"I know that, Colonel," said the Colonel, "but what is your age?"
"Colonel," returned the Colonel suavely, "I have forgotten my exact age. But I know that I am somewhere between eighty and one hundred and forty-two."
It was Mr. Matson's deal. He dealt. The cards passed through the air and fell, one on the other, in neat piles. (If you prefer it, Mr. Matson can drop a fan-shaped hand before you, all ready to pick up.) And from the time that the first hand was played I knew that here, as in St. Louis, my companion and I were babes among the lions. I do not know how he played, but I do know that I played along as best I could, only trying not to lose too much money at once.
But why rehearse the pathetic story? I spoke in a former chapter of Missouri poker, and Pike County is a county in Missouri. Bet on a good pat hand and some one always holds a better one. Bluff and they call you. Call and they beat you. There is no way of winning from Missouri. Missouri poker players are mahatmas. They have an occult sense of cards. Babes at their mothers' breasts can tell the difference between a straight and a flush long before they have the power of speech. Once, while in Pike County, I asked a little boy how many brothers and sisters he had. "One brother and three sisters," he replied, and added: "A full house."
The Missouri gentlemen, so gay, so genial, at the dinner table, take on a frigid look when the cards and chips appear. They turn from gentle, kindly human beings into relentless, ravening wolves, each intent upon the thought of devouring the other. And when, over a poker game, some player seems to enter into a pleasant conversation, the other players know that even that is a bluff--a blind to cover up some diabolic plot.
Once during the game, for instance, Colonel Hawkins started in to tell me something of his history. And I, bland simpleton, believed we were conversing _sans_ ulterior motive.
"I used to be in politics," he said. "Then I was in the banking business. But I've gone back to farming now, because it is the only honest business in the world. In fact--"
But at that juncture the steely voices of half the other players at the table interrupted.
Whereupon Colonel Hawkins, who by that time had to crane his neck to see the table over his pile of chips--a pile of chips like the battlements of some feudal lord--anted suavely.