106 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



horse race, it'll be on my own horse, and he'll run for blood. No, 

 I don't recognize that there's any moral principle at all involved in a 

 gamble. If I've got a hundred dollars, and you've got a hundred 

 dollars, and I like to put my hundred against yours that I kin play 

 a game better'n you can, I reckon that ain't any one else's business 

 but ours. Yes, I think gambling should be made legal for anyone 

 who wants to buck the game and can afford it. They's a lot of rich 

 men around that don't know anything else to do with their money, 

 and it gets a lot of money in circulation that otherways would never 

 move. The man who has a family dependent on him and who 

 can't aflFord to, and for their sakes shouldn't gamble, should be 

 punished. The single man who ain't responsible to no one but 

 himself, he should be permitted, and when he's broke, let him go to 

 work again. 



" I ain't been in a church for thirty years, and then I was pall 

 bearer at the funeral of a friend who had a misunderstanding with 

 a deputy sheriff. There was a church started in Dillon long before 

 that, and the hat was passed for contributions for the building, 

 and they came to me and the other game keepers, and we all put 

 up — and we wasn't mean about it. When the church was finished 

 and the preacher started business — Methodist it was — my wife 

 wanted to go one night, and I went with her. And there was a 

 lot of the other men that with me had put up for it in there too. 

 And the preacher preached straight at us as gamblers and publicans, 

 and damned us so far into hell we have never got out of it, and 

 after he'd taken our money too. Now, wasn't that enough to 

 make any man quit?" 



"Look here, Ben" the artist wanted to know; "would you 

 consider it sportsmanlike to bet on a sure thing?" 



" I don't know about its being sportsmanlike," responded Ben; 

 "but I'd reckon it darn good judgment." 



"But, say," persisted the artist; "would you reckon that a 

 gamble?" 



"Why not?" 



" If you're betting on a dead sure thing, there is no element of 

 chance in the proposition; and when you don't take a chance, it 

 isn't a gamble. " 



"Oh, yes it is," concluded Ben. "I never knew a thing so 

 sure yet, but a man could slip up on it some way or other." 



