We won again!
Our adversaries, getting still more nettled at our success, now proposed doubling the stakes. This was agreed to, and another game played.
Again Chorley and I were winners, and the pork-man asked his partner if he would double again. The latter consented after a little hesitation, as though he thought the amount too high. Of course we, the winners, could not object, and once more we “swept the shin-plasters,” as Chorley euphoniously expressed it.
The stakes were again doubled, and possibly would have increased in the same ratio again and again had I not made a positive objection. I remembered the amount of cash I carried in my pocket, and knew that at such a rate, should fortune go against us, my purse would not hold out. I consented, however, to a stake of ten dollars each, and at this amount we continued the play.
It was well we had not gone higher, for from this time fortune seemed to desert us. We lost almost every time, and at the rate of ten dollars a game. I felt my purse grow sensibly lighter. I was in a fair way of being “cleared out.”
My partner, hitherto so cool, seemed to lose patience, at intervals anathematising the cards, and wishing he had never consented to a game of “nasty whist.” Whether it was this excitement that caused it I could not tell, but certainly he played badly—much worse than at the beginning. Several times he flung down his cards without thought or caution. It seemed as if his temper, ruffled at our repeated losses, rendered him careless, and even reckless, about the result. I was the more surprised at this, as but an hour before at Euchre I had seen him lose sums of double the amount apparently with the utmost indifference.
We had not bad luck neither. Each hand our cards were good; and several times I felt certain we should have won, had my partner played his hand more skilfully. As it was, we continued to lose, until I felt satisfied that nearly half of my money was in the pockets of Hatcher and the pork-dealer.
No doubt the whole of it would soon have found its way into the same receptacles, had not our game been suddenly, and somewhat mysteriously, interrupted.
Some loud words were heard—apparently from the lower deck—followed by a double report, as of two pistols discharged in rapid succession, and the moment after a voice called out, “Great God! there’s a man shot!”
The cards fell from our fingers—each seized his share of the stakes, springing to his feet as he did so; and then players, backers, lookers-on, and all, making for front and side entrances, rushed pell-mell out of the saloon.