Year: 1873

Out of Luck


1t was q November night in '67 n
sleeting. bad night, when it is dismal


outside and the damp chlls creep indoors,


despite fires and lamplight. that noun


taineer came into Julesburg, Kansas, on
| the construction train from the west, and
| wended his way into the principal and on
ly street Of the town. If he was tall and


straight and bearded; and if from be-


meath the tapping rim of his wide black


felt hat heavy masses of blacker hair fell


down and swept the fringe on the short
cape about his shoulders; and If in his
| belt were seen the butts of his best friends


peeping from their black leather sheaths :;


still you could tell as You caught the out


lines OF his face in the shaded light that
came out OF the stained windows of the
dance-house, at the front of which he had


halted, that these outward habiliments
and trappings of the Montana mountainecr


only disguised form that had grown I'M
der other skies and amid other surround
mgs. He was about five feet eleven;
straight and clean-clmbed us Santee
Sioux; dressed from the top of his hat to


the soles Of his cavalry boots in the
fashion Of the Yellowstone; and his face


might have been Il poets but for the h ,rd


lines of a semi-melancholy devlltry that
were traced there by experiences that had
in them only prose. "This is the place


Mott described" said he in an undertone,
pulling out of his breast pocket 81 soiled
card whereon were halt-effaced memo
randa in pencil; This is the house now
let me see where the bank is" Turning
away from the front of the hurdy-gurdy,
he took straight across the river of red
mud they called the street, and ploughed
his way through it to the farther side


Here was a shanty-halt tent and halt
board shed, long, low, and narrow. The
door swung back for him, and he went
in. There was Il long pine board laid
along the tops of some whiskey barrels at
the right as you went in, that answered
for a bar. At the farther end were two
or three thick groups, in the centre Of
each OF which was II faro game. The
mountaneor muttered, This is the place
-keliy's place. wonder now if he is
heIe?" Gong up TO the nearest group
he edged his way in till he reached the
end of the table. The dealer did not look
up, But the mountaineer looked down.
As the features of the dealer filled his
vision, there was Il little flash under the
bronze of his cheek, and little dangling
gleam in his eye that was baletul. He
pulled his wet hat down low over his eve
hrows, and then threw down five double
eagles on the baize. "Give me Il stack of
reds" said he, The game went on then,
and the strangers play was singularly
desperate and wonderfully lucky Half
dozen deals had changed his red TO blues,
and there We're two or three stacks where
there had been one. There was three
card turn i'll the box-ace, seven and tray
"Wait a minute, Mr.. Dealer" said the
mountaineer, 81 want to press the game
q little Can you stand double or break
on my pile ?"


"stand anything, sir, ii it's all the same
to you"


i" Hum-m well, ace twice winner
she'll lose out put that on the ace to lose,
if you please. I'll make q favor lite of the
tray to win out-she's a three time loser"


There was fifteen hundred on the turn
seven hundred and fifty on each side Of it
and the run was tray, ace-a whipsaw.


"Ont of luck, of course, on the last
turn" said the mountaineer between his
teeth.


He left the table and went back to the
bar.


"What is that dealers name ?" he asked,
pointing to the table he had Just left, and
addressing the bartender.


sJoe Morford"


"Has he got IA girl over across the way,
at the Alamo ?"


'Yes,'


Then he sat down on an empty keg that
stood in the corner, and mused for long
while


That there was no one there to make
that scene art-immortal is one of the mis-
fortunes of the century. 1t might have
stood away yonder in the new time when
we shall have been ground in the gods
mills to the dust of the old, and unre-
membered, save a mist that was in the
morning and is not at noon it might have
lived then with the soul of genius in it, to
toll with mute lips a story of the times
that were and the lives men led who lived
in then that pen can never tell. That
rude tent-and-shanty, with its long. low
roof overhead its unexpected floor of un-
matched boards its dense air thick with
tobacco smoke and whiskey fumes, and
laden with imprecations that might have
1ioated up from the gaming tables and
hung under the rude rafters as cobwebs
fastened there. unclean and noisome the
cllnk of glasses and the rattle of tin cups
on the unplaned and unpainted bar, the
throng OF men that surged here and there,
now about the tables, stilled with the
Dameless fascination of the faro, and again
about the bar, surly with misfortune, and
grutf, or garrulous with whiskeY, and
loud; clad in all the strange and curious
fashions and freaks of the order; belted
all: some with pistol-butts and knife-hilts
showing their grim teeth above the belts,
and others with pistol-muzzles and the
metal lips OF knife scabbards peering from
under the short fringed blouses and in
the foreground the typical one of his
vanishing class, who sat on the old keg in
the corner musing-Out of Luck; all this
was a picture worth the immortality that
the touch of Titan could have annoint-
ed it with, tor it was the type and minia-
ture of life that it passing, even as the
buffalo that goes before it, to come back
no more forever. The men who were
there are scattered as widely as were the
homes they knew in infancy, in the four
quarters OF the globe. This one may be
gathered to his kindred, for he went home
to die. That one sleeps under the white
sands OF some Arizona stream. with no
tablet to tell the story of his death save
the broken arrow shaft half buried in the
sand beside him, while the long locks of
which he was 50 proud hang ornamental
from the peeled poles of an Apache lodge
Tor he died rs he had lived-roving for
the gold that mayhap weights the sand
that covers him. And two others rest
where the crumblng shanties of Jules
burg,-stray, oblisks of warped and
shrunken boards that are ro ting in soil
tude-stand their melancholy monuments
where the yellow blossoms of the lone
some and unsavory-scented dogfennel> !
bloom instead of violets, and where the