Max nodded. "Way I count it."
"Uh ... Figure Louisiana's still looking for you?"
Max shook his head. "Maurie ... I ain't never been in Loo-zeeanna in my life."
Maurie stiffened. "Uh — No. Me neither."
"You look prosperous," said Max. "Han'some-lookin' suit."
Maurie smiled and shrugged. "Pinchbeck," he said. "But I'm doing all right. There's money here. This is a boomtown. They drill in new wells every day. This country's afloat on oil."
"You still sellin' fake insurance policies?" Max asked.
"No, sir," said Maurie. "They'd hang a man for that here. They ain't got no sense of humor in Texas. But you can make money playin' cards honest. I got my method. Somebody says, 'You cheatin',' I says, 'Search me, friend. You'll find no gun, no knife, and no extra cards.' And they do, and they don't find them. Then I say, 'Call for a new deck of Bicycles, friend — just in case you think I got 'em marked.'
Then we play some more, and I win some more. Then if I see the man's gone bust, I say, 'Friend, I wouldn't never want a man to walk away from a table busted from playing cards with me. I believe I won a hundred fifty off you. Here's fifty back. Matter of principle with me.'"
"How you do it?" Mike asked.
"I play all the time, and I play smart. I don't drink when I'm playing. Besides ... word's around. It's a challenge. Beat Maurie Cohen. That proves you're smart. I've been paid as much as two hundred to sit with a man and lose a hundred to him. Gives him a reputation. What he does with it is up to him. Anyway, what are you guys doing in town?"
"We been runnin' cattle down in Mexico," said Max. "Once in a while we come up to Texas to put some of our money in an American bank."
"That's smart," said Maurie. "You like to have supper? And I know where I can find a couple of real nice young girls."
"That's friendly of you, Maurie," said Max gravely. "We've got to talk to a couple of men, then we'll be back."
5
A nightmare. They didn't knock on his door. They broke it down in the middle of the night. By the time he was awake, their heavy handcuffs were on his wrists, and he was being hustled out of his hotel room in his nightshirt — totally mystified as to why.
"Gentlemen!" he protested. "I don't cheat! Any man who has played with me can attest —"
One of the deputies shut him up with a hard fist to the jaw. He was dragged into the sheriff's office bleeding from the mouth.
They shoved him into a chair.
"All right, Cohen. Who are they? Where are they?"
"Who?"
The deputy slapped him. "You bought a bottle for two guys, one of them a nigger. You bought 'em supper. You bought two whores for 'em. That's who!"
"Friends," said Maurie. "Friends from years back. I hadn't seen them in eight years. What — ?"
"They didn't get into the safe, you know," said the sheriff. He was a fragile little old man, pallid, with an outsized hat he did not take off. "The one they kilt was one of them. Now, you tell us why, Cohen. Why'd they kilt that man? And that way? What the hell was goin' on?"
"I don't know!"
"Don't? Well, let's fill you in. They tried to rob the Merchants and Mechanics Bank. Only thing, the clerk on duty din't have the combination to the vault. They threatened to burn his eyes out with a hot poker they'd heated in the office stove. Instead, the big one, the mean one, burnt out the eyes of one of them. I mean, he blinded his partner with a red-hot poker he shoved in his eyes. The man ain't gonna live, I don't think. No difference. We'd hang him anyways."
"I don't know anything about this!" Maurie cried.
"Don't? The one they blinded was called Ed. What's his last name?"
"I don't know! I never met no Ed."
"Who's the others? Who's the men you bought drinks and supper and whores for?"
"I "
The deputy slapped him hard, so hard Maurie wondered if his neck hadn't snapped.
"Names, goddamn ya!"
Maurie bent forward and vomited. "Max!" he spluttered. "And Mike! The nigger is named Mike!"
"Their last names?"
"I don't know!"
"Where you get to know 'em?"
"In Louisiana."
"Where in Loo-zeeanna?"
"I had to do time on a prison farm. They were there. Mike give me stripes. Look on my back. You'll see I'm tellin' the truth."
The deputy lifted Maurie's nightshirt. He nodded at the sheriff. "Marks of a Loo-zeeanna prison snake if ever I seed any." He stared at Maurie with a new eye, with a sort of grudging respect.
"Cohen, where are these two men?" the sheriff asked.
"If I knew, I'd say," said Maurie. "I don't owe them nothin'."
The sheriff frowned at the deputy. "Well ..." he mused, pushing his hat back on his head but not taking it off. "I figger they'd-a got the fifty thousand out of the vault, you'd-a got a share. On that basis, we'll hold you for bank robbery and ... if the one they called Ed dies, for murder. Hangin' you might not be technical right, but it'll rid the world of one slick little Jew. Welcome our kike-boy into a cell, Brewster."
6
Nightmare. They took away his nightshirt and locked him in their cell naked, saying they'd bring his clothes from the hotel tomorrow. He wrapped himself in the skimpy, threadbare gray blanket from his cot and sat there shivering the rest of the night and all the next day. They didn't bring his clothes. They brought newspaper reporters to look at the bank robber — including a woman, before whom he could not cover himself decently. They shot off flash powder and took pictures of him.
He shuddered. They were serious. They were going to hang him.
The second day they brought him a woman's dress. They guffawed when he put it on, but it covered more of him than the blanket did, and it was warmer.
What evil spirit governed his fate? How had he come to deserve the tribulations that — ? God had tested Job and had not found him wanting. He, Maurie, had been tested in Louisiana and had been found wanting. He should have fought off John at the cost of his life. That was what the Lord had expected, and he had failed. Now ...
The second night, he managed to sleep fitfully. Until about four in the morning, when he was wakened by the sound of a key turning in the lock. A dawn hanging. A lynch.
But no. It was Max Sand. He jerked Maurie to his feet and shoved him out into the sheriff's office, where the deputy who had tormented him lay facedown on the floor.
They rode out of town. No one bothered them. Houston was not unaccustomed to seeing women riding astride horses. The odd-looking woman riding with the bearded man was obviously a whore, being taken out to entertain. She'd earn her money. People who noticed them shrugged and shook their heads. Many of them laughed.
7
They rode hard. A posse would not be far behind, but Max seemed to know where he was going, to some place he had been before. He avoided everything that might have made traveling easier and stopping more comfortable: groves, streams, grassland. They sat down at last, under a high sun, in a dry creek bed, where two rattlers retreated as they rode in.
"How can I thank you?"
"You can't. But you don't have to. If you hadn't said hello to me and bought supper and all, they wouldn't have grabbed you."
"Where's Mike?"
"He was hurt. He ordered me to leave him behind and go on. Worst thing I ever did, but I did it. 'Cause I figured I had an obligation t' come back and he'p you."
"How'd you know they grabbed me?"
"We didn't run out of town all that fast. Wanted to get some he'p for Mike. Figured too we'd better bring you with us. I saw 'em grab you."