The Devil's Odds

by Milton T. Burton

  Obviously not knowing how else to respond, Madeline gave her a grave nod. My aunt turned back to me. “What now?” she asked.

  The previous hours had caught up with me, and I realized I was starving. I began to eat in earnest, talking between bites. “The first thing I want to do is get a carpenter out from town and have the kitchen door replaced. And I want a door that’s as strong and easily secured as the front door. We should have done that a long time ago.”

  “I’ll take care of that myself,” she said.

  “Today,” I insisted.

  “Done. Then what?”

  “Madeline and I are going to leave. I want to get her away from La Rosa. If she stays here they’ll just try again.”

  “I see. Where do you plan to go?”

  “Press Rafferty’s place.”

  Rafferty was an old family friend who’d fought with my father in the Spanish-American War. He lived in a wooded, remote section of the Neches River bottom a few miles east of Palestine in East Texas, an area whose inhabitants were noted for their clannishness and insularity. If there was anywhere in the state the girl would be safe, it was with Press and his daughter.

  “I also intend to get hold of Charlie Grist and probably a guy I know down in the attorney general’s office. I plan to call Salisbury, too. I’m going to do my best to convince him that he doesn’t want to send anybody else out here. And I guess we better set up a schedule where our people can guard the house in shifts. At least for a while.”

  She shook her head. “They were up all night, Virgil. And they’re getting old, like me. I think I’ll call some of our friends in other counties and see about having some guards sent over.”

  “George Parr?” I asked with a smile.

  She nodded. “Why not? I figure he owes us.”

  “Just make sure he sends people who won’t try to lord it over our own vaqueros. Some of his deputies can be pretty high-handed.”

  “He’ll know better than that,” she said tersely. “But I’ll mention it just the same. When are you leaving?”

  “Late this afternoon. I’ve got to get some sleep first.”

  “Fine. I’ll make arrangements for the carpenters to come about three so their hammering won’t keep you awake. How does that sound?”

  “Lovely. Can I have a couple more eggs?”

  * * *

  My phone calls took over an hour. No one knew where Charlie Grist could be found, but I left a message for him to call me at a half dozen of his usual haunts. My friend in the AG’s office was also out of pocket. But Salisbury, the man I’d expected to be the most difficult to find, answered on the third ring when I called the Grotto Club in Beaumont.

  “This is Virgil Tucker,” I said.

  I’ll give him one thing: he had presence of mind. There was barely a pause before he replied with a noncommittal, “Yes?”

  “I’m about to tell you several things you need to know, and I suggest you keep calm and listen. It’s for our mutual benefit.”

  Once again there was the barest of pauses. “Go ahead.”

  “Two of your men are dead and one is on his way to prison.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Also you should be aware that Madeline Kimbell is no longer at my ranch, and that my family is being guarded around the clock by commissioned law enforcement officers. Don’t send anybody else down here. If you do, you’re going to be stepping into something you don’t have the capacity to appreciate.”

  “That’s all fascinating, but what—”

  “Surely you know somebody who’s familiar with the political situation in South Texas,” I said. “Get them to brief you.”

  “I’ll look into it,” he replied. By this time he was beginning to sound a little wary. For some reason hoods always think they have a monopoly on power and intimidation.

  “I’m willing to give you my word that I can guarantee the girl’s silence in the future, and anybody who knows me will tell you that my word is good. In return I want your assurance that she and my family will be left alone.”

  There came a long pause. Finally he spoke. “Well, that would be an interesting proposition if I really knew anything about—”

  “You can cut the bullshit, Salisbury. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  I hung up and found myself covered in sweat. I’d walked a fine line during our conversation. On one hand, I had to sound firm and tough enough to convince him that I meant business about his thugs staying away from the ranch, while on the other hand I had to appear naive enough to make him think I’d be willing to accept his assurances. I fervently hoped I’d pulled it off. I desperately needed a little breathing room.

  * * *

  We left a few minutes before four that afternoon. Two guards were already posted at the gate, one Anglo and one Mexican, stone-faced, khaki-clad men in their forties who came armed with well-worn Winchester rifles and big revolvers. I stopped and spoke with them for a moment and learned that they were from Starr County. I also learned that a pair of deputies each from Hidalgo and Webb counties were on their way. I thanked them and drove off, then a few hundred yards down the road it hit me how absurd a system it was that my aunt could just pick up the phone and procure public employees to act as private guards as though she were ordering something from the Sears catalog. It was too much; I started laughing and I laughed and laughed until Madeline finally asked, “What on earth is wrong with you, Virgil?”

  “Sorry,” I muttered and reached over to pat her hand. “Don’t worry about it. I was having myself a little fit to break the tension of the last couple of days.”

  We rode along in silence for a few minutes, then she asked, “You don’t like that Martindale fellow, do you?”

  “No, I sure don’t,” I replied, glancing over at her once again. “Is it that obvious?”

  She gave me a nod. “What do you have against him?”

  I gave her a quick rundown on Stubb. “He’s a bully and sadist,” I said in conclusion. “And one of these days he’s going to really hurt somebody.”

  “Are there many others like him? People who hate Mexicans, I mean?”

  I shook my head. “No, but most of the Anglos subscribe to the idea that Mexicans are an inferior people. Add to that the class system that’s in effect in the whole Spanish-speaking world and then you’ve got something very complex. Take Tía Carmen. She loves the families who live on the ranch. Yet when we got electricity out here she never considered putting it in the vaqueros’ homes or the bunkhouse. At least not until I mentioned it, then she was fine with the idea.”

  “But why didn’t she think about it? I mean, she’s part Mexican herself.”

  “Upper-class Mexican,” I said. “Aristocrats. It simply never entered her mind that Alonzo and Helena would sleep better at night in these awful summers we have here if they had an electric fan. But go into Mexico and see how the hands on the big ranches over there live. It’s both a class problem and a race problem, and I don’t know the answer.”

  My voice tapered off and I stared down the road, brooding a little, as the Ford’s tires sang over the pavement.

  “This part of the state is like a completely different country,” Madeline said.

  “More like a different planet,” I said bitterly.

  * * *

  We made good time to San Antonio, but a few miles north of town on the road to Austin we got caught in one of those endless military convoys that were the bane of travel during the war years. At 9:00 P.M. I decided to find some place to spend the night. Finally, just outside San Marcos, I saw a sign that advertised an all-night truck stop café and a tourist court. I turned off the main road, then swung in behind an abandoned filling station and cut my lights.

  “What are you doing?” Madeline asked.

  “Checking to see if we’re being tailed. I don’t think we are, but still…”

  I waited ten minutes, during which time no cars followed us. Then I cranked the engine, and we pulled in at the tourist
court a few minutes later just as the night man was closing the office. Three dollars and we had the key to a cabin near the back of the lot where the car couldn’t be seen from the road. “We’re leaving early in the morning,” I told him.

  “Fine,” he said. “The office opens at seven. If nobody’s here just drop the key in the mail slot.”

  The room was clean with a big double bed and a bathroom with a deep, claw-footed tub. “Hungry?” I asked once we’d dumped our bags at the foot of the bed.

  She nodded. “Do you think we’ve been followed?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I checked the rearview mirror pretty regularly since we left the ranch. But if I’m wrong, they’ll come at us in the night, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So we might as well get a good night’s sleep and try not to worry. I figure that if we’re still alive in the morning we’re in the clear. I also figure this Salisbury guy has enough sense to wait to hear what I have to say. But still, I wish you’d give me the whole damn story.”

  “I’ve told you everything, Virgil,” she said. Her tone of voice was sincere but her eyes avoided mine.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “There’s more to this business and you know it. I’ve been aware of that since the first night up in San Gabriel.”

  I stared at her for a long while. She tried to hold my gaze, but her eyes faltered and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “I wish you wouldn’t look at me that way,” she said. “I just can’t tell you. I’m so ashamed of myself.”

  “What is it? If it would make the difference between us living or dying, then I have a right to know.”

  “It won’t,” she said plaintively.

  “Why not let me be the judge of that?”

  She looked up at me, her face thoroughly miserable, yet still saying nothing. I continued to stare pointedly at her.

  “It’s just that I’m afraid that I may have been the cause of Henry DeMour getting killed,” she muttered at last. I don’t know what I expected to hear, but that wasn’t it.

  “What?” I exclaimed. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t ask me anything more about it, Virgil. Please.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “What do you mean you may be responsible?”

  She put her hands over her face and shook her head. I knelt down beside the bed and took her wrists and pulled her hands away. “Tell me,” I demanded.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” she wailed. “I didn’t mean for anybody to get hurt. I’ve never meant for anybody to get hurt, not in my whole life.”

  She jerked from my grasp and turned and fell across the bed facedown, her whole body shaking with sobs. I was disgusted. I should have pressed the issue, but I didn’t. Most people cry at one time or another, and the truth is that women cry more readily than men. But the more honest of them don’t hide behind it. Madeline was hiding now, and I liked her a little the less for it. I let the subject drop and stood watching her impassively until she wound down. When she finally stopped I handed her my handkerchief and said, “Wipe your eyes and let’s go try that café.”

  * * *

  After we’d eaten, we returned to the room, where I gave her first shot at the tub. When she was finished I took a long, hot soak. I came out of the bathroom toweling my hair to find her standing at the foot of the bed in her gown and robe. She looked at me for a moment, then raised her eyebrows inquiringly. “Do you want to…?” She let the question hang unfinished in the air just as she had that first night at the Weilbach.

  “Sure,” I said, and kissed her gently. I was still annoyed with her, but there was something so pathetic and disarming about the hesitant way she offered herself to me, something that made me think of a little girl lost in the woods. Of course, it could have all been good acting. I never really knew which. There were a lot of things about her I never knew.

  CHAPTER NINE

  We left at six the next morning. Gas rationing was in effect and the traffic was light, but it was still a hard, eight-hour drive with only a quick stop for a hamburger in Hearn. A few miles past the little town of Buffalo the Piney Woods began. The terrain gave way to rolling hills and deep woods, a soft, gentle land a world apart from the harsh Brush Country of South Texas. Two miles east of Palestine I turned off the paved highway onto a dirt road that wound gently downward toward the Neches River. On either side loomed tall, dense forest.

  “How far out in these woods does your friend live?” Madeline asked.

  “Several more miles,” I said.

  She shuddered. “It’s awfully remote.”

  “That’s why you’ll be safe.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  I looked over at her and grinned. “He’s a professional scoundrel.”

  “Virgil, please … for once give me a straight answer.”

  I laughed. “All right. Press runs several hundred head of cattle on land he leases from one of the timber companies. And he gambles. Craps, for the most part. Loaded dice. He’s the best dice switcher I ever saw. He’s also got a couple of colored families back in Palestine who sell whiskey for him. Which is funny, because he never touches a drop of the stuff.”

  “Moonshine?”

  “No, bonded stuff. Pints and half pints, mostly. This is a dry county.”

  “You’re leaving me with a bootlegger?” she asked, sounding a little horrified.

  “I’ll have you know some bootleggers are fine people,” I said raffishly. “Besides, gambling and bootlegging don’t really qualify as crimes in this neck of the woods. Put your worries aside. He’s an honorable man where women are concerned. And you’ll have female companionship, too. His daughter Nora and her little girl live with him.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Six,” I said. “Her name’s Brenda.”

  “No, I mean Nora.”

  I shrugged. “A couple of years younger than I am.”

  “Married?”

  “Not anymore. Her husband was a cop in town. Actually, he was a lot like your friend Nolan, now that I think about it. An ex-athlete who thought he could bully his way through anything. After Brenda was born, he began drinking heavy on his days off. Finally one night he and Nora were arguing, and he slapped the hell out of her. Then he went in the kitchen to get himself another drink. Nora followed him, and he told her to get her ass back in the bedroom and get undressed and ready for business. She told him to go to hell, and when he drew back to slap her again she put a thirty-eight bullet through the middle of his right palm.”

  “My God!”

  “Right,” I agreed with a laugh. “She packed her clothes that night and came home. About a week later he showed up sober and begged her to come back to him. She said sure, she’d give it another try, but that he needed to understand that if he ever hit her again she’d put the next bullet right in the center of his forehead. Apparently the boy didn’t trust his own self-control, because he decided divorce would be a safer course.”

  “Have the two of you ever been…”

  I glanced over at her and smiled. “Romantic? No. I have wished, though, and I think Nora has, too. Back when we were kids she and Press used to come down to La Rosa for a couple of weeks every summer. But she didn’t take too well to South Texas. In fact, I’ve heard her say a dozen times that she wouldn’t live there if she owned it. I knew the day would come when I’d have to move back home to run the ranch, and I saw what living in a place she hated did to my own mother.”

  We passed over a rattling plank bridge that spanned a narrow creek. On either side of its banks rose great oak and gum trees, and at their bases the ground was covered in a tangle of tie vines and water myrtle. The road up out of the bottom resembled a dark tunnel. Madeline gazed out the window with an expression that approached horror. “Do they even have electricity out here?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said with a nod. “Press put in a big Delco generator right after Nora moved back home. And they’ve got a bathroom and a radio,
too. So don’t worry. You’ll be as comfortable out here as you would be at home.”

  I took a couple more turns and came to a fork in the road. Taking the left branch, we wound our way down another dark tunnel, then emerged into a clearing of several hundred acres. A few yards down the road a rural mailbox stood beside a well-graveled driveway. I wheeled into the driveway and topped a gentle rise. Ahead of us, nestled in a grove of pin oak trees, loomed a large, tin-roofed house that was surrounded by about an acre of yard and bordered by a tall fence of heavy wire mesh.

  “We’re here,” I announced.

  We’d no more than stepped from the car when a half dozen hounds boiled out from behind the house. They were fine-blooded animals, Plotts and redbones, and their baying was deafening.

  “Press likes to hunt,” I explained above the din. “He’s got coon dogs and squirrel dogs and deer dogs, and I don’t know what else. He also likes the security of having some of them in the yard at night. The fence keeps them from getting loose and chasing deer.”

  The front door opened and Nora Rafferty appeared on the porch looking like something out of a New York fashion magazine in a sleek pair of tan slacks and a tailored shirt of red cotton under a cream-colored cashmere sweater vest. Except that New York fashion models rarely carry double-barreled shotguns cradled in their arms. “Hush, dogs!” she yelled.

  The noise slacked off and she waved at us. “Hi, Virgil.”

  “Hello, Nora,” I said. “Are you planning to shoot me?”

  “You mean this?” she asked, hefting the shotgun and giving me a big grin. “Nope. I thought it was you when you first drove up, but I decided to be careful and make sure. Daddy killed a twelve-point buck this morning and he’s dressing it out down in the shed. Come on in.”

  “Deer season ended last week, didn’t it?”

  “Maybe so,” she said with a twisted little grin, “but you know Daddy.”

  Nora was about five-six with a good figure, ash blond hair, and an angular Scots-Irish face that narrowly missed being beautiful and was all the more interesting for it. That afternoon she wore one of those red bandannas in her hair that were popular with women during the war—part of the Rosie the Riveter image, I suppose—and it looked great on her. Everything looked great on her.