“The proposition caught me. You know I used to pride myself on my poker. After a little hesitation the others agreed. The man who proposed it had the cards, and we counted out six hundred coffee beans for chips and began playing on a blanket folded and laid on the ground. You would think the details of a game like that would fix themselves in the memory, so that I would be able to tell you every hand I held and every bet I made, wouldn’t you? Well, I can’t. In fact, I can’t tell anything about the first game excepting that I was the first man to lose all his chips. I had played often enough for what I thought were high stakes, but the thought that I was playing for my life rattled me completely, and I really believe I bet at random. Whatever I did I lost, and the man who had proposed the game won out. He was shot in a gambling house three months later--had an extra ace in his sleeve, I believe, or something like that.
“The next freeze-out, between three of us, was a comparatively short one. It did not take more than twenty minutes for the scout to gather in all the chips, but short as it was, I managed to get myself together a little, though I was still full of the thought of the value of the stakes--a thing which, I have noticed, always interferes with my play. When I consider the value of a chip it always influences my betting one way or the other, even though I try not to allow it to do so, and in this case I said to myself that each bean represented the one hundred and fiftieth part of my life. In other words, I was gambling away months and years instead of money.
“When the third game began, however, I pulled myself together with a most tremendous effort, and really became as cool as I ever had been before at a game of cards. The man I played against this time was a young Englishman whom I had grown to esteem highly in the short time I had known him. He was a gentleman clear through, and as cheery and companionable a man as I ever met. His people at home never heard this story, and I hope they never will. They know he was killed by the Indians and that he was on a hunting trip, but they never heard of his last game of cards, nor of the way he rode to his death. We had each three hundred beans, and half a dozen hands were dealt before either of us got cards to bet on. Then on my deal I caught three deuces and made it fifty to play. He looked at his cards and raised me fifty, which I covered. He drew one card and let it lie without looking at it, while he watched me. I saw him looking, of course, and I am more glad than I am of almost anything else I ever did in an almost useless life to think that I made the worst play I ever saw made. I liked the man well, as I said, and some impulse that I couldn’t understand then, and can’t explain now, told me to leave the thing to chance, and to give him a little the better chance. I had played with him before, and I was certain that he had not come back at me the way he did on two pair. He was drawing to a flush, and somehow I felt that he had filled it. Of course I should have drawn to the strength of my hand, but I didn’t. I drew one card only, holding up an eight spot to my deuces, and I shoved all my beans into the pot without looking at my draw.