“One way to find out,” the man replied good-naturedly.
Clint thought his chances were pretty good of taking an even bigger chunk out of the other man’s chips. Then again, it was only the first hand, and Clint had no way of knowing whether or not the man was bluffing or if he’d gotten even luckier on the draw than Clint had.
“Raise another fifty,” Clint said reluctantly.
Without hesitation, the man called the bet. He moved in the chips and showed three kings with an ace and ten to back it up. “Three wise men,” he said. “What’ve you got?”
Clint showed his full house and raked in the chips.
The older man shook his head and laughed. “You got awfully damn lucky on the draw, my friend, but that luck doesn’t last.”
“For my sake, I hope it does,” Clint replied with a grin.
“This should prove to be an interesting game.”
“I’m counting on it.”
FORTY-FOUR
The game wore on for hours. Truth be told, it was one of the more interesting games Clint had played in a while. Even though he wasn’t just there to play poker, Clint found himself savoring every moment. The stakes rose steadily. All the players had their moments of glory, and not one of them was prone to foolish mistakes. It was exactly the sort of thing Clint had been hoping for when he’d first opened the finely engraved invitation.
Even though that invitation had come only through a bit of trickery on behalf of the Texas Rangers, Clint was glad to be there all the same. He’d won his fair share of the pots, and the fact that the other gamblers weren’t too interested in talking and swapping stories only allowed Clint to concentrate on what he was doing.
Kenneth grinned as he lay down his cards. “Flush,” he announced proudly. “Queen high.”
Clint and most of the other men tossed their cards amid a few muttered curses. The man across from Clint, however, looked back and forth between his cards and the ones spread out in front of Kenneth.
This man was the heavyset one with the strong features and thick black hair that made him look more like the captain of the boat than one of its passengers. “It seems to be your night, Kenneth,” the man said.
“Just playing the cards I’m dealt.”
While shuffling and preparing to deal, the man across from Clint nodded and replied, “We’ll just have to see what we can do about that.”
Clint watched the shuffle and the deal as closely as he’d been watching all the others. He didn’t see the other man make a switch or even move the cards to somewhere they were out of sight. Even so, somewhere along the line, the switch was made.
By the time Clint received his third card, he noticed something familiar. The pattern on the back of his cards was slightly altered in a way that could have easily been mistaken for normal wear and tear due to sweaty hands or careless shuffles. The irregularities weren’t consistent, but Clint knew they were the same as the ones he’d seen on those cards in room number five.
Clint was dealt the ace of spades and two other spades to match. He also got two of his three lucky threes, so he kept those and the ace and discarded the rest.
The betting started off small and Clint kept it that way. When he didn’t get anything to match his threes or ace, Clint was glad he hadn’t been superstitious. Keeping his eyes on the man across from him, Clint called the bet that was made and watched for a move to be made.
The skinny fellow on Clint’s right won the hand with a pair of sevens, and nothing else of interest came to pass. As the next several hands were played, Clint noticed the man across from him taking fewer and fewer losses. In fact, he’d even started to build up a healthy stack of chips that had been taken directly from Kenneth’s pile. Those marked cards stayed in play, and Clint managed to learn a few of those markings for himself.
It wasn’t until an hour later that some of the right cards fell into the right set of hands.
Clint didn’t even look at his cards before he called the bet of a hundred dollars posed by the older man at the table. When the bet was raised again, Clint looked at the man who’d tossed in the additional chips and asked, “Did you hear about what happened earlier?”
“No,” Kenneth replied. “What?”
“Some men were killed because they were caught cheating.”
The older man nodded and the skinny fellow shrugged.
“What do you think about that, Solomon?”
Although the man across from Clint didn’t say anything outright, the speed with which his eyes jumped up to look at Clint spoke volumes.
“I heard they were friends of yours,” Clint said.
“Are you speaking to me?” Solomon asked.
“You know damn well I am,” Clint replied. “I just thought you’d like to know that all those people you held hostage are free and all the money you stole has been accounted for.”
The older man sitting next to Solomon cleared his throat and asked, “What’s the meaning of all this talk?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Solomon said evenly. “Perhaps you should ask him.”
Clint turned and saw Mia standing near the door. Elsa was beside her and so was Marty. Both of them talked excitedly to Mia and pointed toward Clint’s table. When Mia walked up to stand behind Clint, she leaned to his ear and whispered, “Both of them say they saw that man when they were captured, but they don’t know for certain it’s Solomon.”
“It’s Solomon, all right,” Clint said.
Solomon grinned and said, “Prove it.”
“All right.” Looking down at Solomon’s cards, he said, “I saw you swap out the deck we were using with one that you’d marked.”
Although the other gamblers didn’t know what to make of what Clint had been saying so far, that sure caught their attention.
“What?” Kenneth snapped.
Solomon shook his head. “He’s lying. If anything, he’s the one that swapped those cards.”
“Don’t you think I’d be sitting on top of more chips if that was the case?” Clint asked.
The other gamblers looked at Clint’s stack, which was less than half the size it had been at the start. Solomon’s, on the other hand, had nearly tripled.
“And you got most of those chips fairly recently,” Clint said. He then looked around to the rest of the men at the table and announced, “This man’s wanted for kidnapping and cheating. If any of you men were afraid to talk before, you should know that the gunmen Solomon brought with him are either dead or being held until we get back to a safe dock.”
When no response came, Solomon grinned and said, “Nice try. Unfortunately, that was a bluff you didn’t want to try.” With that, Solomon snapped his fingers and waited for someone to carry out his order.
Nobody came.
As Solomon’s smile faded, the skinny man next to Clint lifted his hand to show the pistol he held. “I was to hand this over when the time came,” he said to Clint as he handed the gun to him. “Take it.”
Clint took the gun as Solomon grabbed the edge of the table with both hands. “You’re dead!”
“He’s right, Mr. Solomon,” the skinny man said. “None of the men are anywhere to be seen. They were supposed to come in here and take all the money from—”
“Shut up!” Solomon snapped.
Turning to Clint, the skinny man explained, “They were supposed to have robbed everyone in this room by now. He wanted me to work for him because lots of these men trust me. He said if I didn’t, he’d kill my wife.”
“What’s your wife look like?” Clint asked.
In a rushed flow of words, the skinny man described the young woman that Clint had found tied up in the furnace room.
“She’s fine,” Clint said. “You can see her shortly.”
“Are you joking?”
“No, I—”
“What the hell’s all this about cheating?” Kenneth snarled. “I want my goddamn money back!”
“You won’t get nothing back,” Solomon replied s
ternly. “I’m not a cheat.”
“The cards are marked,” Clint said. “He’s holding the ace of hearts, the queen of diamonds and the queen of spades. I don’t know what the other two are.”
Kenneth reached across the table and flipped over Solomon’s cards. Those three cards were there, just as Clint had promised. “Son of a bitch,” Kenneth muttered.
Just then, Solomon stood up and drew a pistol that had been tucked under his belt. He aimed it at Clint and thumbed the hammer back before another shot blasted through the room.
Clint had jumped to his feet, but didn’t have a gun in his hand. Kenneth, on the other hand, was holding a derringer that he’d stashed up his coat sleeve.
“Nobody cheats me, you son of a bitch!” Kenneth said. “Nobody!”
Solomon slumped into his chair. His eyes were still fixed on Clint, but his body was quickly losing the strength to follow through with anything but a pained wheeze. As more blood pumped from the fresh wound in his chest, Solomon let out one last breath and dropped his pistol.
Everyone in the room was watching what happened. One of the gamblers asked, “Was that another goddamn cheater?”
“Yes,” Clint replied. “He was.”
“Serves him right then. Dump him in the water and deal the next hand.”
FORTY-FIVE
Clint returned to Labyrinth a little later than expected, since he’d had to explain some things to a group of Texas Rangers as the rest of Solomon’s men were taken off the Misty Morning. Mia, Elsa and Gretchen said their good-byes, and Clint soon found himself in Rick’s Place telling Hartman about the affair.
Rick leaned on the bar, nodding every so often and occasionally drinking from a mug of beer. When Clint was finished, Rick still didn’t say much of anything.
“I swear,” Clint said as he picked up his own beer, “I can’t go anywhere without it going to hell.”
“You didn’t even get any gambling done?”
“Actually, I did. I even turned a nice little profit.”
“What about our arrangement?” Rick asked. “Did you manage to spread the word about this place to earn the money I put toward your bankroll?”
Clint stared at Hartman over the top of his mug. Since the Texan knew him too well to believe a bluff, Clint put his mug down and dug into the pocket where he kept his winnings. “Serves me right for doing a good deed,” Clint muttered.
Rick laughed, but didn’t lift a finger to stop Clint from peeling off the right number of bills from the hefty roll of cash.
Watch for
CLINT ADAMS, DETECTIVE
308th novel in the exciting GUNSMITH series from Jove
Coming in August!
Red River Showdown Page 15