Bohemian Days | Page 7

of France, thinking as little of
the sunshine, and the harvesters of flax, and the turning leaves of the
woods, and the chateaux overawing the thatched little villages, as if the
train were his mail-coach, and France were Arkansas, and he were
lashing the rump of the "off" horse, as he had done for the better part of
his life.
Risque's uncle had been a great Mississippi jobber; he took U. S. postal
contracts for all the unknown world; route of the first class, six horses
and daily; route of the second class, semi-weekly and four horses; third
class, two horses and weekly; fourth class, one horse, one saddle, and
one small boy.
The young Auburn had been born in the stable, and had taken at once to
the road. His uncle found it convenient to put him to work. He can
never be faithfully said to have learned to walk; and recalls, as the first
incident of his life, a man who carried a baby and two bowie knives,
teaching him to play old sledge on the cushions of a Washita stage.
Thenceforward he was a man of one idea. He held it to be one of the
decrees, that he was to grow rich by gaming. As he went, by day or
night, in rain or fog or burning sun, by the margins of turgid
south-western rivers, where his "leaders" shied at the alligators asleep
in the stage-road; through dreary pine woods, where the owls hooted at
silence; over red, reedy, slimy causeways; in cane-breaks and bayous;
past villages where civilization looked westward with a dirk between

its teeth, and cracked its horsewhip; past rich plantations where the
negroes sang afield, and the planter in the house-porch took off his hat
to bow--here, there, always, everywhere, with his cold, hard,
pock-marked face, thin lips and spotted eye, Auburn Risque sat
brooding behind the reins, computing, calculating, overreaching,
waiting for his destiny to wrestle with Chance and bind it down while
its pockets were picked.
His whole life might have been called a game of cards. He carried a
deck forever next his heart. Sometimes he gambled with other
vehicles--stocks, shares, currency--but the cards were still his mainstay,
and he was well acquainted with every known or obsolete game. There
was no trick, nor fraud, nor waggery which he had not at his
fingers-ends.
It was his favorite theory that there was method in what seemed chance;
principles underlying luck; measures for infinity; clues to all
combinations.
Given one pack of cards, one man to shuffle, one to cut, one to deal,
and fair play, and it was yet possible to know just how many times in a
given number of games each card would fall to each man.
Given a roulette circle of one hundred numbered spaces and a
blindfolded man to spin the ball; it could be counted just how many
times in one thousand said ball would come to rest upon any one
number.
No searcher for perpetual motion, no blind believer in alchemy, clung
to his one idea closer than Auburn Risque. He had shut all themes,
affections, interests, from his mind. He neither loved nor hated any
living being. He was penurious in his expenditures--never in his wagers.
He would stake upon anything in nature--a trot, an election, a battle, a
murder.
"Will you play picquet for one sou the game, one hundred and fifty
points?" says a soldier near by.

He accepts at once; the afternoon passes to night, and the lamps in the
roof are lighted. The cards flicker upon the seat; the boors gather round
to watch; they pass the French frontier, and see from their windows the
forges of Belgium, throwing fire upon the river Meuse. Still, hour after
hour, though their eyes are weary, and all the folks are gone or sleeping,
the cards fall, fall, fall, till there comes a jar and a stop, and the guard
cries, "Cologne!"
"You have won," says the soldier, laying down his money.
"Good-night."
The Rhine is a fine stream, though our German friends will build
mock-castles upon it, and insist that it is the only real river in the world.
Auburn Risque pays no more regard to it than though he were treading
the cedars and sands of New Jersey or North Carolina. He speaks with
a Franco-Russian, who has lost in play ten thousand francs a month for
three successive years, and while they discuss chances, expedients and
experiences, the Siebern-gebierge drifts by, they pass St. Goar and
Bingen, and the wonderful Rhine has been only a time, nothing of a
scene, as they stop abreast Biberich, and, rowed ashore in a flagboat,
make at once for the railway.
At noon, on the third day, Mr. Risque having engaged a frugal bed