Another essential of the game is that it shall add to the interest of the game by furnishing opportunities to bet.

Very well, in this regard no good outfit can claim any advantage over a bad one.

I know, by experience, that a bad outfit is as valuable as the best one; that an outfit that couldn't be sold at auction for seven dollars is just as valuable for all the essentials of the game as an outfit that is worth a thousand.
I acquired some of this learning in Jackass Gulch, California, more than forty years ago.

Jackass Gulch had once been a rich and thriving surface-mining camp.

By and by its gold deposits were exhausted; then the people began to go away, and the town began to decay, and rapidly; in my time it had disappeared.