Cards, Gentlemen

their part to bring civilization, culture, and religion to the territory of their residence: In Tombstone the very Rev. Endicott Peabody, whose Episcopal outlook on life had been nurtured in the sheltered precincts of Cheltenham and Cambridge, had cause to decry the frugality of his devout flock.

In the eyes of the Rev. Peabody, it was an intolerable offense against the parish that the church yard should be left unfenced. At Sunday morning service the rector appealed for funds for this worthy cause. He proposed to erect a neat, iron picket fence to mark the boundaries of this plot of the Lord's Kingdom.

Perhaps the parishioners weren't listening. Perhaps they had their minds on other things. At any rate the collection fell far short of the desired sum.

Somehow or other the gamblers at the Crystal Palace heard of the Rev. Peabody's disappointment. Being men of action they set up a kitty, and for the next fifty hours or so of their perpetual poker game every pot won with a hand above two pairs was assessed for a contribution towards the building of Endicott Peabody's picket fence.

When a sum more than sufficient for the purpose had been collected, a messenger delivered the proceeds to the parish house. A more stodgy parson might have peered askance at the source of this manna, but the Rev. Peabody thanked the gentlemen for their generosity and built his fence.

When the problem of selecting a site for the University of Arizona first presented itself to the assembled patronagehungry legislative delegates, no one wanted the University.

In Tucson there were three far-sighted men, B. C. Parker, E. B. Gifford, and W. S. Reid. These gentlemen, sophisticated gamblers, recognizing the potential value of such an institution, purchased forty acres of land and donated it to the territory so that the University might be established at Tucson.

Contrary to the propaganda spread by the writers of lurid Western fiction, a gambler was not per se a villain. But it is true that evil men gambled. A crooked game was usually but not always climaxed by a fight.

In the late 80's when Vulture ore was running somewhere around $200 a ton, Wickenburg was a booming frontier town. "Screw-Jaw" Davis, a cattleman by profession and a poker player by choice, bought a stack of chips in a game operated by four short-card men who regarded this stranger with the twisted jaw as a sacrificial sheep.

House rules governed the play, and much to the dismay of Screw-Jaw Davis, his opponents had some peculiar rules. In their game a skip straight beat a flush. Twos and threes paired made twenty-three, and topped a full house. Screw-Jaw dropped better than $200 as tuition fee for learning the new rules. At the end of three hours he was plunging desperately. By bulling the game he drew nearly three hundred dollars into the pot. He was called. He threw down his hand defiantly. The king of spades, the jack of diamonds, the eight of hearts, the nine of clubs, and the deuce of spades.

Screw-Jaw reached out one big hand and raked the winnings his way.

"What kind of a hand is that?" one of his opponents who had a full house demanded.

Old Screw-Jaw looked up and regarded his questioner with exaggerated innocence. His right hand came into position on the table top and the nose of his hogleg wavered with no preference from one to the other of his opponents.

"That," he said "is a blaze." Using the barrel of his six gun as a rake, he pulled in the pot.

Raymond Alee, now a successful Phoenix attorney, vouches for the truth of the next two incidents. The first one happened in Ashfork. Ray and a friend, Bill Ward, the greenest of tenderfeet, descended from the westbound Santa Fe eager to sample the delights of that frontier town.

As potential investors, they surveyed the situation, and then settled for two stacks of chips at a poker table. They played with indifferent success for an hour when finally all hands dropped with the exception of Ward and the house man.

These two opponents raised back and forth until all the eastern capital was in the pot.

The house man displayed four of a kind and Bill Ward laid down a royal flush.

The house man pushed the pot to Ward with no comment.

An hour later the game resolved itself again into a contest between two men, this time Ray was betting against the dealer. When the pot had devoured all of the contestant's capital and the hand was called, the dealer exposed a full house and it was Ray's turn to put down a royal flush.

The dealer's six gun came into view. Using the weapon

Legal Tender in Tucson, the limits were automatically lifted when Bill Green appeared.

Mulford Winsor, Arizona State Historian, recalls watching Green drop $18,000 in thirty minutes on the faro game at the Legal Tender.

But this was small change compared to what happened to Bill Green at the Bankers' Club in New York City. Cananea Copper was the hottest thing on the market, and Green had a reputation as a sporting man.

The luxurious furnishings of the swank New York gambling club made quite an impression on this western Croesus. Bill Green liked to do things in a big way. He dropped a $10,000 bill before the dealer of the roulette wheel and held out his hands for chips.

The dealer gave him one white chip.

Green looked at the stacks of blues and reds on the table. There was, he decided, at least a million dollars bet on the wheel. He dropped his white chip on thirteen to win and twenty minutes later he left the game having won $280,000.

To promote the sale of Cananea stock, a number of wealthy financiers were invited to come to Arizona and look over the property.

They travelled west in a private car. On the way out, Green and an extremely British individual lost heavily at poker. By the time the party reached Benson, every man in the car with the exception of Green and the English man, was flushed with the stimulation of consistent winning. Their egos had been needled to a pressure point. None of them had ever seen a copper mine before, but they acted wisely, asked a few questions, and then over-subscribed the stock issue up for sale.

Green, the master salesman, had purposely lost at cards on that westward trip. The Britisher was his stooge play ing with his money. On the return journey, Arizona's copper colonel let himself go. He displayed a brand of poker which left the eastern money bags talking to them selves.

A man's gambling habits frequently earned a nickname. Arizona's Spanish War hero, Bucky O'Neill, earned the Bucky part of his name in recognition of his predilection for faro, "Bucking the Tiger."

In Tombstone an otherwise undistinguished gambler, John O'Rourke, became Johnny Behind the Deuce because he always bet the deuce to win at faro. Johnny bet the deuce and the deuce frequently won, but on one occasion when his life was in the balance, he was forced to gamble on the strength of a soft-voiced faro dealer.

Over breakfast one morning in Charleston, Johnny be came enraged at the aloof attitude of Henry Schneider, a mining engineer. Words passed between them, and Johnny shot and killed the mining man.

A mob of lynch-hungry citizens assembled to avenge the murder of Schneider. Constable George McKelvey, who had arrested Johnny, led the gambler into a buckboard and headed his mules towards Tombstone.

Johnny arrived in Tombstone with the mob at his heels, and the constable, who had been lost by the wayside, sent a message with his prisoner appealing to Wyatt Earp for protection.

Wyatt was dealing faro at the Oriental when Jack Mc Cann, owner of the Last Chance saloon, delivered Johnny Behind-the-Deuce and McKelvey's message.

There were bets on the board. Wyatt drew the cards from the box, called the turn, paid the winners, leveled the stacks of chips in the check rack, then said, "Hold on to your chips, boys. I'll cash 'em when I get back."

The Oriental with its wide swinging doors and glass front, was a bad place to make a stand. Wyatt took the now thoroughly frightened Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce to a bowl ing alley on Elm street. He posted his brother, Virgil, at the rear door, left Doc Holliday at the front, and stepped out in the street to face the mob alone.

He didn't draw his guns, he just stood there and defied the mob to come and take his prisoner.

Five hundred armed men milled about the front of him, five hundred blood-thirsty animals coming in for the kill. They could have killed Wyatt, they could have killed Doc and Virgil, but they couldn't match the courage of the slender, blue-eyed faro dealer who stood before them. They couldn't call his bluff. They quit.

And even before the mob had completely dispersed, Wyatt Earp, the gambling man, walked back to the Oriental and calmly resumed the deal.

Felix Knox was a short card man, a man with brooding dark eyes, a lean and hungry look, and a game leg. The Knox and McKnalley saloon at Globe had an evil repu tation.

Knox had a ranch on the upper Gila river. One morning in the spring of 1882, he left the ranch and headed for Globe driving a buckboard. In the seat beside him was his wife, their two children, and the children's nurse.

The party had travelled less than five miles when Knox sighted an Apache war party. The gambler didn't hesitate. He lashed the mules into a run, kissed his wife and children goodbye, clutched his rifle in one hand, and dropped over the tail board of the careening buggy.

Knox stopped the Apaches. They found his body sur rounded by the bodies of seven Indians. Ordinarily, Apaches on the war path mutilate their victims, but Felix Knox, the fighting man, had won their respect. His body was touched.

Open gambling is gone. The gentlemen with the color ful names are only a memory. Their profession, where it still exists, has degenerated into a racket. The activities of the oily gangsters spawned with prohibition, have twisted the name of their calling into an epithet. But back in the cow trail saloons and frontier gambling houses, the dealer's phrasing of that question, "Cards, gentlemen?" applied the proper salutation.

"Your chips are down, gentlemen. You've paid your bets. Here's luck on the new deal."