Queer Luck: Poker Stories from the New York Sun

by David A. Curtis

“I notice that the stories of lawlessness and rambunctious violence printed in the papers from time to time are told, as a rule, of places far West or out of the usual run of travel,” said the gray-haired young-looking man who sat in the card-room of an up-town club the other night after the game had broken up. “I don’t mean by that,” he continued, “to question the truth of any of these stories. It only occurs to me that the writers take unnecessary pains in going so far away for their material. I have seen, right along the banks of the Mississippi River—and we call that pretty well East now—some things as exciting as any of the mining-camp yarns. And everything was wide open in some of the towns, too. I haven’t been out there since ’82, but that’s not so long ago, and then it was not uncommon to find a gambling saloon on the main floor of the principal hotel in a flourishing town. You could walk in as freely as you could into the barroom and play faro, keno, or poker at any hour of the day or night.

“The great flood of ’82 rather accentuated the devil-may-care condition of things; partly, I suppose, because there was not so much traveling on the river as usual and none at all by rail. Strangers were scarce in the river towns, and the inhabitants were reduced to the necessity of gambling among themselves. No, there wasn’t what you might call very much shooting, but every man carried a pistol, and occasionally there would be some. There was enough, at all events, to make the citizens of Memphis enforce pretty strictly a city ordinance against carrying concealed weapons.”

“That’s right,” said a drummer who was of the party. “I was in Memphis then, and I remember the Mayor of a Kentucky city being sent to jail for ten days for carrying a pistol. He had plenty of money and plenty of influence, too, but neither could save him from jail.”

“Well, Memphis was the only city I struck on the river,” said the first speaker, “where such a law was observed. I got caught in Arkansas City, I remember, when I was trying to get to Little Rock. I arrived there just after the train had gone, so I had to stay over for forty-eight hours. It’s only about a hundred miles, but there was only one train, and that took all day going up and all next day coming down. It was an accommodation train, and I saw it stop fifteen minutes for a darky who signaled from a distance, with a basket of eggs on his arm which he wanted to ship as freight. The conductor told me, when I asked about it, that that was quite usual, and a little while afterward he stopped the train to let a passenger get off and get a quail that he shot from the car.

“But the stop in Arkansas City was lively enough, if it was only two days. A darky was drowned trying to get across the street, the first day I was there, for the town was so far under water that the railroad track on top of the levee had been washed away. Only the houses on the highest ground were habitable, and there wasn’t such a thing as a sidewalk visible. A few timbers were strung along here and there, and people jumped from one to another of these when they went from house to house, unless they were going far enough to take a skiff. This poor fellow jumped and missed his footing, and was drowned in sight of a dozen people. I asked the man who told me about it whether any effort had been made to save him, and he said no, that there was no boat handy. And when I expressed some horror he seemed surprised and said:

“‘Why, ’twas only a nigger. You couldn’t expect a white man to take chances to save him.’ Niggers were not so valuable then as they were before the war.”

“I don’t know that the color line was so strictly drawn, though,” interrupted the drummer again. “I saw a roustabout fall into the river one night at New Madrid, and he was a white man, too, but no effort was made to save him. The mate stepped to the side of the boat and looked over, but he did no more, and not one of the other rousters stopped work even for a moment. They were unloading freight in a great hurry, and I think they were afraid of the mate. It was dark, to be sure, and the current was swift enough to carry off the strongest swimmer, but still I was surprised to see no effort made to save the poor devil. Before I recovered from my surprise it was too late to do anything, and it didn’t seem to be wise to say anything, either.”

“Good policy, sometimes, not to,” resumed the young-looking gray-haired man. “I learned to keep my mouth shut at a card table a long time ago, and that is why I had no part in a little disturbance that occurred the second day I was in Arkansas City. I don’t think there was more than one other stranger in town when I was. He had come there the day before me, on the train, and was waiting for a boat up the river. I struck up an acquaintance with him, and he told me he was on his way home, after a business trip. I congratulated him and we took a drink on it, next door to the hotel.

“We were both tired waiting, and there was nothing better to do in the place, so we both sauntered to the room just back of the bar. The door was wide open, and we saw card-playing inside. Three men were playing poker, and we stood for a few moments looking on. One of the three was a comical-looking old fellow, evidently a superannuated gambler. He must have been seventy years old, and his hands were very shaky, but I could not make up my mind whether he was palsied or had been drinking, or whether he was assuming decrepitude in order to watch the cards more carefully as he dealt them. The latter seemed likely enough, and I suspected marked cards, so I pleaded ignorance of the game when one of the other players—the proprietor of the place, as I learned later—looked up with a pleasant smile and suggested that perhaps my friend and I would like to join in.

“My ‘friend,’ as he called him—I didn’t even know his name—was willing enough, and he sat in. I stood by, smoking and looking on for a few minutes, though I pretended not to be watching the game very closely. You can’t be too careful about observing the etiquette of the place you’re in, as I have always noticed, no matter what place it is, and the people around a card table are always liable to resent an outsider’s interest if it even borders on inquisitiveness. Where the resentment is liable to be expressed with a knife or a pistol, a wise man avoids showing his interest if he has any.