The truth of the matter was that Cleve Van Valen was riding a streak of bad luck at the tables and elsewhere, and he knew enough of gambling to know any man was a loser who played when he had to win.
The run of bad luck was no new thing, for it actually had begun, he decided bitterly, almost fifteen years ago when his father dropped dead of a heart attack while Cleve had been taking the Grand Tour of Europe.
Rushing home as swiftly as the sea would permit, he found he had been less swift than the vultures, for in the interim his father’s estate had mysteriously vanished. Scarcely twenty-one, and without business experience, he listened to the glib explanations of his father’s associates and knew they lied…but they had covered their actions very well.
They showed him notes signed by his father that he knew were forgeries, but he had no evidence, and the men who had defrauded him were prominent in business and social circles. He had no evidence, and what little sympathy there was for him was lost when he called John Norman Black a liar and a thief.
Black challenged him, making a great show of regret at the necessity. A skilled duelist and a noted pistol shot, Black assured all who knew him that the duel had been forced on him, and the last thing he wanted was a duel with the son of his former partner.
Yet on the field of honor, when they stood briefly back to back and out of earshot of the others, Black spoke over his shoulder. “Had your father not dropped dead, I should have killed him, for I did rob him and he discovered it. I shall now kill you.”
Perhaps he hoped to make Cleve angry enough to be careless. Perhaps he merely wished to twist the knife in the wound. John Norman Black was a dead shot, and unworried. He took the required paces and turned, bringing his pistol down on the target.
Cleve Van Valen had never fought a duel nor fired a pistol in anger, yet there was nothing wrong with his reflexes. Instead of bringing his pistol down in the usual way, taking careful aim, he had simply turned and fired. Black’s pistol exploded harmlessly in the air, and he fell, shot through the heart.
Feeling was against Cleve. All believed he had made wild, unreasonable accusations against a reputable citizen, and that he had been a hot-headed fool to challenge him. All agreed he had been astonishingly lucky to kill such a man. Without friends, the estate now far removed from him, he had nothing to gain by remaining in Maryland. So he started west, following the Natchez Trace.
He had neither profession nor trade. The business education which his father planned to give him on the job had gone glimmering. The one thing at which he possessed a degree of skill was cards. He had a natural card sense, a good memory, and he played well.
He worked New Orleans, winning and losing, always able to live well, but making no progress. He was young, and he had a liking for money and the spending of it. Moreover, he was a man without a destination.
Natchez, St. Louis, and Cincinnati followed, the river boats, and then, riding a winning streak, Europe. He spent two years there, moving from London to Paris, to Weimar, to Vienna, Innsbruck, and Monte Carlo. He fought his second duel at Nîmes, with sabers, and won.
But the winning streaks became fewer, and of shorter duration. He lived well, but the margin with which he played grew narrower, and the feeling grew within him that he was headed for the discard.
He returned to the United States, played a little around New York and Saratoga, often in small, private games. He played honestly, as always, but he played with skill, and he won.
He was well ahead of the game when one night he was recognized as a professional gambler. By noon the following day the clubs were closed to him, and an invitation he had accepted to appear at a party was quietly withdrawn.
In Cincinnati he lost much of what he had won, and now in St. Louis he was doing scarcely better. He stared at the river of mud that was the street, and wondered if here, too, he might sink clean out of sight.
He was nothing if not honest with himself, and he knew the slight he had received in New York had hurt. Deeply sensitive, he had been proud of his playing, and had never considered playing a crooked game…although he knew how it was done.
He stared at the mud. He was no longer a gentleman—he was a gambler, a questionable character in any sort of society. He was a gambler, and he consorted with gamblers.
Suddenly someone moved up beside him; it was Allen Jones, known wherever men gamed. “Going across to the hotel?” he asked. He smiled and indicated the street. “You’ll never cross that in those boots, Cleve.”
“I’ll bet you the best dinner in St. Louis that I can cross that street without getting a speck of mud on me!” Cleve said quickly.
“Done!” Jones replied. “I’ll take that bet.”
Cleve glanced around. A bulky, heavy-shouldered man of middle age was coming up the street toward them. “You, there!” Cleve said. “I’ll give you five dollars if you’ll take me on your back across to the hotel.”
The man hesitated, looking from Cleve Van Valen to Allen Jones.
“I’ve a bet on,” Cleve explained, “that I can cross the street without getting muddy.”
The heavy-set man smiled grimly. “All right.” He backed up to Cleve. “Get aboard.”
Cleve stepped astride him from the walk’s edge, and, carrying him piggy-back, the man started slopping through the mud.
“Hey!” Jones yelled. “Ten dollars if you drop him!”
The man spoke over his shoulder. “Want to raise the ante?”
“We made a deal,” Cleve replied. “I stand on the terms.”
“Twenty dollars!” Jones yelled.
Hunching Cleve higher, the man struggled on through the mud, then deposited Cleve on the steps of the hotel.
Taking out a thin packet of bills, Cleve peeled off the five dollars and handed them to his bearer. Coolly, the man reached in his own pocket and removed a sack bulging with bills and coins. He added the five dollars to the sack, then grinned at Van Valen. “A little here, a little there. One day I shall be a rich man.”
“You refused a larger sum to dump me into the mud,” Cleve said.
The man glanced at him. “You said it yourself. A deal is a deal. If a man’s word is no good in this country he’s nothing.”
“Come inside,” Cleve suggested, “and I’ll buy you a drink. Are you new to St. Louis?”
The stocky man grinned. “Don’t take me for a man to be plucked, my friend. I’m no gambler. That’s not to say I wouldn’t take a flyer in a business way, but business is my game. Never play another man’s game, that’s what I say.”
He stamped the mud from his boots. “Yes, I’ll drink with you. They tell me Professor Jerry Thomas has come up with a new one called the Tom and Jerry.”
“He’s the best bartender in the country,” Cleve said. “Come on inside.” In the bar, he looked at the man again. “Maybe I’m wrong, but you look familiar, now that I see you in the light.”
“I doubt if you saw me more than once or twice. I worked for your father.”
Cleve’s expression grew cold. “Oh? I don’t recall any friends back there.”
The man was not disturbed. “I’m Gabe French. You didn’t know me; your father did. A time or two when the going was rough he gave me a hand up.” French tasted his drink. “A good man.”
“They robbed him,” Cleve said bitterly.
“That they did…and you as well. It was a good job you did—shooting Black. He’d had it coming for a long time.” French gave a quick glance at Van Valen. “Ever done any shooting since then?”
“When necessary.”
“You’ve the knack, my friend. I saw it, you know. You simply turned and fired…instantaneous reflexes, no aiming. You simply turned and fired…bull’s-eye.”
Allen Jones joined them. “I owe you a dinner. Want to collect?”
“Mr. Jones…Mr. French.”
French thrust out his hand. “I know you, too, Mr. Jones. Knew you when you were a saddle-maker.”
“I made good saddles.” Allen J
ones spoke a little proudly. “There’s a great feeling in it,” he added. “Nothing better than turning a nice bit of work with good leather. I’ll come back to it some day.”
“Join us for dinner?” Cleve said to French.
“No, thanks. Got to be moving. Selling mules to folks bound for California, and I’ve about decided to go myself.” He turned to Cleve, putting his glass down on the bar. “Want to come along? You could do well out there.”
“I know when I’m well off. I’ll stay here.”
When Gabe French was gone, Jones turned to Cleve, chuckling. “Do you know who he is—that man you hired to pack you across the street? He’s the biggest stockdealer in this part of the country. He’s the richest man in town, if you skip old Choteau.”
“I can see why he’s rich,” Van Valen said. He put down his glass. “I’ll take that dinner now, Allen.”
“The food is better right here,” Jones said, “but the best show is down the street. There’s a new girl down there, just out from the East. She’s really lovely. Dances, sings like an angel, plays the accordion. Her name is Prescott, Lilith Prescott.”
*
THE THEATRE-RESTAURANT WAS crowded, but the waiter guided them to a table near the stage, for he recognized Allen Jones at once, and Cleve Van Valen was obviously cut from the same cloth.
Cleve glanced around, thinking wryly that if his present bad luck held he soon would no longer be able to afford meals in such a place, or the gambling in the rooms at the Planters’. He would be forced to work the wolf traps or snap houses on the bluff over the river.
Anything but that. Discontentedly he watched the girls on the stage. The dancing was not particularly good, but the swirl of their petticoats was enticing, and his discontent turned to half-amused interest.
The food was excellent, and the Chateau Margaux was a vintage wine. He relaxed slowly. Dick Hargraves, already notorious on the river, joined them, ordering a second bottle of wine. “Wait until you see Lily,” he said. “That girl’s got something special.”
Jones laughed. “Anybody can see that, but nobody seems able to find out how special it is.” He gestured. “Here she comes.”
Lilith moved with an easy, impudent grace. It was at once apparent that she had something the other girls did not have, for aside from her very real beauty and that impudence, she had style.
Her eyes swept the crowd, and she began to sing, leading the chorus in “Wait for the Wagon.” Her dancing was far better than Cleve had expected. Certainly, wherever she had learned, her instruction had been good. He sat up abruptly, refilled his glass from the bottle, and watched.
Cleve Van Valen, who had seen dancing in Paris, Vienna, and Rome, could see that she knew a great deal more than her present routine demanded. Somewhere, at some time, she had worked very hard to learn.
Curious, he watched her face. She was lost to all but the music…and then their eyes met. Hers held his just for an instant, then moved on away from him.
Had she really seen him? The footlights were not overly bright, so she might have been able to see, and he was close to the stage. He had a feeling that she had seen him and had in that instant catalogued both himself and his friends—drifters, gamblers, ne’er-do-wells.
“I say three at most,” Hargraves was saying.
“Three what?” Cleve asked.
“Petticoats…Jones thinks she is wearing at least four.”
“Four? I am sorry, gentlemen. She is wearing six.”
“Six!” Jones exclaimed. “You’re crazy, Van. It’s all that lace that fools you. She can’t be wearing more than four.”
Hargraves put down his glass. “You’d better not bet with him, Allen. From all I hear, Cleve’s an expert on everything pertaining to the female of the species. Anyway, there’s no way to prove it.”
“Look.” Cleve had scarcely taken his eyes from the girl on the stage. “I just stuck you for dinner, and don’t mind doing you in a little more. I will lay you an even hundred she has not less than six petticoats on.”
“How would you prove it?”
“Go backstage and find out. Is it a bet?”
“If I go with you to check.”
“Fair enough.” Cleve got up. “Let’s go!”
It was crowded backstage. Girls were coming and going in various stages of undress. There were no proper dressing rooms, simply shoulder-high screens, and behind each of these a girl was disrobing or changing costume.
Cleve Van Valen worked his way through the group with the assurance of a man to whom no situation is entirely strange, and the two gamblers followed.
Lilith Prescott was easy enough to find. She was behind a screen, only her head and the very top of her shoulders visible, while over her head hung an elaborate dress suspended by wires and prepared to be lowered about her. A wardrobe mistress stood outside the screen ready to take her clothing as it was removed.
Cleve looked across the screen at the girl’s pretty, somewhat flushed face and asked himself if he had really come backstage to satisfy a bet, or to see more of this girl? Was it because her glance seemed to have catalogued him and brushed him aside as of no importance? He smiled at the thought of his pride being injured by so slight a thing, but admitted that it nettled him. He was not, he believed, more than ordinarily vain, but he had been fortunate with the attentions of women, of all sorts and kinds…and after all, what sort of girl would be dancing in such a place?
As he hesitated, awaiting the proper moment to ask his question, he heard someone say, “Oh, I beg your pardon!”
Glancing around, he saw a middle-aged man moving somewhat diffidently through the backstage crowd. Obviously, he was both confused by the disorder and embarrassed by the visible extent of bare flesh and stockinged leg, but he persisted until he reached Lilith Prescott’s screen. Hesitantly, he said, “Miss Prescott? Miss Prescott?”
She did not even look up. “Later.”
“It’s quite important, Miss Prescott. I—”
“It’s always important. The older they are, the more important it becomes.”
A petticoat flopped over the edge of the screen, and Cleve lifted a finger.
“Miss Prescott, you misunderstand. I am Hylan Seabury, attorney in the matter of Jonathan Brooks.” Seabury paused. “Does he mean nothing to you?”
“That old goat?”
“Well,” Seabury said testily, “you evidently meant something to him. He included you in his will.”
She looked over the screen, startled. “He what” Her eyes went past Seabury, meeting those of Van Valen. She looked away.
A second petticoat flipped over the screen, then a third. Cleve’s fingers registered them as they appeared. “I’m going to win, gentlemen. Not less than six.”
As he spoke there was a momentary lull in the noise backstage and Seabury’s voice sounded loud in the partial silence.
“You will have to go to California, Miss Prescott, to take advantage of the bequest, but if I were you—”
“You’re not me. And I wouldn’t go to California if John Jacob Astor willed me all of San Francisco.” As she spoke the fourth petticoat flopped over the screen and was taken up by the wardrobe mistress.
Cleve’s fourth finger came up. “See? That makes four. And my bet was not less than six.”
“Mr. Astor has no such holdings in San Francisco, Miss Prescott. However, you will discover the yield from Mr. Brooks’s holding is not to be scorned. Definitely not.”
The fifth petticoat appeared atop the screen, and the men whose task it was to lower the ornate costume cleared their lines.
“That’s all, Mary. All right, boys.”
“All?”
“You heard me. That’s all!” She lifted her arms into the dress as it descended around her, moving her shoulders to settle the dress into place.
“Yield, you said. Yield of what?”
“Gold, Miss Prescott. In fact, I am advised the property is considered quite a good one. Now, if you would like to si
gn these papers—”
“Did you say…gold?”
“Precisely. The claim yielded thirty-five hundred dollars during the first week.”
Lilith glanced past Seabury at Cleve Van Valen, who was counting gold eagles into Jones’s outstretched hand. “You win,” Cleve said, “but damn it, I’d have sworn—”
“You did swear, but you lost. Not less than six, you said, and we all heard you.”
Dropping the last coin into Jones’s hand, Cleve heard Lilith saying, “For that much, I might even go to California.”
Disgusted with his luck, Cleve turned away, and as he walked off, Lilith flopped the sixth petticoat over the screen, then stuck out her tongue at his retreating back.
Chapter 8
*
NIGHT, AND A distant glow upon the sky…now, what would that be? Stars overhead, and somewhere, not too far off, a dog barking. No sound but the creak of his saddle and the clop-clop-clop of his horse’s hoofs. The air was cool, and he thought he could smell the river.
Cleve Van Valen knew he was seven kinds of a fool, starting off after a girl who might not even have come this way. Had he not heard her say she would not go to California? Still, when the lawyer mentioned gold she was interested…and so was he.
Cleve took a long, slow look at himself and did not like what he saw—a grown man who had wasted fourteen or fifteen years of his life gambling, and who was now searching for a girl simply because she had inherited a gold mine. And why? Because he hoped to marry her and so gain possession of the mine and its income.
There was little in the past of which he was proud, yet nothing of which he was actually ashamed; but if he did what he had set out to do there would be reason for shame. If he could manage it at all…and that was the joker in his little deck of cards, for Lilith Prescott had manifested not the slightest interest in him at any time.
She had glanced his way, seen him and the company he kept, and had ignored him from then on. And that was what rankled.
Novel 1963 - How The West Was Won (v5.0) Page 8