The Mary Situation

You got to appreciate what an explosive element this Bonnie situation is.
- Jules in Pulp Fiction

The Minnesota Territory became the 38th state on May 11, 1858, just in time to help elect Lincoln and provide him with 22,000 troops for the initial Union war effort. Meanwhile, thousands of Swedes and Norwegians kept arriving to farm the vast wheat fields and work in the forests and sawmills up north. With St. Paul and Minneapolis growing astride the headwaters of the Mississippi, and Duluth at the westernmost point of the waterway connecting Lake Superior to the Atlantic, Minnesota was emerging as a great North American crossroads.

Statehood required a slew of freshman representatives and senators to be elected in a hurry, along with a brand-new state legislature. With so many campaigns under way all at once, corruption of Bunyanesque proportions would not have been surprising. Most campaigns may have operated with integrity, but a story published in the New York Sun told of a pokeraticious exception in a close race for one of the senate seats. For reasons that will soon become obvious, the reporter withholds the candidates' names while disclosing that both were Republicans. We know that the winner of one of the races was Morton Smith Wilkinson, a Republican attorney who served in Washington from 1859 to 1865. We don't know whether Wilkinson played poker, but we do know that one of his chief campaigners did - quite effectively, too.

The Sun writer tells us that the lumber industry was allied with the business interests in Minneapolis, and that its chief political operative was a man called Doc Martin, a high-spirited sawmill owner who spent most of the winter in the northern forests with his men. The opposing candidate was represented by a logger named Gilmartin.

Two months before the election, Doc Martin invites the correspondent along with a group of ward men to a roadhouse on Fort Snelling Road near Minnehaha Falls for drinks, dinner, and perhaps a friendly game of cards. Martin and three others liked to play for high stakes, but they also accommodated their less affluent chums with a smaller game. As the convivial evening progressed, the pots in both games became larger.

Suddenly, and to everyone's surprise, Gilmartin appears at the door. "I don't want to 'rough in,' boys," he says, "but I stopped here to get supper on the way home, and the landlord told me you were here, so I thought I'd ask you to drink with me." A popular fellow all around, Gilmartin is invited in, though the strange coincidence of his arrival does not go unnoticed. Invited to play poker as well, he chooses to sit in the higher-stakes game. Doc Martin eyes him suspiciously. "Been out to St. Paul tonight, Gil?"

"Yes, I have," says Gilmartin with a trace of defiance. He also begins to target his raises at Martin, seeking to isolate him in as many hands as possible. As the friendly ring game turns into more of a heads-up duel, a jackpot develops in which Martin opens, stands pat, and keeps raising after the draw until Gilmartin is his only opponent. Gilmartin turns over a jack-high flush and is about to rake in the $400 pot when Martin shows him an ace-high flush. A few hands later, Martin takes a $200 pot from his adversary. According to the Sun correspondent, "Gilmartin became angry, though he controlled himself tolerably well." As another big jackpot keeps building, Gilmartin finally opens for a raise and is called by everyone except the reporter, who had aces but failed to improve on the draw. Martin has drawn three. Having drawn two, Gilmartin bets the $10 limit. Once again, after a series of raises, only the two opposing canvassers remain, and both raise the limit at each opportunity.

"Ten better than you," says Gilmartin fiercely. "You won't get away from me this time."

"If you think so," Martin tells him evenly, raising, "what do you say to taking off the limit?"

"That will suit me exactly," says Gilmartin, producing a thick roll and peeling off several bills. It turns out that he's carrying $5,000 in cash, almost certainly drawn from the war chest of his candidate. "I'll see that and go you five hundred better."

"Does my check go?" asks Martin. "I haven't so much money with me."

"It's good for fifty thousand, and you know it."

Everyone now understands that both men are using identical campaign budgets as their poker bankrolls. Yet, after a heated series of $1,000 raises, Gilmartin hesitates; the gravity of the situation finally seems to have dawned on him. "I have to call you," he says, "for I've only got twelve hundred left."

Apparently, Martin now has him where he wants him. "I'll put up five thousand more, if you want to play for it."

"But how can I? I tell you I haven't any more money."

"If you will give me your promise to go as far south as St. Louis for sixty days, and tell nobody that you are going, I'll take that as an equivalent for five thousand." In other words, he's proposing that Gilmartin sell out his candidate, not only stealing from his war chest but leaving him in the dark about his lack of a canvasser in the state's northern districts.

Gilmartin is "deathly pale" as he peeks at his cards again, but Martin speaks so coolly that even the seen-it-all correspondent can't help shuddering. "I need not say anything to impress on the minds of all the gentlemen present that this is a private party, and that nothing which happens here can be told outside while it can by any possibility work injury to anyone concerned."

When Gilmartin looks around the room, he can see that everyone, including the reporter, agrees - that if he loses the bet and leaves Minnesota till after the election, they would not turn him in to either his employer or the police. "I'll take that bet," he says finally. "But God help you, Martin, if you win it. I don't believe you can, for I've got almost a sure hand."

"If you lose," replies Martin, "you have no cause of quarrel with me. I am not forcing you to play. But if you mean enmity, all right. I'll gamble your friendship, too, along with the rest, if you like."

"So be it. It's a call, then. If you lose, you pay me five thousand. If I lose, I leave."

But when Martin turns over the proverbial four kings, Gilmartin shockingly fails to show him the inevitable hand. All he has is four queens, having drawn the case lady and trapped himself for his honor, his influence, and the rest of his candidate's money. "His face as he left the room was such a picture as I hope never to see again," writes the reporter, "but he kept to his bargain. At least, I imagine he did, for he was not seen again in that part of the country while I was there. I never spoke to Martin again, but his friend was elected Senator. … Both men are dead, or I would not have told the story."

Though we may have our suspicions, the reporter gives no hint of even the possibility of a cold deck. Gilmartin's unexpected appearance also tends to suggest that the cards were squarely shuffled, since Martin is unlikely to have prepared a cold deck for his political comrades. Then again, the odds against quads over quads fairly dealt are longer than January in International Falls.

A note on the game's open stakes is also in order. The Sun story is a North Woods version of what might be called A Big Hand for a Little Lady scenario. That 1966 Western is set in the same period as the Minnesota pols' game, and open stakes are crucial to its climactic hand, as well. The movie begins with the five richest men in cattle country gathering at Sam's Saloon in Laredo for their annual poker showdown, an event so important to them that ranch owner Henry Drummond (Jason Robards) skips his daughter's wedding to play, and a lawyer abandons his client in a capital case. We also meet a family of settlers - Meredith (Henry Fonda), Mary (Joanne Woodward), and their young son Jackie - who were on their way to purchase a farm near San Antonio when a broken wagon wheel forces them to wait at Sam's until a blacksmith gets around to repairing their wheel. When Meredith, a recovering gambler, learns of the poker game, he begs to go sit in the back room "just to watch," but Mary puritanically refuses to permit even that. While she's over talking to the blacksmith, however, Meredith buys into the game, staking the nest egg it took them 12 years to accumulate.

Soon enough, the title's big hand develops, with players reraising until there's more than $20,000 in the pot. Though it's clear that Meredith has drawn a monster, he's unable to call the latest raise. "That's four hundred dollars to you," Drummond tells him. "And you know something, mister? You ain't got enough left to stay in this pot." The cattleman is referring to the house rules allowing players to buy or borrow any amount of chips during the hand, but also saying that if anyone fails to match the latest raise, he must fold, no matter how much he's already contributed. There are no side pots.

While Andrew Carnegie would do rather well by these rules, the stress they cause farmer Meredith, who has wagered his last earthly nickel on what he thinks is an unbeatable hand, literally gives him a heart attack. Doc Scully (Burgess Meredith) is called to the saloon, and his prognosis is less than encouraging. Barely conscious, Meredith hands his cards to his wife as he's carried away. His intention is clear: Mary should play out the hand at all costs.

Overcome with anxiety about her husband and the fix he has put her in, Mary takes his place at the table. "Gentlemen," she asks, "how do you play this game?" Their first response is a series of loud objections to playing poker with a woman at all, particularly one ignorant of the rules, conveniently ignoring their vested interest in seeing her hand in the muck. Eventually, though, they give in. What choice do they have, after all, besides shamefully taking the money of a dying farmer and his vulnerable - not to mention extremely attractive - wife? They gallantly explain the dire straits the little lady finds herself in: If she can't match the last raise, and any others that might follow, she must fold her hand and forfeit everything that Meredith recklessly put in the pot.

The next thing we know, Mary is sliding her five cards into an envelope, crossing the street, and buttonholing C.P. Ballinger (Paul Ford), owner of the Cattle and Merchants' Bank. At first Ballinger assumes she's playing a practical joke, but once she shows him the hand, he agrees to loan her $20,000. Mary returns to Sam's table and reraises all in. One by one, her stunned opponents reconsider their hands and then fold. Mary rakes the huge pot, pays Ballinger back with interest, smiles, and walks out.

Cut to: Black Creek, the movie's version of Abilene or Dodge, where Mary, her husband, and son are all revealed to be master sharps. Led by Ballinger and with the collusion of Scully, they have scammed the six cattlemen - who had it coming anyway for swindling Ballinger in a land deal a few years earlier. Prim little "Mary" is actually the saucy moll, Ruby.

Many real games of this period were played with open stakes, but too many scams, kited checks, deeds to twice-mortgaged farms, and other dubious IOUs eventually led to the near-universal adoption of table stakes. Each player starts every hand with a verifiable stake on the table, and at no point during the hand may she remove money or chips from her stack or add any more from her purse, let alone from a banker across the street. But once she goes all in, she retains full equity in the main pot as whatever side pots among better-funded players keep building.

The most obvious reason not to play for open stakes is that it would be impossible for the wealthiest person at the table - or the one with the healthiest line of credit - to lose. But the open stakes in that Minnesota roadhouse let Gilmartin not only borrow $5,000 mid-hand, but barter his secret abstention from the Senate campaign, causing his candidate to lose a close race. His disgraceful behavior may be the ultimate case of what we would now call "going light."