GIRLS OF THE GULCH

They call me Poker Alice

By G. Sam Carr

My name is Alice Huckert Tubbs, but folks call me Poker Alice, 'cause when it comes to poker or faro I can whup the pants off any man in the territory. 

The reason I'm telling this story is to correct all those untruths, half-truths, and outright damn lies told about me; some of them even told by me. Since I'll soon be going under the knife, maybe getting ready to join that big poker game in the sky, I'll try to set the record straight.

I'll give you an example: For years I told everyone I was born in England in 1851 and that my father was a schoolmaster. Fact is, I was born in Virginia in 1853 and my parents were Irish immigrants.

When you look at me now, butt big as Bear Butte, chewing a cigar, and wearing a khaki army shirt and campaign hat, you'd play hell believing I was once a very beautiful young lady. 

My first husband, Frank Duffield, was a mining engineer and gambler in Colorado gold camps. We weren't married long when he was killed by a misfire while shooting off a dynamite charge in a mine tunnel. One blast and I became a merry widow whose only assets were good looks and the skills Frank taught me. I took up gambling full time and did very well. After one good string of luck, I took off for New York to replenish my wardrobe of fancy low-cut gowns and ostrich plumes. It was money well spent. An attractive dealer is always an asset in the gambling business.

By the early 1890s I'd worked my way from Colorado to Deadwood where I started building a reputation with my gambling skills. That's when I married Warren Tubbs. He hailed from Sturgis, painted houses during the day and gambled at night. I soon saw he wasn't lucky at cards so I tried to get him to stick to painting houses and let me be the gambler in the family. He didn't buy it. He was really best at producing children; we had seven. While they were growing up, we did our best to keep our kids away from the gambling houses. Soon as they got old enough to be on their own, they moved away. We'd go visit them once in a while but never let them come to Deadwood again.

I made us a good living dealing poker and faro in Deadwood and other small towns in the area. All in all I'd say I made over $250,000 just using my clever hands and astute brain. Even after I became a rough-talking heavy drinker men welcomed me at the tables. With my ever-present cigar that I called jackass rope, I fit right in.

When Warren contacted tuberculosis, I had to give up my gambling and move to a little ranch on the Moreau River where I tried to nurse him back to health. I didn't think I was going to like it, but fact is I welcomed the peace and quiet of the plains. Warren died in the winter of 1910. I bundled up against the sub-zero weather and used a horse-drawn wagon to take his body the 100 miles back to Sturgis for burial.

With Warren gone, I decided to open up a bordello and bought an old house on Bear Butte Creek on the outskirts of Sturgis near the Fort Meade Army Post. Problem was the house wasn't big enough. I went to the bank for a $2,000 loan to build on an addition and go to Kansas City to recruit some fresh girls. When I told the banker I'd repay the loan in two years, he scratched his head for a minute then let me have the money. In less than a year I was back in his office paying off the loan. 

He asked how I was able to come up with the money so fast. I took a couple chaws on the end of my cigar and told him, "Well it's this way. I knew the Grand Army of the Republic was having an encampment here in Sturgis. And I knew that the state Elks convention would be here too.  But I plumb forgot about all those preachers coming to town for a conference."

Around 1913 the number of regular army troops assigned to Fort Meade petered out and my business started to drop. But that July, things started looking up when the Fourth Regiment of the South Dakota National Guard took its summer training there. More than five hundred state militiamen from the regiment's twelve companies participated in eight-day maneuvers on a rotating basis.   

One evening they gave out so many passes those soldiers hit my place like a herd of buffalo.  Soon as the house filled to a dangerous capacity, I locked the doors and refused to let anymore in.  That really riled the Troop K guardsmen waiting outside.

At first they did a lot of yelling and pounding on the door. Then they cut telephone and electric wires to the house. When they started throwing rocks through the windows I went to the closet in my bedroom and took out my rifle. I carried it to the parlor, pointed at one of the windows and fired some shots. I wasn't shooting at anyone in particular. I just wanted to scare the soldiers so they'd leave me alone. When they finally backed off, they discovered my shots had downed two of the troopers. One of them, a sergeant, died at the post hospital. The private recovered.

It wasn't the first time I'd used a gun. I spent a big chunk of my early years in some of the West's roughest and wildest camps. For my own protection, I carried a gun, a .38 on a .45 frame, and I knew how to use it. My father, an excellent marksman, taught me well. Even as a child I was able to knock a squirrel from a tree at will.

On two different occasions I found it necessary to draw down on men. The first time was when a gangster attacked my husband with a knife. The SOB didn't even notice my gun hand moving toward my holster. I shot him in the knife arm and that ended the quarrel in a hurry. 

 The other time was in a faro game when I wasn’t dealing. I thought luck was running against me. I lost $500, then $1,000. When I began on the second $1,000 I kept my eyes fastened on the faro box more than on the play. There was something uncanny about the way I was losing. Then I thought I detected a little movement in that box and a thickness about the turn. I watched more closely -- for $800 worth. Then I drew my revolver and said, "If you'd done that cleverly, there wouldn't be any kick. I can admire a clever crook, I'll admit that. But a clumsy one like you ….  Now before I pull this trigger, you give me back my money!"  When I walked out of that gambling hall, I took my entire $1,800 with me. 

Getting back to the Fort Meade fracas, it only took the police a few minutes to get to my place. They sent the troopers back to the fort and escorted me and my six girls to jail. What really made me mad was them deciding the guardsmen weren’t responsible for any part of the brawl. Them damned cops all knew who started the trouble, yet it was only us women who got hauled in. 

The judge tried playing Wells Fargo detective by asking me about the layout of my house and I put an end to that real fast. I looked the old SOB right in the eye and said, "Hell, Judge, you been in my place so many times there ain't a window or door in the whole damn house you don't know about. Besides, it was so dark in that room nobody saw who did the shooting. Now, charge us with something or let us go."  He charged me with keeping a house of ill fame and my girls for frequenting the place. I paid the fines and we went back home.

Once when I found myself short of cash, I borrowed a thousand dollars from a man named Huckert.  Being the good businesswoman I was, I married him to keep from paying him back. Huckert died shortly after our marriage. I kept his money and took back the name of Tubbs.

After that, I was often arrested for drunkenness and for keeping a disorderly house, but I paid my fines and continued my business as usual. I must say I was well liked in the community, even among the straitlaced. When I was finally sentenced to a term in the state penitentiary for repeated convictions of operating a house of ill fame, many of them wrote the governor urging leniency.  Them letters must have worked because the governor noted that I was 75 years old and pardoned me. He said he wasn't going to send an old lady to prison when she obviously had so few years left and besides, he said, "Alice is not used to confinement."

Over the years I've been accused of cheating.  But I swear here, on the eve of my possible death, that only once did I ever cheat and that was a joke. In Deadwood there was a man who gambled incessantly and had only one view of the matter when he lost -- the game was crooked, and he announced it. But if he won, he said the game was straight and square. It got on my nerves.  "One of these days, I've a notion to run in a cold deck on him," I told a fellow gambler. "Maybe it'll teach him a lesson."

Shortly after that the man came into a poker game and I never saw such luck. Every time he played, it seemed, I was his opponent and the loser. By actual count, he beat twenty-seven sets of threes without me ever winning a hand. If I held three kings, he’d have three aces; if I drew the three highest cards in the deck, he’d have a small straight.

"I've got into a square game at last," he crowed over his pile of chips.

I bit down on my cigar and said, "You'll think it's the crookedest before I get through with you."  Shortly afterward, I excused myself from a hand, went to a back room and fixed up a cold deck. Next time it was my turn to deal, I switched the cards. I gave the player on my right a kick to warn him not to cut.

"Let 'em ride," he said, as he rubbed his bruised shins.

I dealt the hand and passed my opponent a pat flush, taking a full house for myself. The betting began with my victim pushing out chips by the stack. Up ‘til then he'd won every hand he'd played against me, but this time I matched his every bet and forced a call. I  recouped my losses and ran up a $900 profit.

"Well, Sam," I asked as I mouthed my cigar, "was that pot crooked?"

"No, Alice," he answered, "I guess you've got a right to win a hand once in a while."

So I kept the money. I never was able to convince him that the play hadn’t been honest. 

Those were the good old days. I don't gamble much anymore. It takes a clear head and steady hands to do it right. The only major sin I have left is getting drunk. I do like to get drunk and I work at it hard and I usually stay drunk for about three days. 

A fortune-teller who once told my fortune in Deadwood predicted I’d live to be more than 100, but I don’t think I’ll make it. When the doctor gave me the odds on this gall bladder operation I told him I'd been gambling all my life and one more time couldn't hurt.

All this palaver has made me very tired. Now get the hell outta here and let me get some rest.

 EPILOGUE

            The hard life of booze, gambling, and sporting houses finally took its toll. Poker Alice never recovered from the gall bladder operation. At age 77 she snuffed out her last cigar, downed her last shot and cashed in her chips. She was buried in St. Aloysius Cemetery in Sturgis, South Dakota. Vacant for many years, the Poker Alice house was saved from demolition by Sturgis businessman Ted Walker. Walker moved it to its present location on Junction Avenue next to the Junction Inn motel. It is open for tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Although this article is written in fiction format, the incidents recorded are essentially true.