Sam Newhouse, the multimillionaire mining operator of Utah, famous on two continents as a charming host, especially when celebrities are his guests, was stopping at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Mrs. Glyn was in San Francisco at the same time. Mr. Newhouse and Ray Baker, a Reno Beau Brummel, clubman, chum of M. H. De Young, owner and editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, and scion of a house that represents the aristocracy of Nevada, were showing Coast hospitality to the distinguished authoress.
A message was sent to Mr. Baker reading substantially as follows: "Please suggest to Mr. Newhouse and Mrs. Glyn the advisability of visiting Rawhide. The lady can get much local color for a new book. If you bag the game, you will be a hero."
Ray was on to his job. Within three days Mrs. Glyn, under escort of Messrs. Newhouse and Baker, arrived in Rawhide after a thirty-eight-hour journey by railroad and auto from San Francisco.
The party having arrived in camp at dusk, it was suggested that they go to a gambling-house and see a real game of stud poker as played on the desert.
They entered a room. Six players were seated around a table. The men were coatless and grimy. Their unshaven mugs, rough as nutmeg-graters, were twisted into strange grimaces. All of them appeared the worse for liquor. Before each man was piled a mound of ivory chips of various hues, and alongside rested a six-shooter. From the rear trousers' pocket of every player another gun protruded. Each man wore a belt filled with cartridges. Although an impromptu sort of game, it was well staged.
A man with bloodshot eyes shuffled and riffled the cards. Then he dealt a hand to each.
"Bet you $10,000," loudly declared the first player.
"Call that and go you $15,000 better," shouted the second as he pushed a stack of yellows toward the center.
"Raise you!" cried two others, almost in unison.
Before the jack-pot was played out $300,000 (in chips) had found its way to the center of the table and four men were standing up in their seats in a frenzy of bravado with the muzzles of their guns viciously pointed at one another. There was enough of the lurking devil in the eyes of the belligerents to give the onlookers a nervous shiver.