“He always needs it,” Nate sighed. “Where is he?”
She pointed toward a section of tables near the back of the room within spitting distance of the faro games. No more than that was needed since it would take a blind man to overlook Pete Meyer in just about any sort of crowd. The man’s wide back, thick shoulders and shaggy hair made him stand out even more among the group of well-dressed gamblers sitting at his table.
“How much is he in for?” Nate asked.
The barkeep picked up some dirty glasses and started wiping them off. “Couldn’t tell you about the gambling losses, but I hear they’re considerable. He owes me for a whole lot of drinks though.”
Nate thought back to the last few times he’d drank with Pete and sorted through the cash that was in his pocket. Handing over his closest guess plus a bit more, he asked, “Will this cover it?”
Taking the money, flipping through the bills and depositing them in the bank between her large breasts, she said, “Almost.”
“Damn. How long has he been playing?”
“Better part of two days.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” she chuckled. “That about sums up his run of luck.”
After downing the rest of his drink, Nate made his way through the saloon. He wasn’t about to lollygag but also didn’t stride right up to Pete’s table and demand a moment of his time. He’d had plenty of hard nights at the card tables, and Nate knew the last thing he would want is someone coming out of nowhere to give him a lecture or try to pull him away when his luck might be ready to take a turn for the better.
Pete’s face was covered in thick whiskers, which did next to nothing to hide the solemn frown he wore. That might have been somewhat telling if Pete weren’t so known to rarely do anything but frown. All Nate had to look at for the rest of the story were the stacks of chips in front of each man. Pete’s wasn’t the shortest stack, but two of the other men had enough chips in front of them to buy a sizeable portion of Texas.
Standing behind one of the empty chairs, Nate asked, “Mind if I sit in for a hand or two?”
The man who answered him sat directly across from Nate. He was slender, somewhere in his early thirties and had the chiseled features of someone who’d never had to do much to win a woman’s attention. He wore a suit cut from expensive dark-blue silk and spoke in a steely, subdued tone. “As long as you can cover your bets, you’re welcome to stay.”
To Nate’s right was a short man with thick, powder-white hair and a bulbous nose. Small, beady eyes gazed out at the world through thick spectacles. He wore a dark suit and matching top hat which gave him a stately air. Pete sat between him and the handsome younger fellow. To Nate’s immediate left was a man with a wide face, earnest eyes and tousled blond hair. Nate was suspicious of him almost immediately after having been burned too many times by baby-faced poker players.
While the blond man shuffled the cards, the gentleman in the blue suit said, “What’s your name, friend?”
“Nate Sathow.”
Pete had yet to respond to Nate with anything other than a half-interested glance.
The well-dressed man in blue said, “I’m Jim. The fellow beneath the top hat is Wilson. Sourpuss next to me is Pete and the dealer’s Owen.”
“No last names?” Nate asked.
“This ain’t a social gathering,” Pete growled. “We’re here to play cards and that,” he added while pointing a warning glare in Nate’s direction, “is all I care to do.”
“Seems like you’re doing pretty well for yourself,” Nate said.
“He would be doing just fine,” Owen said, “if he hadn’t borrowed all that money in front of him from me to cover his losses.”
Jim added, “And he’d be doing even better if he hadn’t also borrowed from me to cover his losses from before Owen sat down.”
Nate raised his eyebrows and looked over at Pete with genuine surprise. “Damn. You really aren’t doing too well.”
“What do you care, mister?” Owen asked. “You two know each other?”
“We’ve done some work together,” Pete said before Nate had a chance to say a word. “Ain’t nothin’ more than that.”
“Perhaps I could have a word with my friend here,” Nate said. “And then I can leave you gentlemen to your game.”
Jim slowly shook his head. “Afraid not, mister. You sat down, so you’re going to play.”
As he stared into Jim’s eyes, Nate saw a whole lot more than he’d seen a few moments ago. In fact, the longer he sat there, the more he felt like he was looking up at everyone else from within the jaws of a trap that had just been sprung. “What are you going to do if I get up and leave?” Nate asked.
“I’ll have my boys at the next table gut you so fast you’ll be staring down at your own innards before your ass leaves that chair.”
Nate’s hand was close to his holstered Remington. His body remained coiled like a spring as his eyes slowly surveyed the nearby tables. Sure enough, there were two men sitting at the one to his left who glared right back at him. Three more that were seated behind Pete shifted to look at Nate while showing the pistols laying across their knees.
“You come along to help Pete here?” Jim asked.
Nate shook his head and laughed uncomfortably when he said, “I just got into town. If you have business with him, I can leave you to it.”
Owen smirked. “That’s a real shitty way to treat a friend.”
“Yeah well, friend or not, you’re staying put,” Jim said like he was already holding a winning hand. “When our business is through, I’ll decide whether you walk out of here or get dropped into the same hole I’ve already dug out back for Pete.”
6
They were biding their time. The methods may have been heavy-handed and their precautions somewhat extreme, but that was all it boiled down to. In Nate Sathow’s line of work, he gained the most ground through a simple talent of getting to the root of something and figuring out what needed to be done. Of course, one of those tasks was often much simpler than the other.
“I need to get up,” Nate said.
“Why?” Owen grunted as he sorted the five cards in his hand.
“To stretch my legs. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour.”
“We been sitting here a hell of a lot longer than that!”
“Then you must have chamber pots under your chairs because I’ve got to take a piss.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
Nate slapped his cards facedown as if he meant to shove them through the table and into the floor. “Because I’m not in the habit of explaining myself to the likes of you!”
“For Christ’s sake,” Jim said. “There’s an outhouse in the alley. Avery will show you.”
“I don’t need an escort,” Nate said.
“And we don’t need to let you leave this table,” Jim hissed.
After a small bit of consideration, Nate shoved his chair back and stood up. “Fine then. Let’s go.”
Jim’s eyes darted down to Nate’s holster and back up again. “You’ve gone this far without trying anything stupid. Don’t get any ideas now.”
“You’ve got me covered front, back and at least one side. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
Whether Jim took any comfort from that was unclear. He eventually nodded to Avery who stepped over to Nate like the good attack dog he so obviously was. “This is nothing against you, Nate,” Jim said. “You just have bad timing is all. This thing here is almost over. Stick it through without a fuss and I may even pay you for your time.”
“Just let me keep my winnings. That should suffice.”
“Winnings?” Jim said through a chuckle. “That’s funny.”
When Nate turned away from the table, Avery was on his feet and standing directly behind him. Not only did Avery outweigh him by at
least sixty pounds, but his pistol was already drawn and held in an easy grip that kept the weapon near his side so as not to attract much attention.
“Your gun,” Avery said. “I’m taking it.”
Since there were still at least four other gun hands around him, not counting the other players at the table, Nate held his arms out to the sides and let the Remington be taken from him. “I was wondering when you might get around to that,” he said.
Avery stashed the Remington under his own gun belt and holstered the pistol he’d drawn. “Thought you might save me the trouble and do something stupid. Makes a mess, but at least I wouldn’t have to drag you to no shit house.”
“Well ain’t we both just inconvenienced?”
Pushing Nate in front of him, Avery herded him through the saloon toward a side door. Along the way, Nate spotted at least one familiar face sitting at one of the other poker games. He kept that bit of information to himself and quickly opened the saloon’s side door before he was shoved through it by the hulking gunman behind him.
The outhouse was large enough to serve the needs of a place the size of the Three Dog. It was wide as a closet and about four times as long. As Nate discovered when he pulled open the only door into the structure that meant it could contain four times the stench of a regular outhouse.
“You coming in with me?” Nate asked.
“If you wanna crawl away through one of them holes in the floor, be my guest,” Avery replied. He then stepped back so he could get a look at a pair of saloon girls tempting passersby while also watching the alley.
Nate entered the outhouse and shut the door. One quick glance was all he needed to confirm that there was only one easy way in or out. Half of the squalid chamber contained a long bench sectioned into a row of five holes. Two men sat doing their business. One of them appeared to have fallen asleep sometime while answering nature’s call. The other fellow stood facing the opposite wall which wasn’t much more than a low trough with a long slit at the bottom that emptied into a ditch beneath the shack. After draining his bladder, that man wheeled around to walk past Nate and get back to whatever pleasures he’d put on hold inside the saloon.
The conditions were far from ideal, but at least Nate had a moment to himself so he could think. Also, it wasn’t just a ruse that had drawn him away from the table. He stood at the trough and stared at the rotting wall directly in front of him. Within seconds, the entire shack rattled on its base as the door was opened so another man could step inside. He was dressed in black and stood directly beside Nate between him and the door.
“Naturally,” Nate grumbled. “A man can’t get a moment’s peace.”
“If you’d rather,” Frank replied, “I can leave. Thought you might appreciate a word. Isn’t that why you came out here?”
“Partly.”
“What’s going on in there? At first, I thought it was an ill-advised impulse that brought you to that card game but when I went to check on you I saw the armed men watching that table.”
“Pete’s in trouble,” Nate said. “The men running that game don’t want him to leave for some reason and I’m fairly certain they intend on killing him after they’re through.”
“Through with what?”
“Don’t know yet. But I’d wager those men inside are the only ones we need to worry about.”
“I didn’t see anyone overly suspicious outside the saloon,” Frank said, “but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“If they had more men, they wouldn’t be so hell-bent on keeping us at that table.”
Frank knew better than to question his partner’s instincts on such things. Those instincts were what separated Nate from the common variety of bounty hunter. “I sent Grey in for a look as well,” he said.
“I saw him in there,” Nate replied. “Playing poker. Tell him to be ready.”
“For anything in particular or just the general readiness?”
“When I make my move, I’ll need you both to follow my lead. We’ll have to move quick and bring them all down at once before they get a chance to put a bullet into me or Pete. Or you, for that matter.”
“That saloon is a fairly public place for an execution,” Frank said.
“All those dandies will have to do is accuse me or Pete of cheating and they’ll be justified in shooting us.”
The entire shack trembled as an impatient fist thumped against the door. “Hurry it up!” Avery said from outside.
The thumping was enough to rouse the man who’d fallen asleep. He snapped to attention, stood up and started grasping clumsily for his britches. “I’m comin’, Margaret, I’m comin’!” he slurred.
Although the drunk seemed to be in a hurry, it was the man who’d been sitting on the bench to his right that got to the door first and hurried outside.
Having finished his business, Nate made himself presentable for the outside world and whispered, “Whatever happens, see to it the man in the blue suit stays alive.”
“I’d prefer if you all stayed alive,” Frank said earnestly.
Nate gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. “I know, Shep. That’s what makes you a better man than me.” He left the outhouse and was immediately grabbed by Avery who slammed him against a wall.
“Just checking to see if you grabbed anything other than your pecker in there,” Avery said while patting Nate down. Once he was satisfied that Nate hadn’t found a weapon hidden somewhere amid the filth, Avery spun Nate around and shoved him toward the door that led back into the saloon.
Without wasting a second, Nate spun around and slapped aside Avery’s hand before delivering a sharp jab to the other man’s stomach. Having already sized up his opponent, Nate knew better than to think that single blow would do the trick so he followed up with three more. His fists landed in a series of solid thumps against muscle that felt like bricks wrapped in a shirt and vest. Avery grunted as he absorbed the punches, which didn’t stop him from reaching for his holster.
Not only did Nate get to Avery’s gun first, but he also retrieved his Remington from where it had been stashed. Jamming both barrels into Avery’s midsection, Nate said, “Tell me what’s going on with Pete and those assholes at the card table.”
“Go to hell.”
“You really want to die for a dandy wrapped in a blue suit?”
It didn’t take long for Avery to come up with an answer to that. Sneering down at Nate, he said, “The owner of the Three Dog hired Pete to find who’s been stealing from every saloon in town. He found out who it was, but not before he got caught.”
“Caught by Jim?” Nate asked. “He’s the one running the outfit, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And Jim caught Pete while Pete was tracking him down?”
“Yeah.”
Nate scowled at the other man. Even more questions were coming to mind, but he knew he didn’t have enough time to ask them all. “What’s going on at that card game?”
“There’s one more saloon robbery on Jim’s slate,” Avery said. “It’s a big one and he’s not about to let Pete ruin it by talking to any law or causing a ruckus that will draw attention to what’s going on.”
“And what happens once the job is through?”
“Hell if I know.”
Nate jammed the gun barrels in deeper as if he meant to dig two holes through the other man’s torso. Thumbing back the hammers to get his point across, he said, “The hell you don’t know. You aim to kill him.”
“It’s Jim’s idea,” Avery spat. “His plan. His call on whether Pete lives or dies. What’s important is that plenty of folks see him at that game when the robbery is taking place so nobody can pin it on him and haul him away to jail.”
“He’s getting hauled away, all right,” Nate growled. “If not to jail, then his carcass will be shot full of holes and hauled into a grave.” Befo
re he could get much further along those lines, Nate felt a hand come to a gentle rest upon his shoulder.
“Easy, Nate,” Frank said. “Let’s not attract any undue suspicion ourselves.”
“Too late for that.”
“Not as such. So far, we can be passed off as three men settling a disagreement. You go into that saloon guns blazing and we’ll have to come up with a few answers of our own.”
“I can handle that,” Nate assured him.
“That tin you carry may not cut it if you show it while surrounded by a stack of dead bodies.”
Avery was starting to show some hope thanks to Frank’s intervention, but Nate put a stop to that by pressing one of the gun barrels beneath his chin. Nate’s glare left no room for doubt that he would pull the trigger if it came down to it.
“Who hired Pete to track down your employer?” Frank asked.
“The barkeep,” Avery replied. “That woman with the nice, juicy—”
“I know the one you’re talking about,” Frank cut in. “And where is the place that’s set to get robbed?”
“Across town,” Avery said. “Place called the Wagon Rut.”
“I saw that saloon when I came into town,” Nate said. “Didn’t look like any sort of place worth robbing.”
“No, but the card game held in the back room sure is.”
“We can go there to have a look for ourselves,” Frank said. “And if this one is lying . . .”
Nate took a step back from the larger man. “If he’s lying then he won’t ever wake up.” With that, he snapped the pistol beneath Avery’s jaw straight up and followed up by cracking the pistol against his temple. Avery dropped like a sack of rocks and Nate holstered his Remington. “They’ll be expecting us back inside soon.”
“I doubt we’ll be gone long,” Frank said. “Since you seem to scout every place that serves liquor as soon as you ride into a town, I’m assuming you know a quick route to the Wagon Rut.”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll go there and brew up some trouble for your friend Jim.”
Nate’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What sort of trouble?”
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