The Bold Frontier (26 page)

“I seen you,” Bates repeated. “You was weaving back and forth.” His eyes puckered together. “Are you sick or something?”

“No,” Coldfield snapped. “I feel fine.”

Bates shrugged. “You sure was staggering a powerful lot. This here river can get a feller mighty sick— you know?” A thick-lipped grin spread across the mouth of the bigger man.

“Forget it,” Coldfield said. An instant later he had cause to regret the words; the sharpness in them.

“You wouldn’t be ordering me around now, would you, tinhorn?” Bates stuck his thumbs into his jacket pockets, looking for a chance to show off his strength

“If you want to call it that. I told you I’m not sick and to forget about the coughing spell.” He had initiated this. Accidentally, to be sure. But he couldn’t turn back now.

“I don’t cotton to being pushed around, tinhorn.” The wicked gleam in Bates’s eyes grew brighter. He took a step forward, as if to see what Coldfield would do next.

Coldfield hesitated; slowly lowered his hands. Then he brought his right hand up with a swift motion, palming the derringer and aiming its tiny barrel at a spot between Bates’s close-set eyes.

“Look,” Coldfield said quietly, “get out of my way and stop jawing.”

Sudden hatred showed on the other man’s face. That was replaced by a look of craftiness. Coldfield was amazed at the way simple emotions moved over that flat, brutal face. “Sure, tinhorn. I’ll step aside. But I ain’t forgetting.”

He moved back toward the wall. Coldfield pocketed the derringer and walked quickly by. At the next turn in the deck, he spun around and looked back. Redneck Bates still stood under the lantern, staring off across the water toward the lights of Herrod’s Landing. He had a knife in his hand. He didn’t look at Coldfield. Coldfield realized he’d made a dangerous enemy in his haste to conceal his own sickness.

The pain was duller, but still with him, as he hurried along the deck and into the brilliantly lit saloon. The hearty sound of male voices mingling with higher feminine ones crashed against his ears like the roar of surf. The small string orchestra wheezed away at “Buffalo Gals.” The tables were crowded.

Tom Chapman had done an unprecedented thing with the
Queen.
He’d opened the gambling saloon to women as well as men. He attracted wealthy people that way; young bucks and their ladies who had money and position and who could afford to brave public scorn when the ladies lifted their skirts and stepped up the plank to this less-than-respectable world of green baize tables and easy money. Coldfield looked around, but he didn’t see Tom Chapman. Coldfield’s regular table, number three, was waiting, deserted as yet.

He crossed the big room, glancing at himself in the mirrored walls. Good God, he thought, I do look sick. Thinner, with sunken eyes. With his hat off, his graying hair was obvious. A man of thirty-three shouldn’t have gray hair, he told himself. But he had it, a mark of the way he’d driven himself to reach the top, here in the gilded main saloon of the
River Queen.

He slipped into his place behind the box. One of the waiters appeared instantly with fresh cards. He cut the paper with his fingernail and began an elaborate shuffle. Before he was finished, he had a full table. They know me, he thought proudly. They come to me for a fair game.

He got the high-stake faro game going, turning the cards out of the box with practiced ease. In less than three quarters of an hour he’d cleared a little over eleven hundred dollars for the house. As players left, new ones took their places. The noise and smell of cigar smoke increased. Coldfield himself lit a Cuban cheroot. He was in control now, though the pain in his chest had grown sharp again. His palms were clammy with sweat. That was something new.

A disturbance intruded on the regular noise of the saloon. A young man at the stud table next to Coldfield’s got up quickly, shouting a curse. Frankie Topp, the dealer, also rose. Behind the young man stood a girl, her blue eyes wide with anxiety. She clutched her escort’s arm. “Jim, let’s get out of here.” Coldfield studied her, his hand mechanically keeping up with his own game. She was older than the young man but not by very much. She had a fresh-scrubbed look. Her clothes, like her companion’s, were obviously homemade. She didn’t fit with the gilded ladies who patronized the
Queen.

“I’m not getting out of here till I get my two thousand back,” Jim said.

Coldfield smiled thinly. Frankie Topp was shrewd, but evidently his tricks hadn’t worked this time.

“I saw what you did—palm the bottom card of the deck. I want my money.”

Frankie Topp smiled gently and said something apologetic. Jim started around the table, fists clenched. The girl screamed as the small nickeled gun popped into Frankie’s fist and exploded with a flat sound. A red smear spread on Jim’s shirt, just above his heart. Another woman screamed and the hubbub of voices rose.

Then, almost like some genie from a bottle, Redneck Bates appeared behind the boy and clamped his arms around him. The boy fought, struggled, but Bates had no trouble dragging him to the door and out. The girl followed quickly. Coldfield turned back to his own game. Chapman allowed his dealers to play crooked if they could get away with it. The young couple had made a mistake in coming aboard the
Queen
; the company was too fast, and the boy had a hole in his chest, possibly fatal, for his foolishness. If he lived and made a fuss, Bates would look him up and break his neck. Chapman tolerated no interference with a successful operation.

The disturbance remained a topic of conversation for some minutes. Finally, the saloon resumed its usual tone of busy confusion. The hours wore on; the pain in Coldfield’s chest became worse. At last he could no longer fight the dizziness. He cursed himself as the faces across the table swam out of focus. He reached too quickly for the edge of the table, spilling the neat card decks carelessly on the baize. He closed his eyes, gripped the table edge, his head swinging from side to side. He heard a woman’s horrified exclamation from the seat across from his. Suddenly he keeled over, his cheek smacking the table top.

A moment later he opened his eyes. The attack had passed. But he remembered what had happened. His stomach hurt.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Another of the house gamblers stood there, motioning him away from the table. He got up stiffly.

“I’ll take over for you, Coldfield,” the man said, and Coldfield knew that word had already traveled to Tom Chapman:
Coldfield’s sick. Coldfield passed out at the table.
It was Chapman’s business to know things almost as soon as they happened.

The house man stared at him. “You’d better go see Chapman.”

Coldfield nodded, aware of the horrified gaze of the woman at his table. He hurried away from her accusing eyes; blindly he pushed through the crowd and up the stairs to the mezzanine. He didn’t bother to knock on the intricately inlaid door. He walked straight in through the curtained foyer to the desk where Tom Chapman sat.

Chapman was built like Redneck Bates. But there the resemblance stopped. Intelligence showed in Chapman’s wide-spaced brown eyes. His hands were delicate, almost feminine, untouched by dirt, odd contrasts to his long, thick arms. The office shone with the glow of expensive lamps on polished wood. The peaty smell of good whiskey floated in the air.

Chapman gestured to a chair. “Sit down, Graham.” There was no cordiality in his eyes.

“I heard you got violently sick at the table,” Chapman said after a moment.

Coldfield shook his head. “No, only a little dizzy. Look, Tom—”

“Don’t call me Tom. You’re a hired hand, nothing else. Now what happened?”

Wearily, Coldfield replied, “I just got a little dizzy and passed out. A few seconds, no more. I’m tired, that’s all it is. Otherwise I’m fine.”

Chapman shook his head. “I can’t have a sick man working for me. I run this place on atmosphere as much as anything. Everything proper and refined. I can’t have dealers passing out, that’s flat. I’m sorry, but you’re done on the
Queen
.”

The words struck Coldfield like a sledge. All his years of struggle wiped out that fast. And Chapman had been so cordial when he hired him. “I thought we were friends. Hell, I’ve been with you three years now—”

“I’m in business,” Chapman cut in; Coldfield saw the ruthlessness he’d always known was there. “The river does funny things to a man. Fever, pneumonia, just plain craziness sometimes. Go out to Arizona. Soak up some of the sun, and when you’re over whatever it is, come back and see me. Maybe I can do something for you then.”

The words burned Coldfield like heated cattle irons. Chapman didn’t give a damn about anybody. He kicked people around, like that boy who was cheated, without ever worrying about it; nothing mattered but the
River Queen.

In moments, Coldfield’s life had gone to pieces. He saw himself in the saddle again, riding from town to town in the cold gray winters; shivering in cheap rooming houses; cadging a drink when he couldn’t draw any customers into a game.

“Look,” Chapman said abruptly, “this would have come sooner or later anyway. Redneck told me he saw you staggering around earlier tonight. You couldn’t have kept it quiet for long. Get off the
Queen
without a fuss and I’ll give you two weeks’ wages.”

“The hell with you, Chapman. I’m all right.”

“You’re lying.” Chapman snarled it. “Now get out and get off before I get angry.”

Coldfield drew back his arm and smashed Chapman on the point of the jaw. Chapman jerked backward in his chair, smart enough to roll his head with the punch. Rocketing to his feet, he fanned back his coat. A heavy revolver appeared in his fist. He pointed it toward a curtained doorway. “Out, Coldfield. Or do I have to kill you on the spot?”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

“You make trouble and you’ll be a dead man. Now get.”

Coldfield turned shakily and walked toward the curtain. He pushed through it without looking back. He stood a moment in the alcove, listening. The side door to Chapman’s office opened; he heard someone come in. There were whispers of conversation; then the door closed again. Coldfield opened the door that led from the alcove and stepped out onto the deck.

Damp mist coiled along the shore of the Blackwater. Coldfield moved down the deck, shivering. Someone stood at the gangplank. As Coldfield approached, he recognized another of the men Chapman employed to do his fighting. Coldfield tried to pass him, but the man seized his coat, dug into his waistcoat pocket and found the derringer. He tossed it over the rail; it plopped into the black water. His mouth split in a yellow-toothed grin.

“So long, Coldfield.”

Wearily, Coldfield started down the plank. The cards, as the saying went, were stacked against him. There was nothing left.

His boots sounded hollow on the plank. He stopped midway to the street. Down on the wharf, under one of the lamps, a man was standing. Coldfield recognized Redneck Bates, hands deep in his jacket pockets. Coldfield started moving again, a tight feeling in his stomach. Bates started forward to meet him. Coldfield suddenly knew what the hurried conversation had been about, the moment after he left Chapman.

Bates moved with lumbering steps. He blocked the end of the gangplank. Coldfield looked around quickly. The wharf was deserted. The main street of Herrod’s Landing, two blocks up along the river, pulsed with noise, but down here there was only shadow and the Blackwater lapping at the pilings and the echoing squeak of violins from the saloon of the
Queen.
This was why the other man had disarmed him. Chapman meant to demonstrate that he didn’t dare fight back. Coldfield couldn’t see Bates’s face, but he knew from his voice that he was grinning:

“Hello, tinhorn. Seems like I’m running into you a lot tonight.”

“Move,” Coldfield said. “I want to get by.”

“Not right yet,” Bates said. “I got a little something to do first. Chapman wants to make sure you won’t make no stink.” A sharp click in the foggy air; a knife blade winked in the light. Far down the river, a mournful whistle sounded.

Coldfield hesitated only a second, then moved. He lunged to the left, seizing Bates’s knife wrist with both hands. He jerked the big man toward him and brought his wrist down hard on the plank rail. Bates howled and the knife fell into the water. Coldfield dodged around him. Bates reared up; Coldfield’s advantage of surprise had vanished.

Bates seemed to move like a powerful machine, gathering momentum. He slammed into Coldfield, and the rush carried the two men back across the wharf until Coldfield’s back struck the wall of a building. Bates brought his fist clubbing down. Bates laughed as the hard blow landed. Red patterns exploded in Coldfield’s head.

He pummeled Bates in the belly, but the man had immense strength; could not be stopped. One after another, powerful punches beat Coldfield down to the wet ground. His mind seemed to float in darkness, even as another blow struck him. No ordinary man could stand up against Bates, he told himself. But he tried; he tried, stumbling to his feet as the big man hit him again.

Something hateful took root in Coldfield’s brain as his surroundings spun. No longer was this a matter of business. There was open cruelty in Bates’s blows. Chapman, too, was responsible for his pain. Chapman had beaten him down to nothing by firing him; there was no need for this attack. And yet Chapman had ordered it. Chapman was responsible for Frankie Topp shooting the young boy, too. Chapman was a disease; a disease of greed.

And now he must be certain he had broken Coldfield. But a broken man could fight back. A broken man couldn’t help fighting back, treated like this. Some men weren’t built to be humbled. Coldfield would not be humbled.

And so he fought, weakly, ineffectually, until Bates’s heavy boot smashed into his jaw and left him limp on the ground. Suddenly he heard a rattle of hoofs in the darkness, and a clatter of carriage wheels. He heard Bates cry out hoarsely; forced his eyes open long enough to see a whip cut the big man’s face and spin him around, sending him staggering.

Bates disappeared in the dark. The carriage stopped. Hands seized Coldfield, tugging at him. A voice said, “Can you climb up into the carriage?”