The Savannah morning news., 1903-12-27

gu uuSn. II was the nerNleSL play
ever saw at the poker table. OF course,
Farrell was gambling on his convic-
ton that Harding was bluffing and
he must have known Harding's style
of play tolerably well, but it showed
nerve, all the same.
And nerve was something that Far
rell never lost. He worked the river
boats for quite a while and did as we'll
as most OF the old-time gamblers, but
he was shrewd enough to see that the
days of river boat gambling were pass
ing away and some time late in the
'70S he settled down in Cairo and
opened a gambling-house of his own.
"They weren't very strict about such
things in any of the river towns in
those days and I don't imagine he
had any serious difficulty with the To-
cal authorities, but if he had any at
all it was satisfactorily adjusted and
l never knew Farrel's place to be
molested.
LAS a matter of course, he ran a
faro bank. for faro was the great game
outside of poker. but 1 never saw any
game played in the place excepting
those two. There was always enough
doing there, though, to satisfy the wild
est gambler.
Was Merry Player.
eiAAGl uGbQ Il kOOQ AOlA anu
though the nominal limit at the bank
was $500 l never heard of his refusing
bigger bets if anybody wanted to make
them. There was a considerable craze
about that time for playing system
and the favorite system was progress
sion,' so 1 fancy the only reason he
fixed any limit was to break up the
system players.
Farrell never dealt faro himself,
but he had two dealers who were call
ed two of the best in the West. Don't
ask me if they dealt brace game. 1
don't know.
IF they did they did it too cleverly
for me to detect them and I have
watched carefully more than once, but
a crooked dealer always knows he
is being watched, and if he can't fool
a sharper man than the average play
er you can't Ill him slick All I
know is that it was rare occurrence
when the bank lost on nights play.
But if there was a poker game go
ing on in the house, and there gener-
ally was one every night, Farrell US
ually sat in if the game was heavy
enough to tempt him. He had been
called one of the best on the river and
his reputation grew after he located in
HIS own house.
HE had been there perhaps half a
dozen years and l had come to know
the place very well, for I always
dropped in when 1 was in Cairo,
though I seldom played more than So
or So But you will do most anything
for amusement in Cairo, or at least !
would In those days.
Playing for Big Stakes.
well, as 1 said, he had been there
five or six years when l dropped in
one night and saw that something I'M
usual was going on. 1 looked on for
| a while, but all that 1 could tell GER
tainly was that an unusually large
| game of poker was in progress.
Farrell was playing, as L would have
expected him to be, and l recognized
| one of the other players as profess
sional from Chicago named George Car
ter, but the other three were men
whom 1 had never seen.
! ION the surface there was nothing
! to excite special attention, but almost
! on the moment 1 entered the place
! was aware of sort of suppressed
excitement that 1 had never observed
| in the house before, even when the
| play was exceptionally high. So l got
! near one of the attendants and asked
| him what was doing.
HE told me that Carter had come
| to town the day before with two
| lIlSlluS W CldllGiiSG II dIIGll W ii BdtilCs
He didn't know who the two men
were, but he had heard them called
Brown and Hunter. They were not
! known as professionals and Carter had
/ declared that they were not, but were
high rollers who had come from some
distance simply to sit in a big game.
Farrell, he said, had accepted the
| challenge, but had proposed a lawyer
from st. Louis named Wharton for a
fifth player, and the game had been
made up. They had been playing two
or three hours when I came in and
| there had been some indications that
trouble was pending.
81 asked the fellow what the indi-
cations were, but he evidently thought
| he had said too much, and he would
not tell me. AS the prospect of see
| ing a disturbance was attractive to
me, however outside of the interest
| of watching big poker, I Joined the
small crowd of men who were looking
on.
Pistols in the Play.
'"rhere was very little pretense OF
| concealment of the nature of the house
! Entrance was easy to anyone who
! wanted to go in, and inside the house
| it was no breach of etiquette to watch
any play that was in progress.
'"They were playing no limit, as
presently saw when Wharton went
! down in his pocket to call a bet OF
! 81, 900, he having all his chips in the
pot before the bet. He won the money,
! too, on three kings, and that gave me