by Matt Braun
Holliday recalled hearing that Rudabaugh rustled cows in between train holdups. He wondered if Webb was a new partner in the venture. “So?” he said, changing the subject. “What brings you gentlemen to Las Vegas?”
“Just passing through,” Rudabaugh said evasively. “Matter of fact, we oughta be on our way. Only stopped off for a drink.”
“Why rush off?” Holliday said. “We could play a little poker.”
“Maybe next time, Doc. We’ve got a ways to ride. You ready, Josh?”
Webb nodded. “I was born ready.”
After a round of handshakes, the men walked toward the door. Holliday still thought them an unlikely pair, hardly birds of a feather. As he turned back, Jim O’Farrel came out of his office at the end of the bar. Holliday motioned around the empty room.
“Where’s all the action, Jim? I came to play.”
O’Farrel was a rawboned man, with square features and a sweeping mustache. “Got me, Doc,” he said dourly. “Never saw it so slow.”
“Well, for a diversion, I might try my hand at faro. Assuming, of course, I could get an honest deal.”
“Hell, come on, I’ll deal. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
O’Farrel jerked his thumb at one of the faro dealers. He took a chair behind the layout and shuffled the deck, placing the cards in an ivory-faced dealing box. Holliday felt assured of an honest game, for the Irishman lacked the finesse to deal crooked. He bet the house limit, a hundred dollars.
The cards were favorable from the opening hand. A gambler sometimes hits a streak, and today Holliday could do no wrong. For every bet he lost, he won three, completely overturning the house odds. With luck at his side, he began coppering his bet, wagering the first card dealt to lose and the second to win. The play was fast, and at two hundred dollars a hand, his stack of chips steadily mounted. By four o’clock that afternoon, he was twelve thousand dollars ahead.
“Jesus,” O’Farrel said, his features tight as he paused to reshuffle. “You’re breaking my back, Doc.”
“Tell you what,” Holliday said amiably. “I’ll give you a chance to get even. Care to raise the limit to five hundred?”
“Done,” O’Farrel announced. “Nobody stays lucky forever.”
Holliday proved him wrong. By five o’clock, a small crowd was gathered around the layout, watching in awe. The chips stacked before Holliday resembled a mound. He was forty thousand dollars winner.
The crowd abruptly turned as a commotion broke out at the bar. One of the saloon girls shrieked, and a man’s voice raised in anger stilled the room. Before anyone could react, the man backhanded her in the mouth. She bounced off the bar onto the floor.
O‘Farrel crossed the room in three swift strides. He spun the man around, planting a fist in his belly, followed by a clubbing blow to the jaw. The man went down and out, and O’Farrel grabbed him by the collar. He dragged the unconscious man to the door and bodily tossed him into the street. Dusting his hands, he returned to the faro layout.
“Well done,” Holliday said as he sat down. “Who’s the ladies’ man?”
“Goddamn thimblerigger named Mike Gordon. Him and his woman had a spat, and she came to work for me. He keeps after her, but she won’t take him back.”
“Smart woman.” Holliday hesitated, studying his mound of chips. “Jim, I have a proposition for you. Suppose we play for double or nothing … all of it.”
“The whole shebang?” O’Farrel stared at the stacks of chips. “Christ, Doc, there’s better’n forty thousand there. That’d wipe me out.”
“Or get you even,” Holliday said lightly. “After all, it’s only money, Jim. Easy come, easy go.”
O’Farrel eyed the chips with open greed. On the turn of a card, he calculated Holliday’s chances of winning at virtually nil. “You’re on,” he said in a rush. “What’s your pleasure, Doc?”
Holliday looked at the casekeeper, the abacuslike device that kept track of the cards already dealt. He saw that none of the aces had been played, and a sudden, visceral instinct told him to take the odds. Leaning forward, he placed a chip in the center of the ace on the layout. Then, playing out his gut hunch, he coppered it. To lose.
A murmur swept through the crowd. O’Farrel appeared dumbfounded, his mouth open. “You coppered it, Doc. First card out of the box. Your bet’s to lose?”
“A loser for a winner, Jim. Deal.”
O’Farrel slipped a card from the box. He gingerly turned it over, and all the color drained from his face. He dropped the ace of diamonds on the table.
The onlookers stood hushed with wonder. O’Farrel recovered himself with the aplomb of a seasoned gambler. “You called a winner,” he said evenly. “Looks like you just won the Occidental, Doc. Congratulations.”
“Nothing so serious.” Holliday was still staring at the ace. “I’ll sell it back to you, Jim. What would I do with a gaming den?”
“Figure out a way to run it. I’m busted.”
“You’re broke?”
“Cleaned out,” O’Farrel said. “You’re the new proprietor.”
Holliday slumped back in his chair. A lucky streak was one thing, but a gaming parlor was altogether different. His features knotted in consternation.
He wondered where to start.
CHAPTER 33
The word spread quickly throughout town. By dark, everyone in Las Vegas knew that Doc Holliday had won the Occidental in a faro game. The news was like an elixir to workingmen who dreamt about beating the tables, and always fell short. They swarmed the Occidental to share in the celebration.
Holliday was lost in an avalanche of detail. After signing over the property, O’Farrel had given him a sketchy briefing on the operation of a gaming parlor. But the Irishman was disconsolate, embarrassed and embittered over the loss of his grand enterprise. He departed with the hangdog look of a man weighted down by defeat.
Left to his own devices, Holliday felt like he’d stepped into quicksand. The crowd was three deep at the bar, and men were wedged shoulder to shoulder around the gaming tables. All of them wanted to shake the hand of the man who had bucked the tiger and won the house. That the man was Doc Holliday, notorious shootist and mankiller, merely fanned their enthusiasm. He was swamped by admirers who pumped his arm with unbridled glee.
Between accepting congratulations, Holliday tried to keep a sharp eye on the tables. Operation of the tables was perhaps the one thing he understood about running a gaming establishment. Every professional gambler knew from experience that dealers were not to be trusted. Just as they routinely cheated, boosting the house odds, they were equally capable of robbing the house. A crooked dealer, working with a confederate on the opposite side of the table, virtually had a license to steal. The trick was to catch them.
Holliday was all too aware that the first night was the most critical. Any dealer who meant to rob the house would capitalize on the excitement and distraction swirling around the new owner. He wandered from table to table, trying to avoid well-wishers, all the while watching the action. Whether faro or roulette, dice or chuck-a-luck, he knew any game could be rigged to reverse the house odds. The problem was, he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
“Mr. Holliday!”
One of the saloon girls planted herself in front of him. She was a brassy woman with rouged cheeks and painted lips, her breasts spilling over the top of her gown. Her eyes popped with anger.
“Yes?” Holliday’s attention was fixed on a dealer at one of the faro layouts. “What is it?”
“I need your help—right now!”
“Help with what?”
“See that man? The lard-assed bastard with the spiky beard. Down at the end of the bar.”
Holliday followed the direction of her finger. He saw a man with a scruffy beard toss back a shot of liquor. The man was wobbly on his feet, clutching at the bar for support. He was obviously drunk.
“What about him?”
“He grabbed my tit!” she said, outraged. “Had to s
mack him to make him let go. I’ll be bruised for a week.”
“I see.” Holliday tried to focus on the problem. “What is your name?”
“Dolly.”
“Well now, Dolly, men get drunk and they try to sneak a feel. Isn’t that part of the job?”
“Not on your tintype!” she huffed. “Nobody’s allowed to get rough with the girls. That was Mr. O’Farrel’s rule.”
“And how did Mr. O’Farrel handle these matters?”
“He’d have tossed the bastard out on his ass!”
“I’ll have one of the bartenders attend to it.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Mr. O‘Farrel always gave ’em the heave-ho himself.”
“Yes, but I’m not a bouncer, Dolly. I’ll hire one tomorrow.”
Holliday stepped around her. As he approached the bar, he saw the girl whose jilted lover had backhanded her that afternoon. She was working a customer, all tease and smiles, plying him to buy drinks. He thought Dolly could learn from her example.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted one of the bartenders downing a shot of whiskey. He edged through the crowd, signaling the barkeep. “Are you in the habit of drinking on the house?”
“Yeah, I guess,” the bartender said hesitantly. “O’Farrel never minded if we took a nip now and then. Just so we stay sober.”
Holliday made a quick mental calculation. Three bartenders with a nip now and then sapped considerable profit from bar sales. O’Farrel apparently ran a loose ship, and he wondered if the bartenders were pocketing money that should have gone in the till. He reminded himself to look into it tomorrow.
“The man at the end of the bar,” he said. “The one with the beard.”
“Yeah?”
“Throw him out.”
The bartender frowned. “I don’t do strong-arm work, Mr. Holliday. I keep bar.”
Holliday stared at him. “Until I hire a bouncer, your duties have changed. Do I make myself clear?”
“Well, yeah, if you put it that way.”
“I do, indeed.”
Holliday turned away. Bartenders who nipped drinks forced him to consider whether O’Farrel had left him with a sieve, rather than a leaky boat. His attention was directed back to the tables, and he studied the play with new concern. The realization suddenly struck him that he might never again have time to spend a night at a poker table. As the proprietor, he would have a full-time job contending with drunks and slippery bartenders, and dealers tempted to steal from the house. The Occidental, far from an unexpected godsend, abruptly seemed to him an albatross. He told himself he was gambler, not a tradesman.
The front window imploded in a shower of glass. The report of a gunshot sounded from outside, followed by another and another. A slug shattered the back bar mirror, and the third shot drilled through a row of whiskey bottles. Women screamed, and men hurled themselves to the floor, panic spreading across the room. Holliday hurried toward the door, drawing his Peacemaker as he went past the dice table. A voice from the street boomed out in a guttural roar.
“Lila! You hear me, Lila? I come to get you!”
Holliday stepped through the door. Framed in a spill of light from the shattered window, he saw Mike Gordon standing in the middle of the street. The thimblerigger was staggering drunk, and clearly intent on reclaiming the girl he’d belted that afternoon. He shook his pistol at Holliday.
“Send her out, goddammit! I want Lila!”
“Drop your gun, Gordon. Don’t make me kill you.”
Gordon brayed a drunken curse. Then, straightening his arm, he fired. The slug thunked into the door frame, and Holliday leveled the Peacemaker. He feathered the trigger, and fired again as Gordon tried to bring his gun to bear. The impact sent Gordon reeling, his legs tangled, like a puppet with its strings gone haywire. He pitched to the ground on his side and lay still. The gun dropped from his hand.
Holliday advanced into the street. Behind him, the crowd jammed the door of the Occidental, watching as he approached the body. He thought he’d never killed a man with less reason, and wondered that a thimblerigger, a common con artist, would challenge him with a gun. Liquor and love, he told himself, made for a deadly combination.
Owen Kimball, the town marshal, appeared around the corner. He moved forward, pausing to glance down at the dead man, then halted beside Holliday. His eyes were guarded. “Mr. Holliday, I’ll thank you to holster that gun. What happened here?”
Holliday holstered his pistol. “Gordon shot out the windows.” He motioned to the empty window frame. “When he kept shooting, I tried to stop him. He fired on me.”
“Gordon fired first?”
“Ask the people in the Occidental. They will verify my story.”
“That’s my job,” Kimball remarked. “There’ll have to be a formal hearing on this. Law requires it of any unnatural death.”
Holliday looked at him. “Are you arresting me?”
“Have I got your word you’ll show up for the hearing?”
“You have my word as a gentleman and a property owner. You may have heard, I now own the Occidental.”
“I heard.” Kimball nodded to the body at their feet. “This isn’t the last time, you know. Even if you’re cleared at the hearing, there’s other gunmen will try you on for size.” He pursed his mouth. “You owning a gambling joint is like a red flag to a bull.”
“You may have a point, Marshal.”
Holliday turned, staring back at the Occidental. The aggravation of the night suddenly came over him, and he realized operating a gaming parlor was not his lot in life. There was, moreover, the real possibility that he would serve as a magnet for men who wished to try their luck with a gun. His gaze settled on the body a moment, then snapped back to the Occidental.
He thought it was indeed an albatross.
The courtroom was in an adobe building on a sidestreet of Old Town. Holliday and the others involved in the hearing filed into the room early the next afternoon. Overnight he had arranged for O‘Farrel and Lila Foster, and one of the bartenders, to testify on his behalf. The bailiff called the court to order at one o’clock.
Justice of the Peace Oren Hough took his place on the bench. He was an imposing man, with a thatch of white hair and a walrus mustache. From a handwritten document, he read aloud the official purpose of the hearing. Then he glanced at a man seated at one of two tables directly before the bench.
“Are you ready to proceed, Mr. Sanchez?”
City Attorney Manuel Sanchez rose to his feet. Of Mexican descent, slim and dark-haired, he was an elected official, representing civil and criminal matters for Las Vegas. He nodded. “We are prepared, Your Honor.”
Hough glanced toward the spectator benches. “Are you represented by an attorney, Mr. Holliday?”
“No, Your Honor.” Holliday stood. “I will represent myself.”
“That’s highly unusual, Mr. Holliday. Particularly in a case involving a homicide.”
“I have had some small experience in such matters, Judge. Given the circumstances, I have no need of counsel.”
“As you prefer,” Hough noted. “You may proceed, Mr. Sanchez.”
The first witness was a local physician, who served as the county coroner. Under questioning from Sanchez, he testified that the deceased, one Mike Gordon, had sustained two gunshot wounds. He went on to state that a bullet to the heart had been the cause of death.
Town Marshal Owen Kimball was then called to the stand. He testified that upon arriving at the scene, he had found John H. Holliday, otherwise known as Doc Holliday, standing over the deceased with a gun in his hand. He further related that Holliday had admitted to the killing, but had not been detained. He felt Holliday would honor his word to appear in court.
“No further questions,” Sanchez said. “That will be all, Marshal.”
Judge Hough peered over his spectacles. “Mr. Holliday?”
“Thank you, Your Honor.” Holliday approached the witness stand. “If you will, Marshal, tell th
e court what you found upon inspecting the deceased’s pistol.”
“Freshly fired,” Kimball said. “Four rounds fired and one unfired cartridge still in the chamber.”
“Were you able to determine where the expended rounds struck?”
“Three rounds hit the window and the back bar of the Occidental. The fourth round lodged in the outside door frame. I pried it out.”
“For what purpose did the deceased fire at a door?”
“Witnesses to the shooting said you were standing in the door. Gordon fired at you and missed. Then you killed him.”
“In other words, Gordon fired first?”
“Yeah, all the witnesses agreed on that.”
“I’ve no more questions, Your Honor.”
Sanchez next called Holliday to the stand. His keen black eyes were alert, piercing. “You admit you killed the deceased, Mike Gordon?”
“I do,” Holliday said firmly. “In defense of my life.”
“How many men have you killed, Mr. Holliday … in defense of your life?”
“No more than necessary, Mr. Sanchez. All forced upon me, I might add.”
Sanchez appeared skeptical. “Is it not true that you challenged Mike Gordon? Threatened to kill him?”
“No,” Holliday countered. “I told him to drop his gun. I said something to the effect, ‘Don’t make me kill you.’”
“Why did you take enforcement of the law upon yourself? Why did you not wait and permit a peace officer to arrest Mr. Gordon?”
“Gordon was endangering the lives of my customers. When I came outside, there were no peace officers in sight. His next shot might have killed an innocent bystander.”
“Of course,” Sanchez said caustically. “So you shot him as a public service. Is that what we are to believe, Mr. Holliday?”
“I shot him,” Holliday said without inflection, “because he fired on me. To be more precise, he was trying to kill me.”
“Is it not true that Gordon was drunk? So intoxicated that he posed no real threat?”
“His first shot missed me by no more than six inches. I thought it imprudent to wait and see if his aim improved.”