In such a game one night he found himself sitting beside a player who had removed his big overcoat with wide patch pockets and hung it on his chair. Fairbanks noticed the fellow had a habit of gathering in the discards when he wasn’t betting and his deal would follow. He also noticed intermittent movements of the fellow’s deft fingers to the big patch pocket and soon saw that every ace in the deck reposed in the pocket.
Later in the game, Fairbanks opened a jackpot. Every man stayed. The crook raised discreetly and most of the players stayed. Fairbanks bet $1000.
“Have to raise you $5000,” the crook said.
Fairbanks met the raise. “... and it’ll cost you $5000 more,” he said evenly.
With the confidence that came from the cached aces, the sharper shoved out the five, smiled exultantly as he spread four kings and a deuce and reached for the pot.
“Not so fast,” Fairbanks said as he laid four aces and a ten on the table.
The crook gave him a quick look. Fairbanks’ eyes were steady. Neither said a word. The crook couldn’t. He knew that Fairbanks’ long fingers had found the big patch pocket.
When three men and a jackass no longer made a crowd in Shoshone, Ralph Fairbanks became restless. With a population of 20—half of it his own progeny, he felt that civilization was closing in on him. “Charlie, I’ve been in one place too long....” He had now become “Dad Fairbanks” to all who knew him.
The automobile was being increasingly used in desert travel and transcontinental trips were no longer a daring adventure or the result of a bet. Sixty miles south of Shoshone there was a wretched road that pitched down the washboard slope of one range into a basin, then up the gully-crossed slopes of another. Part of the transcontinental highway, it was a headache to the traveler. Radiators usually boiled down hill and up.
To this desolate spot went Dad Fairbanks. The hot blasts from the dunes of the Devil’s Playground and the dry bed of Soda Lake made summer a hell and the freezing winds from Providence Mountains turned it into a Siberian winter.