Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (12 page)

It turns out it really did ease one ill—the gut-wrenching ailment known as dysentery, rampant throughout the West at the time and caused primarily by the drinking of tainted water. It turns out that mixing clay with water, an old remedy, had the desired effect of “stoppering” the offending flow.

No one was more astounded than Ms. Irish when she made a fortune off the stuff, money from which her heirs are still enjoying today.

DOC AND THE STINGER

Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil lived from 1877 to 1976 and gained prominence throughout the United States by stealing more than $8 million throughout his life in a series of over-the-top cons. But he got his start hawking his mentor's patent medicine, “Doc Meriwether's Elixir,” to the hopeful. Said to have incredible healing powers, the shoddy tonic was composed chiefly of rainwater. But Weil's life and exploits, the basis for the Hollywood movie
The Sting
, were most effective.

HADACOL!

Heck, even silver-screen stalwart Mickey Rooney wasn't above shilling for dubious products. In 1950, at a low point in his career, he was so cash-strapped that he toured the South with the Hadacol Goodwill Caravan, a roving variety show sponsored by Hadacol, a supposed vitamin supplement. And for just one box top from the packaging a bottle of Hadacol came in, you could gain admission to the show. Hadacol was the brainchild of Dudley J. LeBlanc, Louisiana state senator, who
Time
magazine described as “a stem-winding salesman who knows every razzle-dazzle switch in the pitchman's trade.”

Alas, the product, as with so many before and since, proved too good to be true. The US government said no-go when Hadacol was found to contain upward of 26 percent alcohol and little else of a redemptive, helpful nature.

As we all know, Rooney, indefatigable as ever, made his way back to Tinseltown and continued to wow fans for decades to come. No word on whether Hadacol had anything to do with it.

Yesterday's snake oils are merely today's unlicensed, over-the-counter, non-prescription remedies, often called “alternative medicines.” And these tonics, tinctures, liniments, and lotions can trace their lineage back to eighteenth-century Britain, where “patent” medicines were born. As with those old-time remedies, some of today's offerings work wonders, and some are pure snake-oil hokum. Only the inventors know for certain, and they're not talking.

G
iven his childhood predilection for schoolyard fisticuffs and roguish behavior, it's a good guess that people who knew George H. Devol as a child might well have predicted the young upstart would live an interesting, if not particularly long, life. As to his pugilistic tendencies, he maintained a lifelong fondness for a good fight. And as to his longevity, he lasted a good many years longer than most who knew him in his youth would have guessed. In the process, he came to be regarded as the most famous gambling man of his day, known up and down the Big Muddy as King of the Riverboat Gamblers. But he didn't earn that title without working a few cons along the way.

It's also probable that much of his life's praise is due, at least in part, to his autobiography,
Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi
, which he wrote at the end of his career, when he was fifty-eight, in 1887. No matter the truth of the tales therein, it's a fun read that provides interesting insights to life during the heyday of gambling aboard riverboats on the Mississippi. Devol led a long, fascinating, and largely successful life doing what he loved and loving what he did.

Born on August 1, 1829, in the little river town of Marietta, Ohio, George was the youngest of six children. With a ship's carpenter for a father gone from home for long periods of time, as a tot Devol showed signs of independence and belligerence where authority was concerned. He wasn't particularly keen on attending school and frequently bunked out, preferring to roughhouse and engage in fisticuffs with other boys. It must have been a secret relief to his mother when the hard-headed handful ran away from home at the tender age of ten.

He became a cabin boy on the river steamer the
Wacousta
. He soon traded up to a better position on a ship called
Walnut Hills
, then the
Cicero
. While on this ship, George began his education in the fine arts of card play, bluffing, and sleight of hand. His goal? To emulate the high-falutin' lives of the gamblers who plied their trade onboard.

Before long, war with Mexico reared its head and George felt he had to dip his oar. He landed a job as a barkeep aboard a ship bound for the Rio Grande. As a soldier, he perfected his playing-card trickery and fleeced fellow warriors out of their cash.

By the time he'd had his fill with the army, George H. Devol was seventeen and had earned $3,000, a fortune in those days, a fair chunk of change for a lad who should have been more concerned with girls than gambling. But then again, Devol never could be considered normal.

Within a few short years of working paddlewheel steamers, of getting into scrapes and never backing down from a bare-knuckle dustup whether he was in the right or wrong, Devol cemented his reputation as a hardheaded man with a penchant for gaming that often exceeded the bounds of being on the up-and-up.

By the age of thirty, Devol had made hundreds of thousands of dollars working southern riverboats. During the Mexican-American War and the War Between the States, he gladly fleeced soldiers and fellow gamblers alike, offering legitimate games when possible, but he was not above rigging the deck, dealing from the bottom and seconds, palming cards, and recovering the cut—all invaluable skills to a man in his line of work. He learned these skills as a youth working aboard the riverboats, from older, wise hands who took the bright, eager young man, always large for his age, under their wings. Little did they know that in a few short years Devol would exceed their skills and teachings.

As shrewd and adroit as he was, Devol admitted that part of his success he owed to his imposing physique. In his autobiography, Devol mentions that he was on the large side, weighing in at more than two hundred pounds. He was proud of his sizable hands, claiming the ability to “hold one deck in the palm of my hand and shuffle up another.”

But it was his clever head's substantial mass that he was most proud of:

I don't know (and I guess I never will while I'm alive) just how thick my old skull is, but I do know that it is pretty thick, or it would have been cracked many years ago, for I have been struck some terrible blows on my head with iron dray-pins, pokers, clubs, stone-coal, and bowlders, which would have split any man's skull wide open unless it was pretty thick. Doctors have often told me that my skull was nearly an inch in thickness over my forehead.

This rather odd trait seems to have served Devol well during a lifetime of indulging in fistfights and out-and-out brawling whenever the urge gripped him, an urge that appeared to overcome him with some frequency. The man loved a good fight and was noted for head-butting his adversaries with that bull-thick skull . . . when he wasn't drawing down on them with his gun, that is—another skill he had reason to cultivate, given his dicey line of work. It must have been a trait that stood him in good stead all those years, four decades plying his trade, the good, the bad, and the nefarious sides of it, up and down the great rivers of the West, as well as in cowtowns and along rail lines. He worked the deck anywhere he could scare up a good or bad game.

In all those years as a professional gambler, Devol won vast fortunes, and he spent them, too. And though he cheated untold numbers of folks out of their hard-earned cash, he also won as much money in honest games of chance. As with so many others of his ilk, he claimed that he never peeled the wad from anyone who wasn't also looking to do the same from him. Maybe not an admirable quality, but a commendable one.

After the Civil War he gambled along the budding railroad lines, stopping to fleece out-of-their-depth cowpokes and miners from Kansas City to Cheyenne. It was while he was engaged in gambling in the Gold Room Saloon in Cheyenne that he first met the infamous Wild Bill Hickok. Though he was not the gunman's dealer, Devol cheerfully recounted the scene: Hickok placed a $50 bet, promptly lost it, then placed another $50 bet. This time he won. But the dealer only gave him $25 in return.

Hickok was fit to be tied and made it plainly known.

To which the dealer replied: “The house limit is $25, sir.”

Hickok stood, his chair squawking backward on the plank floor. “But you took fifty when I lost!”

The dealer smirked. “Fifty when you lose, sir.”

With the speed for which he was known, Wild Bill delivered a quick striking blow not with a revolver but with his walking stick, straight to the dealer's gleaming pate. Then the famed gunman upended the games table and snatched the entirety of the till, filling his pockets. No one protested. Devol shifted the cigar in his mouth and smiled, flicking his eyes back to his own cards. He was not about to waste the opportunity this unexpected and unguarded moment presented to glance at the cards of his opponents, once again demonstrating he was merely an opportunist looking for an angle.

For all his cunning, Devol could at times be his own worst enemy. Never more so than one evening when he worked the Cheyenne-to-Omaha route, enjoying what for him was turning out to be an excellent game onboard the Missouri Railroad.

One by one the other men at the table dropped out, and his florid opponent, a well-dressed man whose name he did not yet know, became more flustered as the game crawled on. But Devol was in his element. He indulged in a moment taking in details of the scene: The clackety-clack of the gently swaying train, the slight movement of the brocade curtain's gold tassels as the train surged along gentle curves through a pretty landscape, and a fine game made even better by a man who was so far gone into his impending loss that he took no pains to hide his discomfort.

Soon enough, the reddening man watched as a wryly smiling Devol shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth and laid out an unbeatable hand.

“That's . . . that's . . .” the man's face fairly shook with rage.

“That's poker, my friend.” Devol offered a sympathetic look, then quietly slid the pot to himself.

“You cheated, sir. Of that I am sure!”

Devol's eyes narrowed and he left the money, chips, and cards where they lay on the baize surface. “And you, sir, are a poor loser.” His big voice rumbled low and menacing. “If there was trickery involved in this game, I can assure you it was not on my part.” He shifted his bull-headed, indignant gaze to the three other men who had dropped out of the game, but none dared voice complaint.

The rest of the gambling car had grown silent, yet the losing player did not seem to notice, or perhaps didn't care.

“But I lost $1,200!”

“Yes,” said Devol. “Yes, you did. And no one told you to bet. I saw no gun placed to your temple.”

“I know well who you are, Devol,” said the man, standing, rage quivering his lips and shaking his outthrust finger. “And do you know who I am, sir?”

“I've no idea,” said Devol, doing his best to not smile too broadly.

“I am a director with this railroad, and from this moment on there will be no gambling on our trains. Do you hear me, Devol? I will see to it! Ha!”

Devol sat in silence, said nothing. Finally he looked up at the angry man and slowly shook his head, keeping up the appearance of righteous indignation. But inside he knew he'd potentially ruined a good thing, not only for himself but for all those other gamblers with whom he was acquainted. A few of them wouldn't blame him, of course. But there were a good many who relied on the rail routes to earn their keep. And he had just single-handedly nipped that in the bud. He would not be popular with them.

The sore loser stomped off, brusquely brushing past a waiter and two men entering the car full of stunned passengers.