"If I advise you," he pursued, "will you agree to follow my advice?"
"Certainly."
"Well," said the Major, "don't you play poker any more while you're in the West. Wait till you get back to New York."
Seeing the houses of the players next day as I drove about the county, I suspected that even these had been built around the game of poker, for each house has ample accommodations for the "gang" in case the game lasts until too late to go home. In the winter the games occur at the houses of the different Colonels, and there is always a dinner first. But it is in summer that the greatest games occur, for then it is the immemorial custom for the Colonels (and Major Wald and Mr. Matson, too, of course) to charter a steamer and go out on the river. These excursions sometimes last for the better part of a week. Sometimes they cruise. Sometimes they go ashore upon an island and camp. "We take a tribe of cooks and a few cases of 'essentials,'" one of the Colonels explained to me, "and the game never stops at all."
My companion and I were tired. The mental strain had told upon us. Soon after the Colonels, the Major, and Mr. Matson went, we retired. It seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes when I heard a faint rap at my bedroom door. But I must have slept, for there was sunlight streaming through the window.
"What is it?" I called.
The voice of our host replied.
"Breakfast will be ready any time you want it," he declared. "Will you have your toddy now?"
Ah! Pike is a great county!