Abroad At Home Part 23

(Oh, yes; they wear them in those Mississippi River towns, and they fit as well as yours does!)

When we had been introduced we all moved to the dining room.

At each place was a printed menu with the heading "At Home Abroad"--a hospitable inversion of the general t.i.tle of these chapters--and with details as follows:

A COUNTRY DINNER

Old Pike County ham, Pike County capons and other Pike County essentials, with Pike County Colonels.

At the bottom of the card was this--shall I call it warning?

Senator Warner once said to Colonel Roosevelt: "_Pike County babies cut their teeth on poker chips_."

I have already said that Pike is a county with a Southern savor, but I had not realized how fully that was true until I dined there. I will not say that I have never tasted such a dinner, for truth I hold even above politeness. All I will say is that if ever before I had met with such a meal the memory of it has departed--and, I may add, my memory for famous meals is considered good to the point of irritation.

The dinner (save for the "essentials") was entirely made up of products of the county. More, it was even supervised and cooked by county products, for two particularly sweet young ladies, members of the family, were flying around the kitchen in their pretty evening gowns, helping and directing Molly.

Molly is a pretty mulatto girl. Her skin is like a smooth, light-colored bronze, her eye is dark and gentle, like that of some domesticated animal, her voice drawls in melodious cadences, and she has a sort of shyness which is very fetching.

"Ah cain't cook lak they used to cook in the ole days," she smiled in response to my tribute to the dinner, later. "The Kuhnel was askin' jus'

th' othah day if ah could make 'im some ash cake, but ah haid to tell 'im ah couldn't. Ah've seen ma gran'fatha make it lots o' times, but folks cain't make it no mo', now-a-days."

Poor benighted Northerner that I am, I had to ask what ash cake was. It is a kind of corn cake, Molly told me, the parent, so to speak, of the corn dodger, and the grandparent of hoecake. It has to be prepared carefully and then cooked in the hot ashes--cooked "jes so," as Molly said.

Having learned about ash cake, I demanded more Pike County culinary lore, whereupon I was told, partly by my host, and partly by Molly, about the oldtime wedding cooks.

Wedding cooks were the best cooks in the South, supercooks, with state-wide reputations. When there was a wedding a dinner was given at the home of the bride, for all the wedding guests, and it was in the preparation of this repast that the wedding cook of the bride's family showed what she could do. That dinner was on the day of the wedding. On the next day the entire company repaired to the home of the groom's family, where another dinner was served--a dinner in which the wedding cook belonging to this family tried to outdo that of the day before.

This latter feast was known as the "infair." But all these old Southern customs seem to have departed now, along with the wedding cooks themselves. The latter very seldom came to sale, being regarded as the most valuable of all slaves. Once in a while when some leading family was in financial difficulties and was forced to sell its wedding cook she would bring as much as eight or ten times the price of an ordinary female slave.

After dinner, when we moved out to the living room, we found a large, green table all in place, with the chips arranged in little piles. But let me introduce you to the players.

First, there was Colonel Edgar Stark, our host, genial and warm-hearted over dinner; cold and inscrutable behind his spectacles when poker chips appeared.

Then Colonel Charlie Buffum, heavily built, but with a similar dual personality.

Then Colonel Frank Buffum, State Highway Commissioner; or, as some one called him later in the evening, when the chips began to gather at his place, State "highwayman."

Then Colonel d.i.c.k Goodman, banker, raconteur, and connoisseur of edibles and "essentials."

Then Colonel George S. Cake, who, when not a Colonel, is a Commodore: commander of the "Betsy," flags.h.i.+p of the Louisiana Yacht Club, and the most famous craft to ply the Mississippi since the "Prairie Belle."

(Don't "call" Colonel Cake when he raises you and at the same time raises his right eyebrow.)

Then Colonel d.i.c.k Hawkins, former Collector of the Port of St. Louis, and more recently (since there has been so little in St. Louis to collect) a gentleman farmer. (Colonel Hawkins always wins at poker. The question is not "Will he win?" but "How much?")

Only two men in the game were not, so far as I discovered, Colonels.

One, Major Dave Wald, has been held back in t.i.tle because of time devoted to the pursuit of literature. Major Wald has written a book. The subject of the book is Poker. As a tactician, he is perhaps unrivaled in Missouri. He will look at a hand and instantly declare the percentage of chance it stands of filling in the draw, according to the law of chance.

One hand will be, to Major Wald, a "sixteen-time hand"; another a "thirty-two time hand," and so on--meaning that the player has one chance in sixteen, or in thirty-two, of filling.

The other player was merely a plain "Mister," like ourselves--Mr. John W. Matson, the corporation lawyer. At first I felt sorry for Mr. Matson.

It seemed hard that the rank of Colonel had been denied him. But when I saw him shuffle and deal, I was no longer sorry for him, but for myself.

With the possible exception of General Bob Williams (who won't play any more now that he has been appointed postmaster), and Colonel Clarence Buell, who used to play in the big games on the Mississippi boats, Mr.

Matson can shuffle and deal more rapidly and more accurately than any man in Missouri.

Colonel Buell was present, as was Colonel Lloyd Stark, but neither played. Colonel Buell had intended to, but on being told that my companion and I were from New York he declined to "take the money." The Colonel--but to say "the Colonel" in Pike County is hardly specific--Colonel Buell, I mean, is the same gentleman who fought the Indians, long ago, with Buffalo Bill, and who later acted as treasurer of the Wild West Show on its first trip to Europe. Some one informed me that the Colonel--Colonel Buell, I mean--was a capitalist, but the information was beside the mark, for I had already seen the diamond ring he wears--a most remarkable piece of landscape gardening.

During the evening Colonel Buell, who stood for an hour or two and watched the play, spoke of certain things that he had seen and done which, as I estimated it, could not have been seen or done within the last sixty years. "How old is Colonel Buell?" I asked another Colonel.

"Colonel," asked the Colonel, "how old are you?"

"Colonel," replied the Colonel, "I am exactly in my prime."

"I know that, Colonel," said the Colonel, "but what is your age?"

"Colonel," returned the Colonel suavely, "I have forgotten my exact age.

But I know that I am somewhere between eighty and one hundred and forty-two."

It was Mr. Matson's deal. He dealt. The cards pa.s.sed through the air and fell, one on the other, in neat piles. (If you prefer it, Mr. Matson can drop a fan-shaped hand before you, all ready to pick up.) And from the time that the first hand was played I knew that here, as in St. Louis, my companion and I were babes among the lions. I do not know how he played, but I do know that I played along as best I could, only trying not to lose too much money at once.

But why rehea.r.s.e the pathetic story? I spoke in a former chapter of Missouri poker, and Pike County is a county in Missouri. Bet on a good pat hand and some one always holds a better one. Bluff and they call you. Call and they beat you. There is no way of winning from Missouri.

Missouri poker players are mahatmas. They have an occult sense of cards.

Babes at their mothers' b.r.e.a.s.t.s can tell the difference between a straight and a flush long before they have the power of speech. Once, while in Pike County, I asked a little boy how many brothers and sisters he had. "One brother and three sisters," he replied, and added: "A full house."

The Missouri gentlemen, so gay, so genial, at the dinner table, take on a frigid look when the cards and chips appear. They turn from gentle, kindly human beings into relentless, ravening wolves, each intent upon the thought of devouring the other. And when, over a poker game, some player seems to enter into a pleasant conversation, the other players know that even that is a bluff--a blind to cover up some diabolic plot.

Once during the game, for instance, Colonel Hawkins started in to tell me something of his history. And I, bland simpleton, believed we were conversing _sans_ ulterior motive.

"I used to be in politics," he said. "Then I was in the banking business. But I've gone back to farming now, because it is the only honest business in the world. In fact--"

But at that juncture the steely voices of half the other players at the table interrupted.

"Ante!" they cried. "Ante, farmer!"

Whereupon Colonel Hawkins, who by that time had to crane his neck to see the table over his pile of chips--a pile of chips like the battlements of some feudal lord--anted suavely.

By midnight Colonel Buell, who had stood behind me for a time and watched my play, showed signs of fatigue and anguish. And a little later, after having seen me try to "put it over" with three sixes, he sighed heavily and went home--a fine, slender, courtly figure, straight as a gun barrel, walking sadly out into the night. Next Major Wald ceased to play for himself, but began to take an interest in my hand.

Under his supervision during the last fifteen minutes of the game I made a tiny dent in Colonel Hawkins's stacks of chips. But it is only just to Colonel Hawkins to say that, by that time, the Missourians were so sorry for us that they were making the most desperate efforts not to win from us any more than they could help.

When the game broke up, Major Wald and Colonel Hawkins showed concern about our future.

"How far are you young men going, did you say?" asked Colonel Hawkins.

"To the Pacific Coast," I answered.

At that the two veteran poker players looked at each other solemnly, in silence, and shook their heads.

"All the way to the coast, eh?" demanded Major Wald. Then: "Do you expect to play cards much as you go along?"