“Afternoon,” Darry corrected.
“Whatever.”
The two shook hands and Longarm ambled out into the afternoon sunshine. He supposed it would be some time before he would be free to do as he pleased again and likely he should enjoy a cool beer and maybe a steak before he joined up with the Austin Capitals. He headed in the direction of the nearest of the several gentlemen’s establishments in downtown Medicine Lodge.
Chapter 8
Longarm laid his cards down, a full house tens over fives. It should have been enough. It wasn’t. “Beats me,” He said as the young dirt farmer across the table showed four treys and a grin. The farmer was still grinning as he raked in the pot. Longarm figured the fourteen or so dollars of winnings would keep the kid and his family, if any, going for a month or better if he was sensible enough to hang on to it. Thinking about it that way made it a little easier to swallow the loss, most of which happened to be his since the others at the table had dropped out early in the deal.
“Gonna take your winnings back t’ the wife now?” Longarm asked the boy, intending it to be more by way of suggestion than question.
“Quit when I’m hot? You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” the youngster returned.
Longarm shrugged. And pitched a tencent ante into the middle of the table.
“Two pair, jacks and nines,” Longarm said. The kid across the way scowled and slammed his cards down. He’d only drawn two, but for the last half dozen or so hands he’d been becoming increasingly desperate to recoup his losses and Longarm had been pretty sure the boy was bluffing in the hope someone would actually believe he had three of a kind. No one had.
Longarm pulled in the pot—six dollars or a little more, which must have looked pretty big to the kid by now—and anted up for the next deal.
“Draw poker, nothing fancy,” said the man at his right whose turn it was to deal. “Ben, you’re light.”
The farmer didn’t have much more than ten cents remaining in front of him. He picked through the meager pile of very small change until he had ten pennies separated from the herd and pushed them forward.
The man with the cards shuffled quickly and offered the deck to his right for a cut, then swiftly dealt out hands to each of the five players.
Longarm could see plain as a wart on a hog’s nose that the farmer hadn’t gotten shit in the deal. Likely not so much as a pair to build on. Longarm took his time picking up his own cards and looking them over—careful to not sort them when he did so—then fingering a quarter out of his own coin pile.
He hesitated a moment, then dragged the quarter back and pushed forward a nickel instead. “Open,” he said. He probably should have gone for more, and would have, except that would buy the kid out of the game and Longarm didn’t want to do that. Unlikely as it might be that the youngster could win again, if he insisted on being a damn fool then Longarm figured he deserved his shot.
And hell, lightning sometimes does strike twice.
Either the other players had nothing or they too wanted to go light so the kid named Ben could have a chance. Each of them called. As did Ben.
“Cards?” the dealer asked.
“I’m pat,” Longarm said and placed his fan-fold of cards facedown in front of him.
The rest of the gents each drew two except for the kid who tossed down three cards. It was all Longarm could do to keep from groaning out loud. Not even this boy Ben would be stupid enough to try another bluff for three of a kind. Which meant he was drawing two cards either to make a flush—damned unlikely for that to happen—or even worse was trying to draw two to fill a straight.
There are times, Longarm reflected, when that kind of stubbornness stops being a display of cojones and becomes just plain stupid. This seemed like one of those times.
“Opener?” the dealer asked. “Your bet.”
Longarm glanced over at the coins lying in front of the kid. There weren’t so many of them that it was hard to count. “Eighteen cents,” he said, pushing out two dimes and dragging back two of the pennies Ben had put in earlier. Longarm could have bet anything from nineteen cents up and taken the kid’s chance away, but he didn’t want to do that.
“Call,” the next man said.
No one offered a raise, everyone seeming willing to go along and give Ben his last opportunity to recoup at least the price of a plug of tobacco and a beer.
“Everyone in?” the dealer asked unnecessarily. “That’s fine then. Lay ‘em down, gentlemen. Lay ‘em down and we’ll all weep but one of us.”
The man to Longarm’s left had a pair of jacks, the next man two kings and the dealer nothing stronger than a pair of treys.
Ben showed a pair of queens, but four of his cards were hearts. Obviously he’d been drawing two for the flush and paired up by sheer dumb luck. But not quite enough of it.
“Straight,” Longarm said, laying his cards down for all to see. “Six high.” Almost reluctantly he scooped the pot in.
“You cheating son of a bitch,” Ben snarled.
“You talking to me, son, or to the man who dealt the cards?” Longarm asked mildly.
“You know who I mean, damn you,” Ben spat back at him, pushing away from the table and pumping his right hand into a fist four or five times in rapid succession. He was not wearing a holster gun but there was a lump in the right front pocket of his overalls that could have been a revolver.
“I expect I do at that, sonny. Fact is, you’re wrong. I just hope you don’t insist on being dead wrong.”
“You cheated me! You…”
“Son, you’d best be careful how you use words like that. Say them to the wrong fellow and they can wind up caught in your throat, y’know?”
“I say you cheated, damn you,” Ben cried loudly. He sprang to his feet angrily. Behind him, the room full of tipplers and friendly card players scrambled to get out of the way.
Longarm was leaning back in his chair with his hands laced lightly across his belly. With his left hand he casually pulled his coat open to show the butt of the big Colt lying only a few inches away from his hand.
“I don’t want t’ hurt you, boy. Go home now, and next time don’t insist on bein’ stupid.”
“I say … I say…” The boy’s mouth gapped and closed, gapped and closed. He was sucking air like a trout in a creel. He was scared. Longarm could see the fear stark in his eyes. He’d gone too far now. The problem was that he didn’t know how to back water and get out of the situation he’d gone and created himself.
Somebody needed to give the kid an out, and it looked like there wasn’t anyone else around who knew how to do it either.
Longarm reached out with his left hand, slowly, and picked up an empty shot glass the man to his left had been using. “Here,” he said softly. He tossed the glass to the kid. Amber liquor sprayed high into the air. So, maybe the glass hadn’t been empty after all.
Ben looked startled and, out of automatic reflex, moved to catch the glass. He blinked and stared into it.
When he looked up again he stared all the harder. But this time into the gaping muzzle of Longarm’s .45. No one in the place, including Ben, had so much as seen Longarm’s hand move. One moment he was sitting leaned back in his chair. The next instant his posture was unchanged but now there was a dark and menacing double-action Colt in his fist.
If he needed an excuse to walk away, he damn sure had one now, Longarm figured.
“If it makes any difference to you,” Longarm said gently, “I never cheated you. Didn’t have to. Now go home, boy. Stop at the bar and have a drink if you like. Tell them I’m good for it. Then go home and tell your wife what you done with your seed money, or whatever it was you pissed away tonight. You hear me, boy? Go home.”
The kid gulped hard. His eyes hadn’t left the muzzle of the .45 since Longarm first showed it to him.
After several seconds of agonized indecision common sense finally broke through the irrational fog of his misery, and Ben turned and walked out into the night. He was still holding the small glass Longarm threw to him but did not stop to collect the offered drink.