“Storms struck one or two blows, and good ones, before any of us could interfere, but as Davison had him in a close grip he could not spar, and he seized the other’s throat, choking off his wind instantly.
“The foreman jumped in, of course, as did two or three others, but Davison had a knife out in an instant, and if he hadn’t been caught in time would have stabbed his antagonist. As it was, it was a difficult thing to pull them apart, for their blood was up, and they would certainly have killed each other if they hadn’t been stopped. When we dragged them apart they struggled like two wild beasts. And that broke up poker playing in that camp for the winter, for the foreman put his foot down hard.”
“And who took the pot?” asked the man with his feet on the fender.
“The foreman made them divide it. I don’t know as he had any right to, but his word was law with us then.”
_A POKER GAME IN MINNESOTA THAT HAD POLITICAL IMPORTANCE_
“Poker has often been called the national game,” said the gray-haired young-looking man in the club smoking-room, “but I fancy there are few citizens who fully appreciate how much influence it has exerted on the destinies of the nation in one way and another. We hear stories now and again of the winning and losing of fortunes, and sometimes how large estates and mining properties have been staked on the chances lying between two hands. And every lobbyist in the country is familiar with the old device of losing large sums in a friendly game with a legislator whose vote is desired on one side or the other. Such things, naturally enough, sway public interests as well as private to no small extent, but I have seen a seat in the United States Senate lost on four queens.”
“Of course you are not talking seriously,” said one of the party.
“But I am,” was the answer, “seriously and literally. It happened in Minnesota soon after the war. Political conditions in that part of the West were very different to what they are now, and in fact all other conditions were, too. It was at about the beginning of the real growth of the North-west. The value of the wheat fields had been learned, but the Swedish and Norwegian immigration was in its infancy, and the lumber industry, that afterward grew to such enormous proportions, was then making comparatively few men rich. Minneapolis was a small town on the south side of the river, and St. Anthony was a town of the same size on the other side. Now it’s all one city, but at that time nobody dreamed of St. Paul being eclipsed in size or importance.