Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/58



Here the Prince stopped looking around, held up his head, laughed a little, and proceeded to state that the night before he had a game with two new gamblers, who claimed to have just come up from Oregon, long-haired and green, as he supposed, as Willamette grass, at twenty dollars a corner. That about midnight he fell heir to four aces, and staked all his fortune, money, mule and watch on the hand. u I really felt sorry for the boys," added the Prince. " It seemed like robbing, to take their money on four aces, and I told them to not set it too deep, but they said they would mourn as much as they liked at their own funeral, and so came to the centre and called me to the board."

u What have you got?"

" Four aces!"

" Four aces! and what else? Skin em out, skin em out!"

u I put down my four aces before their eyes, when one of them coolly put his finger down on my fifth card, pushed it aside, and there lay the sixth card ! "

Boston gave a long whistle, and as he could not push his panama any further back, he pulled it for ward, and looked up with his nose at Mount Shasta.

This was my first lesson in gambling. Here for the first time I learned that any one caught cheating at cards forfeits his stakes.

Cheat all you like, but don t get caught. A game at cards, you see, is much like many other things in this respect.