The Hunt for Clint Adams

by J. Roberts

  “Deliver a message.”

  FIFTEEN

  Clint looked across the poker table at the man who called himself Black Jack Mulligan—literally. He said it whenever he made a play: “Black Jack calls,” or “Black Jack folds,” or “Black Jack wins.” It would have been funny except for a couple of things—they were playing for big money, and Black Jack Mulligan was a damned good poker player.

  There were three other players at the table in the Queen High Saloon and Gambling Hall in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but they were like useless appendages. They’d been donating money for hours while Clint and Black Jack kept passing the chips back and forth.

  They were playing five-card stud, and with four cards on the table the other three had dropped out. Clint was showing a pair of kings, Black Jack a pair of aces.

  “Black Jack bets a hundred,” Mulligan said.

  Wearing a black suit, the big man looked like a blacksmith. He scratched his long black beard and regarded Clint across the table with eyes that betrayed more intelligence then you would have thought by looking at him. Or listening to him. Black played the fool so people would underestimate him. Clint had caught on after ten minutes.

  Clint studied the man while the crowd murmured and buzzed. The man was the strength on the table, there was no doubt about that, but Clint had to see how strong he really was.

  “I call the hundred, and raise two hundred,” Clint said.

  “Black Jack Mulligan likes you, Adams,” Mulligan said with a smile. “He’s gonna be sorry to take your money.”

  “Why’s that, Black Jack?” Clint asked. “You been taking it all night long.”

  Mulligan laughed. The noise sounded like it was coming up from the bottom of a barrel.

  “Black Jack Mulligan calls your two hundred, and raises two more.”

  So, Clint thought, pretty strong. Three aces? Maybe. Could be two pair, but that wouldn’t be as strong.

  “Call,” Clint said, tossing the chips in.

  One of the other players, Hector Trent, was the dealer, but was so engrossed he forgot.

  “Trent,” Clint said. “Deal.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  Trent picked out the deck and dealt each man his last card. They now had one card down and four up.

  Clint had been dealt an eight, a king of hearts, a king of clubs, and now another eight. Two pair.

  Black Jack Mulligan had been dealt an ace of diamonds, a three, an ace of hearts, and another three. Two pair, but aces high.

  “Wow,” Trent said, and put the deck down on the table. He’d been warned earlier by Mulligan about holding onto the deck between deals.

  “Black Jack bets,” Trent said.

  “Black Jack Mulligan bettin’ five hundred,” Mulligan said.

  Clint looked down at his chips, and at Mulligan’s. Then he looked around the table. Nobody left a game until after a hand, so it looked as if all three of the other players were done and would vacate the table when the hand was over. Should he push Mulligan now? If the big man had a discernible vice it was that he paid too much attention to his own hand and not enough attention to others’. He was skillful when he had the cards, and he had the cards now, but there was something he might not have noticed.

  Clint downplayed his hand, staring first at the cards on the table, then looking at his hole card, and then looking at Mulligan, who was smiling, white teeth showing up stark in his beard.

  “Black Jack Mulligan is waiting, Adams,” he said.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Black Jack,” Clint said. “Here’s your five hundred, and a thousand more.”

  Black Jack laughed loudly.

  “You’re tryin’ to push me out of this hand, Adams,” he said.

  “You’re right,” Clint said.

  “Yeah, I know I am,” Black Jack said. “Two thousand more.”

  “This might be the last hand of the night,” Clint said.

  “Looks like it,” Black Jack said. “Win or lose, Adams, I’ll buy you a drink after.”

  “You’re on,” Clint said. “I’m all in. I got . . . five thousand here.”

  Black Jack looked down at his chips.

  “That’s about what I got, more or less. I can count it—”

  “Don’t bother,” Clint said. “Just push it in. We’ll round it out. That is . . . if you call.”

  Black Jack Mulligan looked at the pot, at Clint, at the hole card in front of him.

  “Come on,” Clint said, “what’s Black Jack Mulligan say?”

  Mulligan looked at him then said, “Black Jack Mulligan says, I call.”

  SIXTEEN

  At the bar Black Jack Mulligan bought two beers, and a whiskey for himself.

  “Here’s to king full,” he said, raising the whiskey. “Beats aces over every time.”

  Clint drank some beer.

  “I didn’t think you had it,” Mulligan said. “I thought you were just tryin’ to push me out.”

  “I told you I was.”

  “What if I’d had that other ace?”

  “You couldn’t have it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trent folded an ace.”

  Mulligan raised his eyebrows.

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “I know,” Clint said.

  “You know,” Mulligan said. “You could give me lessons. I heard you’ve played with Masterson and Short, and Ben Thompson.”

  “I have, and a lot others,” Clint said, “but I don’t give lessons.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t have time,” Clint said “But you don’t need lessons. You’re pretty good.”

  Mulligan drank half his beer and said, “Not good enough, though. That’s obvious.”

  “You have one fatal flaw.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t pay enough attention to the other cards on the table,” Clint said. “You just look at your own.”

  “Nah, that ain’t true,” Mulligan said. “I do look at the other cards. I just can’t remember ’em. I got a really bad memory.”

  “If that’s true, you can probably work on it.”

  “How?”

  “That I can’t tell you,” Clint said. “I know one thing you can do, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Play Draw, don’t play Stud.”

  “What’s that do?”

  “Keeps you from having to memorize the cards on the table.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Clint and Black Jack Mulligan had a few drinks and then left the saloon to go back to their hotel. They happened to be staying in the same one.

  It was about an hour after sunup. The poker game had gone on all night. It was what the Queen High Saloon advertised: a never-ending poker game.

  “Where you headed after this?” Clint asked.

  “Black Jack Mulligan’s got a game waitin’ in Denver,” Mulligan said. “You wanna come along?”

  “I don’t think I want to see look across a poker table at you for a while, Black Jack,” Clint said.

  “I think I’ll just take that as a compliment.”

  The first shot rang out as they approached the hotel. Clint heard the bullet slap flesh, but didn’t feel any pain. He rolled and was still rolling when the second and third shots sounded. He came to a stop behind a horse trough, tried to see where the shooting had come from; might have been a doorway, or a rooftop. He couldn’t tell.

  Men came running out of the saloon. The other businesses still had their doors locked. Clint saw Black Jack Mulligan lying on his stomach in the middle of the street.

  He stood, ready to hit the ground again if there was another shot, but it was quiet. He approached Mulligan as a man with a badge came running from the opposite direction.

  Clint leaned over Black Jack and turned him over. The big man’s eyes fluttered weakly and he looked up at Clint.

  “Goddamn,” he said. “Black Jack Mulligan’s been kilt.”

  Later, Clint visited Blac
k Jack Mulligan, who had been carried up to his room so the doctor could work on him there. They wanted to take him to the doctor’s office, but the hotel was closer and Clint wanted the doctor to start working on Mulligan as soon as possible.

  The big man looked up at Clint and asked, “I ain’t been kilt?”

  “No, you’re not dead,” Clint said. “The doctor dug a bullet out of your back. You were hit once but it’s not going to be fatal.”

  “What happened?”

  “Somebody took some shots at us,” Clint said.

  “At me or at you?”

  “I don’t know,” Clint said. “Maybe both of us.”

  “You talk to the law?”

  “A short conversation,” Clint said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay, first. I’m going to go and talk to him again.”

  “I ’ppreciate it, Clint.”

  “The doctor should be in to see you again later,” Clint said.

  The big man nodded, and before Clint got out the door his eyes closed and he was asleep.

  Clint stopped in the sheriff’s office to see Sheriff Floyd Mason.

  “I went up on the rooftops across the street,” the sheriff said. “I figure there was at least one man up there with a rifle. Found a spent shell that looks too new to have been up there a while.”

  “I think there was somebody on the ground with a pistol, too,” Clint said.

  “Two shooters, one for each of you?” the lawman wondered. “Or were they both after you?”

  Clint shook his head. The sheriff was in his forties, an experienced man who had reacted rather quickly when he heard the shots.

  “I don’t know,” Clint said. “None of the men we were playing poker with strike me as the type who would try this. And I only just met Mulligan, so I don’t know what enemies he has, if any.”

  “On the other hand,” the sheriff said, “you are the Gunsmith.”

  “I know,” Clint said. “Have you found anyone who saw anything?”

  “No,” the sheriff said. “It’s early; the stores on that part of the street were not open yet. I’ve got no witnesses.”

  “Too bad.”

  “How long you intend to stay in town?”

  “My plan was to leave today, but the game went so long I’ve decided to ride out tomorrow,” Clint explained, “unless you want me to go today?”

  “No, no,” the sheriff said, “stick with your original plan. I’m not gonna run you out of town just because somebody took a shot at you.”

  “I appreciate that, Sheriff,” Clint said. “A lot of other lawmen wouldn’t see it that way.”

  “This ain’t my first rodeo, Adams,” the sheriff said. “But do me one favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just watch your back the rest of the day.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Bobby Davis and Tom Melvin stopped when they’d put a few miles between them and Colorado Springs.

  “I don’t get it,” Bobby said. “We coulda killed the Gunsmith easy.”

  “That ain’t what the job was,” Tom said.

  “None of this is what we thought the job was gonna be,” Bobby complained. “Dex said we’d be robbing banks and makin’ money.”

  “But Dex ain’t the boss, is he?”

  “He would be, if he killed Tarver,” Bobby said.

  “Look, Bobby,” Tom said, “if you and me had any brains we’d have a gang of our own, wouldn’t we? But we don’t, do we?”

  “Speak for yerself,” Bobby said. “I got brains.”

  “Really? We been ridin’ together for five years and I ain’t seen hide nor hair of your brains.”

  “How about that time—” Bobby stopped himself.

  “See?” Tom said. “Even you ain’t seen ’em. Come on, we gotta get ahead of the Gunsmith, so we can see where he’s goin’ next.”

  “Does Tarver really think this is gonna put a scare into a man like the Gunsmith?” Bobby wondered. “Damn, he’s gotta be gettin’ shot at all the time.”

  “I don’t know what Tarver thinks, and I don’t wanna know,” Tom said. “Let’s just ride.”

  When Dexter decided to bring Bobby and Tom into the gang he had a definite use for them in mind. But now, nothing had gone the way he’d planned. He was starting to think that Tarver had sent them out so that the Gunsmith could kill them. And he had already recruited two men to replace them—men that he had found himself, so there was no way they were going to go along with Dexter’s plan.

  On the other hand, they had already robbed two banks in New Mexico and had lined their pockets with money. Now they were riding through Colorado, on the lookout for their next job.

  The last telegram Tarver had gotten from Bobby and Tom said that the Gunsmith was in Colorado Springs. That’s where they were headed, but Tarver figured Adams would be gone by the time they arrived. And there would probably be a telegram waiting there for Tarver. Bobby and Tom were supposed to be finding Adams—which they did—and then tracking him to make sure Tarver always knew where he was. And Tarver wanted them to keep peppering Adams with shots to keep him nervous.

  “And if he’s with somebody,” Tarver had told them, “that’s who you kill. Got it?”

  Bobby and Tom nodded, but they didn’t get it any more than Dexter did. A man like Clint Adams was not going to scare easy.

  Dexter looked ahead at Tarver’s back, as the man rode ahead of him and Gerald and the other two, Gary Stevens and Del McDermott. How easy would it be to put a bullet in Tarver’s back? But then the man would never know why he was dying, and that was part of Dexter’s plan.

  He looked behind him at Gerald riding with Stevens and McDermott. The three of them were getting along fine, which was okay with Dexter. Maybe he could use Gerald to get the other two over to his side.

  When he killed Tarver, the man would know it was because of the forty thousand dollars from that bank heist five years ago. Dexter knew that Tarver was going to keep the money for himself, and it was only getting caught by Adams that kept him from doing it. If Tarver had not insisted on carrying all the money himself, Dexter would have gotten away with at least twenty thousand.

  He had to give Tarver credit, though. He’d picked two good banks this past week, and had come up with flawless plans to rob them. Dexter hadn’t had this much money in his pockets since before Tarver went to Yuma.

  But that didn’t change anything. He was still going to carry out his plan against Tarver—as soon as Tarver carried out his plan against Clint Adams.

  Tarver could feel Dexter’s eyes burning into his back. Dex had changed over the past five years, but perhaps not as much as Tarver himself.

  Tarver and Dexter had been closed friends and partners for years, but Tarver had been tempted by that forty thousand dollars five years ago, and he had a feeling Dexter knew it. While he was planning his revenge against Clint Adams, he knew he had to keep an eye on Bart Dexter. In fact, what he had learned in Yuma was that he had to keep an eye on anybody he allied himself with, because when it came right down to it, everybody was always out for themselves.

  NINETEEN

  When Clint woke the next morning, he found himself thinking about Jed Tarver. It had been a few weeks since Tarver got out of Yuma. Could that have been Tarver shooting at him the day before? Or someone hired by Tarver?

  From what he knew of the man, he thought Tarver would want to do his own killing. Could he have tracked Clint down in a few weeks since he’d walked out the doors at Yuma?

  Clint decided to have breakfast and then see Black Jack Mulligan before he left town. He paid special attention to the rooftops as he walked. He had stayed away from the poker tables last night. He didn’t want to get involved in another all-night game, and the only interesting player—Mulligan—was flat on his back in his hotel room.

  He had breakfast in a small café on a side street, at a table against the back wall, where he would not offer a target to anyone from outside.

  He was in the middle of break
fast when Sheriff Floyd Mason walked in.

  “They told me at the hotel I might find you here,” the lawman said.

  “Have a seat, Sheriff, and some coffee.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Mason sat down and removed his hat. Clint poured him a cup of coffee and then continued to eat his breakfast of steak and eggs.

  “Something on your mind, Sheriff?” Clint asked.

  “Just wanted to let you know I did manage to come up with a witness—sort of.”

  “What do you mean, sort of?”

  “Well, my witness didn’t actually see the shooting, but he saw two men ride into town early yesterday morning.”

  “Who’s the witness?”

  “Fella who runs the livery,” the sheriff said. “You saw him when you rode in.”

  “Big heavyset fellow, right?”

  “You’re being kind,” Mason said. “Bud is downright fat, but he’s got good eyesight.”

  “Did they put their horses up at the livery?”

  “That’s just it,” the sheriff said. “They tied them to a fence behind the hardware store.”

  “It was the roof of the hardware store where you found the shell casing, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  They figured the shot that was fired into Mulligan’s back had been fired from the roof with a rifle. The other shots, they believed, had come from a man on the ground, using a handgun.

  “He see anything else?”

  “He saw them riding out moments after the shooting.”

  “Seems like pretty strong circumstantial evidence, doesn’t it?”

  “Seems like,” Mason said. “Of course, it’s not strong enough for me to get a posse together.”

  “Strong enough for me to try to track them, though,” Clint said. “I’ll start behind the hardware store and see how far I get.”

  “Bud can show you where the horses were tied,” Mason said.

  “I appreciate the information, Sheriff,” Clint said. “I’ll be leaving once I check in on Mulligan.”

  “I wish you luck then,” the lawman said. He finished his coffee and stood up.

  “If I leave you some money will you pay the doctor for me for Mulligan’s care?”