"I had so much luck in a poker game I once sat into that I've never played draw since," said a civil engineer who helped to build several of the railroads west of the Missouri. "It happened in Abilene in the summer of '70. We had then pushed the road about eight miles to the west of Abilene. You know what Abilene was in '70. Dodge City was then a camp-meeting grove compared with Abilene. The men belonging to our construction gangs were a bad enough lot to make it worth any man's while to go light on them, but they were cooing doves alongside of the batch of evil devils who had thrown the town of Abilene together in anticipation of the building of the railroad. Before we got anywhere near Abilene there was a pretty fair-sized and comfortably-filled cemetery plotted out near the town. But when we got close enough to Abilene to make it practicable for our construction men to put in their spare time there, drinking 'sumac' whisky and playing cards, between knock-off on Saturday afternoon and jump-in on Monday morning, Joe Geddes, the pine-box undertaker of Abilene, had more business than he could handle, working night and day.
"From the time that we got ten miles this side of Abilene until the rails were set twenty miles the other side of it, we lost construction men so fast that the road's employing agents in Leavenworth and Kansas City had trouble in filling their places. Every Monday morning there was a round-up of the dead and wounded in the whitewashed calaboose and hospital in Abilene that reminded the ex-soldier surveyors who were with me of their war experiences. The construction men got the worst of it, of course. While they were game enough men, their weapons were their fists, their knives, and sometimes their picks. But they were not up to the science of fine gun work, whereas the Abileneites, composed chiefly of left-over cowboys from the great Texas cattle-trail, whisky-dishers from the slumped Colorado mining camps, and tin-horners and desperadoes from everywhere, all knew how to pump lead like lathers spitting nails.
"Although a pretty young man at that time, I was in charge of the surveyors' gang. Most of the men in my gang were experienced, taciturn chaps. The experiences they had picked up in bad towns along other Western lines they had helped to map out had taught them the sense of steering clear of such towns and of sticking to their tents. I don't suppose that a man of my gang walked through the streets of Abilene when we brought the road there—not because they were in any sense cowardly, but because they had learned in the course of years of frontiering that trouble, and a whole lot of it, often overtakes men who are least in search of it in towns like Abilene.
"These old-timers tried to talk me out of my determination to have a look around in the town where so many of the men of the construction gangs were being killed off—for I wanted to see what thorough out-and-out bad men looked like. They told me that if I ever wanted to see my folks back East any more I'd better not do any monkeying around in Abilene. But I knew it all in those days, and so, without letting any of the men in my gang know anything about it, I slipped over to the chainmen's tents one night and roped in a couple of them to handcar me down to Abilene. When we reached the town I sent the chainmen back with the handcar, telling them to return for me in the morning.
"Abilene rather surprised me at first. I at least expected to have my hat shot off a few times in the course of an hour's rambling around, and, in fact, I was prepared to do a little impromptu dancing for the edification of Abileneites, who enjoyed toying with strangers. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the fellows hanging around the whisky mills and the brace faro layouts good-naturedly took me in hand and started in to give me a good time. I was a breezy young chap, you see, and able to hold my own in any public exhibition of the swelled head I unquestionably possessed at that time. Anyhow, things had not thoroughly warmed up for the night when I fell in with the gang early in the evening. It all looked so smooth and easy, and the heavy-artilleried chaps that I ran into seemed so square and peaceable that I drank a good deal more sagebrush whisky than I had any right to drink or than I had ever drank before.
"Around about midnight five of us, including Jim Cathcart, a bad man who was hanged a few years later for the murder of a Sheriff in Texas, pulled up at Toole Kingsley's 'Kansas or Bust' saloon and faro bank. The three other fellows I was with were outlawed cowboys, although I didn't know it then, and even if I had it wouldn't have made any difference in the shape I was in. Cathcart suggested a game of draw. He had probably noticed my good-sized wad of money, and I guess he reckoned on getting it. I didn't have any more sense than to agree, and, the other three chaps being willing, of course, we went up to the second floor of Kingsley's rum and faro honkatonk and waded in. When Cathcart suggested the game I noticed that a tall, broad-shouldered, very muscular-looking man, with long hair and a heavy mustache, who was standing with his back to the bar, eyed us pretty carefully, and at the time I rather wondered what he meant by it, though I forgot all about him five minutes later in the intensity of the game.
"'Intense' is not the word to describe that game of poker. I had been plugging along at the game of draw more or less ever since I was a growing lad, and after I had begun to shoulder an azimuth I had been an onlooker at some mighty queer games. But I never saw cards run the way they did that night. I was just about a fair to middling poker player; certainly nothing extra, although I was deft of hand and knew how to riffle cards in a way to bluff fellows not acquainted with my comparative inferiority as a poker player into the belief that I was some pumpkins with the pasteboards. But, second-rate player as I was, and something over two parts loaded as I was, besides, in common with my four fellow-players, the luck that I had from the very beginning of the game was positively miraculous. None of the other men had a half-skilletful of luck. It all came my way. It was embarrassing for a while, but later on it became dangerous; for I was a total stranger to these four men and a good deal oilier in manners and speech than they—a thing that was likely to excite suspicion in towns like Abilene in those days, especially in the minds of men steadily losing in a game of draw.
"Every man of the four persisted in giving me such massive hands to play against the utterly no-account hands they dished out to themselves that I didn't know what to make of it. All four of them were reasonably good poker players, but they were none of them short-carders—able to stack a deck; and I had certainly never sat into a squarer game of draw. But my own luck was absolutely magical. Pat hands were given to me about as often as pairs were served out to the other fellows. Every time this happened, and one or more of my opponents determined to find out if I was bluffing on my pats, I laid down the hands with a little fear growing within me; for after we had been playing for an hour or so I noticed all four of 'em snatching glances at me out of the tails of their eyes.
"After I had continued whacking all four of them pretty hard on their own deals (rarely dealing myself a hand worth anything) for a couple of hours, the luck took a peculiar switch, although it stayed with me. I began to get nothing whatever on the deals of the other fellows, but on my own deals I fed myself hands that actually smelt of brimstone, they were so weird and inexplicable. One time I got four eights pat on my own deal. I drew a card to give the impression that I was either drawing to two pairs or bobbing to a straight or flush, and won a corking pot. I was given some bad looks for this. Ten minutes later, when it was my deal, I was kind enough to give myself a pat full, kings up on sevens, and, the whole four staying, I rapped them again with all my might, although the chill of fear was creeping over, in spite of the copious quantities of fiery red liquor I was getting outside of along with the others. Once the luck veered around this way, it seemed as if I never got as much as ten high when the other fellows dealt. So the only thing I could do was to drop my hands and stay out on their deals. They were quick to notice this, and it didn't improve my situation any, either.
"This extraordinary luck jumped me on my own deal only once after I had caught and played those two self-dealt pat hands for all they were worth. The result was that I was out of the game for quite a little while, none of the other men serving me with hands fit to draw to. Meanwhile the four of them played listlessly with me out of it, for I had a good deal of the money of each, and they wanted it back. I think all four of them had fully decided in their own minds by this time that I was crooked and were only waiting for a chance to nail me.