by Yvonne Jocks
Jack took another draw on his cigarette, then started shuffling the cards—not a new deck, but unmarked; he'd made sure— and then noticed Early watching. The youth's shaggy bowl haircut, his bone structure too strong for his young face, and his eyes somehow dull and enthralled at the same time, al told of a boy with more appetite than sense.
Jack reminded himself that nobody had the right to make the boy's decisions but the boy. No other way to learn. “You in?”
“You just... you just lost twenty-three dollars.” Early considered the pot he'd lost. “That's over a hunnerd dollars in all . In one hand.” So much for his ciphering abilities. He'd forgotten to deduct the twenty-three dollars the winner had put in himself.
Jack said, “It's only money,” and, along with the other three, anted up.
“See here,” said the banker. “Either you sit in, boy, or you go loiter elsewhere. This isn't school.”
Then he laughed. “But it is a school night.”
Jack grinned. Even that Ham fellow's cheek twitched. The old farmer laughed again. And Early set his jaw with the stubborn look of a bull calf fixing to get into trouble.
Then Ham said, “We're both heading back Candon way. He'd best not leave til I do.”
Jack's attention focused sharply. Candon way, was it?
“I can get home without your help,” Early protested.
“But can Hamilton get home without yourn?” said the dairy farmer with a cackle.
Jack looked closer at the quiet fellow from Candon—Hamilton. He seemed fair to steady, for someone who might be stewed, but some men just got quiet like that.
“Go roll yourself a smoke, son,” Jack suggested, to ease some of the tensions around the crate, and offered the remnants of his makings to Early. “Won't likely be much longer.”
The old man said, “Think that way if you're of a mind, stranger.”
But at least the boy was persuaded to go sit on a barrel in the corner and occupy himself with none-too-dexterous attempts at building a cigarette. He'd have an easier time of it if one of the barn cats didn't “help” with a swiping paw now and then. That the boy only nudged the animal away with one square-toed boot, instead of venting his frustration on the cat, spoke well of him.
“Rode through Candon just t'other day,” Jack admitted sociably—and for a moment, as he set down the deck for a cut, he saw large gray eyes, sorrel-colored hair, and the finest smile this side of heaven. Miss Garrison, the gal had written on her blackboard. Jack couldn't recollect the name of the last woman he'd known, in the Biblical sense, back in New Orleans. But the proper little schoolmarm who had barely brushed his fingers with hers and who had called him sir... well, he suspected he'd remember her for some time. Miss Garrison.
When he blinked away the memory to deal the cards, he noticed for the first time just how danged smoky the place had gotten. It made him feel a mite empty inside, all of a sudden.
“Small town,” he noted to Hamilton, to explain his interest. “Five-card draw, one-eyed jacks are wild.” Even if the lady hadn't begged his secrecy, which she most eloquently had, he would not do her the insult of mentioning her in what amounted to a saloon.
But the powerful urge to do so, to learn something about her or at least prove he'd met someone like that, surprised him.
Ham said, “Oh, Candon's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.”
Jack focused fully on his hand, particularly on that saucy queen of hearts that usual y brought him so much luck. The old man, ripe with his winnings, opened with a hefty fifteen dollars, and the game got interesting fast, until the farmer called at seventy-five.
Early, now smoking a sorry excuse for a hand-rolled cigarette, risked the banker's wrath by coming closer to watch. Jack raised ten. Hamilton saw the ten and raised three. A relatively small bet, compared to the rest, but he hadn't called. Interesting mixture of caution and risk.
The old farmer spat and folded. Fast come, fast go.
The banker started to sweat some as he matched the other raises to stay in.
I would be disinclined to have you as my banker, thought Jack. He matched Ham's raise with a three-dollar coin and slid the last of his paper money out of his vest pocket. “How's twenty more?”
Young Early said, “That's . . . !” But he apparently couldn't manage the arithmetic. A family in these parts could live well for a year off this combined pot, assuming anyone saw his raise.
Hamilton whistled through his teeth, thought a minute, and said, “How about credit?”
Tarnation. Therein lay the danger of closing saloons; in a back room of even as prosperous a burg as Bedford, folks could bet only so high. "Now you seem like a nice enough fellow, friend, but I make it a policy not to extend credit."
“But I do make it a policy,” Hamilton explained. "I run the mercantile in Candon. Let me see your raise with twenty dollars' credit in my store. Twenty-five, since it's not cash money. I could write the voucher out for you right now."
Jack hesitated. He figured he could take the pot either way; getting Hamilton to fold would just minimize the competition. But he didn't play so much for the money as the gamble. And winning merely by being better staked than a small-town shopkeeper offered no gamble at all .
Not to mention that he liked the looks of this Hamilton fellow. The glazed desperation that had played across young Early's face found no purchase on Hamilton's. While some might see that as cause to minimize the man's losses, Jack saw it as reason to give the man the respect of a free rein —he admired little more than watching a fellow take an open-eyed risk.
Not to mention that doing some marketing in Candon would give him an excuse to double back to the place, maybe catch glimpse, of that pretty Miss Garrison one more time.
“I'm of a mind to accept, if our associate here will,” he decided, with a nod to the banker.
“Might as well,” agreed the banker, a touch flinty. “I go through Tarrant now and then.”
“But I do call,” added Hamilton, drawing from his pocket a brown cigarette paper and a stubby pencil to write out the promised voucher.
“And I,” added the banker, drawing one more note out of his now apparently bare wallet, “raise it another twenty.”
Hamilton, who'd started writing, grunted and crossed out the number he'd just written.
Jack, not liking the banker's satisfaction, said, “Well , don't you got rocks in your pocket.”
The banker said, “If you can't match it, stranger, I expect you'll just have to fold.”
Oh. One of those. He'd noticed that Jack's previous bet had emptied his pocket. How downright observant of him.
Rube. If they were playing three-card monte, Jack would own him by now. He slid his gaze back to Hamilton. “Best write fifty, if you mean to match it. I call.”
The storekeeper met his gaze, then glanced back at the scrap of paper and began to write again. "I reckon I can give fifty dollars' credit easy as I can twenty-five."
The banker looked nervous all of a sudden. “You gotta match the bet to cal , stranger.”
Exactly—which was why he hadn't called before. Jack leaned back in his chair and hiked his foot on one knee, to better reach into his boot in full sight. It made for a healthier retrieval, in a tense situation like this, but the banker still said, “You're not going for a gun, are you?”
Well, didn't that perk up everyone's ears? "Now what kind of an idiot would keep a gun in his footwear?" And Jack plunked his emergency fifty-dollar gold piece on the table, then took back thirty dollars of the paper money he had already bet. “Fear I'll have to make change.”
Early, staring, started into his refrain of, “That's ... !”
“It's a fifty-dollar slug, son,” informed Jack, patience running low. He could've raised the pot another thirty, but if the banker had much more money stashed on him, too, Jack would end up betting his gold watch. He hesitated to chance his Jürgensen. “It was also a call.”
Hamilton finished his vouche
r for store credit, put it into the pile in the middle of the table, and slid his gaze to the banker. “You raised last.”
The banker tried a grin, but what with nobody else folding under his pressure, it didn't come out as cocky as he had likely hoped. He showed his hand—four aces. When the storekeeper discarded his cards facedown, out, the banker's grin started to regain its confidence.
Then Jack turned his hand—a straight flush, all hearts except for that handsome one-eyed jack of spades, filling in for a king high.
“You low-down cardsharp!” The banker rose as if to lunge at Jack. “You chea—”
But he stopped at the single-shot derringer pointed at him. Jack's patience had at last run out. "I said I didn't carry a gun in my boot,“ he noted. ”I said nothing about my sleeve."
“Those aren't legal in this town.” But the fellow had lost the worst of his swagger, anyhow. Funny how an up-close view of a muzzle did that to a man.
Jack smiled. “Unlike drinking and gambling.”
Hamilton's low, “Go home, Bennet,” finished it. High time, too. Folks like that took al the fun out of the game.
As soon as the banker headed out, Jack seated himself and slid the derringer back into his sleeve—
that spring-loaded holdout had paid for itself many times over. Then he gathered his winnings, not bothering to count. The only paper his attention lingered on, amid a handful of bills, read: This voucher entitles the bearer to fifty U.S. dollars' worth of merchandise in the Candon Mercantile, Tarrant County, Texas. Signed: Ferris Hamilton.
Jack had little use for fifty dollars' worth of merchandise, considering the lack of space in Queen's saddlebags. But he couldn't simply dismiss the voucher. It would be poor business, and an insult to a stand-up fellow like Hamilton besides.
Although Ferris Hamilton seemed to have a touch of difficulty in standing up. That jug beside him looked to be lifting a sight lighter than the last time Jack had noticed. Achieving his feet, Hamilton stared at Jack for a moment, then said, “Thanks for keeping that bastard honest.”
Jack smiled one of his first true and honest smiles of the evening. "I look forward to seein' your establishment." And maybe a few other of the local sights as well.
The pup, Early, stared at Jack with something akin to worship. “You just won ... !”
But Hamilton interrupted his latest attempt at ciphering with a hand on the back of his neck.
“Come on, Early. Your folks catch you out, they might think I had somethin' to do with it.” As the two of them left, Ham swayed. The man was definitely in his cups.
Jack, who'd already gotten leave from the dairy farmer to sleep in his barn that night, didn't like that he hadn't recognized Ferris Hamilton's condition. Playing against drunks lessened his pleasure in winning and downright annoyed him when he lost.
He took a bracing swallow of tonsil varnish from the tin can on the crate and reminded himself that men had the God-given right to ruin their lives in whatever manner they saw fit. Nobody ever kept good sense or a good conscience without challenging it now and again—
Suddenly something walloped the wall , something big enough and heavy enough that Jack spun toward it and almost released his holdout derringer again.
The old farmer said, “Sakes alive!” and started toward the door.
Then young Early appeared. “Ham's horse just throwed him! I think he's hurt bad.”
It didn't take much curiosity for Jack to find himself outside in the chill October night. Sure enough, there lay Hamilton. His groans indicated he'd survived, but from the angle of his leg, he'd not survived in full working order.
Well. Tarnation. Tempted to vanish back into the barn and go to sleep, Jack hesitated. The man would need a doctor. Doctors charged a fee. And Jack had all the fellow's cash.
Not that this was Jack's problem.
Except... if this Hamilton fellow lost his store, Jack might lose fifty dollars of credit.
He sighed. Nobody waited for him in Fort Worth. Hell's Half-Acre never really closed.
When he went back into the barn for the jug, it was not to avoid the excitement but to bring the liquor out as a painkiller... and an indication of his own grudging assistance. Only for the merchandise, he told himself. And maybe one last peek at that schoolmarm.
After that, whether or not this drunken fool killed himself was the sole business of the drunken fool.
Another class day almost over. Audra tried not to will the minutes by more quickly. Candon had given her a job when Sheridan, Wyoming, had revoked their offer. She owed them her best effort.
A full day's work for a full day 'spay, her father always said.
Thus she made herself walk to the back of the classroom again, where the biggest of the big children sat. She took measured steps, kept her back straight and dignified as if she were taller, older ... a better teacher in general. Until she improved, she could pretend competence.
She hoped.
So far, so good. Even those pupils sharing their blue-backed spellers or slates worked quietly.
Nobody had hidden a dime novel in his textbook, not since yesterday with Deadwood Dick's Doom, now incarcerated in Audra's drawer. And any moment now, it would be time to—
Audra paused, her attention caught by ... what? She sniffed. For a moment her heart quickened with irrational delight. Papa?
Then she realized the full impact of what she had scented. Not her father; he and home remained as far away as ever. No, Audra distinctly smelled tobacco. One of her pupils had been smoking!
Cigarettes?
She glanced at the girls' side of the aisle, but they did not smell of tobacco smoke. Claudine, edging her slate away from the Parker girl, ignored Audra. Melissa, seated with Emily Calloway in back, slid a half-apologetic, half-sympathetic gaze up at her. Apparently Melissa had suspected the breach of conduct as well but, loyal to the other pupils, had remained silent.
Slowly Audra turned to the boys' side. There, in the back desk, sat her culprits. Jerome Newton's shoulders shook slightly, much though he attempted to control them, and Early Rogers' face was flushed plum. And they smelled like a bunkhouse.
Audra had obviously failed in her supervision at recess. Now her stomach sank. Not only must she discipline a boy bigger and older than herself, but she must handle two!
“Jerome, Early,” she said, her voice inadequate to her ears. “You wil remain after class. Melissa, please tell my aunt that I'll be several more minutes. The rest of you are dismissed.”
She turned back to her desk as her pupils fled. Were she teaching younger children, she might linger at the coat hooks to tie cloaks securely under little chins, remind sweet babies not to forget their lunch pails. But Aunt Heddy had the first levels, and thus far Audra had failed to inspire anything approaching her own love of knowledge, even in pupils closer to her age. She could not ride hard on them well enough to prevent such blatant misconduct as smoking!
Al too soon, only Jerome and Early remained.
“Come up front,” instructed Audra. Once both boys had shuffled closer, they stood almost a foot taller than she and who knew how much wider. They attended school only when their families'
farming duties ran light. That meant neither was as far along in his lessons as the girls. In a week, Audra had sensed in them a restlessness she despaired of ever taming. But it was her job.
The boys shifted their weight uncomfortably, staring at the floor—but from her vantage she could still see their faces. Jerome looked downright amused.
Before she had fully planned it, her question burst out of her. “How could you?”
“How could we what?” asked Jerome, his mouth twitching.
Early, still flushed red, said, “You know what, Newton.”
Jerome's mouth stopped twitching. “Way to bluff, Rogers!”
“Boys!” This time, heaven help her, Audra actually stomped her foot. At least that got their attention. “You both reek of tobacco. You must know that smoking is not al owed a
t school. It is a coarse, vulgar habit and ... and it sets a poor example for the younger children!”
She remembered that her first thought, on smelling that particular smoke, had been of her father.
That was different. Papa was a cattleman. More important, of course, he was an adult.
“What can you do about it?” challenged Jerome—and meeting his unashamed gaze, Audra felt a stab of fear for something more immediate than her character. There were two of them, and only one of her. And everyone else had gone ...
She said firmly, desperately, “I shall have to punish you.”
“Yes, ma'am,” mumbled Early.
Jerome snorted and said, “How?”
The schoolroom door opened. Audra, Jerome, and Early all started at the interruption, and Melissa
—slipping apologetically back in—appeared fully aware of her intrusion.
“I'm sorry, Miss Garrison,” she said. “Mrs. Cribb told me to wait here and to walk home with you.”
For once Audra welcomed her aunt's interference.
“She said . . .” Melissa glanced nervously at the boys, then back at Audra. “She said to tell you not to be too long.”
“That is quite all right,” Audra said, stronger for the support.
“For your punishment,” she decided, "you must each write a composition on the importance of following rules in a well-run society. Tomorrow morning you will each read your composition to the class. Is this understood?"
“Yes, ma'am,” said Early.
Jerome said, “Why bother? You're too little to whip us.” And he stepped closer, emphasizing his size.
But his nearness also brought the scent of cigarette smoke back to Audra and, with it, the memory of her father. Papa could boss anybody. He never questioned his ability—he just did it. And she was his daughter.
She stood as tall as nature allowed her and stepped boldly forward herself. Jerome Newton stepped quickly back in surprise.
"I may be small, Jerome, but I can still give my best effort. If you do not fulfill the terms of your punishment, I will whip you, and if you sass me again, you may stay home from school tomorrow and explain to your parents why you are no longer welcome in my class, Understood?"