Around the tables sit, or stand, the players, exhibiting a variety of facial types, and national costumes. For there you may see not only human specimens of every known nationality, but of every rank in the social scale, with the callings and professions that appertain to it; an assemblage such as is rarely, if ever, observed elsewhere: gentlemen who may have won university honours; officers wearing gold straps on their shoulders, or bands of lace around the rims of their caps; native Californians, resplendent in slashed and buttoned velveteens; States’ lawyers, and doctors, in sober black; even judges, who that same morning were seated upon the bench—may be all observed at the Monté table, mingling with men in red flannel shirts, blanket coats, and trousers tucked into the tops of mud-bedaubed boots; with sailors in pea-jackets of coarse pilot, or Guernsey smocks, unwashed, unkempt, unshorn; not only mingling with, but jostled by them—rudely, if occasion call.
All are on an equality here; no class distinction in the saloon “El Dorado;” for all are on the same errand—to get rich by gambling. The gold gleaming over the table is reflected in their faces. Not in smiles, or cheerfully; but by an expression of hungry cupidity—fixed, as if stamped into their features. No sign of hilarity, or joyfulness; not a word of badinage passing about, or between; scarce a syllable spoken, save the call-words of the dealer, or an occasional remark by the croupier, explanatory of some disputed point about the placing, or payment, of stakes.
And if there be little light humour, neither is there much of ill-manners. Strangely assorted as is the motley crowd—in part composed of the roughest specimens of humanity—noisy speech is exceptional, and rude or boisterous behaviour rare. Either shown would be resented, and soon silenced; though, perhaps, not till after some noises of still louder nature—the excited, angry clamour of a quarrel, succeeded by the cracking of pistols; then a man borne off wounded, in all likelihood to die, or already dead, and stretched along the sanded floor, to be taken unconcernedly up, and carried feet-foremost out of the room.
And yet, in an instant, it will all be over. The gamesters, temporarily attracted from the tables, will return to them; the dealing of the cards will be resumed; and, amidst the chinking of coin, and the rattling of cheques, the sanguinary drama will not only cease to be talked about, but thought of. Bowie-knives and pistols are the police that preserve order in the gambling-saloons of San Francisco.
Although the “El Dorado” is owned by a single individual, this is only as regards the house itself, with the drinking-bar and its appurtenances. The gaming-tables are under separate and distinct proprietorship; each belonging to a “banker,” who supplies the cash capital, and other necessaries for the game—in short, “runs” the table, to use a Californian phrase. As a general rule, the owner of a table is himself the dealer, and usually, indeed almost universally, a distinguished “sportsman”—this being the appellation of the Western States’ professional gambler, occasionally abbreviated to “sport.” He is a man of peculiar characteristics, though not confined to California. His “species” may be met with all over the United States, but more frequently in those of the south and south-west; the Mississippi valley being his congenial coursing-ground, and its two great metropolitan cities, New Orleans and Saint Louis, his chief centres of operation. Natchez, Memphis, Vicksburg, Louisville, and Cincinnati permanently have him; but places more provincial, he only honours with an occasional visit. He is encountered aboard all the big steamboats—those called “crack,” and carrying the wealthier class of passengers; while the others he leaves to the more timid and less noted practitioners of his calling.
Wherever seen, the “sport” is resplendent in shirt-front, glittering studs, with a grand cluster of diamonds on his finger sparkling like star, or stalactite, as he deals out the cards. He is, in truth, an elegant of the first water, apparelled and perfumed as a D’Orsay, or Beau Brummell; and, although ranking socially lower than these, with a sense of honour quite as high, perhaps higher than had either.