West Of Dodge (Ss) (1996) (15 page)

"No one would hold you to such an agreement."

"He would. And I must pay my debts, one way or another. At the moment I can see no other way out."

"We'll see. Wait, and don't be afraid." Adding another stick to the fire, I returned to the table. Tallman glanced up suspiciously, for he could have heard a murmur, although probably none of the words spoken between us.

It was my deal, and as I gathered the discards my eyes made note of their rank, and swiftly I built a bottom stock, then shuffled the cards while maintaining this stock. I placed the cards in front of Henry for the cut, then I shifted the cut smoothly back and dealt. John gathered his cards, glanced at them, and returned them to the table before him. Tallman studied his own, then fidgeted with his money. I tossed in my ante and we started to build Tallman. We knew he liked to ride hard on a good hand and we gave him his chance. Finally, I dropped out and left it to the doctor. Tallman had a straight, and Doc spread his cards--a full house, queens and tens.

From then on we slowly but carefully took Tallman apart. Haven and Wilson soon became aware of what was happening. Neither John nor I stayed when either of them showed with anything good, but both of us rode Tallman. Haven dropped out of the game first, then Wilson. Henry stayed with us and we occasionally fed him a small pot. From time to time Tallman won, but his winnings were just enough to keep him on edge.

Once I looked up to find Carol's eyes on mine. I smiled a little and she watched me gravely, seriously. Did she guess what was happening here?

"Your bet, Mistah Duval." It was John's soft Georgia voice. I gathered my cards, glanced at them, and raised. Tallman saw me and kicked it up. Henry studied his cards, shrugged, and threw them in.

"Too rich for my blood," he said, smiling.

John kicked it up again, then Tallman raised. He was sweating now. I could see his tongue touch his lips, and the panic in the glance he threw at John when he heard the raise was not simulated. He waited after his raise, watching to see what I would do, and I deliberately let him sweat it out. I was holding three aces and a pair of sixes, and I was sure it wasn't good enough. John had dealt this hand.

My signal to John brought instant response. His hand dropped to the table, and the signal told me he was holding an ace.

Tallman stirred impatiently. Puttering a bit, as if uncertain, I raised twenty dollars. The southerner threw in his hand and Tallman saw my raise, then felt in his pockets for more money and found none. There was an instant of blank consternation, and then he called. He was holding four queens and a trey when he spread his hand.

Hesitating only momentarily, I put my cards down, bunched together.

"Spread 'em!" John demanded impatiently, and reaching across the table he spread my cards--secretly passing his ace to give me four aces and a six.

Tallman's eyes bulged. He swallowed and his face grew red. He glared at the cards as if staring would change their spots. Then he swore viciously.

Coolly, I gathered in the pot, palming and discarding my extra six as my hand passed the discards. Carefully, I began stacking my coins while John gathered the cards together.

"I'm clean!" Tallman flattened his big hands on the table. He looked around the room. "Who wants to stake me? I'll pay, I'm good for it!"

Nobody replied. Haven was apparently dozing. Rock Wilson was smoking and staring into the fire. Henry yawned and looked at the one window through which we could see. It was faintly gray. It would soon be morning.

From the ceiling a drop gathered and fell with a fat plop into the bucket. Nobody spoke, and in the silence we realized for the first time that the rain had almost ceased.

"What's got into you?" Tallman demanded. "You were plenty willin' to take my money! Gimme a chance to get even!"

"No man wants to play agin his own money," Wilson commented mildly.

My winnings were stacked, part of it put away, yet of what remained the entire six hundred dollars had been won from Tallman. "Seems early to end a game," I remarked carelessly. "Have you got any collateral?"

He hesitated. "I've got a--!" He had started to put up his pistol, but changed his mind suddenly. Something inside me tightened when I realized what that might mean.

Tallman stared around, scowling. "I guess I ain't got--" It was time now, if it was ever to be time. Yet as the moment came, I felt curiously on edge myself. "Doesn't she owe you money?" I indicated Carol Houston. "And that agreement to marry should be worth something."

Even as I said it, I felt like a cad, and yet this was what I had been building toward. Tallman stared at me and his face darkened with angry blood. He started to speak, so I let a string of gold eagles trail through my fingers and their metallic clink arrested him, stopped his voice in his throat. His eyes fell to the gold. His tongue touched his lips.

"Only for collateral," I suggested.

"No!" He sank back in his seat. "I'll be damned if I do!"

"Suit yourself." My shrug was indifference itself. Slowly, I got out my buckskin money bag and began gathering the coins. "You asked for a chance. I gave it to you." I'd played all night for this moment but I was now afraid I'd lost my chance.

Yet the sound of the dropping coins fascinated him. He started to speak, but before he could open his mouth Carol Houston got suddenly to her feet and walked around the table.

"If he won't play for it with you, maybe he will play with me." She looked at Tallman and her smile was lovely to look upon. "Will you, Sam?"

He glared at her. "Sit down! This here's man's business!" His voice was rough. "Anyway, you got no money! No tellin' what you'd be doin' if I hadn't paid off for you!"

Dutch Henry's face tightened and he started to get to his feet. John was suddenly on the edge of his chair, his breath whistling hollowly in his throat, his eyes blazing at the implied insult. "Sir! You are a miserable scoundrel--!"

"Wait!" Carol Houston's voice stopped us.

She turned to John. "Will you lend me six hundred dollars?"

Both Dutch Henry and I reached for our pockets but she ignored us and accepted the money from the smaller man.

"Now, Sam. One cut of the cards. One hundred dollars against the agreement and my IOU's . . . Have you got the guts to do it?"

He started to growl a threat, but John spoke up. "You could play Duval again if you win." His soft voice drawled, "He gave you quite a thrashing."

Yet as John spoke, his attention, as was mine, was directed at the face of Carol Houston. What happened to our little lady? This behavior did not, somehow, seem to fit.

Tallman hesitated, then shrugged. "Yeah? All right, but I'm warning you." He shook his finger at John. "I'm paying no more of my wife's debts. If she loses, you lose too. Now give me the damn cards."

She handed him the deck and he cut--a queen.

Tallman chuckled. "Reckon I've made myself a hundred," he said. "You ain't got much chance to beat that."

Carol Houston accepted the cards. They spilled through her fingers to the table and we helped her gather them up. She shuffled clumsily, placed the deck on the table, then cut--an ace!

Tallman swore and started to rise.

"Sam, wait!" She put her hand on his arm. He frowned, but he dropped back into his seat and glared at me.

Carol Houston turned to me, her eyes quietly calculating. The room was very still. A drop of rain gathered on the ceiling and fell into the bucket--again that fat plop. The window was almost white now ... it was day again.

"How much did you win from Sam, Mr. Duval?"

Her face was without expression. "Six hundred dollars," I replied. "Not more than that."

She picked up the cards, trying a clumsy shuffle. "Would you gamble with me for that money?"

John leaned back in his chair, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. Yet even as he coughed his eyes never left the girl. Dutch Henry was leaning forward, frankly puzzled. Neither Wilson nor Haven said anything. This seemed a different girl, not at all the sort of person we had--

"If you wish." My voice strained hard not to betray my surprise. I was beginning to understand that we had all been taken in.

She pushed the entire six hundred dollars she had borrowed from John into the middle of the table. "Cut the cards once for the lot, Mr. Duval?"

I cut and turned the card faceup--the nine of clubs.

She drew the deck together, straightened it, tapped it lightly with her thumb as she picked it up, and turned--a kingl Stunned, and more by the professional manner of the cut than its result, I watched Carol Houston draw the money to her. With careful hands she counted out six hundred dollars and returned it to John. "Thank you," she said, and smiled at him.

His expression a study, John pocketed the money.

Haven, who had left the cabin, now thrust his head back into the door. "All hitched up! We're goin' on! Mount up, folks!"

"Mr. Haven," Carol asked quickly, "isn't there a stage going west soon?"

" 'Bout an hour, if she's on time."

The six hundred she had won from me she pushed over to Sam Tallman. Astonished, he looked at the money, and then at her. "I--Is this for me?"

"For you. It is over between us. But I want those IOU's and the marriage contract."

"Now wait a minute!" Tallman roared, lunging up from his chair.

He reached across for her but I stopped him. "That money is more than you deserve, Tallman. I'd take it and get out."

His hand dropped and rested on his pistol butt and his eyes narrowed. "She's goin' with me! I'll be damned if I let any of you stop me!"

"No, suh." It was John's soft voice. "You'll just be damned. Unless you go and get on that stage."

Tallman turned truculently toward the slighter man, all his rage suddenly ready to vent itself on this apparently easier target.

Before he could speak, Dutch Henry spoke from the doorway. "You'll leave him alone, Tallman, if you want to live. Thaf s Doc Holliday!"

Tallmanbroughtup short, looking foolish. Doc had not moved, his right hand grasping the lapel of his coat, his gray eyes cold and level. Shocked, Tallman turned and stumbled toward the door.

"Henry Duval, you quit gambling once, did you not?"

She held my eyes. Hers were clear, lovely, grave. "Why . . . yes. It has been years . . . until tonight."

"And you gambled for me. Wasn't that it?"

My ears grew red. "All right, so I'm a fool."

Until that moment I had never known how a woman's face could light up, nor what could be seen in it. "Not a fool," she said gently. "I meant what I said by the fire--up to a point."

We heard the stage rattle away, and then I looked at Carol.

A smile flickered on her lips, and then she picked up the cards from the table. Deliberately, she spread them in a beautiful fan, closed the deck, did a one-hand cut, riffled the deck, then handed them to me. "Cut them," she said.

I cut an ace, then cut the same ace again and again. She picked up the deck, riffled them again, and placing them upon the table, cut a red king.

Picking up the deck I glanced at the ace and king she had cut. "Slick king and a shaved ace," I said. "Tap the deck lightly as you cut and you cut the king every time. But where did you have them?"

"In my purse." She took my hands. "Henry, do you remember Natchez Tom Tennison?"

"Of course. We worked the riverboats together a half dozen times. A good man."

"He was my father, and he taught me what I did tonight. Both things."

"Both things?"

"How to use cards, and always to pay my debts. I didn't want to owe anything to Sam Tallman, not even the money you took from him, and I didn't want to be the girl you won in a poker game."

Dutch Henry, the Cherokee Strip outlaw, slapped his thigh. "Women!" he said. "If they don't beat all!"

It was almost two hours before the westbound stage arrived . . . but somehow it did not seem that long.

*

Riches Beyond Dream
.

It was June when they arrived at the adobe on Pinon Hill. There had been little change since Kirby Ann had last been there . . . the trees Tom Kirby planted the year before he died were taller, and bunch grass grew where the lawn should be.

Kirby Ann got out of the jeep and looked at Bob. The ride had tired him ... a serious wound and a year in a Red Chinese prison camp had wrecked his health. He needed the sun, they told him, with rest and quiet. Well, he could get that here. Maybe it was all they could get here.

"If s a roof, honey," Bob said quietly. "We can fix up the place." He took her hand and they walked to the edge of the hill. "I always loved it here," she said.

Before them lay the long valley, dotted now with cloud shadows, and beyond the valley a rugged hill, and beyond more hills, more valleys, more peaks and ridges.

'Tom built for the view," Kirby Ann said, "and would you believe it? When he was declared mentally incompetent, this was one of the reasons. Because he built an expensive house in a lonely place, and then wouldn't allow a road to be built leading to it."