Hatless Joe and the White Rat
Hatless Joe enjoyed a scam to show
he and White Rat were both in the know
as they were adept at switching face cards
of all of those who plunged into the bars
expecting to reap a whale-load of gold
but ended up being broke and old.
Their setup was as ancient as sin itself.
They simply lured men with a promise of pelt
and bumpkins by legions wandered in
then left with nothing but trousers and skin
while Hatless Joe and the White Rat scam
left them with the gold, both nugget and gram.
Lords of the Faro in the Ophir Saloon,
they started “Bucking the Tiger” promptly at noon,
playing just as long as the rubes were awake
and kept all the gold that was theirs to take
with double-dealing and mirrors and thread
only not stealing from those who were dead.
But they made a mistake by doubling the cards
on a man they knew not who frequented bars,
who sauntered alone into the Ophir Saloon
looking beat and disheveled at the full of the moon
and placed on the table a pile of doré
which paid for his entrance to gamble and play.
Hatless Joe didn’t smile, as was his style,
and the White Rat kept silent – for a while –
as the stranger kept winning, which was the want
of the two faro conmen who planned to daunt
and send the rube out with only his shirt
and, if he stumbled, end up face down in the dirt.
To their surprise, the rube was quick with the cards
and no double-dealing could stall their canard.
Every trick that they pulled fell flat on its face
be with sevens or nines, a Jack or Ace.
Hand after hand, the played cards revealed
the stranger had thwarted the conmen’s planned steal.
When the last of the doré, nuggets and chips
were swept up by the stranger, Hatless Joe snipped
that the stranger had cheated, and White Hat agreed
and demanded the gold the bumpkin had seized.
In a loud voice, the Marshal was called
to see what was what with this scuzzball
who had bamboozled the scammers
claiming the rube was a flimflammer.
But the Marshal found not a case to be made,
for no cards had been lost, and none had been shaved
and Hatless Joe and his cohort in crime
had standings in towns that were far from sublime.
So out the front door of the Ophir Saloon
walked the rube with the gold, leaving the goons
broke and a frypan of eggs on their face
and no one to blame for their discovered disgrace.
The news then got worse in their Faro scam thicket:
for the vigilantes in town gave both blue tickets.
So off went the two on the last barge of the season
Bering Seabound and still pondering the reason
their best-laid plans had gone so awry
with a stranger both men had tried
to strip of his doré, nuggets, and flakes,
and bolster their fame as card-dealing snakes.
Hatless Joe and his partner in crime
never know their end of the line
was a win for the town which tossed them aside
and sent them southward for a long ocean ride
while the doré and flakes from the Ophir Saloon
constructed a church and a hospital room.
They never knew the rube they plotted to cheat
had been a con artist with scams replete
until he discovered he was streaking to hell
living on booty and fast-tracking to a life in a cell
so he switched sides of the table, so to speak,
and found redemption by turning his cheek.
Boomtown by port and card game by chips,
he assisted the coppers and local judgeships.
Chaos had been the law of the land
which had given all shysters free hands
but the landscape had changed in the blink of an eye
and in every hamlet, decorum arrived.
The name of the game was reversing the flow
of where nuggets and flakes would finally go.
In this new land, the lawyers were king
but only piles of nuggets would get them to sing.
Without the doré, nuggets and flakes
Hatless and White Rat had no means of escape
There is an adage, both ancient and true,
that misfortune will follow all those who
fail to grasp what you reap you will sow;
goodness takes years to get what you’re owed
but hardship is quick to swirl back to its source
regardless of any sense of remorse.