“All the chips were in the center when Smith raised it a thousand, putting up a marker in the shape of an I. O. U., hastily scribbled. The other Congressman dropped out, and Jones came back with another thousand. Smith was fairly white, but he reached over and changed the figures on his I. O. U. from $1,000 to $4,000, saying quietly, ‘Two better.’
“‘Two more than you,’ said Jones, just as quietly, laying four one-thousand-dollar bills on the table. And then there was dead silence in the room.
“Smith paused, and it seemed to me that I could read his thoughts. He was eager enough to go on with the play, but though he did not know, and could not stop just then to reckon how deeply he was dipped, he knew he was over his head. Moreover, four eights, strong as it was, was not an invincible hand, and his better sense urged him to call.
“Finally he did, and when the showdown came, I thought for a moment he would faint. He rallied, however, and like the gallant fellow he was, made some light remark with a half-laugh as he rose from the table.
“‘I’ve got enough for to-night,’ he said, and the game was over. I never knew all the circumstances of the settlement, but I know the bill was reported favorably by the committee within a week, and that Smith used to hang around the club-house more persistently than ever for the rest of the season. As for Jones, I never saw him after that night.”
Poker for High Stakes
A BOUT WITH CARD SHARPERS ON A MISSISSIPPI BOAT
“I have always found it hard to believe the stories I used to read about the luxury of travel and the magnificence of the appointments on the great Mississippi River steamboats,” said the gray-haired young-looking man in the club smoking-room. “It seems to be the generally accepted belief that forty years ago or so people went up and down on the bosom of the Father of Waters in floating palaces, enjoying something like the extreme of sumptuous luxury. Maybe that is true. I didn’t travel the river so long ago as that, and, of course, I can’t say what the condition of things may or may not have been when I wasn’t there to see. What I can say positively is that if it was true in those days, the war or some other disturbing cause changed things very materially before I became as familiar as I did afterward with the river boats. My notion is that the whole thing is a tradition, resting on very little foundation excepting comparison. The mere fact of having a stateroom to sleep in, with only one stranger as a room-mate, and a seat at a table with room for a waiter to pass behind you, served to make travelers at that time think they were in luxury, because they hadn’t experienced it before. And I imagine, from what I know of a later period, that that was about the extent of the luxury. Certainly none of the boats I was ever on, in the ’60s and ’70s, compared with the North River or the Sound boats of the same time. And even those would not seem very luxurious to travelers of the present day.
“But there were a good many stories told about the old-time Mississippi boats that I am fully prepared to believe. That the game of poker flourished on the river as it never has elsewhere, before or since, seems entirely probable. I have seen games that made me hold my breath because of the size of the stakes, and because of the fact that I knew the players were all armed, and a shot or a stab was certain to follow a hasty word or a suspicious act.
“It was on a trip from Memphis to Natchez that I first saw a woman gamble in public. The boat wasn’t crowded, but there were perhaps fifty passengers on board, and among them were six or eight ladies and this woman. That she was a social outlaw was evident enough at a glance. Not only were her clothes of a fashion too pronounced for respectability and her jewelry too ostentatious for daylight wear, but there was a frank devilry in her eye, and a defiant swing—almost a swagger—in her carriage that told the story all too plainly. Her behavior was correct enough. She was, or seemed to be, traveling alone, and she took the somewhat too ostentatious avoidance of the ladies in perfectly good part, pretending to be utterly unconscious of it, and ignoring them as completely as they did her. Neither did she give any overt encouragement to the efforts that some of the men made to cultivate her acquaintance. It was evident that while she took no pains to conceal her character, she did not propose to make herself obnoxious. Naturally every one was curious to know who she was, and I soon learned, as I supposed the other passengers all did, that she was a notorious character in New Orleans, where she was known as ‘Flash Kate.’ What her business had been in Memphis I did not hear, but a dozen stories were told of her recklessness and general cussedness, and among other things it was said that she was a confirmed gambler.