XV HE SAT IN WITH A V

“I hear a lot o’ talk,” said old man Greenhut, as he wiped up the bar and set his bottles and glasses in order, “about modern progress an’ the elevatin’ influences of eddication, an’ sich, but I’ll be everlastingly hornswaggled if it don’t appear to me that young folks nowadays is sure a degenerate lot. I don’t mean boys, for there can’t nobody tell what a boy’s goin’ to turn out to be. I’ve seen reg’lar milksops that went to Sunday school an’ wore neckties, or, mebbe, played with their sisters up to the time they was seventeen or eighteen, turn all of a suddin like, an’ develop into rip-roaring good citizens that could take their own part in anything that came along from a poker party to a political meetin’, an’ was a right down credit to the community. An’ similar I’ve seen right lively youngsters o’ fifteen an’ sixteen, that was full o’ ginger and gave every promise o’ bein’ husky citizens, take to foppish ways by the time they was twenty, an’ go around smokin’ cigarettes. No, there ain’t no tellin’ about boys.

“What I mean,” continued the old man, as he came around to his favourite seat by the window, “is the no-’count ways that the younger men of to-day seem to be fallin’ into. Why, talkin’ about cigarettes, there’s grown men smokes ’em now, just as shameless as if they was smokin’ honest tobacco in a pipe. An’ I don’t mean dagos and creoles an’ sich, but full-grown men. An’ what with temp’rance societies, an’ the women tryin’ to vote an’ gettin’ the men to uphold ’em in it, the country seems to be a-goin’ hell to breakfast cross lots an’ sideways.

“You don’t see none o’ the old style o’ men scarcely. Forty year ago men was different. They wasn’t afraid to drink four fingers to once o’ good liquor, an’ a word meant a blow an’ a blow meant a shot. Consequences was men was careful what they said, an’ was a heap sight more polite. An’ they played a man’s game o’ poker in them days. Nowadays they tell me the women is playin’ it, an’ it’s got to be a reg’lar parlour amusement.

“Sam Nichols was in here only the other night an’ somebody ast him to take a hand in a little game that was goin’ on in the back room, an’ he laughed an’ says: ‘No, I ain’t a-playin’ poker anywheres now ’ceptin’ at home. My wife, she’s learned the game an’ some o’ the neighbours comes in with their wives, an’ we plays ten-cent limit. You have all the fun o’ poker an’ it don’t cost nothin’ to speak of.’ An’ Sam, he used to be one o’ the stiffest players in Arkansas City.

“Just naturally, I was disgusted for fair. ‘Yes, Sam,’ I says, ‘you can have all the fun o’ poker if you leave out all there is in the game that makes it worth playin’. Certainly you can. An’ you could have all the fun of eatin’, too, if you was to take all your teeth out an’ gum it on a piece o’ sponge. But you wouldn’t get no nourishment out of it, I reckon. An’ similar, I’d like to know what sort o’ nutriment for a grown man there is in a ten-cent limit game. You sure make me sick.’ ”

The old man smoked in silence for a few minutes after he had got all this out and then began to chuckle. “It wasn’t no ten-cent limit game they was playin’ in here the night Park Halloway made his big haul,” he said, still chuckling. “That was a grown man’s game. The boys had been a little short o’ money for three or four weeks, an’ had got to playin’ a table stakes game among themselves. You see there hadn’t been no strangers in town since Three-finger Pete an’ his pal come in an’ done up the crowd with some marked cards they’d had sent here ahead of ’em.

“That was the slickest trick that was ever played on this community. Didn’t you never hear of it? Why that was told all up an’ down the river for years an’ years. It ’peared that Three-fingered Pete was special sore on Arkansas City for doin’ him up bad the first time he come here, an’ he swore he’d get even. So he waits a long time an’ he gets in with a feller that dealt in cards wholesale. That feller was afterward shot, but we never caught Pete.

“Well, Pete managed to get a line on everybody in Arkansas City that bought an’ sold cards. There was only three stores where they kept ’em, an’ this feller that I’m tellin’ about sold to all three. Well, Pete, he fixed up a set o’ marks entirely original an’ clever enough to fool the devil himself, an’ for three whole years he marked every pack that came to Arkansas City, so’s to be sure that no other kind o’ cards would be in use in the town when he come. He was a good stayer, Pete was, an’ he played a long game on this.

“After he was plumb certain that there wasn’t no old stock left over in town, he drifted in one day, an’ his pal followed next day. They was too slick to come together, or to let on that they knowed each other. Well, just naturally, when every pack o’ cards in town was marked, an’ only two men knowed it, and both o’ them had been practisin’ on readin’ them marks till they knowed the backs as well as they did the fronts, them two men took away all the available cash capital there was in Arkansas City. It was a rich haul, an’ everybody ’lowed that Pete was entitled to great credit for the way he worked it, though just naturally we was all pretty sore when we found it out, which we didn’t till Pete an’ the other feller had got away to Mexico.

“Well, as I was sayin’, the boys was a-gettin’ on the best way they could after that cyclone, an’ playin’ mumbletypeg amongst themselves with their odd change till some more strangers would come along an’ give ’em a chance to git their money back. An’ it had been goin’ on that way for some weeks when it come that night I was tellin’ of, that Park Halloway made his big play.

“It was a dispensation o’ Providence, sure enough, that sent three cotton factors up f’m New Orleans just at that time. They was comin’ up to dicker with some o’ the planters for the next crop, there havin’ been some difficulty in the market that had got a lot o’ planters dissatisfied, and these new factors had all sorts o’ money with ’em. They was stoppin’ over in Arkansas City to make some inquiries, an’ just naturally they set into a little game while they was a-waitin’ for the next boat.

“Jim Farley an’ Dick Hackett had been playin’ with ’em for about a hour when Halloway come in, an’ naturally they had accumulated some wealth, so that the game was pretty healthy. It was table stakes, but there wasn’t one o’ the five that didn’t have over a hundred in front of him, so when Halloway come in an’ ast if he c’d have a hand we was some surprised. He’d been as near broke as anybody in town since Pete’s raid, an’ it didn’t seem likely that he had money enough to set in with.

“So when he ast to set in, Hackett looked up a little doubtful an’ says, ‘Why, cert’nly, Park, but we’re playin’ table stakes,’ an’ he looked around at the money then in sight as much as to say, ‘That sort o’ lets you out, don’t it?’

“But Halloway, he grinned an’ says, ‘That’s the on’y game where I could get a show for my money, I reckon,’ an’ he sets down an’ flashes a five-dollar bill as sassy as you please. ‘I’ll make it as quick play as I can,’ he says, still grinnin’, an’ they all laughed an’ pushed him over five white chips.

“Well, it was his age an’ he antes a white chip as the others had been doin’ an’ let his cards lay face down till they’d all come in. Then, still without lookin’ at his cards, he made his ante good an’ shoved up the other three. One o’ the factors sat next an’ he saw. Then Hackett raised it five on the side, Halloway havin’, o’ course, a show for his money. The other two factors, Davis and Allen their names was, they was lookin’ for trouble, so they come in, an’ Farley, settin’ next, h’isted it ten dollars.

“Course, Halloway hadn’t nothin’ to say, an’ Smith, the first factor, he laid down. So did Hackett an’ Davis, but Allen come back with ten more, an’ Farley called it. Then Davis showed an ace high straight an’ Farley a small flush. Halloway waited till they was through, an’ then he turned his cards over. They was a ten full on sixes.

“That sort o’ gave him a footin’ in the game, for he had, o’ course, thirty dollars instead o’ five, an’ while Hackett was ten dollars out, Farley had won thirty dollars. The strangers was flush, anyhow, an’ they wasn’t a mite disturbed.

“It was Halloway’s deal next, an’ when it come his turn to see the ante he threw his cards away without lookin’ at ’em. ‘I’ll bet the next hand,’ he says, ‘same as I did the last, an’ I’d ruther not do it on my own deal.’ So they played that hand without him, an’ Hackett won it, with about forty dollars in the pot.

“Sure enough, in the next deal, Halloway shoved his thirty dollars in the pot without looking at his hand. Just naturally nobody thought he’d win again, so they bet as if he wasn’t in the game. Smith an’ Farley laid down, but Hackett an’ Davis raised back an’ forth till Hackett called for a show for his money. Allen stood one raise, but laid down on the second.

“Then came another surprise. Davis had three queens, Hackett had three kings, an’ Halloway had three aces. He won ninety dollars on that deal, an’ Hackett won something like a hundred an’ fifty.

“When the cards was dealt next time there was a jack-pot, for they was a-playin’ with a buck an’ Hackett had it. They made it a five-dollar jack, an’ Davis an’ Allen an’ Farley passed. That brung it up to Halloway an’ he opened it for twenty-five dollars. Smith an’ Hackett come in, Davis raised it fifty, Allen an’ Farley come in, an’ Halloway shoved up all he had which was forty dollars more. An’ once more they all come in. I don’t remember that I ever see anything just like it afore, but each man of the six drawed one card an’ not one of ’em bettered his hand. Davis was raisin’ on a four straight flush, king high, an’, of course, wanted to play it as hard as he could, but the others was drawin’ to four straights an’ four flushes exceptin’ Halloway, an’ he had aces up.

“Then he was in the game with all four feet, for he’d won more’n seven hundred dollars off’n his V-spot in three deals. We was all struck, but Park on’y grinned an’ says, quiet like, ‘ ’Pears as though I’d struck my gait, don’t it?’ which it sure did.

That warn’t the end of it, though, for on the next deal, Allen having the age, an’ Farley comin’ in, Halloway simply made good with his little two dollars, waitin’, as it appeared, for somebody else to raise. It was good play, too, for when it come Smith’s turn he raised it ten dollars. The others all come in, an’ Halloway raised it twenty-five. This kind o’ staggered ’em, an’ Hackett an’ Farley, knowin’ Halloway as well as they did, laid down, but the strangers all thought he was bluffin’ on the stren’th of his run o’ luck, an’ all three of ’em made good. Allen drew three cards to a pair of aces. Halloway drew one, holdin’ a kicker to three sevens, Smith drew two to three jacks, an’ Davis, who was dealing, drew one to a four flush.

Allen got his third ace. Halloway got his fourth seven. Smith didn’t better, an’ Davis filled his flush, so if ever the Lord was good to a man, He cert’nly was good to Halloway. It was his first bet, Farley havin’ passed out, an’ he put up fifty dollars. Smith came in, figgerin’ that some one else’d raise, which Davis did for fifty dollars more. Allen studied on his three aces for awhile an’ then come in. I don’t know what sort of poker he thought he was playin’, but I reckon he thought Halloway an’ Davis was both bluffin’. Just naturally Halloway come back with a hundred more, an’ Smith an’ Allen laid down, Davis callin’. That made seven hundred and ten dollars in the pot, of which four hundred and seventy-three dollars went to his profit an’ loss account, makin’ his winnin’s up to this time one thousand one hundred and eighty-eight dollars, which was doin’ well for a five-dollar bill in four pots.

By this time the others was all proper astonished, an’ Davis showed a little temper. He’d been hit pretty hard three times an’ was aggravated, but Halloway never said nothin’. On’y just set there an’ grinned, an’ once more the lightnin’ struck in the same place. It was a short game an’ a tol’able warm one.

The next deal was Davis’s, an’ as Halloway had the first say he come in without lookin’ at his cards. The next two men come in, an’ Davis raised it fifty. That showed, o’ course, that he was lookin’ for fight, for there wa’n’t but seven dollars in the pot up to then, an’ nobody had showed any stren’th. Allen an’ Farley looked over their cards pretty careful, an’ findin’ no encouragement they dropped.

Then Halloway picked up his cards an’ skint ’em down slow. The luck was still with him, for he had four treys. He was a cool player, though, an’ pretended to be studyin’ the cards, while he was really studyin’ how to play Davis good and hard again. He knowed it was no good to think about the others, for they wouldn’t be likely to stand Davis’s raise, let alone his, if he should raise back. So he thought awhile an’ then raised it a hundred.

That made Davis madder’n ever. ‘You can’t bluff me that way,’ he says, very nasty, an’ as the other two laid down, he come back with two hundred more. Then, o’ course, Halloway had him. He looked more serious than ever for awhile, and finally he says, ‘Well, I reckon I’ll draw one card,’ shovin’ up his two hundred as he spoke.

He let the card lay as it was dealt to him, an’ Davis, havin’ a pat flush, o’ course, drew none. Halloway looked at him for a minute, as if tryin’ to study out whether he was bluffin’ or not, an’ finally says: ‘Well, I’ll bet you five hundred, anyway.’

‘An’ I’ll raise you a thousand,’ said Davis, with some sort o’ French swearin’ that I reckon he must ha’ brought f’m New Orleans, f’r I never heerd anything like it around here.

Halloway grinned again, an’ he says: ‘I’m sorry I can’t see your thousand, but I’ll call for a show for what I have, an’ I reckon my cards is good.’ An’ he showed down his four treys.

Well, that broke up the game. Davis was too mad to play any more, an’ his pals see that it was foolish for them to stack up against any such luck as Halloway was settin’ in. But it was a monstrous good game while it lasted. I never seen five dollars grow to two thousand three hundred and eighty-six quite so quick, afore nor since.”