Now Rita again deposited herself at center stage.
“I must add,” she said, “that we have no way of knowing how long our tournament may last, and we understand that you may need to leave temporarily or for the evening, should we extend into the wee hours. As Mr. Cole mentioned, we are pleased to see with us this evening so many of our lovely Trinidad ladies, who are likely, as am I, to be rooting for a new schoolhouse... thanks to the participation of our Citizens Committee and our guest Raymond L. Parker of Denver.”
Those players, at Rita’s urging, stood and half bowed, and a solid round of applause echoed off the tin ceiling.
Then Rita said with her own half bow, “Thank you, gentlemen... and ladies.”
This time the applause for their hostess was perhaps more than polite, though still not ringing.
Cole called out, “Gentlemen... you may begin play!”
As York shuffled, he considered how key it would be for the Preacherman to win and keep winning, should his intended target be at one of the adjoining tables. As he dealt, he wondered who among these city fathers might be that target.
In the West, one never knew the history of a seemingly upstanding citizen. Only the background of editor Penniman, who had worked in the newspaper trade for some time, was known to York. But he could certainly have made a powerful enemy in that pursuit.
And who could say what sin lurked in the past of the undertaker here, a man so comfortable with death? Or whom the druggist, Davis, might have accidentally or even purposely poisoned? Had the barber or the hardware man stolen money or swindled a partner elsewhere to set up shop in New Mexico? That mercantile store would take real money to get going.
Who is the target?
The first hand was won by Hollis — three jacks taking it over York’s pair of aces, the others having dropped out. With an ante of a dollar chip, a first round two-dollar bet, and York meeting the Preacherman’s five-dollar bet, that was twenty-eight dollars sliding down to Hollis at his end of the table, with York eight dollars the poorer.
This could go fast, he thought.
But things evened out as each player took his turn as dealer. York noted that when Hollis first dealt — and the Preacherman had a riverboat gambler’s touch that Yancy Cole might have envied — lanky, bandaged Trammel pulled in a pot with the best hand of the night so far: full house, queens over tens.
Both Trammel and Landrum had to be reminded when they displayed their hands to announce their cards to the crowd, but by the time the cards came around to York again, they’d fallen in line. York’s deal this time earned him a small victory — a pair of kings besting the undertaker’s eights — and by the start of the second hour, he was up fifteen dollars. Trammel was keeping alive, largely based on that big pot he’d landed, though Landrum’s stacks had dwindled considerably.
Down half maybe?
Then it was the Preacherman’s deal and, lo and behold, Landrum pulled in his own healthy pot, with a straight to the king, which knocked out York’s three queens and decent hands that had kept both Perkins and Penniman in for several raises. Their stacks were withering. Only Trammel had been smart enough to get out.
Trammel smart enough?
That was the moment when York realized how Hollis was operating. Whenever the deal was his, the Preacherman was feeding big pots to Trammel and Landrum to keep them in the game. Hollis was sharp enough a player not to have to cheat for his own benefit, at least not at this point.
But the way the tournament was set up, only two players from this table would move on to the next one. So why keep them both in? Why didn’t the Preacherman select one of his cronies — the better gun between them, most likely — to move on to the next table with him?
Something at the back of York’s neck was tingling.
The deck was his now. He shuffled four times, gave the cards to Penniman for a cut, then began to deal. When he looked at his cards, they almost smiled back at him — an ace-high flush. A lovely hand. Hollis opened for two dollars. Everybody stayed in, and York raised it another orange chip.
Again, everybody stayed.
Nobody liked it when York said he was pat, but nonetheless, everybody stayed in for the second round of betting. That could make uneasy even a player with a hand as good as York’s. He decided to see where the power was and raised Penniman, who had bet two more dollars, a red-edged chip. Five whole dollars.
At that, everybody dropped out but the Preacherman, who saw the five and raised it ten — the first raise of a blue-edged chip at this table. York saw the bet and raised it another blue chip — the final bet allowed. All eyes at the table traveled between the two men, and the audience near their table was paying rapt attention, as well.
Hollis saw York’s ten dollars and raised it another blue chip.
And York knew. Suddenly he knew. Knew exactly who the Preacherman had come to town to kill...
Caleb York.
Casually, he dropped his right hand from the table as he flipped with his left another blue chip into the pot, seeing Hollis’s bet.
“Three kings,” Hollis said, showing them.
York turned over the ace-high flush.
And just as he knew would happen, the Preacherman snarled, “You’re a goddamned cheater, York! You been dealing off the bottom, and my friends and me saw it!”
The Preacherman’s right hand slipped from view.
With his left, York upended the table, putting it between him and Hollis, and chips and cards flew everywhere, and the players to his right and left scattered almost as quickly as the .44 in Caleb York’s fist punched three holes through the table in the Preacherman’s general direction.
The thunder of it, the splintering wood, the smoke from the gun, the shrieks of women, the yells from men were everywhere as York, ready to shoot again, kicked his chair away and stepped to his left.
Hollis crawled out from behind and under the upended table, Colt .45 in hand, and rolled onto his side, tried to bring the gun up, hand quavering, then passed out.
The Preacherman’s stunned gunny Trammel backed away, eyes bulging, and bumped into the staircase, going for his own .45 as an afterthought. York sent a shot through the goggle-eyed scarecrow’s right shoulder, rocking him, turning his gun hand a limp thing that could barely hold on to its fingers let alone a weapon, which careened away on the floor somewhere. Then Trammel lost his balance and sat down hard on a stair step and slid down to the next one and sat hard again.
Somewhere an explosion happened, and York glanced to his right to see that the pig-faced Landrum, 45 in hand, had taken a blast from Tulley’s scattergun in the back and was weaving on two pudgy legs that did not have a chance in hell of holding him up. In the next instant the pudgy saddle tramp flopped facedown onto the back of the table, cracking it, the bloody, jagged, gaping hole in his back revealing his spine had indeed been severed.
York had barely heard the screams of the men and women who had been so nearby and were now down on the floor, knocking chairs aside, scrambling away like the frightened animals they’d become. And he did not see Rita Filley watching with big eyes and a hand over her mouth. Nor did he see Hub Wainwright and Yancy Cole coming up with their weapons in hand, ready to back him, if he needed it.
He didn’t.
York went over to the Preacherman, who was on his back now, hat askew, his breathing heavy and bubbling, mouth frothing scarlet, two red holes in his black-vested chest and another in his belly, and plucked the .45 from the dying man’s fingers.
Turned out the ivory handles did have angels carved on them.