“‘Long about the third day he began takin’ short walks, an’ bimeby he got as far as to come in here an’ look ’round. Seein’ the bar, he called for some red liquor an’ drank it, an’ then seein’ a chair he sot down. There hadn’t been much doin’ for a week or two, an’ I says to Jake Winterbottom that it mought be a good idea to start a game o’ poker. ‘This here stranger,’ I says, ‘don’t look as if he knowed one card from another, but ’tain’t likely he’s quite as simple as he looks, an’ mebbe,’ I says, ‘you might get him into the game. Don’t make it too stiff right away,’ I says, ’an’ who knows but you might get a small stake out of him? ’Tain’t very promisin’,’ I says, ‘but some men is like crooked cattle. There’s more meat on ’em than they looks.’ Well, Jake, he didn’t think there was nothin’ doin’. He looked the stranger over an’ sort o’ turned up his nose, but things was quiet, an’ finally he says: ‘I don’t reckon he’s got fifty dollars in the world, an’ if we win that we’ll only have to chip in an’ send him away. There ain’t the makings of a citizen into him, no way I can figure it, an’ we don’t want him settin’ around for ever. But we might take a shy at it, just to pass the time.’ “So him an’ Sam Blaisdell an’ George Bascom kind o’ got together an’ played a few hands, thinkin’ the stranger might show some interest an’ propose to join the game, but he never stirred. Just sot still an’ chawed his tobacco, like he didn’t give a cuss for nothin’. So finally Bascom he spoke up an’ says: ‘This is pretty slow playin’ three-handed. We’d oughter have somebody else in the game,’ an’ they waited a minute to see if that would catch him, but he never even looked round. So Winterbottom says: ‘Wouldn’t you like to play?’ an’ the stranger he says: ‘Yes,’ just the same absent-minded-like way he’d spoke to the hotel proprietor, an’ he went over an’ sot in. I sold him ten dollars’ o’ chips, an’ they dealt him cards. It were a table stakes game, an’ each man had put up ten. “The stranger, he talked like a Yankee an’ looked like a Frenchman, but his name on the hotel register was Dennis McCarthy, an’ for all the interest he showed in the cards after he got ’em he might have been a Chinee. He just put up when it come his turn, an’ drawed cards every time, but he never made a bet till his ten was all gone, an’ then he bought ten more as calm an’ collected as a knot-hole in a board fence. “Well, we played along, if you can call it playing poker, just like that until his third ten-spot was gone, an’ he bought ten more worth o’ chips. Then he caught a hand that seemed to interest him some, for he studied it a long time after Bascom had bet ten on his cards before he said anything. Then he said, ‘I call,’ an’ shoved a ten-dollar bill into the pot. They showed down an’ the stranger had a pair o’ queens. Bascom, he had three sevens, so he raked the pot, o’ course, for Winterbottom an’ Blaisdell had passed out.