Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History/Chapter 4

by Cincinnatus Heine Miller

CHAPTER IV.

HIGH, LOW, JACK AND THE GAME.

HE man did not notice me, but made straight up to my companion until his mule s opera-glasses nearly touched the tall man s nose, who was now in a little trail at my side.

Then the man under the palm-leaf let go the reins, leaned back as the mule stopped, put his two hands on the saddle pommel, and slowly, emphati cally, and with the most evident surprise, as he raised one hand and pushed back the palm-leaf clear off his eyes to get a good square look at my com panion, said :

u Well blast my sister s cat s-tail to the bone ! Is this you, Prince Hal, or is it Hamlet s daddy s ghost? You back from the war-path, afoot and alone ! Angels and ministers of grace defend us !

Spirits of the"

And here as if the mention of the first-named in the sentence had suddenly inspired him with a new

thought, he leaned forward, unfastened his catenas, and drew forth a long-necked bottle. He drew the cork with his teeth, then held the bottle up to the sun, shut one eye, looked at the contents as if to see that they had the desired bead, handed it to the man he had called Prince Hal, said " Boston s best," and bowed down his head.

The Prince took the bottle solemnly, held it up to the light, placed three fingers on a level with the top of the contents, and then slowly raised the bottom towards the sun.

A gurgling sound, then the telescope descended, and the Prince took a long breath as he handed the bottle on to me.

I had not yet learned the etiquette of the moun tain traveller, and shook my head.

A hand reached out from under the broad hat, as the Prince returned the bottle in that direction, took it by the neck, shook it gently, tilted it over as the broad hat fell back, and consulted the oracle ; then stuck it back in the catenas.

When he had replaced the bottle, he stood in his great wooden stirrups, rattled the bells of steel on his great Spanish spurs, and again eyed my com panion.

"Well damn old roper!" he again broke forth, "money, mule, and watch all gone, and you afoot and alone ! Well, how on earth did it happen ? And is it really so? Just to think that Prince Hal, the man of all others who always made it partic ular hell

for the rest of us, should travel all the way from Yreka to Cottonwood to get a game, and then get cleaned out cleaner than a shot-gun ! Too jolly for anything ! And are you really dead-broke ? "

" Skinned clean down to the bed-rock. Haven t got the colour," said the Prince, laconically, as he again tapped the dust with his boot.

" Well now, do tell a fellow how it happened. I shall hang up at Cottonwood to-night, and if I don t make the sports ante, my name ain t Boston. What did you go through on?"

"Four aces!"

" Four devils ! and what did the other fellow have ?"

" A pair ! "

u A pair of what? You let him take your money on a pair when you had four aces ? Now come ! On the square how on earth did you get sinched, any how? and did you really have four aces?"

"Yes."

" And the other fellow?"

" A pair."

"Of what ?"

u Six-shooters ! " calmly answered the laconic Prince, still tapping at the dust and looking sidewise like, to the right.

u Now look here," said Boston earnestly, as he dismounted, stood on one foot and leaned against his mule, with the broad hat pressed back and his right arm over the animal s neck, u do for the love of Moses tell me all about how this happened ! "

Here the Prince stopped looking around, held up his head, laughed a little, and proceeded to state that the night before he had a game with two new gamblers, who claimed to have just come up from Oregon, long-haired and green, as he supposed, as Willamette grass, at twenty dollars a corner. That about midnight he fell heir to four aces, and staked all his fortune, money, mule and watch on the hand. u I really felt sorry for the boys," added the Prince. " It seemed like robbing, to take their money on four aces, and I told them to not set it too deep, but they said they would mourn as much as they liked at their own funeral, and so came to the centre and called me to the board."

u What have you got?"

" Four aces!"

" Four aces! and what else? Skin em out, skin em out!"

u I put down my four aces before their eyes, when one of them coolly put his finger down on my fifth card, pushed it aside, and there lay the sixth card ! "

Boston gave a long whistle, and as he could not push his panama any further back, he pulled it for ward, and looked up with his nose at Mount Shasta.

This was my first lesson in gambling. Here for the first time I learned that any one caught cheating at cards forfeits his stakes.

Cheat all you like, but don t get caught. A game at cards, you see, is much like many other things in this respect.

The Prince of course remonstrated, but it was no use. He had not been cheating; they had waxed his cards together and he did not detect it till too late.

Appearances were against him ; besides a pair of pistols cocked and at hand, decided the matter. He acknowledged himself beat. Took a drink good- naturedly with the crafty gamblers and retired.

For the benefit of ladies whose husbands may profess ignorance on this subject, I may state that four aces in a game of poker make a " corner " that .cannot be broken.

The man in the broad hat slowly mounted his mule, set his feet in the stirrups, stretched his long legs in the tapideros, unbuckled the catenas, and again reached the contents of the right-hand pocket to the Prince, and leaning back as my companion took a refreshing drink again, said u Well blast my sister s cat s tail to the bone ! "

" Well, Prince," said Boston, as he drove the cork home with his palm and replaced the bottle, u you and I have set against each other, night after night, and I have found you a hard nut to crack, you bet your life, but to see you skinned to the bed-rock, and by Oregonians at that, is too rough ; and here s my hand on that. You was always bast, and I second best, of the two you know, but no matter; take this." And he put his hand down in the other pocket of his catenas, and drew forth a handful of twenties. u Take them, I tell you," as the Prince

declined. u You must and shall take them as a friend s loan if nothing else. That is, I intend to force you to take these few twenties, and won t take no for an answer."

The Prince took the coins, carelessly dropped them into his pocket, and again tapped the dust with his boot, and looked up at the sun as if he wished to be on his way.

Neither of the men had counted the money, or seemed to take any note of the amount.

The bottle was again uncorked and exchanged. Boston gathered up the reins from the neck of his mule, settled himself in the saddle, stuck his great spurs in the sinch, and the mule struck out, ambling and braying as he went, with his opera-glasses held directly on the river below.

I had not been mentioned, or noticed further. I might have been invisible as air, so far as my presence was concerned, after I declined to take a drink.

California gamblers these, of the old and early type ! And they were men ! There is no doubt of that. They were brave, honest, generous men. But let it be distinctly understood, that the old race is extinct.

These men described were the cream of their call ing, even at that time when gold was plenty and manhood was not rare. Such men were the first to give away their gains, the first to take part in any good enterprise, not too much freighte d with the

presence of a certain type of itinerants, so-called " Methodist ministers." In these few first years, they went about from camp to camp, and won or lost their money as the men above described.

The man who keeps a gambling den to-day is another manner of man. The professional gambler through most of the Pacific cities of to-day is a low character. The would-be " sport " who would imitate these men of the early time is usually a broken-down barber, bar-tender, or waiter in disgrace.

A sudden and short-lived race were these. Gay old sports, who sprung up mushroom-like from the abundance and very heaps of gold. Men who had vast sums of money from some run of fortune, and no great aim in life, and having no other form of excitement, sat down and gambled for amusement, until they came to like it and followed it as a calling, for a time, at least.

All men have a certain amount of surplus energy that must be thrown off against some keen excite ment. You see how very naturally very good men became gamblers in that time. Their suc cessors, however, gamble for gold and gain ; too idle to toil and too cowardly to rob, they follow a calling, about the mining camps particularly, that is now as disreputable as it was once respectable, or rather aristocratic.

The good old days are gone. The gay gamblers with their open pockets and ideas of honour ; the fast women who kept the camps in tur moil and commo-

tion, are no more. Their imitators are there, but in camps where men would be glad to pay a woman well to wash his shirt, and where every man strong enough to swing a pick can get employment, there is no excuse for the one nor apology for the other.

Water will seek its level. As a rule, the low are low avoid them, particularly in America, more par ticularly on the Pacific side of America. Give a man five years, and, with unfortunate exceptions of course, he will find his level on the Pacific, and his place, whether high or low, as naturally as a stream of water. Many of our old gamblers took up the law. A great many took to politics ; some advanced far into distinction, even to Congress, and were heard when they got there. Many fell in Nicaragua. One or two became ministers, and made some mark in the world. One is even now particularly famous for his laconic sword-cuts of speech, born of the gambling table, when he is excited and earnestly addressing his congregation of miners in the mountains.

As a rule, these men remained true to the Pacific, and refused to leave it. The miners gathered up their gold, and returned to their old homes ; the merchants did the same as the camps went down, but these men remained. They have, to use their own expression, mostly " passed in their checks," but what few of them are still found, no matter what they fol low, are honest, brave old men.

Nature had knighted them at their births as of noble blood, and they could not but remain men even in the calling of knaves.

It was late in the day when we passed, on one side of the dusty road we had been travelling but a short distance, a newly-erected gallows, and a populous grave-yard on the other. Certain evidences, under the present order of things, of the nearness of civilization and a city.

Mount Shasta is not visible from the city. A long butte, black and covered with chapparal, lifts up before Yreka, shutting out the presence of the mountain.

It was a strange sort of inspiration that made the sheriff come out here to construct his gallows out in the light, as it were, from behind the little butte And full in the face of Shasta.

A strange sort of inspiration it was, and more beautiful, that made the miners bring the first dead out here from the camp, from the dark, and dig his grave here on the hill- side, full in the light of the lifted and eternal front of snow.

Dead men are even more gregarious than the living. No one lies down to rest long at a time alone, even in the wildest parts of the Pacific. The dead will come, if his place of rest be not hidden utterly, sooner or later, and even in the wildest places will find him out, and one by one lie down around him.

The shadows of the mountains in mantles of pine were reaching out from the west over the thronged busy little new-born city, as we entered its populous streets.

The kingly sun, as if it was the last sweet office on earth that day, reached out a shining hand to Shasta, laid it on his head till it became a halo of gold and glory, withdrew it then and let the shadowy curtains of night come down, and it was dark almost in a moment.

The Prince unfastened his cloak from the macheers behind my saddle, and as he did so, courteously asked if I was u all right in town," and I boldly answered, " Oh yes, all right now." Then he bade me good bye, and walked rapidly up the street.

If I had only had a little nerve, the least bit of practical common-sense and knowledge of men, I should have answered, " No, sir; I am not all right, at all. I am quite alone here. I do not know a soul in this city or any means of making a living. I have nothing in the world but a half-dollar and this pony. I am tired, cold, hungry, half-clad, as you see. No, sir, since you ask me, that is the plain truth of the matter. I am not all right at all."

Had I had the sense or courage to say that, or any part of that, he would have given me half, if not all, the coins given him on the trail, and been proud and happy to do it.

I was alone in the mines and mountains of Cali fornia. But what was worse than mines and mountains, I was alone in a city. I was alone in the first city I had ever seen. I could see nothing here that I had ever seen before, but the cold far stars above me. There was nothing, no one there

that had ever heard of, known, or cared for me before, but .... God.

I pretended to be arranging my saddle till the Prince was out of sight, and then seeing the sign of a horse with hind legs like the knees of a ship, and other points displaying equal artistic skill, swing ing before a stable close at hand, I led my tired pony there, and asked that he should be cared for.

A negro kept this stable, a Nicaragua negro, with one eye, and an uncommon long beard for one of his race. He had gold enough hung to his watch-chain in charms and specimens to stock a ranch, and finger-rings like a pawn-dealer. He was very black, .short and fat, and insolent to the white boy who tended his horses. I was afraid of this man from the first, instinctively, and without any reason at all.

When you fear a man or woman instinctively, follow your instincts. I shrank from this short, black, one-eyed scoundrel, with his display of gold, in a strange way. When he came up and spoke to me, as I was about to go out, I held my head down under his one eye, as if I had stolen something and dared not look into it.

Permit me to say here that the popular idea that the honest man will look you in the face and the knave will not, is one of the most glaring of popular humbugs that I know. Ten chances to one the knave will look you in the eye till you feel abashed yourself, while the honest, sensitive man or woman

will merely lift the face to yours, and the eyes are again to the ground.

" Look me in the eye and tell me that, and I will believe you," is a favourite saying. Nonsense ! there is not a villain in the land but can look you in the eye and lie you blind.