Poker Pete in True West Magazine

I'm going to make this the 2nd of a 3 part installment on Poker Pete.  The next one will be a time line or chronology of Poker Pete.  This one is an excerpt from a True West article called A Cabin on Price River. 

                At that time Lower Crossing consisted of a railroad station, section house and a water tank.  Nearby was a farm owned by three Swiss brothers, Louie, Felix and Bert Pressit.  Over on the riverbank was the only commercial establishment in the settlement, operated by a character known as Poker Pete.  In one room of a two-room cabin, Pete lived; in the other room he kept a small stock of overalls, flour, coffee, tobacco and salt, and a large stock of very poor whiskey and beer.  Prominent in this room was a card table, and Pete's aim in life was to get some wandering sheepherder drunk so that he could skin him out of his winter's wages in a poker game.  After some success in this line, Pete would get the idea that he was a real gambler and needed a wider field for his skill.  But he always came back.  Broke. 

                The section hands were all Chinese--the old-fashioned variety who wore their hair in long queues down their backs, long shirts outside their baggy pants and heelless slippers.  They spoke no English. 

                A few small cattle outfits came in to Lower Crossing for mail and freight, both of which were handled at the station.  Among these were the Range Valley Cattle Company from over on Range Creek, of which Johnnie Downard was foreman, and a small spread over on Green River owned by big good-natured Tom Dilly.  Tom's place could be reached by a pack trail that went down Price River Canyon where it cut through the Book Cliffs and then went off to the northeast, then down to Green River. 

                In later years I have read some uncomplimentary things about Tom Dilly, but when I knew him I always found him to be a pleasant, likeable fellow.  Several times when we happened to be in the settlement at the same time, we got up dances and had a lot of fun.  The dances were held in an abandoned log cabin schoolhouse on the other side of the river.  Candles furnished the illumination and also the "slickum" for the dance floor.  Music came from Felix Pressit's concertina and Tom Dilly's mouth organ.  Most of the dancers came from farms farther up the river, some from twenty miles away, but we had a good time in our simple way.  One dance was held in cold weather, when the mothers thought it was too cold to leave the babies in the wagons--so they took them over to Poker Pete's and parked them in Pete's bed with Pete installed as babysitter! 

A CABIN ON PRICE RIVER

True West, November-December 1964

By HARVEY HARDY