COLUMBUS - The West was
wild and wooly when Calamity Jane last dealt cards in Columbus.
Starting next week,
she'll be back, more than a century later, dealing poker at the New Atlas
Bar.
Dianne Gleason is
opening the New Calamity Jane Card Room at the back of the bar on Dec. 18.
Festivities begin with free food and beer beginning at noon, followed by
Gleason, playing Calamity, performing her historical show free at 2 p.m. The
betting begins at 4 p.m. when Calamity shuffles the cards for the bar's
first game of poker in years. Beginning Dec. 19, she'll be dealing cards
every Sunday, from 4 p.m. to midnight.
"If there are enough
players, I'll stay till 2 (a.m.)," Gleason said.
Dana Burchell, who
manages the New Atlas, thinks the new twist on gambling should be a draw for
the bar.
"I think it'll be fun,
especially with her celebrity," Burchell said. "She's quite a colorful
character."
Gleason is not only a
colorful character, some say she could be Calamity Jane reincarnate. She
took on Calamity's persona several years ago as a champion cowboy action
shooter and moved from Deadwood, S.D., to the Livingston area last spring.
Since then, she's been entertaining crowds with her nightly performances in
Livingston and her presence at local rodeos and parades.
Gleason is a walking
encyclopedia of Calamity Jane lore. She claims her namesake drank and dealt
a game called Faro in the Columbus bar in the late 1800s – years before it
became the "New" Atlas. The original Calamity's Faro outfit, complete with a
German silver dealer box, is on display downstairs at the Peter Yegen Jr.
Yellowstone County Museum at Logan International Airport.
Gleason says it's a
misconception that Calamity spent all her time in Deadwood. In fact, she
says, Calamity crisscrossed Montana off and on for 23 years.
"She was heavy in this
area from 1884 to 1901," Gleason said, noting that Calamity lived in a cabin
up Canyon Creek north of Laurel, at the same spot where a monument now marks
the Nez Perce Battle.
According to Gleason's
research, a butte just above the cabin served as a cache for horses stolen
by two of Calamity's compadres, Rattlesnake Jake and Long-haired Owen. When
the two men were shot dead on the main street of Lewistown on July 4, 1884 -
for beating a town local - a band of vigilantes went after Calamity. She
saved her own life with some quick talking, Gleason said.
"She walked the line -
she was never into serious crime, but she walked a fine line," she said.
Whenever Calamity was
ready to pull up stakes, which she did frequently, Gleason surmises that she
would have headed down to Columbus or Billings to catch the train.
"She wasn't always
welcome in Billings," she said. "She was run out of town several times for
her shenanigans on Montana (Avenue)."
Back when the original
Calamity dealt cards in Columbus, the game of Faro - not poker - was king.
Played similar to roulette, only with cards instead of a wheel, Faro gave
just about even odds to the player and the house.
"The only thing was,
there was no such thing as an honest game of Faro," Gleason said.
The game was eventually
banned by supporters of the temperance movement, who believed that "if you
could outlaw alcohol and Faro, you could keep your husband home," she said.
Back in its heyday,
Gleason said, Faro was referred to as "buckin' the tiger." Wherever a game
was in progress, they always hung a picture of a Bengal tiger out front.
Gleason's got her own "buckin'
the tiger" banner that she'll hang at the Atlas when she's dealing cards.
Only this time, it won't be Faro but a rousing game of "Texas Holdum," the
poker game, usually spelled as "Texas Hold 'em," that's been sweeping the
country.
"It's huge. Women and
young people - a whole spectrum of people - play Texas Holdum now," she
said.
That includes Annie
Duke, who lived in Columbus off and on during the 1990s and still has family
there. In August, Duke took home the $2 million prize for winning the 2004
ESPN World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions.
At the New Atlas, Texas
Holdum will be played on one of the original poker tables. The game can be
played with a minimum of four players, up to a full table of nine. The poker
variant is limited to $300 per pot in Montana, Gleason said, so that means
bets typically start at $3 to $6.
Gleason is looking
forward to bringing Calamity back to one of her old haunts.
"I get to walk in her
footsteps when I'm doing this," she said.
Besides dealing weekly
poker games at the New Atlas, Gleason will spend Thursday nights this winter
at the Huntley Lodge in Big Sky, performing her one-woman show. Like
Calamity, Gleason is a woman willing to rope opportunities that come her
way.
"Those were hard times,"
she said, referring to the Victorian era in which the original Calamity
earned notoriety for bucking tradition. "She was just trying to get by."
