CHAPTER X.
ROBBER GAMBLERS OF SAN FRANCISCO.--ENGAGED BY COL. ELLIOTT AS
INDIAN SCOUT.--KILLS AND SCALPS FIVE INDIANS.--PROMOTED TO CHIEF
SCOUT.
Arriving at San Francisco we found things very lively, this being
about the time of the greatest gold excitement in California. Here
was the first city of note that I had been in since leaving St.
Louis; here also was the first time I had seen gambling going on
on a large scale. There were all kinds of games and all kinds of
traps to catch the honest miner and rob him of his money that he
had labored hard to dig out of the ground.
That night Jim Beckwith and I took in the sights of the city. We
went to the different gambling houses and had just finished our
tour and were on our way back to the What Cheer house--that being
the hotel at which we put up--the leading hotel in the city then.
We were just passing one of the gambling dens, when we saw two men
coming out of the door leading a man between them who was crying
like a child, and exclaiming: "I am ruined! I am ruined!"
We learned from the two men that he had come to the city that day
with eight hundred dollars in gold, had bought a ticket for New
York, and it was his intention to sail for that city the following
morning. But he had gone out that night to have a farewell spree
with his friends, got too much booze, started in gambling,
thinking he might double his money by morning; but like thousands
of other miners in those days, he "played out of luck," as they
termed it, and had lost every cent he had.
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