Stand Pat; Or, Poker Stories from the MississippiCurtis, David A.
General
Stand Pat; Or, Poker Stories from the Mississippi
Curtis, David A.
Poker players -- Fiction; Short stories, American
“After some hours’ play the second day, though, all hands seemed to get
impatient. ’Twa’n’t that they played any less cautious, but they seemed
to be gettin’ on to one another’s play better an’ better all the time
an’ feelin’ as though they was justified in playin’ to the strength o’
their hands more’n they had. I noticed they begun callin’ one another
once in awhile, an’ a call had been ruther a scarce thing before that.
Dunnigan was caught bluffin’ most outrageous once, on a busted flush,
but nobody even smiled. Blivins had called him on two pairs, an’ he
raked in a pot of near a thousand dollars just as if nothin’ had
happened.
“All of a sudden came a most astonishin’ deal. I reckon it was honest
enough, for, as I said, they was a-watchin’ one another like cats, an’
slick as they all was, there warn’t one of ’em but knowed the others
would catch him if he tried to deal crooked. So just naturally we had to
assume it was honest, anyway, although Dunning dealt the cards, an’ he
was one o’ the best manipulators I ever see.
“What made it surprisin’ was that the cards had been a-runnin’ most
almighty slow up to that time, as they will sometimes for a long spell.
There had been a few good hands, o’ course, but there hadn’t been a
real struggle worth talkin’ about in all those hours o’ play. This
time, though, there was struggle enough to satisfy the most sanguinary.
“Dunning dealt, as I said, an’ Waters had the age. He got four hearts
with the ace and king at the head. Blivins was next player an’ he caught
three queens. Dunnigan was next an’ he found kings and eights in his
hand. Simpson was next an’ he got four spades--little ones. An’ Dunning
dealt himself four ten-spots, pat.
“That of itself was a tol’able noteworthy deal, but the draw was still
more astonishin’. They’d all come in as a matter o’ course, an Waters
had just naturally raised it a blue chip. That give Dunning a chance,
an’ he raised it a hundred dollars. I asked him a long time afterward
how ’twas he didn’t raise the first round, an’ he said he couldn’t
exactly say, on’y he had a sort o’ hunch that Waters would raise, as he
did, an’ so give him all the better show. Everybody stood this raise
also, and then they called for cards.
“Waters got his fifth heart. Blivins caught the fourth queen. Dunnigan
made a king full, an’ Simpson got nothin’. Dunning, o’ course, drew a
dummy to his four tens.
“If ever there was a kettle o’ fish that was. Blivins bet five hundred
on the go off, an’ Dunnigan raised him five hundred as a simple act o’
Christian duty, havin’ a king full against one two-card and three
one-card draws, Simpson threw down his cards, havin’ no chance to do
anything else. Dunning just naturally put up a thousand dollars more,
an’ Waters was between the devil an’ the deep blue sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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