Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (13 page)

It would be but a few days before Devol saw the handbills the man had had printed up and hung in his railroad's cars. They prohibited gambling onboard and threatened conductors with loss of jobs should they allow such aboard their trains. Devol's chum also informed him that the railroad had hired Pinkerton Detectives to patrol its lines, on the scout for professional gamblers. With a regretful shrug, Devol shifted his attentions to other train lines and back to the riverboats.

One of Devol's peculiarities involved the fleecing of men of the cloth. Apparently the ubiquity of gambling on the frontier was such that even the Godly were not unaffected by the allure of the wager. But never let it be said that Devol was a less-than-charitable gambler. . . .

George H. Devol sipped his drink, set it down, and studied his cards. He didn't need to, for he knew just what his opening move would be. But it pleased him to make a show of this, one of his most cherished pastimes—that of gambling against a minister. “I see by your manner of dress and by your pious countenance that you, sir, are a man of the cloth.”

The others at the table raised eyebrows, two of them barely concealed smirks. They were all-too-familiar with Devol's peculiar habit and had, imperceptibly but between the pair of them, nodded to each other, placing a silent bet as to whether Devol would or would not succeed in fleecing the preacher. And now the little saga had commenced.

“I too am a man of the cloth, you see,” said Devol. “The green cloth, that is.” He smiled broadly and dragged a chubby hand across the baize surface before him. “But it all amounts to the same in the end, doesn't it, Padre?”

The man had reddened considerably since he'd been outed as a minister. “Why, yes, yes, I . . . I am privileged to have been called upon to spread the Good Word, as it were. But . . .”

Devol's head cocked and his eyebrows arched out of curiosity. “Yes?”

“Only, I wonder how it is you came to know I am a man of God?”

Devol kept his eyes on the paste boards pinched in his hand. He looked as though he were giving the matter mighty thought. What he really was doing was concentrating on the purpose of the game. Finally he laid down a face card, said, “Hold,” and flashed his eyes briefly about the table. He recognized the almost imperceptible shadows of doom cross the faces of his fellows. Not a good hand between the lot of them, he guessed. Then Devol addressed the minister once again. “You might say that you wear your occupation not unlike a wine stain. No matter what you do, it will not wash out.”

“I'm not sure quite how to take that, sir.”

“Any way you like, though I assure you it was meant in the highest regard for your profession.”

No more was said on the matter as play continued, gaining intensity and fervor until one by one the men dropped away and the two who remained were, naturally, Devol and the minister. The latter tried to suppress a smile but could not. The confidence he had in his cards was clear.

Devol pooched his lips and set his cigar down. He channeled concern through his face, well-trimmed beard and thick features topped with slicked-back hair lightly scented with lavender. With a small flourish of his pink hand, Devol laid his cards down.

“But . . . but, how can that be?” the minister pushed back from the table, hands still visible, shaking and pale, as was his face. “That simply cannot be.”

Devol curled a thick finger around his cigar, fixed the man with a beetle-brow stare, and said, “I assure you it can be. Indeed, it is. And any further chatter about how I could not have won a simple card game, a game of chance, I might remind you, would intimate to me and all others gathered here and within earshot—for your cries have attracted unwanted attentions from nearby tables—that I had somehow contrived to win by any means necessary, perhaps even through chicanery.”

“Oh, no, no, I don't mean that at all, sir. I was referring to my own foolishness. For you see I am broke, having gambled the entire wad that was to have sustained me on my journey to St. Louis and back again.”

Devol poked the cigar back into his mouth, regarded the fretting man a moment more, then stood and raked his haul into an assembled stack. He looked down once more at the glaze-eyed minister, who himself sat staring at the meager hand he had laid down moments before with such confidence.

Devol once again plucked the cigar from his mouth, proffered the folded cash before the minister's face, and in a voice loud enough for much of the large, crowded room to hear, said, “Now, go forth and sin no more.”

As Devol threaded his way through the crowd toward the bar, a few of his fellows patted him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. It was a good feeling, and he offered slight nods of appreciation. He also didn't have to stand himself a drink for the next hour.

“He's one of a kind,” said one of the two other men at the table, privy to Devol's ultimately kindly treatment of the man.

“How do you figure that?”

They headed toward the door, onto the deck of the big thrumming river-boat to take in fresh air before the evening's play commenced.

“Because I know he always says that to the men of the cloth and makes a big show of it and all.” He fished his cigar case from an inner pocket. “But you'll never see him cut slack to farmers, businessmen, salesmen, soldiers, or the like.”

“And definitely not with other gamblers!”

“Don't I know it,” said the man, touching flame to his cigar. “Thanks for reminding me.”

Though he earned in excess of $2,000,000 in forty years of gambling throughout the South and West, sixty-seven-year-old Devol, at the request of his wife, retired from his life's work as a professional gambler in 1896. He had seen the end coming for some time anyway.

The heyday of the great riverboats steaming up and down the mighty Mississippi River and sumptuous gambling cars aboard railroads were all but gone. Instead, Devol hawked his memoir, which he had written a few years before. The book proved to be a crafty blend of fact, fiction, tall tale, and outright balderdash—not unlike his claims of being an honest gambler. When he died in 1903, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, George H. Devol, King of the River-boat Gamblers, was a man poor in wealth but rich in memories.

BOOM . . . BUST:
WILLIAM “CANADA BILL” JONES

A good friend, confidante, and frequent partner of George H. Devol was William “Canada Bill” Jones, considered one of the all-time top card sharps. Devol spent considerable time in his own memoir describing Canada Bill, who, contrary to his nickname, was no Canadian but arrived there from his birthplace of Yorkshire, England, as a young man. He brought with him a long litany of scams—and left in his wake many fleeced victims, which leads one to wonder about his motives behind emigrating to Canada.

He made his way south and found a ready-made situation for men such as himself aboard the riverboats. For several years he worked as one-quarter of a foursome of gamblers, each with his own specialty, among them Holly Chappell, Tom Brown, and George Devol. Rumor has it that before the quartet whittled down to just Jones and Devol, Canada Bill's take alone from the team's mutual efforts was $240,000.

In time the team reduced to the duo of George Devol and Canada Bill, who worked successfully together for several years. Eventually, the two men fell out, each claiming to have caught the other cheating him. (Did they really think otherwise?) Devol's version of the events tells that Jones was the first to cheat, so Devol merely returned the favor.

Of his old friend, Devol said:

Canada Bill was a character one might travel the length and breadth of the land and never see his match, or run across his equal. Imagine a medium-sized, chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of a man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling, half-apologetic sort of a gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. For hours he would sit in his chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. His clothes were always several sizes too large, and his face as smooth as a woman's and never had a particle of hair on it. Canada was a slick one. He had a squeaking, boyish voice, and awkward, gawky manners, and a way of asking fool questions and putting on a good-natured sort of a grin, that led everybody to believe that he was the rankest kind of a sucker—the greenest sort of a country jake. Woe to the man who picked him up, though.

That glowing sketch came far too late for a lifetime's worth of marks that the squeaking, dolt-like man led down the lane and fleeced. Though he was adept at a number of games, including poker, as were all his cronies, Canada Bill's game of choice was three-card monte. He learned this inherently crooked, house-stacked, and rigged game from Dick Cady, another famous gambler con man. Play kicks off when the dealer shows three cards to another player, places them face-down, rearranges them, then points to the player and tells him to find just one of the cards shown to him.

Another grifter, Dutch Charlie, teamed with Canada Bill in Kansas City following the war. They cleaned up, earning $200,000 before moving westward on trains. It wasn't long before people began complaining about their losses due to the monte players on the rail lines. Officials on the Union Pacific Railway began a rout of the offenders, so Canada Bill tried to head off the trouble before he lost out on his good thing. He famously wrote to the superintendent of the line and offered $10,000 a year for the guarantee of exclusive rights to run a three-card monte game on their trains. Alas, he was turned down.

Canada Bill was also in love with the notoriously house-stacked game of faro. So much so that despite his enormous success at three-card monte, Bill routinely dumped his ill-gotten gains straight into faro, at which he was not so good at “evening the odds.”

Sadly, at the age of forty in 1880, Canada Bill died of consumption, broke and homeless, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was buried in a pauper's grave. When his old gambling chums heard of his untimely passing and sad resting place, they chipped in, paid the city of Reading for its expenses, and bought a proper marker for Canada Bill, King of Three-Card Monte. Though he relished “snaking in the greenhorns,” Canada Bill was also remembered as being a generous soul, often peeling off cash for a Sister of Charity he'd meet on the sidewalk.

There are a number of snappy quotes attributed to Canada Bill, among them “A Smith & Wesson beats four aces!” and “Nobody ever went bowlegged carrying away the money they won from me.” But perhaps the most famous: When told by Devol that a faro game Canada Bill wished to play in was rigged, Bill said: “I know it's crooked, but it's the only game in town!” Now that's dedication to one's craft.

O
ne fine day in 1871, twenty-eight-year-old James Addison Reavis sat at the desk in his small real estate office in St. Louis, Missouri. He had just finished altering a title to a parcel of property that would otherwise go unsold. A slight amendment to the wording was required or the entire deal would end up hamstrung, barely reaching probate court. And all because it lacked a few slight inky flourishes to make it a saleable transaction in which the seller would be pleased, the buyer would be pleased, and Reavis himself would be pleased, for he would earn his commission.

What then is the harm, he asked himself, in altering the moldy old documents ever so slightly to enable all involved to get what they want? With a final satisfied sigh, Reavis set down the last page and leaned back in his desk chair. His client would be none the wiser. In fact, no one would.

Surely, he mused, there had to be a way to make more efficient use of his talents than merely helping others by ushering their own land purchases through the sometimes-hairy process of acquisition. Granted, he was rather good at it and it was something that he enjoyed. The challenges were just enough to keep his interest sparked, and they held much more appeal to him than any of the numerous jobs he had held up to that point.

Reavis folded his long hands behind his head and mused on the path that brought him to this point—owning his own, albeit modest, real estate brokerage firm. Yes, it was a one-man shop, to be sure, but it beat all to heck clerking in retail establishments, roving from place to place as a salesman. Lord, but that had been a slog. As with most things he'd turned his hands to, he had been good at it, better than most, in fact, but at what cost? The worst job, of course, even though it, too, had elements that he had enjoyed, had been as a streetcar conductor in St. Louis.

“Not bad for a man with scant schooling,” he said softly as he looked about the empty office. And all the while he had slogged through those various jobs, he kept in mind that they helped provide him with the means to better himself. He was not interested, never had been, in fact, with behaving as so many of his fellows did. Squandering his hard-earned money on foolishness, on frippery and frivolity.