“There was a good bit o’ money up in that game, for there was four o’ the nerviest men I ever knowed in it, an’ every one of ’em was out for blood. Two of ’em, Jim Waters an’ Abe Simpson, was St. Louis sports that always travelled together. Jim Blivins was another. He come from Memphis, but he’d kind o’ run hisself out o’ town an’ mostly travelled the river. ’Twarn’t that he was crooked, partic’lar. He played as fair as most of ’em did, an’ used to say that he never stacked the cards ’thouten he had reason to think that somebody else in the game was up to the same sort o’ deviltry. But the truth was he played too strong a game for the Memphis crowd, an’ it got so that nobody that knowed him would play with him, so just naturally he had to seek for new pastures an’ strange lambs. The fourth man was a feller I never seed afore, though I come to know him well enough afterward. ’Twas George Dunning, a chap f’m somewheres up in Iowa that had took to the river for business an’ somehow had struck up a friendship with Blivins. They was playin’ partners at the time, though I didn’t know it, an’ just naturally they wasn’t a-shoutin’ it out from the housetops, the same bein’ the upper deck in case of steamboats. Incidentally there was another feller in the game. He was a cattle-dealer from Texas, Dunnigan by name, that had just been up north sellin’ a slew o’ cattle, an’ was goin’ home with a wad that wouldn’t fit comfortable in his inside pocket. “The other four was just naturally intendin’ to get hold o’ that wad, but there was some difference of opinion amongst ’em about it. Waters an’ Simpson was reckonin’ on takin’ it back to St. Louis with ’em, an’ Blivins an’ Dunning was thinkin’ o’ gettin’ off at Memphis an’ dividin’ up there. What Dunnigan was figurin’ on I don’t know, but I reckon he expected to draw compound interest on his money durin’ the time he was on the boat. “By the time we got below Cairo the game was goin’ on under a full head o’ steam. The professionals was all well fixed for money an’ there wasn’t no small stakes played for. Nothin’ was said about a limit, neither, nor there warn’t no table stakes rules. It was just a case o’ bettin’ anything you damn please, an’ either layin’ down or makin’ a bigger bluff every time the other feller peeped. “White chips was a dollar, reds was five, an’ blues was fifty, makin’ a tol’able stiff game even with chips, but they was a good many hundred-dollar bills lyin’ on the table ’fore they’d been playin’ long, an’ there was a feelin’ among them that was lookin’ on that bigger money than that was liable to be flashed ’most any time.