With a swift motion of her hand the girl swept sack and slip to the floor. "Oh, I—I hope you die!" she cried hysterically, and gathering her wrap about her, she sped from the room.
CHAPTER V
LUCK TURNS
Before the advent of the tin-horns, who invaded the Yukon at the time of the big rush, a "limit" in a poker game was a thing unknown. "Table stakes" did not exist, nor did a man mention the amount he stood to lose when he sat in a game. When a player took his seat it was understood that he stood good for all he possessed of property, whatever or wherever it might be. If the play on any hand ran beyond his "pile" all he had to do was to announce the fact and the other players would either draw down to it, or if they wished to continue the play, the pot, including the amount of the "short" player's last bet was pushed aside until the last call was made, the "short" player only participating in the portion of the pot so set aside. If, in the final show-down his hand was the highest he raked in this pot and the next high hand collected the subsequent bets.
Stud poker was the play most favored by Brent, and when he sat in a game the table soon became rimmed with spectators. Other games would break
up that the players might look on, and they were generally rewarded by seeing plenty of action. It was Brent's custom to trail along for a dozen hands or more, simply calling moderate bets on good hands, or turning down his cards at the second or third card. Then, suddenly, he would shove out an enormous bet, preferably raising a pair when his own hand showed nothing. If this happened on the second or third card dealt it invariably gave the other players pause, for they knew that each succeeding bet would be higher than the first, and that if they stayed for the final call they would stand to lose heavily if not be actually wiped out. But they knew also that the bet was as apt to be made on nothing as on a good hand, and should they drop out they must pass up the opportunity to make a killing. Another whim of Brent's was always to expose his hole card after the play, a trick that aggravated his opponents as much as it amused the spectators.
The result was that many players had fallen into the habit of dropping out of a game when Ace-In-The-Hole sat in—not because they disliked him personally, but because, as they openly admitted, they were afraid of his play. Many of these spent hours watching his cards. Not a man among them but knew that he was as square as a die, but every man among them knew that his phenomenal luck must sometime desert him, and when that time came they intended to be in at the killing. For only
Brent himself believed that his luck would hold—believed it was as much a part of himself as the color of his hair or his eyes.
Among those who refused to play was Johnny Claw, from whom Brent had won ten thousand dollars a month before on three successive hands—two cold bluffs, and a club in the hole with four clubs showing, against Claw's king in the hole with two kings showing. Unlike the others who had lost to him, Claw nursed a bitter and secret hatred for him, and he determined that when luck did turn he would profit to the limit of his pile.
Johnnie Claw was one of the few old timers whom men distrusted. He was a squaw-man who had trapped and traded in the country as far back as any man could remember. With the coming of more white men, and the establishment of saloons along the river, Claw had ceased his trapping, and had confined his trading to the illicit peddling of hooch, for the most part among the Indians of the interior, and to that uglier, but more profitable traffic that filled the brothels and the dance halls of the Yukon with painted women from the "outside." So Claw moved among his compeers as a man despised, yet accepted, because he was of the North, and of the civilization thereof a component part.