picked up his first card this time and said, 'Ah, a good beginning.' When he looked at his second card, said he, 'Better yet.' He made no comment upon his third card, but he flushed and gave a start that was perceptible to every man in the room save Lescolette, who was scanning his own hand. His fourth card took the flush out of his cheeks and steadied him. He went pale when he looked at it. He forgot to pick up his fifth card until Lescolette, looking up, remarked: 'Phil, are you strong enough to beat me with only four cards?' Then Cuthbert picked up his fifth card mechanically. It was a bad break, his leaving his fifth card untouched until reminded of it. It announced, simply, that he had pat fours. But he didn't seem to think of this.
"Cuthbert's $50 anteing chip was in the middle of the table. Lescolette looked at it for a second, and seemed to be in more than one mind about playing or making it a jack pot. He decided to play, and joggled in his blue chip.
"'Suppose,' said Cuthbert, still pale but steady, 'we make it $100 more to play, Joe?'