A NOTED GAMBLER'S DEATH

Grey River Argus, Volume LVII, Issue 9871, 8 January 1898, Page 4

A NOTED GAMBLER'S DEATH

(o) "Al" Hankins, a gambler of the type Bret Harte loved to portray, who was most prominent in the days of the Montana gold fever, when he conducted half-a-dozen gambling palaces, recently met with a strange death at Chicago. Entering his apartment in the afternoon, he sat down on tte edge of a folding bed, which unexpectedly closed on him, breaking his neck. Hankins was the proprietor of a fine racing stable, and at intervals in his gambling-house career had made books at nearly all the principal American tracks. He was a remarkable revolver shot, and owed much of his success to his wonderful control over his nerves. It is related of him that once, when he was running a miniature Monte Carlo at which the stakes played for were weighed out in ounces of "dust " a desperado, who had lost a fortune within a week at faro, staked his last thousand and took an oath to kill the proprietor if he lost at the same moment that one of Hankin's former partners, also a dead shot, stepped into the club room fingering the pistol in his pocket. As the cards came out that finished the losing miner's fortune, and he rose to execute his threat against Hankin's, the latter faced the two advancing adversaries, and coolly inquired : — " Which of you first ?" This "nerve" so paralysed the two desperadoes that they hesitated — just long enough for Hankin's friends to disarm them both. .