Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/95

 of lengthy sessions—food. In this sacrosanct room usually could be found the stiffest game north of Denver. Not a paltry pastime of diddling away white chips on jacks or better, but a game with the hair on, wherein not infrequently the disposition of an entire shipment of fattened beef cattle depended solely on catching a flush filler or making a king-full stand up.

Here the lordly foremen of cow outfits numbering their thousands gathered around the green baize to have a hack at Fortune's trailing robe, even though a year's salary and bonuses might be the price of that lady's disfavor. Here, too, the occasional big director of one of the cattle companies up from Cheyenne or out from Washington played his yellows against a rival director's. It is legend with the Capitol that a titled young man representing a great English cattle concern and visiting the Big Country for the first time, "did n't know the game of draw", and after thirty-six hours steady in Dad Strayhorn's upper room took the stage out with a little more than $90,000 buttoned under his tweeds.

Not for the lowly or the casual cowpunch was this quiet upper room. Dad himself was