“Overland Jack”
HOW A WESTERN CROOK HAD FUN WITH SOME SHARP NEW YORKERS
“I don’t know how far local pride may color the judgment,” said the gray-haired young-looking man, “but I am satisfied that very few New Yorkers would be willing to admit that an all-round sport could come here from the West and clean up the town, metaphorically speaking. That is, tackle the experts of the city at their own different games and win money from one after another without losing to any of them, and finally depart after a season of riotous success with his pockets laden with spoils. Such a thing does not seem likely. Yet I remember one case in the ’70s when just that thing was done by one of the best-known gamblers in the United States. ‘Overland Jack’ was the name by which he was usually called, but his real name was John McCormick. He cut a very wide swath when he first came to New York, but he made a good many friends here, too, not only among the sporting fraternity, but among actors and men-about-town generally.
“The fact of his having a goodly number of friends was manifest when he came to die afterward in Chicago. He knew, toward the last, that his death was near, but instead of weakening he recalled the incidents of his career with the utmost satisfaction, and declared that he had no regrets for the way he had spent his life, but, on the contrary, considered that he had done excellently well with it. As a token of his feelings, he expressed the wish that his friends should go to his funeral, not with religious ceremonies, but with champagne galore, and that in place of praying for his future they should drink to his memory over his open grave.
“It was just such a crowd as he would have selected that went to his grave and carried out his wishes. Tony Pastor, Jack Studley, Pat Sheedy, Johnny Blaisdell, Mike McDonald, and many others were there. There were enough, at all events, to get away with five baskets of wine before the grave was filled in, and the empty bottles were thrown in on the coffin. It was a memorable occasion, even for Chicago, and it occurred only a few years ago. It was in ’90 or ’91, if I remember aright.
“The time I speak of, however, was before he was known on this side of the continent, excepting by reputation. Overland Jack, the sport, came from San Francisco. Where John McCormick, the man, came from originally no one seemed to know. The first that could be definitely stated was that he was a private in a California cavalry regiment at the time of the Civil War. He never rose from the ranks, but he was always well supplied with money, even when on duty, for he was far and away the best poker player in the regiment. After the war he never did anything but gamble for a living.
“He was a quiet man, who was so uncommunicative about himself that his best friends could not even say with certainty whether he was a well-educated man or not, but he was always smiling and extremely pleasant in his manner. It was said of him that he was never known to be angry, but I have heard this disputed. Certainly he had no reputation as a fighter, though he took his life in his hands often enough in his play, for he was, beyond question, a crook, which makes the fact of his having so many friends all the more remarkable.
“He became well known on the Pacific coast soon after the war, but it was not until ’73 or ’74 that he started East, and then he didn’t come straight through, but stopped at various places. The first I heard of him was at Salt Lake City, where he had a notable adventure. I heard the story from a man who stood in with him in his faro game and helped him to get away with considerable Mormon capital. He traveled with a faro outfit and dealt a brace game always. Of course he had to be skilful to do that, but he was particularly skilful. When he reached Salt Lake he put up at the Townsend House and set up his faro layout in his room, running the game quietly enough to rouse no antagonism on the part of the landlord, but managing, with the aid of my informant, who was an actor, then playing in Brigham Young’s theatre, to rope in several of the wildest sports in the city.
“Among others, Brigham Young’s son, John Young, was informed of the chance to play, and, being eager to do so, was accommodated to the tune of seven hundred or eight hundred dollars the first night. The actor went with him and played with him, and was a loser to a less amount. He was therefore in a proper position to urge Young to try it the second night that they might both get even. Overland Jack, however, let nobody get even when he was manipulating the box, and Young lost about three thousand dollars the second night. He was not a good loser, as was shown long afterward when he came to Chicago and killed a man there in a quarrel in a gambling-house—a matter, by the way, for which he was never tried—and he was furious at his losses this time. Overland Jack was shrewd enough to foresee trouble, and that night he packed his faro layout in the trunk of his friend the actor, and early in the morning started out for a walk. The walk was a long one, and not caring about walking back he took a way train at the next station, and after changing cars once or twice was well on his way to Laramie before John Young went back to the Townsend House with police force enough to take in four faro banks and all their attendants.
“The actor tarried in Salt Lake for a discreet interval and then went to Laramie himself. For some reason it was not thought wise to deal faro there, and they lay around idle till they got a chance to play together in a pretty heavy poker game that was going on. They had not spoken to each other there till they met at the table, and supposed that no one in the place knew that they were acquainted, so the chance seemed a good one to play in the way they had arranged, which was for Overland Jack to do the dealing and the other man to hold the cards. Among the other players was a rich plainsman who had come to town for a racket and was having it to his complete satisfaction. He was not a particularly good player, and the game looked like a good thing.