“The way of it was this. It was in the time o’ the spring floods, an’ the river had been up for nigh two months, an’ Arkansas City was all afloat up to the second story, ’xcept on the levee. There were a boat now an’ again, of course, but they’d just tie up at the levee for a few minutes, an’ the folks that had been thinkin’ o’ comin’ ashore would just look around for a spell, kind o’ discouraged like, and then they’d set down on the boat again an’ go on down the river, or up, as the case might be, an’ you couldn’t blame ’em. The railroad was washed away for ten miles back, an’ there wasn’t no other way to git out o’ town. Just naturally folks took the way they was sure of, there bein’ nothin’ to stay here for. There bein’ no strangers in town, the boys played poker among themselves pretty constant, for there wasn’t nothin’ else to do while the river was up, an’ after the first five weeks the entire cash capital of the place was in the possession of two men. It was a case o’ what the Good Book tells about when it says that him as has shall win, and him that has nothin’ shall lose that which he seemeth to have. Jim Harris and Pete Barlow won everything in sight, an’ there wasn’t another man in town among the sporting set that had a dollar to his name. ’Course there was some of us taxpayers that didn’t play frequent, that had money in the bank, but the sports was all flat broke ’xcept them two. We was all looking for them to come together an’ for one of ’em to eat the other up, but for some reason they didn’t, each bein’ more or less afraid of the other as near as I c’d figger it. Pete an’ Ike was good friends, but Jim Harris hated Ike like p’ison for reasons of his own, an’ Ike like a good Christian was always lookin’ for a chance to pile red-hot coals on him. “Well, just then some crossroads gambler from Mississippi come along the river lookin’ for blood. He’d raked one or two other towns clean, an’ just naturally arrove here with a wad bigger’n his head. He drifted around the first day tryin’ to get acquainted, an’ some o’ the boys spotted him, an’ lost no time in tellin’ our two capitalists about him an’ his wad. Thar was some backin’ an’ fillin’, but the second day the three come together right here in this room an’ after some talk got to playin’ cards. The news got around an’ the room was tol’able nigh full o’ the boys. All of ’em was pinin’ for the destruction o’ that stranger, just for the sake of encouragin’ home talent, but there wasn’t many of ’em that cared whether Harris or Barlow’d git away with him, so long as one of ’em should do the trick. Ike was here, o’ course. If he’d had money enough to set into the game I s’pose he’d ha’ been in Little Rock, but bein’ as there wasn’t no earthly probability o’ his bein’ wanted here, he was just naturally here. But the dispensation o’ Providence is very often mysterious an’ he turned out to be the chosen instrument o’ heaven for the salvation of Arkansas City.