Gambling Man

by Clifton Adams

  And when Lilie died...

  He remembered that day all too well; all the grief and helpless rage that had followed him down the years. His wife was dead. The baby—his son—had killed her. In the darkness of his soul he had craved violence, he had longed to lash out and cause hurt, as he had, been hurt. But how could a man hurt a baby; how could a man direct all the hate in his brain against his own new-born son? Yet Nathan could not bear to look at that small, red face; so he had left Plainsville and his son behind, taking his wildness and rage with him.

  But now he was back.

  He sat at one of Surratt's plank tables riffling a deck of cards over and over in his hands, waiting for someone to come in and start a game. It was a slow way to make a living, being a gambler in a place like Plainsville.

  If it wasn't for the boy, he thought, I'd pack up and leave right now!

  He'd have to keep clear of the New Mexico country, of course, because he'd heard the marshals were looking for him over there. But there were plenty of other places. If worst came to worst he could always head back for Sonora or Chihuahua—or Indian Territory. The Federal court at Fort Smith wasn't as powerful as it used to be, so the Territory might be a pretty good place.

  But Nathan could hardly believe the hold his son had got on him. He had not been prepared to find so much of Lilie in the boy. Even now, after all these years, the sound of her name could squeeze his heart dry, leaving him bloodless and cold, savage with loneliness.

  Bert Surratt, the only other person in the place, came over to Nathan's table and took a chair. The saloonkeeper was a beefy man in his late fifties, an early settler.

  “Slow today.”

  “Every day's slow.”

  “Maybe Plainsville will get the railroad,” the saloonkeeper speculated. “There's been talk in that direction.”

  “It's just talk,” Nathan said. “Why would a railroad want to lay track out here to the very center of God's nowhere?”

  Surratt shrugged. “Well, there's still plenty of cattle around here, if you can get to them through the barbed wire. The town would make a fine shipping center for this part of Texas.”

  Nathan gazed without interest at the dirty, flyspecked mirror behind the bar. “Don't you believe it. Plainsville will go on dying until some day they'll have to bury it to keep it from smelling.”

  The saloonkeeper looked indignant, although he cursed the town himself for running off the cattle trade. “Now if Plainsville's as bad as all that, why did you come back, Nate?”

  Nathan smiled thinly and shrugged. “It's a long story, Bert. Have you got some black coffee over there in that pot?”

  The saloonkeeper was annoyed with Nate Blaine. Oh, he'd heard the stories that had been circulating about Nate killing a man in New Mexico—and maybe that wasn't the only one, either. Bert wasn't sure that he liked having a man like that sitting in his saloon day after day taking hard-earned money from the squatter men. Not that he cared for squatters, but they were the only customers he had, just about.

  Groaning, Bert lifted himself from his chair and tramped heavily to the end of the bar where he kept the coffee hot over a coal-oil lamp.

  And there was another thing he didn't like, Bert thought as he poured the muddy liquid into two thick cups. Plainsville had got over the notion that a man had to have a gun strapped around his middle every time he stepped out of the house. Not many of his customers were heeled these days. He was afraid Nate was going to scare all his trade away.

  No doubt about it, Blaine could look plenty dangerous when he wanted to, with that revolver tied down on his right thigh like a Territory gun, and the way he looked at you out of those dark eyes.

  If he had his way about it, Bert would just as soon have Nate take his business someplace else.

  Surratt put the crock mugs on the table and eased into the chair again. The two men sipped at the scalding coffee, thinking their own thoughts.

  It's kind of a funny thing, Bert mulled, that the Sewells would keep a case like Nate Blaine in their house. It was the boy, he guessed. They'd raised the kid like one of their own, and he had heard that kids could get a grip on you if you didn't watch them, like a good horse or a hunting dog. Maybe Wirt and Beulah were afraid Nate would take the boy away if they got his back up.

  Well, it was none of his business, Bert decided. As long as Nate behaved himself and didn't start any trouble, he guessed it wouldn't hurt much to have him sitting around the saloon. It wasn't likely that some tanked-up cowhand would come in on the prod, like they used to do.

  Nathan Blaine riffled the cards in his strong, lean fingers. Phil Costain, the drayman, came in, and Surratt had to get up again to wait on him.

  “Howdy, Blaine,” Phil said from the bar.

  Nathan nodded. He did not ask Costain to the table, for the drayman would only be full of questions. Since his arrival in Plainsville, Nathan had had his fill of questions, spoken and unspoken. He knew it would be smart to pack his revolver away in a saddlebag and leave it there, but he'd be damned if he would go about half undressed just because some squatters became uneasy at the sight of a gun.

  One thing he had to be proud of, anyway; his son was not afraid of guns. He had been working with the boy just a few days, and already the kid could handle the Colt's as well as a lot of men Nathan could mention.

  Jeff had a knack with guns and horses—and with cards, too, for that matter. Nathan smiled quietly to himself, remembering back two days when he had been showing the boy some card tricks in the Sewell parlor. Beulah Sewell had caught him at it, and you'd have thought that Satan himself had put an evil spell on the kid, from the way she had taken on....

  “What time is it, Bert?” Nathan called to the saloonkeeper.

  Surratt looked at the big key-wound watch that he carried in his vest pocket. “Gettin' on toward four, Nate.” Almost time for the academy to let out, Nathan thought. He blocked the deck of cards that he had been riffling, and slipped them into his shirt pocket. He paid Surratt for the coffee and walked out.

  Since coming to Plainsville, Nathan had set a schedule for himself that the citizens could set their watches by. At nine in the morning he rode with Jeff to the academy, then he left the horses in the public corral and took a table in Surratt's place, where he stayed until a few minutes before four. At four o'clock Nathan took his black and Jeff's bay mare out of the corral. He walked the horses up to the head of Main Street, where the boy would meet him.

  “Now look here, Nate,” Wirt Sewell had told him a day or so after he had started this schedule. “Jeff's got work to do at the tin shop, and he has to do it after school. A boy can't spend all his free time riding horseback and doing as he pleases.”

  Nathan had fixed his dark stare on Wirt and said, “Jeff's my boy. I figure I've got a say in what he can do and what he can't.”

  “He's living under my roof!” Wirt said angrily.

  “I can take him out from under your roof. Is that what you and Beulah want?”

  Wirt Sewell had melted like wax. He had blinked in disbelief and the features of his face seemed to run together. That had been the last Nathan had heard about Jeff's working in the tin shop.

  Now Nathan waited with the horses at the watering trough in front of Baxter's store. Pretty soon he saw Jeff coming toward him, up the dusty side street from the clapboard schoolhouse.

  This was the moment that Nathan waited for, that first sight of his son coming to meet him. The first day or two there had been other boys with him, excited and green with envy when they saw that glossy bay that Jeff could ride whenever he felt like it. It had given Nathan a warm feeling of pleasure to see his son sitting proud as a prince on that horse while the other boys danced like excited urchins around his feet.

  But the other boys had stopped coming. Sometimes the Wintworth boy would come with Jeff as far as Jed Harper's bank, but he would turn off there and head for home without giving the horse or Nathan a second glance.

  Nathan Blaine was not blind; he
knew what had happened. He did not know how his reputation had reached all the way to Plainsville, but he did know that it had. He could tell by the uneasy way people sidled away from him. He suspected that Beulah Sewell had started the gossip herself without a speck of evidence, but there was no way of proving it. Anyway, he didn't give a damn what these people thought about him. And neither did Jeff.

  The boy was a Blaine. He didn't need anybody to lean on.

  But as Nathan waited by the watering trough he thought that there was not quite the spring to the boy's step that there had been before. He looked lonesome, plodding barefoot in the deep red dust of the street.

  “You look like you had a hard day,” Nathan said, grinning faintly.

  “It was all right.”

  “Would you like to ride up to Crowder's Creek with me?”

  “I don't care,” Jeff said, stroking the bay's glossy neck.

  At that moment Nathan could see so much of Lilie in the boy that his arms ached to reach out and hold his son hard against him. But, of course, a twelve-year-old boy would never stand for a thing like that.

  At that moment Nathan had a flash of inspiration. He said, “What do you say we let the horses stand a while? I just thought of some business I have to take care of.”

  The boy looked completely crestfallen until his pa said gently, “You come along, Jeff. The business has to do with you.”

  Nathan stepped up to the plank walk and Jeff followed, puzzled. Side by side they walked along the store fronts, and they could have been the only two people in the world for all the attention they paid the curious eyes that followed them from behind plate-glass windows. Nathan stopped in front of Matt Fuller's saddle shop, which was mostly a harness shop now that squatter trade had taken over the town.

  Jeff's eyes widened as his pa turned in and motioned for him to follow. They walked into a rich smell of tanned leather. On the walls of Fuller's shop there hung horse collars of all sizes, and all kinds of leather harnesses and rigging. The floor was littered with scraps of leather and wood shavings; two naked saddletrees stood on a bench, and there were boot lasts and knives and all kinds of tools for the cutting and trimming and dressing and tooling of leather.

  When they walked into the shop a bell over the front door jangled and Matt Fuller came up front to see what they wanted.

  “I want some boots made,” Nathan said.

  Matt squinted over the steel rims of his spectacles. He was a wrinkled, white-haired little man who had been up in years when he first came to Plainsville fifteen years ago. But his hands were still good and strong and he was a fine leather worker when he got hold of a job that pleased him.

  “You want 'em made like the ones you're wearin'?” Matt said. When Nathan said yes, the old man took his arm and led him over to where the light was better and studied the boots carefully.

  “In front,” Nathan said, “I want them to come about an inch short of the knee, right where the shin bone ends. The back should be cut about an inch lower. The vamps must be made of the thinnest, most pliable leather, and the tops of your best kid.”

  “I ain't blind,” the old man snapped. “T can see bow they're made. Well, you'll have to let me measure your foot. And if you want fancy stitchin' or colored insets, that'll cost you extra.”

  “I guess the fixin's will be up to the boy,” Nathan said quietly. “The boots are for him.”

  The old saddlemaker snapped his head around, peering incredulously at Nathan. “Bench-made boots? For that boy?”

  Jeff could hardly believe that he had heard his pa correctly. Boots of that kind were very expensive, and he had never known a boy his age having a pair made just for him. Such extravagance would appall the citizens of Plainsville. Quality boots were made to last for years; all except the thin soles, of course, which had to be replaced from time to time.

  Matt Fuller snapped, “I ain't in no mood for foolishness, mister. A boy like him would grow out of his boots in no time. Then what'll you do?”

  “Then,” Jeff's pa said mildly, “I'll have you make another pair.” Nathan saw the glow of pleasure in his son's eyes and knew that he was doing the right thing.

  Matt Fuller didn't take to this idea of spoiling a sprout of a boy with fancy footgear. It was a criminal waste of money. But, after all, he was in the business, and he went grumbling to his bench and gathered up the tools he needed for measuring and fitting.

  “Make those vamps snug,” Nathan said as the old man made a paper cutout to fit the instep of the boy's foot. “And the arch high,” Nathan added.

  The saddlemaker snorted. “He won't be able to walk from here to the bank buildin'!”

  “Riding boots were never meant to walk in,”' Jeff's father answered.

  To Jeff, it was as unreal as a dream, but better than any dream he could remember. The old man didn't slight him just because he was a boy. When Matt Fuller made a pair of boots, he made them right; and besides, Jeff's pa was right there to see that he didn't get shorted.

  “Now, how about the fixin's?” Nathan asked, when the measuring was done.

  “Could I have my initials stitched in red thread?”

  “Absolutely,” Nathan smiled. “You want some do-dad stitchin'? Say a quilted pattern, or maybe a butterfly?”

  It was a temptation, but Jeff decided he would rather have them like his pa's. Soft black kid from toe to tops.

  At last they got it all settled with old Matt. It would take him two weeks to get them finished, the saddlemaker said, and Jeff didn't think he could possibly stand to wait that long. Already he was impatient to feel the tight fit of soft leather on his feet, but he didn't show it any more than he had to.

  But just wait till Todd Wintworth and the others saw him in a pair of real bench-made boots! They'd be sick with envy, the whole bunch!

  It was an odd thing, Nathan Blaine was thinking, how the glow in a boy's eyes could melt the winter in a man's soul. He guessed that he hadn't felt so good about a thing since the day he and Lilie were married.

  He never should have run off, he thought, the way he had twelve years ago. But all that was in the past. Now he was determined to give the boy the best that was in him, teach him everything he knew.

  It was a month to the day since Nathan Blaine had ridden unannounced and unwelcomed into Plainsville. Beulah Sewell had just brought in an armful of wood for the cookstove, and was stacking it neatly in the woodbox when Wirt came in the kitchen door. Beulah peered out the window and saw that the sun was almost an hour high.

  “You locked shop early,” she accused her husband.

  Wirt walked heavily across the kitchen and sat at the oilcloth-covered table. Only then did Beulah notice the bleakness of Wirt's eyes, the prominence of worry lines around his mouth.

  “Oughtn't Jeff be bringing that wood in for you?” Wirt asked.

  Beulah snorted. “Jeff Blaine's got too big for chores,” she said bitterly. “All he thinks about is rubbing his new boots and horseback riding.”

  “That ain't all he thinks about,” Wirt said.

  That was when Beulah Sewell knew that something was wrong. She turned to her husband, brushing stovewood chips from her apron. “What do you mean, Wirt?”

  He moved uncomfortably on his chair, and Beulah could see that he was beginning to wish that he had never brought it up. But she waited patiently, and at last he started: “Probably it's nothing at all.” And that was the worst thing he could have said. All bad news, it seemed to Beulah, started with “probably it's nothing at all.”

  “What I mean—”

  Wirt tried again— “I got to talking with Marshal Blasingame, and somehow the subject of Nathan and Jeff came up—”

  “I knew it!” Beulah said. “Nathan Blaine's in some kind of terrible trouble! I knew it the minute I laid eyes on him, when he came riding up here that day as big as you please, with that rifle on his saddle. I never saw the revolver at first, may the Lord help me, or I never would have let him in my house.”

 
“Beulah, Beulah,” her husband said wearily, “it's nothing like that at all. Leastwise, if Nate's in trouble, Elec Blasingame knows nothing about it.”

  “Well, he ought to. There's plenty of talk!”

  “But it's only talk,” Wirt said patiently. “When the railroad comes, and the telegraph, Elec will be able to track down what talk he hears, but not now. Anyway, what he was telling me is something entirely different.”

  “Well, don't keep me in the air!” Beulah said. “Can't you come right out and say whatever it is?”

  “I'm trying, Beulah. Well, the talk got around to Nate and Jeff, like I said, and Elec mentioned that he'd been up toward Crowder's Creek and had seen them there.”