“Then Hapgood seen what he’d done an’ picked up the deck again. ‘Oh, no,’ he says, ‘it ain’t a misdeal. I’ll give him a hand,’ and he dealt him one card off the top of the deck, another off the bottom, the next off the top, the next off the bottom, and the next and last off the top.
“Then Winterbottom turned to me an’ says: ‘Greenhut, I wish you’d bring me a drink o’ red liquor. I think I’m going to faint.’ I brought it to him quick, for he did look pale, an’ he ain’t as young as he was. After he’d swallowed it he says to Hapgood: ‘What in blue blazes is that sort o’ monkey business you was just puttin’ up? Is there anything in that extraordinary thing you call a book that says for you to do a thing like that?’
“ ‘Why, certainly,’ says Hapgood. ‘You’ll find it in law 34 of the International Code, on page 98. “If too few hands have been dealt or a player has been omitted, the dealer shall supply the omission by dealing the necessary number of cards alternately from the top and bottom of the pack.” There it is. You can read it for yourself.’
“And he handed the book to Jake. Jake took it and looked at it curiously while the rest of us looked over his shoulders. The rule was there and so were the other things he told us about. And the book was published by some firm in London and another firm in New York. It looked like a sure enough book. It even had the author’s name printed as Templar. I was almost stunned. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Neither could the rest of the boys for a few minutes, but finally Jake handed the book back to Hapgood an’ he says, mighty serious like, ‘I don’t find no fault with you, stranger. You mean well, an’ I don’t reckon you’re the man that wrote this book, but I want to give you a little good advice. If you’re thinkin’ o’ playin’ poker much while you’re in the country, an’ think o’ takin’ that book along with you, the best thing you can do is to take out an all-fired big policy o’ life insurance. Your heirs, if you have any, is liable to get rich monstrous sudden that way. As for me, I think I’ll cash in. I’m open to play draw-poker at any time, but this here game is too rich for my blood.’
“An’ that broke up the game. I don’t know whether they really do play any such poker as that book tells about in the East, but ’tain’t never likely to be played in this country. It does beat all how some folks can get things printed, but I remember hearing it said once that it stood to reason that nobody would ever write a book on how to play poker if he knowed, ’cause if he knowed he’d play enough not to need to write for a livin’.”
XIX
ONLY ONE SURE WAY TO WIN
“ ‘Pears to me,” said old man Greenhut, as he leaned his elbows on the bar and pulled viciously at a very black cigar to keep it alight, “like there was a monstrous lot o’ foolishness talked about the game o’ draw-poker. Fellers’ll tell you with tears in their mouth about gettin’ beat at the game an’ about the hard mess of luck they have an’ how some other player’ll always hold over ’em or pull out against their pat flushes an’ wipe up the floor with ’em when they’d oughter have the pot cinched according to all laws. Oh, there ain’t no end to hard luck stories. They’re thicker than cold molasses, but there hain’t no sense into ’em. O’ course, a man may get hit hard now an’ again when he ain’t lookin’ for it—he may get kicked by a mule sometimes when he thinks he’s out o’ the mule’s reach; but a man that gets kicked all the time is either a jackass or else he don’t know mules.
“So with poker. No man that knows poker is goin’ to get beat at it all the time, an’ the man that does get beat nine times out o’ ten beats hisself. ’Tain’t the other fellers’ play half as much as it is takin’ fool chances that makes men walk home ’stead o’ takin’ the cars. There’s a heap o’ talk about one man playin’ better poker than another man, but my experience tells me that the principal trouble is not that one man plays better than another, but that one man don’t play so well as another. An’ it stands to reason that when a man don’t play as well as the other feller he’s goin’ to beat hisself.
“There was Jake Winterbottom,” continued the old man, as he straightened himself up and walked around to his favourite seat by the window. Winterbottom wasn’t in the room at the time, or probably Greenhut would not have mentioned him by name.
“There was Jake Winterbottom. Jake is a powerful good player now, an’ I reckon he can hold his end up in the most select circles. He’s played steady with the best talent of Arkansas City for a good many years, an’ any man that can do that don’t have to have no trepidation about settin’ in with the best of ’em.