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Updated: June 13, 2025
"Monsieur," I said, while he dealt the cards, "may I ask if you are Monsieur Frederic Taillefer, whose family I know very well at Beauvais?" "Yes, monsieur," he answered. He dropped the cards, turned pale, put his hands to his head and rose, asking one of the bettors to take his hand. "It is too hot here," he cried; "I fear " He did not end the sentence.
His little boost for art finished for the living pictures were art in which he had a proprietary interest, and he could afford to talk for it once in a while the one-eyed man cast his glance over his table and saw the small bets. By some singular fortune all of the bettors won. They pocketed their winnings with grins as they pushed out among the gathering crowd.
The book-makers, ranged along in rows, stood on little platforms in front of their booths, taking the crowd's money and calling out the amount and nature of each bet to assistants within who scratched off and registered corresponding pool-tickets which were quickly returned to the struggling bettors. On a blackboard at the end of each booth were posted the names of the horses with their jockeys.
Each of the bettors sat in a chair, tucked up in white to the chin. Each was having his hair cut. At the same moment a fly had lighted on each of the mirrors before the two customers. The man who had offered the bet was a well known local character Jim Duff by name, by occupation one of the meanest and most dishonorable gamblers who had ever disgraced Arizona by his presence.
But the party of bettors had had enough. They didn't care to risk any more money and some of them couldn't afford to lose a hundred dollars; but firmly believing that they would win, they had borrowed a little to make up that amount. Evelyn and her two visiting friends agreed to go up to Crabtree and stand up with Tom and his girl when they were married.
Among the throng the heaviest punter is a fat lady with diamond earrings. Does the reader recognize her? It is little Algy's mother. Her husband is dead, leaving her the whole of his colossal fortune, and, having developed a taste for gambling, she is now engaged in "doing it in on the ponies". She is one of the biggest bettors in the game. When women take to betting they are worse than men.
The game voila! At one end was the table the bank. We could see neither bank nor dealer; both were hidden by the double ring of bettors, who encircled the table one line seated, the other standing behind.
I ask the aid of women. Let them set their faces against tin's horrid sport, and it will soon be known no more. If the silly bettors themselves could only understand their own position, they might be rescued. Let it be distinctly understood that the bookmaker cannot lose, no matter how events may go.
Eight men, five of them miners from the Brewster copper mine, and three of them discharged employees of the Red Butte Western, were the bettors; Red-Light himself, in sombrero and shirt-sleeves, was dealing, and Rufford, sitting on a stool at the table's end, was the "lookout." When Judson reeled in there was a pause, and a movement to put him out.
Here is Soult, with his dogged look and beetled brow; there stands Balzac the author, his gains here are less derived from the betting than the bettors; he is evidently making his own of some of them, while in the seeming bon hommie of his careless manners and easy abandon, they scruple not to trust him with anecdotes and traits, that from the crucible of his fiery imagination come forth, like the purified gold from the furnace.
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