"'You ought to teach that poodle how to play draw,' said he to me, and I was beginning to fear he was getting next. But he kept on looking as moon-faced and easy as usual and losing right along, though I couldn't help noticing how carefully he watched the moves of the mutt.
"The next night, when we again sat down at the game, I again noticed that the young geezer had his eye on the dog's moves behind the chairs. I also noticed that he generally stayed when I fell out after the draw, and that when he did stay, with me out, he very often took big hunks out of the other two young fellows. I couldn't quite get next to this, the duck looked such a Rube. Finally a big jack came around, and I, only having eight high, kept out of it. One of the other young fellows opened the pot, the man next to him stayed, and the moon-faced Rube, who had been watching my dog so carefully, raised the both of 'em before the draw. It was a good, stiff raise he gave 'em, at that. They stood it and stayed in. They bet around for fifteen minutes, and then the slob who had been studying the mutt was called by both of them, and beat them both out with his queen full on sixes. I thought that was kind o' queer, especially in view of his earnest study of my poodle, and so I got cold feet in order to have a chance to think the thing over. Oddly enough, the moon-faced-looking dub got cold feet at the same time, and was out on the street with me a little while later. We had walked a block or so, chinning, when he gives me a dig in the slats, and says he, grinning:
"'Great dog, that, of yours.'
"I turned around and sized him up.
"'Pretty fair mutt,' said I.
"'Only thing about him is,' went on this soft-looking guy that you wouldn't think knew the difference between sand and slag, 'he wants to change his code. It took me a week to get next to it, but I had it safe to-night, all right. I'm only $2,000 ahead on the night's play, which makes me $500 more than even. You want to teach the mutt new business before some other duck that looks as much like a dead one as I do comes along, tumbles to the dog's wig-wag system, and does you out of a good bundle. By the way,' he wound up, 'what kennel did that one come from? Where's the rest of the litter? I'd like to have a brother of him.' Queer how he got onto the game, wasn't it?"
"Yes, very," replied the man who had doubted the fox terrier's possession of any intelligence.
[WIND-UP OF A TRAIN GAME OF POKER.]
One of the Players Hadn't Long to Live, Anyhow, and So He Took a Hand for a Final Deal.
"I haven't played any cards on railroad trains, even with friends, for the past seven years," said Joe Pinckney, the Boston traveling man who sells bridges and trestles in every land, at a New York hotel the other night, "and it's more than certain that, for the remainder of my string, I shall never again sit into a train game, whether it's old maid, casino, whist or draw—especially draw. I used to play cards most of the time when I was on the road just to relieve the monotony of traveling. I don't recall that it ever cost me much, for I generally broke even and often a little ahead on a years' play. I very rarely sat into a game in which all of the other players were strangers to me, especially when the game was draw or something else at so much a corner, and so I never got done out of a cent.