Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches

by G. Frank Lydston

It was noticeable that those of our citizens whose losses at the gambling table were largest and most recent, or whose morals in other directions were least worthy of commendation, were the noisiest champions of social reform. As is usually the case with meetings where the dominant impulse is to pretend a virtue though one has it not, the party of reform—and noise—carried the day.

The meeting was well timed, for the only man who might have interposed an objection to the sweeping tone of the final resolution was absent from town—Toppy had been in Stockton for several weeks. Poor fellow! He remained in blissful ignorance of the social revolution that menaced the safety of Poker Jim, until long after it was too late to defend his friend—in this world at least.

Public opinion developed into concerted popular action very quickly in California mining towns, and by the following morning, due notice had been served on every individual who was in any way identified with the undesirable element of the population, to leave town within twenty-four hours.

Most of the persons who were ordered to move on, had been in similar straits before, and were constantly on the qui vive of expectation of some such emergency. As practice makes perfect, and delay is not healthful after one has been told to leave a mining town for the good of its morals, the majority of the tabooed ones took time by the forelock and decamped early. Indeed, by nightfall, everybody who had been given the ultimatum by the citizens, had departed—with one exception.

* * * * *

It was nearly midnight of the day of the exodus. A large party of our citizens were congregated in the bar-room of the Tuolumne House, discussing the important event that had so effectually cleared the moral atmosphere of our town. The subtle essence of sanctity apparently had already pervaded our social fabric.

Mutual congratulations had been in order for some time, and the resultant libations had considerably disturbed the equilibrium of the crowd. Each man, however, felt that he was a thoroughly good fellow, and that everybody else present was pretty good. There was not a man in the crowd who did not feel that he was a modern Hercules, jubilating after the successful accomplishment of a task beside which his ancient prototype’s experience as chambermaid in the Augean Stables, was but a trifling thing indeed. Commingled with the self-congratulations of these moral reformers, were boastful remarks expressive of the awful things the speakers would have done, had not the persons who had contaminated the very air of our little burg, opportunely left in good season after having received their “notice to quit.”

The proceedings of the extempore mutual-admiration society-of-social-purists were at their height, and our citizens were fast becoming inflated to a superlative degree, when a step was heard on the hotel porch, the door opened, and there on the threshold, with a smile of mocking gravity upon his handsome face, stood—Poker Jim!

He had evidently been riding hard, for his boots and clothing were covered with the red dust of the Tuolumne roads, and his long curly hair was in a condition of dusty confusion that was totally unlike his usual immaculateness.

The sudden quiet that fell upon the noisy crowd was something phenomenal, and as a disinterested observer I was duly impressed by it. My fellow townsmen were not cowards, but they were now face to face with a quality of bravery which was more than physical indifference to danger. Poker Jim was a man whose presence conveyed the impression of great intellectual and moral power—and it was not without pronounced effect upon those rude miners.