It was Mr. Matson's deal. He dealt. The cards passed through the air and fell, one on the other, in neat piles. (If you prefer it, Mr. Matson can drop a fan-shaped hand before you, all ready to pick up.) And from the time that the first hand was played I knew that here, as in St. Louis, my companion and I were babes among the lions. I do not know how he played, but I do know that I played along as best I could, only trying not to lose too much money at once.
But why rehearse the pathetic story? I spoke in a former chapter of Missouri poker, and Pike County is a county in Missouri. Bet on a good pat hand and some one always holds a better one. Bluff and they call you. Call and they beat you. There is no way of winning from Missouri. Missouri poker players are mahatmas. They have an occult sense of cards. Babes at their mothers' breasts can tell the difference between a straight and a flush long before they have the power of speech. Once, while in Pike County, I asked a little boy how many brothers and sisters he had. "One brother and three sisters," he replied, and added: "A full house."
The Missouri gentlemen, so gay, so genial, at the dinner table, take on a frigid look when the cards and chips appear. They turn from gentle, kindly human beings into relentless, ravening wolves, each intent upon the thought of devouring the other. And when, over a poker game, some player seems to enter into a pleasant conversation, the other players know that even that is a bluff—a blind to cover up some diabolic plot.
Once during the game, for instance, Colonel Hawkins started in to tell me something of his history. And I, bland simpleton, believed we were conversing sans ulterior motive.
"I used to be in politics," he said. "Then I was in the banking business. But I've gone back to farming now, because it is the only honest business in the world. In fact—"
But at that juncture the steely voices of half the other players at the table interrupted.
"Ante!" they cried. "Ante, farmer!"
Whereupon Colonel Hawkins, who by that time had to crane his neck to see the table over his pile of chips—a pile of chips like the battlements of some feudal lord—anted suavely.
By midnight Colonel Buell, who had stood behind me for a time and watched my play, showed signs of fatigue and anguish. And a little later, after having seen me try to "put it over" with three sixes, he sighed heavily and went home—a fine, slender, courtly figure, straight as a gun barrel, walking sadly out into the night. Next Major Wald ceased to play for himself, but began to take an interest in my hand. Under his supervision during the last fifteen minutes of the game I made a tiny dent in Colonel Hawkins's stacks of chips. But it is only just to Colonel Hawkins to say that, by that time, the Missourians were so sorry for us that they were making the most desperate efforts not to win from us any more than they could help.
When the game broke up, Major Wald and Colonel Hawkins showed concern about our future.