By the Horns Page 4

  “In her eyes I spurned her,” Owen said, “and on all of God’s green earth there is no more fearsome critter than a woman who has been spurned.”

  “That’s why I have nothin’ to do with them,” Slim said as he dealt. “Females are more of a headache than they are worth.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Cleveland said. “They come in pretty handy on cold winter nights.”

  The cowboys laughed but their hearts were not in it.

  Pitney accepted his five cards and, doing as the others did, he looked at them without letting anyone else see what they were. “What is this game we are playing called?”

  “Poker,” Lon said. “Don’t tell me you have never heard of it.”

  “I am afraid not, no,” Pitney said. He raised his head from his cards to find all eyes were now on him. “What?”

  “You’re serious?” Lon asked. “Don’t they have cards wherever it is you come from?”

  “Bristol, England,” Pitney said. “Do you honestly expect, Mr., um, Lon, that our two countries share the same conventions?”

  “The same what?”

  “That we eat the same foods and drink the same drinks and play the same games? I would wager a substantial percentage of my annual salary that you have never heard of cricket, yet it is as common in my country as this poker appears to be in yours.”

  “I see your point,” Lon said. “Want me to tell you how it’s played?”

  “If you would be so kind.”

  Interrupted by comments from the others now and then, Lon proceeded to explain the ranking of the cards from a royal flush on down to one pair, and how a player could ask for three cards after the initial deal, except for the dealer, who was allowed to take four, and how each round of betting was done, and what it meant to call and raise.

  “It sounds like marvelous fun,” Pitney said dubiously.

  “The only better ways to relax are with whiskey and a woman,” Cleveland mentioned. “And women only half the time because they’re not in the mood.”

  Lon refilled his glass. “So are you ready to commence?”

  “If I am to be permitted,” Pitney said. “I am afraid my whiskey has gone right through me. Where might the lavatory be?”

  “The what?”

  “The loo. You know, where I can heed nature’s call, as it were?”

  “Oh. The outhouse is out back. You can’t miss it. It smells like a mountain of manure, only worse.”

  Pitney excused himself and made for a door past the bar but the bartender informed him that no one was allowed through there and he must go out the front and all the way round.

  The experience was one Pitney would have preferred to forget. He held his breath but the reek was still terrible. As he finished and quickly shut the outhouse door behind him, he was taken aback to find Luke Deal leaning against the rear of the saloon, smoking a cigarette. Pitney nodded and started to walk by him.

  “Hold on there, hoss.”

  “If you are looking for trouble—” Pitney began.

  “I’m just waitin’ my turn,” Deal said, tilting his cigarette at the outhouse. “No hard feelin’s about earlier, are there, pilgrim?”

  “You haze all new arrivals, do you?”

  “Only fancy-pants fellas like you.” Luke grinned, and patted his revolver. “Nothin’ like a lead chucker to make a tenderfoot dance.”

  “If you won’t take offense at my saying so, you seem to possess a mean streak, Mr. Deal.”

  “No seems about it,” was the reply. “I have snake blood, and I’d as soon as buck a man out in gore as look at him.”

  The fact that Deal was still grinning encouraged Pitney to ask, “How can you brag about being so despicable? In England murder is frowned upon.”

  “You’re in Texas now. Killin’ is as common as grass. I couldn’t count the number of people I’ve seen killed or heard about bein’ killed.”

  “How horrible,” Pitney said. “I have never seen anyone murdered, and I truly don’t care to.”

  “Then you’d best make yourself scarce,” Luke Deal advised. “Those Bar 40 boys you’re with are high on my list.”

  “What do you have against them?” Pitney made bold to inquire. “What harm have they ever done you?”

  Deal’s face clouded. “It’s personal. There’s a reckonin’ to be had between Owen and me, and when it comes, blood will be shed. Make no mistake.”

  “He strikes me as a decent fellow,” Pitney said.

  “He’d do to ride the river with.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “The highest.”

  “Then I am confused, Mr. Deal. How is it you can praise him so highly yet want him dead? It makes no sense.”

  “A lot of things in life make no sense. We’re born just to die. We go from cradle to grave not knowin’ why we’re here or what it’s all about. Life is a puzzlement with a nasty surprise at the end.”

  Alfred Pitney shook his head in wonder. “That was quite profound, Mr. Deal. There is more to you than you let on.”

  “Just because I’m not a fancy-pants like you doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” Luke Deal said. “I think about things, the same as everybody.”

  “Yet your disposition is hardly admirable. You act as if you enjoy hurting others.”

  “I do.”

  “That can’t be,” Pitney asserted. “No one likes to see others suffer. It is inhumane. Surely a thinking man like you realizes that.”

  “You take a lot for granted,” Luke said. He raised the cigarette to his mouth and blew a smoke ring in the air. “It shows you are city bred.”

  “I am afraid I don’t quite follow you,” Pitney admitted.

  “City folks tend to think highly of themselves. They also think everyone should think the same way they do. But that’s not how things are. I don’t think like you and you don’t think like me and neither of us thinks like a Comanche and a Comanche doesn’t think like an Apache, and on and on it goes.” Deal dropped the cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the heel of a boot. “You have a lot to learn about life, mister.”

  “I admit I have a lot to learn about you.”

  Luke Deal glanced up sharply. Amazingly fast, he drew his revolver and pressed the muzzle to Pitney’s forehead. “Want me to show you how a pistol can splatter a man’s brains all over creation?”

  Alfred Pitney froze.

  “The only reason I don’t put a window in your skull is that Bartholomew would likely figure out it was me and have every hand at the Bar 40 out to treat me to a hemp social.”

  “You can’t kill me in cold blood.” Pitney found his voice.

  Incredibly, Luke Deal laughed, then twirled the Remington into its holster. “You must have solid pine between your ears. You still don’t savvy, pilgrim.”

  Pitney had to know. “Would you really have shot me? I mean, if you believed you could get away with it?”

  “Just like that.” Luke Deal grinned and snapped his fingers. “Now scoot back to your nursemaid before I change my mind.”

  Terribly confused, Alfred Pitney reclaimed his seat at the poker table. The cowboys had played a few hands while he was gone and Owen had just won a pot.

  “Ready to lose all your money?” Lon asked.

  “I’d rather not lose any, thank you very much.”

  Cleveland was the dealer. He gave each of them a card in turn until they had their five, then reminded them, “Jacks or better to open.”

  Pitney eventually won the hand with three queens. He went on to win five of the next six hands. The more he played, the more he enjoyed the nuances to the game—the need to keep what the cowboys called a poker face, the art of the bluff, the art of reading a bluff in an opponent’s expression. “There is much more to this poker of yours than I would ever have imagined,” he mentioned at one point.

  The cowboys joked and laughed a lot. Pitney found himself liking their company more and more. He envied their easygoing natures. Emptying his first glass of whiske
y, he asked for another.

  “Be careful, hoss,” Owen cautioned. “Tarantula juice will sneak up on you if you let it.”

  “I am perfectly sober, I assure you.”

  It was Owen’s turn to deal. As he was sliding their cards across, he said so only they could hear, “Don’t look now, but we’re bein’ sized up for a fleecin’.”

  A portly man approached, smiling broadly. He wore store-bought clothes that did not quite fit him. The shirt was too small, the pants too short. A double chin bulged over his collar. “Mind if I join you?”

  “This is a friendly game,” Lon said.

  “Then I will fit right in,” the man said, and doffed his bowler. “William Lacker is my name, and I am as sociable a person as you will ever meet.”

  “You must be the drummer stayin’ over to Mrs. Harker’s place,” Owen said.

  “That I am,” Lacker confirmed. “And may I say the old woman is as fine a human being as ever drew breath. Her rooms are immaculate, and she practically stuffs her boarders full of food.”

  “Much more of that stuffin’ and you’ll need bigger clothes,” Slim commented.

  “How long are you fixin’ to stay in Whiskey Flats?” This from Owen.

  “I should have left today but I decided to treat myself to a few pleasant diversions.” Lacker slid a billfold from an inner pocket. “What do you say? May I pull up a chair and join you?”

  “We would be plumb tickled to have you,” Owen said, and was treated to the puzzled expressions of his friends. He moved his chair to make room for the chair the drummer pulled over, and when Lacker sank down, he shook the man’s pudgy hand as warmly as if Lacker were long-lost kin.

  “Yes, sir,” the drummer said, “I’ve never been to a friendlier town anywhere.” He opened his billfold. “I have mainly bank notes, state and national. Will they do?”

  “So long as the state is Texas,” Slim said.

  “I played some cards here yesterday and won a little money. I hope to do even better today.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Owen said.

  Alfred Pitney sensed there was more to what was going on than seemed apparent, but he could not begin to fathom what it was. He saw that the other cowboys were not happy about having Lacker join their game, Lon least of all. The sandy-haired puncher hardly uttered ten words over the next half hour.

  Lacker had an astonishing run of luck. He beat Cleveland’s two pair with a straight. He beat Slim’s flush with a full house. After that, the drummer won about every fifth or sixth pot. About as it should be, given the number of players, but Alfred Pitney noticed that the pots the drummer won were always the bigger pots, always the ones with the most money piled in the center of the table.

  “I seem to be holding my own today,” Lacker commented along about six in the evening.

  “You’re doin’ right fine,” Owen complimented him. “If we’re not careful, by midnight you’ll have all our money.”

  “I doubt that.”

  But the drummer continued to win the larger pots. Pleading a weak bladder, he repaired to the outhouse at least once an hour.

  Pitney and the cowboys had lost well over two hundred dollars when yet another hand was dealt. Luck favored Pitney, and he received a pair of kings among his five cards. He discarded three and was delighted to get another king and a pair of twos. A full house. The best hand he’d had all evening. Adopting a stone face, he counted what was left of the money he had set aside to play with and announced, “It will cost you seventy-seven dollars to see these cards, gentlemen.”

  Lon and Slim folded. Cleveland pondered a bit, then did the same. Owen, smiling, called. Then it was Lacker’s turn and he not only met the seventy-seven, he added another fifty.

  “But I don’t have that much,” Pitney said. He was fibbing. He had several hundred more on him but it was company funds and his personal code of honor prohibited him from venturing it.

  Owen appealed to the drummer. “Are you willin’ to take an IOU for the difference?”

  “I don’t know,” Lacker said uncertainly.

  “On my word of honor as a gentleman, you will be paid should I lose.” Pitney said, adding his own appeal.

  “Can you get the money to me before I leave on the stage?” the drummer wanted to know.

  Pitney’s hopes were dashed. “No. But I can send it wherever you want. Let me have your forwarding address.”

  “No offense,” Lacker said, “but given how the mail is, even if you send it, there’s no guarantee I will get it. I am afraid, sir, I must respectfully decline.”

  Owen sat up straighter. “I reckon that leaves you and me. Let’s take a gander at those cards of yours.”

  With a flourish and a smug smile, the drummer turned them over. “Read them and cringe, friend. Four aces.” He extended his hands to rake in the pot.

  “Not so fast,” Owen said.

  “Why not?” Lacker was confused, and he was not the only one. Lon and Slim and Cleveland looked at one another with furrowed brows.

  “There is one hand that beats four of a kind.”

  “There are two hands.” The drummer knew his poker. “A straight flush and a royal flush. But since I have all four aces, you can’t possibly have a royal flush. That leaves a straight flush, and the odds against that—”

  “Are pretty high, I know.” Owen smiled. “But there is a third hand that beats four of a kind.”

  “If there is I never heard of it,” Lacker said suspiciously. “Show me what it is.”

  “Five sixes,” Owen said.

  “There’s no such thing.”

  “Sure there is. I have them right here.” So saying, Owen drew his Colt and placed it on the table.

  “You’re joking.” Lacker laughed nervously and glanced at the other cowboys but it was plain they were as mystified as he was.

  Slowly, almost delicately, Owen scooped the pot toward him with his free arm. “The next time you need your laundry done, you should do it yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I ran into Mrs. Harker earlier today. The lady you’re boardin’ with. She told me how you asked her to do your laundry. How she did all you gave her, then went to your room to ask if there was more.”

  “So?” Lacker angrily snapped. “What does that have to do with you stealing this pot from me?”

  “So Mrs. Harker said your door was open. She saw you sittin’ on the edge of your bed, practicin’ with that rig you have up your right sleeve.”

  For a few moments no one spoke or moved. Then, swearing luridly, William Lacker heaved up out of his chair. In his left hand gleamed a nickel-plated derringer, which he trained on Owen. “No one calls me a cheat! Apologize, or so help me, I will shoot you.”

  4

  A Strangulation Jig

  The entire saloon was suddenly quiet. The bartender stopped wiping the counter, the cardplayers stopped playing, chips stopped tinkling, and the gruff laughter ceased. Every head swiveled and fixed on the portly man holding the nickel-plated derringer on the Bar 40’s foreman.

  Beads of sweat broke out on William Lacker’s brow and a wild gleam animated his eyes—the gleam of fear, the fear of being caught in the act of doing something he should not have been doing. “I don’t know what you are talking about!” he bluffed in a high-pitched whine that served only to confirm he knew exactly what the foreman was talking about.

  For his part, Owen was surprisingly calm. “You don’t want to do this,” he said quietly.

  “I’m taking my winnings and walking out that door and no one is going to stop me.”

  “How far do you reckon you’ll get?” Owen asked in the same quiet manner.

  “Use your head,” Lon threw in. “So far all you’ve done is cheat. Don’t make it worse.”

  “You have no proof,” the drummer said.

  Lon replied, “All we have to do is pull up your right sleeve.”

  Lacker pointed the derringer at him. “But who is to do it? Y
ou, cowboy? I think not. I want you to take off your hat and fill it with my winnings, and be quick about it.”

  “Take off my hat?” Lon repeated in a disbelieving tone.

  “Just do it!” Lacker commanded, then suddenly shifted when the bartender started to lower his hand under the bar. “Don’t even think it! I assure you I am rather handy with this.”

  Slim snickered and declared, “Says you, mister. I never yet met a drummer who could shoot straight.”

  “Hard to do with a derringer,” Cleveland said. “They tend to fire wild unless you know exactly how to use them.”

  “I do!” Lacker boasted. He motioned at Lon. “What are you waiting for, damn you? Take off your hat.”

  Lon shook his head. “It will be a cold day in hell before I kowtow to the likes of you.”

  Bewilderment was added to Lacker’s fear. “It’s just your hat, for God’s sake! Take the damn thing off and fill it with my money!”

  Owen placed his hands flat on the table to show he would not make any abrupt moves. “The money isn’t yours. You didn’t win it fair and square.”

  “It’s your word against mine, and I hold the trump.” The drummer wagged his derringer.

  Someone in the saloon moved and coughed. Instantly Lacker turned and barked, “Stay right where you are! All of you! I mean it!”

  “This is gettin’ ridiculous,” Lon said, and pushed back his chair. “Mister, listen to me, and listen good. Folks say I’m quick. Mighty quick. So quick, I can draw and put a slug into you before you can blink. Even if you tie me, you’re dead. So be reasonable and put down that weak sister excuse for a shootin’ iron before you make me mad.”

  “No one is that quick,” Lacker scoffed.

  “He is.” Carmody was coming toward them. She took slow steps so as not to agitate the drummer any more than he already was. Holding one hand out in appeal, she said, “So far no one has been hurt, but if you’re not real careful this can turn real ugly. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Lacker threatened.

  Carmody took another slow step, her voice as calm as Owen’s had been. “Please, Mr. Lacker. I haven’t quite caught what is going on, other than you were cheatin’—”

  “He has a rig up his sleeve,” Owen said.