“Anyhow, he raised, as I said, an’ then o’ course he was their cold meat. All they had to do was to wait on one another, so Dunning he raised an’ Blivins chipped along. Dunnigan naturally thought he had one of ’em beat, an’ he raised again, hoping to scare the other one out. He made his raise five thousand this time, as was entirely proper, seein’ he’d made up his mind to bet, but he was considerable surprised when Dunning fingered his roll an’ called for a show on two thousand, which was all he had left, an’ then Blivins makes good an’ goes him five thousand more.
“That was a little more than poor fallen human nature could stand. Just naturally he was certain that Blivins was bluffing, an’ havin’ more money in his pocket than was reely good for him, he makes another bluff hisself, havin’, as I say, parted entirely with his self-control.
“Blivins was well fixed, too, though, an’ he comes back at him again, so Dunnigan see it was plump foolishness to raise any more, an’ he called. I’ve heerd people criticize his play, sayin’ that he’d either oughter laid down or raised again, but I’m free to say that I don’t agree with ’em. A king full was good enough to call on, but nothin’ short of a straight flush was good enough to raise on against Blivins’s play, according to my notions.
“I’ve heerd people say, too, that they didn’t believe Dunning dealt them cards honest, but I seen the expression on his face when Blivins showed down four queens against his four tens an’ raked the pot. If he warn’t genuinely surprised I never see any one that was.
“That broke up the game, for the cattle-dealer didn’t want to go plumb broke an’ he dropped out, so there wern’t no use in prolongin’ the struggle. But if ever a man had cause to be thankful for his self-control, Jim Waters had when he laid down his ace flush.”
XV
HE SAT IN WITH A V
“I hear a lot o’ talk,” said old man Greenhut, as he wiped up the bar and set his bottles and glasses in order, “about modern progress an’ the elevatin’ influences of eddication, an’ sich, but I’ll be everlastingly hornswaggled if it don’t appear to me that young folks nowadays is sure a degenerate lot. I don’t mean boys, for there can’t nobody tell what a boy’s goin’ to turn out to be. I’ve seen reg’lar milksops that went to Sunday school an’ wore neckties, or, mebbe, played with their sisters up to the time they was seventeen or eighteen, turn all of a suddin like, an’ develop into rip-roaring good citizens that could take their own part in anything that came along from a poker party to a political meetin’, an’ was a right down credit to the community. An’ similar I’ve seen right lively youngsters o’ fifteen an’ sixteen, that was full o’ ginger and gave every promise o’ bein’ husky citizens, take to foppish ways by the time they was twenty, an’ go around smokin’ cigarettes. No, there ain’t no tellin’ about boys.
“What I mean,” continued the old man, as he came around to his favourite seat by the window, “is the no-’count ways that the younger men of to-day seem to be fallin’ into. Why, talkin’ about cigarettes, there’s grown men smokes ’em now, just as shameless as if they was smokin’ honest tobacco in a pipe. An’ I don’t mean dagos and creoles an’ sich, but full-grown men. An’ what with temp’rance societies, an’ the women tryin’ to vote an’ gettin’ the men to uphold ’em in it, the country seems to be a-goin’ hell to breakfast cross lots an’ sideways.
“You don’t see none o’ the old style o’ men scarcely. Forty year ago men was different. They wasn’t afraid to drink four fingers to once o’ good liquor, an’ a word meant a blow an’ a blow meant a shot. Consequences was men was careful what they said, an’ was a heap sight more polite. An’ they played a man’s game o’ poker in them days. Nowadays they tell me the women is playin’ it, an’ it’s got to be a reg’lar parlour amusement.
“Sam Nichols was in here only the other night an’ somebody ast him to take a hand in a little game that was goin’ on in the back room, an’ he laughed an’ says: ‘No, I ain’t a-playin’ poker anywheres now ’ceptin’ at home. My wife, she’s learned the game an’ some o’ the neighbours comes in with their wives, an’ we plays ten-cent limit. You have all the fun o’ poker an’ it don’t cost nothin’ to speak of.’ An’ Sam, he used to be one o’ the stiffest players in Arkansas City.