Poker Jim, Gentleman, and Other Tales and Sketches

by G. Frank Lydston

The expression on that poor boy’s face was a horror and a sermon both in one. As the woman coldly and haughtily swept away from him, her tainted skirts swishing suggestively and ominously over the floor, gathering up tobacco and other filth which was purity itself beside her harpy-like soul, the lad stood gazing after her as if in a dream. He was stunned into obliviousness to everything but the realization of his disaster.

He stood for a moment as though incapable of motion, then with an expression of desperation in his eyes, and a countenance that was the typification of utterly hopeless despair, he passed through the green baize doors out into the night—his first black night of fathomless woe and absolute demoralization.

I had watched the boy from the time we left the table, and his expression, as the hawk that had plucked away his youthful plumage flew away from her victim, at once appealed to my young professional eye. I made my diagnosis almost intuitively, and instinctively started to follow the lad, as quickly as I could without attracting his attention. As I turned toward the exit, I caught a glimpse of some one just passing out. As the doors swung back before him, I recognized the stalwart form of the picturesque unknown.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and strolled leisurely along after the stranger. I do not know why, but I felt that the boy was safe. I was sure I could not be mistaken in my interpretation of the play of emotions that had animated the stranger’s face, as he watched the game which had ruined the poor lad whom he was evidently following.

I soon saw that I was right. The stranger caught up with the boy just as he stepped into the brilliant light that illuminated the sidewalk in front of the gambling den. Placing one hand upon the boy’s shoulder, he gently but firmly halted him, I meanwhile drawing back into the shadow of the outer door of the Palace, determined, with the best of motives, to see the thing through.

“Don’t be frightened, my lad,” said the man, “I just want to say a word to you, that’s all.”

The boy looked at him as though dazed for a moment, and then replied slowly:

“I’m not frightened, sir. You’re not apt to do anything worse to me than I’ve already done to myself. My money is all gone, and you can’t do any more than kill me, if you don’t want money. As for killing me,—well, I have more lead than gold left, and I’ve not forgotten how my father taught me to die, like a gentleman.”

I fancied that the boy looked quite the hero as he spoke. There was a little touch of the southron born about him that brought my Kentucky home back to me. I had seen such boys there, and I knew—well, there was one who was something like that, whom I would have given the world to see, and my heart went out to that poor, unfortunate lad. And, yet, for some reason, I had an even kinder feeling for the man who was evidently going to act the friend and adviser of our mutual protegé.

“Pardon me for even suggesting that you might be frightened,” said the unknown, “but you are young; San Francisco has some queer ways and still queerer people, and it’s not every man who gets the drop on you who means well. I am free to say that I should be uneasy myself, were I to be similarly accosted, and they say I am—well, that I’m ‘no chicken’, you know. Where are you from, my boy?”