Lone Star 01 (6 page)

Slumped in a fourth chair, his head resting on the table, was a white-haired elderly man. Tobias Melville, Jessie assumed. His son Daryl was towering behind him, face gnarled with rage and nearly as red as Nealon's had been. Across from them, standing where his chair had tipped over, was the fifth player, a squat, plumpish man with a cherubic face and pouty lips, garbed in a black cutaway coat, ruffled shirt, string tie, and a rakishly tilted green Keevil hat.

As Jessie and Ki approached, Melville was snarling at him, “Sure, you run it friendly and honest, all right. About as friendly as a rattler, Kendrick, and you give a man just about as much chance.”

“I won't take no more of this,” the gambler warned.

“You'll take it,” Melville raged heedlessly, one hand gripping his father's lax shoulder. “You've been taking everything else from us for months now, when you know we can't pay, only go deeper into debt to you. You and Halford have been addling him with whiskey till he can't tell an ace from a queen. Just look what you've done to him!”

“Yeah, the old fool's passed out cold,” the smirking player cut in snidely. The other players stayed quiet and still, unwilling to intrude. “Tell you what, Melville, I'll help you. I'll help you carry him out and dump him in the closest horse trough.”

The man snickered at his own joke. He was big enough to get away with it, taller than Melville and heftier by a good ten pounds. But Melville was beyond caution now, and he focused all his pent-up fury on the sneering giant, his voice like the edge of a scythe.

“Shut your mouth, Volpes, before I shut it for you. I've had it with you too, just like the other ranchers have had it. We're out there working, trying to live decent, but for some reason all you can think to do is sneer and bully like the king of the shitpile.”

Volpes rose swinging.

An uppercutting haymaker crunched against Melville's jaw with a meaty impact, sending him reeling off balance. Wincing with pain, Melville shook his head to clear it, falling back a pace to regain his footing, as Volpes confidently charged to polish him off.

Melville ducked the onrushing roundhouse fist, dancing aside and striking back with a jolting right-left to Volpes's stomach and heart. The attack caught Volpes surprised and unguarded, but he moved in undaunted, hammering with abandon. Melville shifted and feinted, evading the blows, stabbing two lefts to Volpes's face so fast that one had scarcely hit before the other had landed.

Then a roundhouse knuckler cracked alongside Melville's cheek, momentarily stunning him. Before he could recover, Volpes got an arm around him and smashed him twice in the face with stiff, short-range punches. Melville butted him hard, breaking free, and launched another one-two combination. His left opened a gash over Volpes's eye, the right flattened the bridge of his nose. Volpes staggered, spurting blood from his nostrils, and the customers yelled.

And the gambler went for a belly-gun. Or at least it appeared that way, Kendrick barking an oath and darting his hand inside his coat, where a stubby-barreled weapon would be hidden in a shoulder holster.

Before Kendrick could produce whatever he was after, Ki took a step forward, his arm blurring up and out. A throwing dagger winked across the table. Kendrick choked on his oath, his hand still dipped inside his coat, and stared down at the jutting hilt of the knife, which had sliced through his coat pocket, skinning his ribs.

“The next will be closer,” Ki called, smiling.

Kendrick grinned weakly and removed his hand.

The fighters traded blows, Volpes the stronger and cruelly effective, and Melville the faster and angrily impervious. Ignoring the battering jabs and chops, Melville returned rights and lefts until he'd wiped Volpes's smirk off his face, and sealed up the eye with the cut over it. Volpes dove, grappling, to wrap him in another crushing hug, but this time Melville was prepared, catching Volpes by the beard and jerking his face downward, mashing Volpes's already broken nose against his rising right knee. Pushing Volpes away then, Melville hit him a half-dozen more times in both eyes. Like a blundering, blind bear, Volpes tried to slug back, but Melville went under the swings and pummeled him in the belly and face, driving Volpes against the table, overturning it, punching him the length of the saloon and pinning him against the bar. Dazed and bleeding, Volpes sagged to his knees, bewildered by the unleashed fury of Melville's assault.

Melville hauled Volpes to his feet, while the crowd closed in around them, baying for the finishing blow. They weren't disappointed. Melville brought his right fist up from somewhere down around his boots. It hit Volpes's chin with the sound heard in a slaugherhouse, when a steer was brained with a maul. Volpes arched backward and slid five feet along the sawdust-covered planks, coming to rest when his head struck a brass spittoon. He didn't get up.

Melville stood catching his breath, looking moodily down at Volpes. Then, turning, he thrust through the congratulatory throng to where his father sprawled snoring on the floor, the old man having fallen there when the table overturned. Jessica and Ki followed, and Ki helped Melville pick up his father and dust him off.

Kendrick, who was righting the table, paused to give the two men a murderous glare. “From now on, you're both barred from here.”

Melville, misunderstanding, snapped, “That's dandy by me. I've been trying long enough to stop Dad from coming in this snakepit.”

“Oh, Toby's welcome anytime. I mean you—and
him.
”

Melville regarded Ki and then the gambler again, and then he frowned quizzically. “Say, isn't that a knife sticking outta your coat?”

Ki answered for the gambler, “He was trying to do what your opponent couldn't. With lead. I thought it wise to discourage him.”

Livid, Kendrick blurted, “Why, you slant-eyed—!” And then promptly shut up, seeing Ki smile the same pleasant smile as before.

Now Melville laughed. “Serves you right, you sidewind er,” he said to Kendrick, and lifting his father by the shoulders, he began carrying him toward the front. Passing the bar, where the customers were thirstily debating the finer details of his fight, Melville glanced back and grinned at Ki, who had hold of the father's ankles. “I guess I owe you my thanks, Mr...”

“Ki.”

“Just Ki, no ‘mister,”' Jessie added, opening the batwings.

Outside, Melville said, “Our wagon's by the barber shop.” Starting across the street, he gave Jessica a sidelong appraisal, seeming to want to say something, but only managing to clear his throat a number of times. Finally it came out: “Maybe I shouldn't ask this, Miss Star—uh, Jessie—but are you...
with
Ki?”

“You bet. Ki's my guardian and sometime chaperone,” she explained teasingly, intrigued by the way Melville's bruised mouth went from a crestfallen droop when he'd asked, to a smiling curve when she'd answered.

Melville stopped in back of a scruffy one-horse farm wagon, whose swaybacked horse dozed placidly at the hitching rail. Opening the wagon's tailgate to climb up inside, Melville started to speak again with faltering embarrassment.

“This is plumb shameful. Please don't think the worse of me or Dad, Jessie. It's mostly on account of him being so powerful lonely and sad, ever since my mother died four years ago.”

“I understand, Daryl. Misery makes it easy for men like Halford and Kendrick to take advantage—and take your money.”

“You don't know the half of it. We're in hock up to our ears to Kendrick, and we'd have to sell out or simply give him the whole blamed Spraddled M, if we ever had to pay him off all at once.”

“You think he's rigged the games to win it?”

“He doesn't want our ranch,” Melville replied, as he and Ki slid his father into the wagon bed. “Besides, Dad plays so badly, Kendrick would have to cheat to lose. What makes you ask, Jessie?”

“Nothing I can pinpoint. But the way the man you beat rose to Kendrick's defense makes me wonder a little bit if they haven't got something going between them.”

“Nope, that tussle was personal ‘tween me and Volpes. We've locked horns before, but nothing like this, and I suppose I shouldn't have lost my temper. But he's been swaggering and bullying around too long, and needed the stuffing knocked outta him.” Melville jumped down and untied the horse, adding sheepishly, “Think he knocked some stuffing outta me, too. Anyway, maybe this'll be a lesson for Cap'n Ryker to keep him on a shorter leash.”

“Ryker? Guthried Ryker?”

“Yeah. Know him?”

“Strictly by reputation,” Jessie said grimly.

“Well, Volpes is Ryker's foreman. He's mean enough to steal the blanket outta his mother's kennel, but he's kinda at odds with Kendrick and Halford, him working for Cap'n Ryker and all.”

“How's that?”

“Well, when Kendrick and Halford arrived here about this time last year, they bought the old saloon and put options on some other properties like the hotel, and generally began acting like bigshots. Then Cap'n Ryker showed up with even more money to spend speculating, and naturally it's stirred up resentments and competition.”

Jessie was still perplexed. “That much makes sense. But if Kendrick and Halford are interested in gaining property ...”

“Sure are,” Melville said, nodding, as he climbed up onto the wagon seat. “Them and Cap'n Ryker, squabbling over this and that like two dogs over a bone, to see who'll wind up lording it over the other.”

“Then why'd you tell me Kendrick doesn't want your ranch?”

“Because that's what he's told us, Jessie. Says he's only interested in town property, money-making property. Says if he took over, he'd have to abandon it and write it off as a total loss, or else try to run it and end up scratching and starving like we are. He says he'd rather have us make payments to him like a loan, than to have us hand over a spread of skin and bones and worthless dust.”

Jessica pursed her lips, pondering for a moment, suspicious of saintly gamblers unwilling to rake in the entire pot the instant it was won. And her brief exposure to Kendrick had not left her impressed with his charitable qualities. She gazed skeptically up at Melville, asking, “Have you offered the ranch to him, Daryl?”

“No, and I don't aim to, unless I'm forced. But speaking of our worthless ranch, I'd best be getting Dad home to bed. Are you still planning to ride out to the Flying W tomorrow morning?”

“At the crack of dawn. Though I wish we could go now, and not waste time spending a night at the hotel,” Jessie replied, then turned to Ki. “We are staying there, aren't we?”

Ki nodded. “It's all arranged. Luggage too.”

“Well, you just remember that fork in the road,” Melville said. “When you pass our place tomorrow, Jessie, you stop in.”

“Thanks, we might, if it won't be any trouble.”

“No trouble, no trouble a-tall, ‘cepting you don't come a-calling like you're expected to.
Then
there'll be trouble.” Grinning broadly, Melville released the brake and lashed the reins, and the horse started plodding down the street, the wagon creaking behind it.

Jessica stood beside Ki, watching Melville slowly haul his besotted father home. Daryl was a smooth hairpin, she had to admit; and he already had so many problems that she certainly didn't want to cause him the slightest bit more trouble. So of course she'd visit.

Chapter 5

Moving to the boardwalk, Jessica and Ki watched the departing wagon, Ki remarking, “I looked for you at the sheriff‘s, Jessie. He told me he'd met up with a dratted female of your description, but otherwise he couldn't help any.”

“You can say that again, Ki,” Jessie replied with disgust. “How'd you know to find me in the saloon?”

“That's where the thick of the uproar was. Where else would you be?” Smiling, Ki took a pocketful of .38 cartridges from his vest and handed them to Jessica, adding: “These are from four boxes I bought. The rest I put in your room.”

“Thanks.” Loading her revolver, she glanced at the bath house next to the barber shop. “Does the hotel have a bath?”

“Two. Fifty cents extra, fresh water daily, reheated noon and evening, and I've already reserved the one on our floor for us.”

“That's a relief,” she sighed, starting along the boardwalk. She felt grubby and unkempt and in need of a good scrub, from all that had occurred since the ambush. But the bath house, like most cow-town bath houses, would be a male preserve where men would mingle, arguing such weighty issues as women and liquor. She had little interest in bathing with them and airing her differences.