"How the deuce do you know all this?" inquired the Englishman.
"Well," replied the American, "you may be pretty certain that I haven't dreamed it. Besides, I figured it that you required some consolation for the loss of your twenty guineas. Didn't you?"
[THIS DOG KNEW THE GAME OF POKER.]
That, at Least, is What the Dog's Owner Claimed, and the Dog's Owner Ought to Know.
"For a fox terrier, that dog don't seem to know a whole lot," said one of the men in the back room of an uptown café.
The old fox terrier was burying his gray muzzle in the lap of his master and wagging his stump of a tail foolishly. His master was a squat, thin-faced man of the all-aged class; that is, he might have been anywhere from 30 to 55 years of age. Running away from the corners of his shrewd eyes were many tiny wrinkles. In his get-up he looked like ready money. He lapped the dog's clipped ears one over the other and looked reminiscent.
"Well," said he, replying to the other man's remark, "I can't say that he does look dead wise and smooth to the naked eye. He's not one of these here fresh sooner dogs that wants to put you next to all he knows the first clatter out o' the box. He's no trick mutt, anyhow. I raised him from a pup, and I never taught him any of the jay tricks that these pillow-raised, dog-cracker mutts go through. What he don't know about standing up in a corner and hopping over a cane and speaking for grub and waltzing on his front feet and playing 'possum, and all that kind o' dinky work, would fill a big book. But if any of you people think you can give him any points on the value of hands in a game of poker, then you need a new dope cook, and that's which."
"Poker?" said another of the party, incredulously. "Say, shoot it in light. Your yen-hok's overworked."
"That's what I said—poker," replied the fox terrier's owner, firmly. "I'm putting you next now, because I don't make it a business to do pals in a poker game. He's the best poker dog on the American continent, that mutt. Can't begin to figure on how many times he's won me out, and for how much. He's sulked on me two or three times at critical junctures in games of draw, and given me the wrong tips, just to get square with me for something or other, but that was when he was young and sassy and disposed to work his edge on me. He's been tipping me off right now for seven straight years, and—well, I've got a dollar or two scattered around," and the owner of the poker dog slowly pulled the tinfoil off a 25-cent cigar.
"Didn't have a bit o' trouble teaching him the game, I suppose?" asked one of the men at the table.