The squint-eyed man with the tattooed hair rises up and kicks his chair back with his wooden leg. I jest come unanimously to the conclusion yu been cheatin, he shouts, as the dealer calmly slides the man’s leather purse into his heap of winnings, then takes up the deck to reshuffle it, so smoothly that the deck seems like a small restless creature trapped between his soft pale hands. Behind him, the schoolmarm, bound to the fortune wheel, grimly turns and turns, though now, with the bald man on his feet, or foot, the rhythmic whooping dies away.
Easy, podnuh, whispers the one-eared mestizo, his hand inside his pants. He spits over his shoulder, away from the dealer. He’s awmighty fast, thet sharper. Dont try him. It aint judicious.
Shet up, yu yellabellied cyclops,’n gimme room! the bald man roars. He stands there before the bespectacled dealer, legs apart and leaning on his pegleg, shoulders tensed, elbows out, hands hovering an inch from his gunbutts. I’m callin yer bluff, yu flim-flammin cartload a hossshit!
A hole opens up explosively in the bald man’s chest like a post has been driven through it, kicking him back into the crowd, the dealer having calmly drawn, fired, and reholstered without even interrupting his steady two-handed shuffle of the cards. He sets the deck down and spreads his plump palms to either side as though to say: Any other sucker here care to try his luck?
He makes certain his sheriffs badge is in plain view, tugs at the brim of his hat, hitches his gunbelt, and steps into the well-lit space just abruptly vacated by the peglegged man with the tattooed hair. He picks up the fallen chair, watching the dealer closely, and sets it down in front of the blackjack table but remains standing. I’m askin yu t’return me back my prizner, he says quietly. He has a hunch about the dealer now, something he grows more convinced of the longer he stands there studying him. She warnt a legal bet. Yu knowed thet. I may hafta close this entaprize down.
His weedy ex-deputy with the busted arm leans close to the dealer, who seems, though his thick lips do not move, to whisper something in his crumpled ear. He sez he dont spect thet’ll happen, says the ex-deputy out the side of his mouth. Behind the mountainous fat man, the revolving schoolmarm’s white knees rise into view like a pair of expressionless stocking-capped puppets, then fall into curtained obscurity, over and over, but he steels himself to pay them no heed, and to ignore as well her burning gaze, for now he must think purely on one thing and one thing only. He sez ifn yu want back thet renegade hoss thief, yu should oughter set yerself down’n play him a hand fer her.
Caint. Aint got no poke. Yes, he’s sure of it now. It’s why he sits so still. Listening. To everything. His ears thumbing the least sound the way his pink-tipped sandpapered fingers caress the cards. Behind those blue spectacles, the man is blind.
Well whut about yer boots? suggests the ex-deputy. Or yer weepons? He shakes his head. The ex-deputy whispers something in the fat man’s ear, then tips his own ear close to attend to the reply. Well awright, he sez. Yer life then, he sez. Yer’n fer her’n.
Hunh. Shore, he shrugs, and sits down on the edge of the chair to get his voice into the right position. Aint wuth a plug nickel nohow. A flicker of amusement seems to cross the fat man’s face, the reawakened cards fluttering between his hands like a caged titmouse, or a feeding hummingbird. He removes his spurs so they will not betray him, and then, leaving his voice behind, rises silently from the chair to slip around behind the dealer. Reglar five-card stud, his voice says. Face up. Dont want nuthin hid. The dealer offers the deck toward the chair. No cut, mister. Jest dole em out. The room has fallen deadly silent as he circles round, nothing to be heard but the creaking and ticking of the wheel of fortune, all murmurs stilled, which may be perplexing the fat man, though he gives no sign of it. With barely a visible movement, he deals the empty chair a jack and himself a king. I reckon yu’re tryin t’tell me sumthin, his voice says from the chair, keeping up the patter to cover his movements. Something an old deerhunter once taught him as a way of confusing his prey. It was a simple trick and so natural that, once he learned it, he was amazed he had not always known how to do it. But a pair a these here young blades’ll beat a sucked-out ole bulldog any day, his voice adds cockily when a second jack falls, a second king of course immediately following on. Uh-oh, says his voice. Damn my luck. Pears I’ll require a third one a them dandies jest t’stay in this shootout. Which he gets, it in turn topped by a third king. He is behind the dealer now, gazing down upon his bubbly mound of glowing pate. Well would yu lookit thet, says his voice, as the fourth jack is turned up. I reckon now, barrin miracles, the prizner’s mine. Stealthily, as the fourth king falls, he unsheathes his bowie knife. The dealer’s head twitches slightly as though he might have heard something out of order and were cocking his ear toward it, so his voice says from the chair: Aint thet sumthin! Four jacks! Four kings! But we aint done yet, podnuh. Yu owe me another card. Yu aint doled out but four. The fat man hesitates, tipping slightly toward the voice, then, somewhat impatiently, flicks out a black queen, which falls like a provocation between the two hands of armed men. Well ifn thet dont beat all, his voice exclaims. How’d thet fifth jack git in thar? The dealer starts, seems about to reach for his gun or the card, but stays his hand and, after the briefest hesitation, flips over a fifth king. Haw, says the voice. Nuthin but a mizzerbul deuce. Gotcha, ole man! And as the gun comes out and blasts the chair away, he buries the blade deep in the dealer’s throat, slicing from side to side through the thick piled-up flesh like stirring up a bucket of lard.
The man does not fall over but continues to sit there in his rotundity as before, his head slumping forward slightly as though in disappointment, his blue spectacles skidding down his nose away from the puckery dimples where eyes once were. His gun hand twitches off another shot, shattering an overhead lamp and sending everyone diving for cover, then turns up its palm and lets the pistol slip away like a discard. A white fatty ooze leaks from the slit throat, slowly turning pink. He wipes his blade on the shoulders of the man’s white linen suit, triggering a mechanical holdout mechanism that sends a few aces flying out his sleeves, and then he carefully resheathes it, eyeing the others all the while as they pick themselves up and study this new circumstance. He’s not sure how they will take it or just who this dealer was to them, so to distract them from any troublous thoughts they may be having, he says: Looks like them winnins is up fer grabs, gentamin.
That sets off the usual crazed melee, and while they are going at it he arrests the wheel of fortune to free the schoolmarm. When he releases her wrists, he half expects her to slap his face again, but instead she faints and collapses over his shoulder, her hands loosely whacking him behind, so that he has to unbind her hips and ankles with the full weight of her upon him. It is getting ugly in the churchroom, guns and knives are out and fists and bottles are flying, so he quickly sidles out of there, toting her beam-high over his shoulder like a saddlebag, the room conveniently shrinking toward the exit to hasten his passage. At the door, before darting out into the night, he glances back over his free shoulder at the mayhem within (this is his town and for all he knows the only people he has ever had and he is about to leave them now forever) and sees through the haze the dead dealer, still slumped there under the glowing lamp like an ancient melancholic ruin, his hairless blue-bespectacled head slowly sinking away into his oozing throat.