With apologies to Dangerous Dan Magrew by Robert Service
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up on the famous APAT site;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting some jag-time jazz
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Haworthbantam bright,
And watching his luck was his light-o"-love, the lady that"s known as Caz.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and glare,
There stumbled a player fresh from the tables, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with an ace in the hole and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of chips on the felt, and he called for all his might.
There was none could place the stranger"s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Haworthbantam right.
There"s men that somehow just call your bluff, and stare at you like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a donk whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he was,
And I turned my head--and there watching him was the lady that"s known as Caz.
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old table cards fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The old man Des was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In an APAT printed shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway,
Then he clutched the cards with his talon hands--my God! but that man could play.
Were you ever out in the Great DTD, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of Tightend, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for no fecking fold
While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars?--
Then you"ve a hunch what the music meant...hunger and might and pokerstars.
And hunger not of the belly kind, that"s banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a flop and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowded with Caz's love--
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true--
Then on a sudden the table changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the pot you wanted; that the flop was a devil"s lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away for spite,
"Twas the crowning cry of a heart"s despair, and it thrilled you through and through--
"I guess I"ll make it a big all in " said Haworthbantam with fight.
The music almost dies away...then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Reraise, reraise," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to push, to push...then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a APAT picked shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don"t know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I"ll bet my stack it's right,
That one of you is a hound of hell...and that one is that Haworthbantam, right"
Then I ducked my head and the lights went out, and two Aces blazed in the dark;
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two hands lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on it's head, and pumped full of hearts, was Haworthbantam"s night.
While the man from the left lay clutched to the breast of Caz (oops some respite).
These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "I've got odds" and I"m not denying it"s so.
I"m not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly as they played that jazz-
The woman that kissed him and--pinched his bankroll --was the lady known as Caz.
