She went into the smoking car and calmly lighted a cigarette
CHEYENNE NELL; TRIMMER
The gambler in this story came from the West to get a little New York money. He had been getting it for years from the Sierra Nevadas to El Paso, and from Seattle as far east as Omaha, which he said was far enough for anybody who liked fresh air, but he had struck a run of bad luck and one of his pals told him that the best way to break it was to trim a New York sucker.
“They’re fly guys there all right,” remarked this same man, casually, “but the flyer they are the easier it is to trim them. I would sooner stack up against a stock broker that runs one of those bubble machines and can speak sixteen different languages than get into a game with a Kansas farmer any day. The farmer knows he ain’t in it and he’s got his eye out for a job every time; his coat is buttoned up so tight that he has contraction of the lungs and his heart doesn’t beat right, but the gink that knows it all thinks he’s so damned smart that he’s got everybody in the world in his corral, and those are the fellows you catch with their vests open.”
All homely philosophy, but as true as gospel and worth looking into.
So Big Ben—that was his name in the country where slouch hats are the real thing—pulled his freight one night and hit the Overland Flyer for Gotham. His name was Big Ben no longer, for the cards he carried in his vest pocket read:
Benjamin F. Van Buren, Mining Engineer.
He bought tickets for two at the station, and there is the heart of the story, as one of the tickets was for Cheyenne Nellie.