We trundled down the flopping, heavy-eddied Missouri to Plattsmouth, and there they backed us on to a siding, the Christian Endeavor being expected to pass that way. And while the equality absorbed themselves in a deep but harmless game of poker by the side of the railway line, the Virginian and I sat on the top of a car, contemplating the sandy shallows of the Platte. “I should think you’d take a hand,” said I. “Poker? With them kittens?” One flash of the inner man lightened in his eyes and died away, and he finished with his gentle drawl, “When I play, I want it to be interestin’.” He took out Sir Walter’s Kenilworth once more, and turned the volume over and over slowly, without opening it. You cannot tell if in spirit he wandered on Bear Creek with the girl whose book it was. The spirit will go one road, and the thought another, and the body its own way sometimes. “Queen Elizabeth would have played a mighty pow’ful game,” was his next remark. “Poker?” said I. “Yes, seh. Do you expaict Europe has got any queen equal to her at present?” I doubted it. “Victoria’d get pretty nigh slain sliding chips out agaynst Elizabeth. Only mos’ prob’ly Victoria she’d insist on a half-cent limit. You have read this hyeh Kenilworth? Well, deal Elizabeth ace high, an’ she could scare Robert Dudley with a full house plumb out o’ the bettin’.” I said that I believed she unquestionably could. “And,” said the Virginian, “if Essex’s play got next her too near, I reckon she’d have stacked the cyards. Say, d’ yu’ remember Shakespeare’s fat man?” “Falstaff? Oh, yes, indeed.” “Ain’t that grand? Why, he makes men talk the way they do in life. I reckon he couldn’t get printed to-day. It’s a right down shame Shakespeare couldn’t know about poker. He’d have had Falstaff playing all day at that Tearsheet outfit. And the Prince would have beat him.” “The Prince had the brains,” said I. “Brains?” “Well, didn’t he?” “I neveh thought to notice. Like as not he did.” “And Falstaff didn’t, I suppose?” “Oh, yes, seh! Falstaff could have played whist.” “I suppose you know what you’re talking about; I don’t,” said I, for he was drawling again. The cow-puncher’s eye rested a moment amiably upon me. “You can play whist with your brains,” he mused,--“brains and cyards. Now cyards are only one o’ the manifestations of poker in this hyeh world. One o’ the shapes yu fool with it in when the day’s work is oveh. If a man is built like that Prince boy was built (and it’s away down deep beyond brains), he’ll play winnin’ poker with whatever hand he’s holdin’ when the trouble begins. Maybe it will be a mean, triflin’ army, or an empty six-shooter, or a lame hawss, or maybe just nothin’ but his natural countenance. ’Most any old thing will do for a fello’ like that Prince boy to play poker with.” “Then I’d be grateful for your definition of poker,” said I.