“Speakin’ by an’ large,” said old man Greenhut, as he bit off the end of a fresh cigar and settled himself in his favourite seat at the window, “there ain’t no question but what the game o’ draw-poker is about as nigh perfect as anything that was ever devised by the mind o’ man, an’ developed by the constant study o’ countless generations. They say there ain’t no record o’ poker bein’ played in former ages, an’ that faro was played hundreds of thousands of years ago, when a feller named Faro was King of Egypt, but it stands to reason there ain’t no truth in that. Like enough faro is a old game. I ain’t a-sayin’ nothin’ against faro. It suits them that likes it, but it’s gamblin’, an’ naturally it belongs to the heathen that started it.
“But poker’s teetotally different. No such system as that of draw-poker ever growed up in a night like Jonah’s gourd, nor it wa’n’t put together by no single set o’ fellers. Stands to reason it’s the crownin’ development of all the civilization the world ever seen. An’ it don’t seem likely, now that the straight an’ the straight flush has been discovered, an’ universally recognized, that there’s ever goin’ to be no changes into the game. It’s perfect as it is, an’ there ain’t no chanst o’ makin’ it any more perfect.
“An’ yet there is times when even the best players is obliged to rely on outside influences to help ’em out o’ some great emergency o’ the game. That ain’t no fault o’ the game, for as I said, the game is all right, but it goes to show that a man as relies on on’y one thing is goin’ to get left when he stacks up against some feller that relies on the same thing an’ has something else up his sleeve besides. An’ that there somethin’ else is got to be more’n a knowledge o’ cards.
“O’ course if a man reely understands the game as he’d oughter, an’ can handle the cards so’s to give himself what he needs in the draw when it comes to a desprit struggle between him an’ the other feller, an’ can read the backs o’ the cards well enough to have a good general idee o’ what the other feller is holdin’, why he can worry along under ordinary circumstances so’s he can hold his own most o’ the time, an’ make enough over from time to time to pay his livin’ expenses. But that’s all a part o’ draw-poker, same as it’s a part o’ the game not to be found out when you’re obliged to change the natural order o’ the cards. There is folks that has prejudices against them things, an’ if a man is clumsy enough to get found out, why, o’ course he’s goin’ to get hisself in more or less trouble, but I maintain so long as they’re done slick enough to not be seen, they are as legitimate as anything else in draw-poker. That’s the way Arkansas City has come to have the reputation it has. There’s some o’ the slickest players on the river right there in that town, an’ nobody has ever caught ’em usin’ marked cards, or holdin’ out, or dealin’ out o’ the middle or off’n the bottom of the deck.
“But what I mean about outside influences is entirely different. There comes a time, sometimes, when a man is obliged to think quick an’ act quick in order to keep some unscrupulous stranger from sweepin’ away all his hard-earned winnin’s in one fell pot. At such times even a thorough knowledge o’ poker ain’t a goin’ to save a man thouten he’s quick enough to think an’ has sand enough to act on the instant.
“There was an instance o’ that in Arkansas City the time when Hank Fairfax an’ his side-partner, Billy Overton, come up here from Vicksburg to do up the town, an’ come so near doin’ it. It were a great night, an’ on’y for Sam Pearsall’s presence o’ mind an’ prompt action I reckon we’d ha’ lost prestige right then an’ there.
“There couldn’t no one find fault with Hank an’ his partner, for they come in like men an’ said, open an’ above board, just what they’d come for. Hank put it kind o’ brutal, but he was fair an’ square about it. He said: ‘We Vicksburg sports is plumb tired hearin’ about Arkansas City poker, an’ Billy an’ I has come to give you jays a few lessons on how the game reely ought to be played. If any of you has the sand to play up against the real thing, now’s your time, but this ain’t no crossroads proposition. We are out for the stuff an’ we propose to carry it back with us.’
“Well, you know there ain’t nobody from nowhere that can let out a yawp like that in Arkansas City without bein’ took up sudden. ’Twa’n’t eight minutes by the clock after he’d peeped, afore him an’ Billy an’ Sam Pearsall an’ Jake Winterbottom an’ Joe Bassett was sittin’ ’round the table countin’ out their chips. They each put up a thousand an’ made it a table stakes game. ‘We didn’t come here to play old maid,’ said Billy, when somebody asked what the game should be. ‘Let’s have somethin’ worth playin’ for,’ he says, an’ they was all agreed.
“Well, just naturally they all played right up under their collar buttons at first, bein’ anxious to get on to one another’s play. There hadn’t none of our boys even played with Fairfax, but they all knowed him by reputation as one o’ the slickest players in Mississippi, an’ they wa’n’t takin’ no chances on his deal. Overton we didn’t none of us know much about, ’ceptin’ he had the name o’ bein’ a cool hand in a quarrel and a bad man in a fight. We knowed he played poker, course, just as everybody does, but we hadn’t heard o’ his bein’ counted no crack player, such as Hank would be sure to have with him, an’ we was a little slow, too, about sizin’ him up, not knowin’ what his particular graft might be.
“Bein’ for them reasons a trifle more cautious than usual, the boys, as I said, was slow about startin’ in, an’ any way the cards ran small for awhile, but all of a sudden there was somethin’ doin’ on Winterbottom’s deal. It was a jack-pot with thirty dollars in it, an’ Hank havin’ first say, opened it for thirty. Pearsall, he came next an’ he come in. Bassett was the next player an’ he raised it thirty. Overton made it thirty more and Winterbottom h’isted it fifty. Fairfax raised it a hundred an’ Pearsall says: ‘I didn’t want to raise it the first time round for fear o’ scarin’ some of ye out, but as long as I’ve got you all hooked,’ he says, ‘it’ll cost ye two hundred more to draw cards.’