“But what I mean about outside influences is entirely different. There comes a time, sometimes, when a man is obliged to think quick an’ act quick in order to keep some unscrupulous stranger from sweepin’ away all his hard-earned winnin’s in one fell pot. At such times even a thorough knowledge o’ poker ain’t a goin’ to save a man thouten he’s quick enough to think an’ has sand enough to act on the instant. “There was an instance o’ that in Arkansas City the time when Hank Fairfax an’ his side-partner, Billy Overton, come up here from Vicksburg to do up the town, an’ come so near doin’ it. It were a great night, an’ on’y for Sam Pearsall’s presence o’ mind an’ prompt action I reckon we’d ha’ lost prestige right then an’ there. “There couldn’t no one find fault with Hank an’ his partner, for they come in like men an’ said, open an’ above board, just what they’d come for. Hank put it kind o’ brutal, but he was fair an’ square about it. He said: ‘We Vicksburg sports is plumb tired hearin’ about Arkansas City poker, an’ Billy an’ I has come to give you jays a few lessons on how the game reely ought to be played. If any of you has the sand to play up against the real thing, now’s your time, but this ain’t no crossroads proposition. We are out for the stuff an’ we propose to carry it back with us.’ “Well, you know there ain’t nobody from nowhere that can let out a yawp like that in Arkansas City without bein’ took up sudden. ’Twa’n’t eight minutes by the clock after he’d peeped, afore him an’ Billy an’ Sam Pearsall an’ Jake Winterbottom an’ Joe Bassett was sittin’ ’round the table countin’ out their chips. They each put up a thousand an’ made it a table stakes game. ‘We didn’t come here to play old maid,’ said Billy, when somebody asked what the game should be. ‘Let’s have somethin’ worth playin’ for,’ he says, an’ they was all agreed. “Well, just naturally they all played right up under their collar buttons at first, bein’ anxious to get on to one another’s play. There hadn’t none of our boys even played with Fairfax, but they all knowed him by reputation as one o’ the slickest players in Mississippi, an’ they wa’n’t takin’ no chances on his deal. Overton we didn’t none of us know much about, ’ceptin’ he had the name o’ bein’ a cool hand in a quarrel and a bad man in a fight. We knowed he played poker, course, just as everybody does, but we hadn’t heard o’ his bein’ counted no crack player, such as Hank would be sure to have with him, an’ we was a little slow, too, about sizin’ him up, not knowin’ what his particular graft might be.