Then, before anybody could do anything, the cardplayer wearing the town suit spoke up and said, "If you boys are going to fight over that young lady, why don't you do it outside? We're playing poker here, and the ladies in my hand are demanding even more attention than the one in that young cowboy's arms."
Now, I don't believe for a minute he was actually holding any queens in his hand. I think he just said that to throw off the other fellas in the game. Or maybe he did, I don't know. But it sort of broke the tension anyway. The man Becky had deserted so sudden-like said, "Hell, a whore's a whore. There's always another of 'em."
That wasn't really fair to Becky, and I wouldn't have blamed her a bit if she'd taken offense at it, but she just giggled and rubbed herself against me some more, and I sort of lost interest in everything else again. Aaron told me later that Harrigan gave the gent a couple of free drinks and steered one of the other girls over to him, and that satisfied him just fine.
Roy and the rest of the gang went over to a big table in the corner, but I was already heading for the stairs, carrying Becky with me. Jace looked back over his shoulder at us and called, "Drew, are you comin' or not?" and that made everybody else hoot with laughter. I didn't bother answering.
I just took Becky upstairs to see if she'd learned any more tricks since the last time I'd been there.
Turned out she had, but I've always prided myself on at least trying to be a gentleman, so I won't go into that. I'll just say that I was a tired son of a buck when I came back downstairs a couple of hours later. Becky had told me she was going to take a little nap, but she made me promise before I left that I'd be back later.
Night had fallen while I was upstairs, and the big room was lit by the glow of several kerosene lamps. The air was smoky from the lamps and the cheroots clamped between the teeth of several of the customers, as well as Harrigan himself. Big Boy, Jace, and Aaron were sitting at the same table where they had been earlier. Big Boy had a blond whore sitting on his lap. She was small to start with, and cuddled up next to such a big fella like that, she looked even tinier. Aaron had two girls with him—no surprise there—one on each side. One was a redhead, but her curls were a darker shade than Becky's hair. The other was a Chinese girl, with long straight hair black as midnight flowing down her back. A girl was sitting next to Jace too, on a chair pulled up next to his, and she was a brunette with just a little paint on her face, which was unusual for a girl like that. Even Becky, who was young enough and pretty enough not to really need it, painted herself up. It was just the way of things.
The table was littered with glasses and empty whiskey bottles. As I came up, Big Boy waved a hand in greeting and said, "Pull up a chair. Drew."
I looked around. "Where's Roy?"
Big Boy nodded toward one of the other tables. "Over there."
I looked and saw that Roy had joined the same poker game that had been going on earlier. One of the players had dropped out, but the dude and the other two were still there. Roy had his hat shoved to the back of his head. A glass of whiskey sat at his elbow, but it didn't look like he had touched it. Roy wasn't much of one for drinking when he was playing cards. He liked to be clearheaded whenever he was doing anything important.
"What about Murph and the Gundersons?"
"Upstairs," Aaron said. "Those Swedes' eyes got so big when a couple of Wing's cousins got hold of them, I thought they were goin' to pop." He patted the bare thigh of the Chinese girl, who had to be Wing.
"Where's Becky?" asked the brunette sitting with Jace.
"Still upstairs," I told her. "She said she was going to take a nap."
That brought a laugh from the others. The little blonde on Big Boy's lap said, "Wore her out, did you. Drew?"
I grinned and said, "She's an enthusiastic girl."
Aaron reached for a bottle with a few inches of whiskey still in it and poured some of the hooch into a glass. He slid it over to me. "Here. Get your strength back."
I felt like I needed more than whiskey, but I knocked it back anyway, then said, "What about something to eat?"
"Harrigan had his cook fry us up some steaks earlier," Big Boy said. "Not all of us were so danged impatient that we didn't stop to eat first."
"Well, I'm about ready to go upstairs, Big Boy," said the blonde. "From what I hear from the other girls, you live up to your name."
Damned if he didn't blush a little when she said that.
Big Boy and Aaron scraped their chairs back and stood up, and Aaron solved the problem of deciding which girl to take with him by taking both of them. I just shook my head in wonderment as they all headed up the stairs.
Jace and the brunette were still sitting there at the table, though, and I realized then that Jace hadn't said a word since I'd come downstairs. His jaw was set tight, in fact. The brunette looked at him, then looked at me, then said, "My name is Cecilia, by the way." She stuck her hand out.
I shook it and said polite-like, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am. I'm Drew Matthews."
"I know who you are," Cecilia said. "You and your friends are the famous Tacker Gang."
I shrugged. I didn't know how famous we were, but I suppose a few people had heard of us. The newspapers had gotten hold of Roy's name somehow and tagged it on the whole bunch, since they didn't know our names.
"I've read about you," Cecilia went on.
"That's one thing about the newspapers," I told her. "You can't believe but about half of what you read in them. If those reporter fellas don't know what they're writin' about, they just make something up."
Now, I know that was maybe overstating things a mite, but I was young and I was talking to a whore, so I didn't really mean anything by it.
She talked to me for a few minutes more, mostly about nothing, but I wasn't really paying attention. I looked over at Jace and when Cecilia gave me a chance, I asked him, "Are you all right?"
"Sure," he said tightly. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, you haven't said nothin' since I came down, and you're still sittin' here—"
He didn't let me go any further. He reached over and grabbed Cecilia's hand and said, "Let's go."
"There's no hurry," she said to him. "Just whenever you're ready—"
He interrupted her too, pushing back his chair and standing up as he said, "I'm ready now."
Cecilia glanced at me, and this time it was her turn to shrug, and then she let Jace lead her over to the stairs and up to the second floor.
I caught Harrigan's eye and asked him if I could get a steak.
"With all the trimmin's?" he asked.
"Damn right."
We were rich, after all.
I ate the steak, along with a mess of potatoes and biscuits and gravy, washing it all down with beer instead of whiskey. Then I went over and watched the poker game for a while so that my food could set a spell before I went back upstairs to Becky. While I was doing that, Murph Skinner and the Gunderson boys came downstairs with their whores to fortify themselves with some more liquor before going back up for another bout.
Some cardplayers don't like it when anybody watches them, but others don't seem to mind. This appeared to be an easygoing bunch. The fella in the pin-striped suit was called Ford, and he was from Los Angeles, over in California. The other two men were ranchers, which was what I had pegged them for from the first. It didn't take me long to figure out that Roy and Ford were the best poker players in the game. They won the biggest pots, about half going to Roy and half to Ford. The ranchers settled for raking in some of the little ones.