A Century of Great Western Stories

by A Century of Great Western Stories (retail) (epub)

  Gamblin’ Man

  Dwight V. Swain

  Stiff-lipped and grim, Mr. Devereaux fingered the double eagle and wondered bleakly if all hulking, loudmouthed men were scoundrels; or was it merely that Fate chose only uncommon blackguards to send his way? Even worse, why did he not discover their connivings before they’d stripped him down to twenty dollars? He had one double eagle left. His last.

  Across the table the man called Alonzo Park scooped up the cards, squared the deck, and riffled it in an expert shuffle. In the process he also managed an incredibly deft bit of palming that ended with six cards missing, just as in previous games.

  Almost without thinking, Mr. Devereaux left off fingering the gold piece and instead caressed his sleeve-rigged double derringer.

  This table around which they played was jammed in a corner at one end of the El Dorado’s bar. It was out of the way, yet close to the source of supply of the red-eye of which Park, who owned the place, seemed so fond. It was a good twenty feet to the door, twenty feet past cold-eyed, gun-slung loungers who wandered about the saloon.

  Park’s voice cut in, a reverberant, bull-throated bellow. The man’s meaty features glistened red as his own raw forty-rod whiskey.

  “Lafe! Drinks all around!”

  In silent, studied apathy, Mr. Devereaux allowed the cross-eyed barkeep to refill his glass and continued his appraisal.

  A sheepherder sat to his left, no gun showing. Beyond him, a rat-visaged nondescript from the livery stable, toting a rusted .45. Then Park, ostensibly unarmed; probably he favored a hideout gun. And finally, to Mr. Devereaux’s right, completing the circuit, a brawny, freckle-faced young fellow, Charlie Adams, who swayed drunkenly in his chair and held solemn, incongruous converse with a long-skirted, china-headed doll over a foot tall which he kept propped on the table before him.

  Mr. Devereaux’s hand turned out a mediocre pair, augmented by another—equally mediocre—on the draw.

  Again he weighed that last remaining gold piece and studied Park. Finally he shoved the double eagle forward.

  The sheepherder and the nondescript threw in their cards. Charlie Adams hesitated, ogling Mr. Devereaux owlishly from behind the doll, then followed suit. For a moment Park, too, hung back. But only for a moment.

  “Raise you, Devereaux! I’ll call your bluff!”

  Mr. Devereaux could feel his own blood quicken, the hackles rise along his neck. Imperceptibly, he hunched his left shoulder forward, just enough for the black frock coat to clear his armpit-holstered Colt. The sleeve-rigged derringer held an old friend’s reassurance.

  “And raise you back, Park,” he said softly. He reached into the pot, removed his double eagle as if to replace it with something larger.

  A harsh, raw note crept into Alonzo Park’s bull voice. He thrust his chin belligerently forward. “Putin your money, Devereaux. Put up or shut up.”

  Mr. Devereaux allowed himself the luxury of a thin, wry smile. He breathed deep—and savored the fact that this very breath might be his last. He pushed the thought back down and brought out the Colt in one swift, sure gesture.

  He let his voice ring, then.

  “Misdeal, Park. I’m betting my gun against your stack that there are less than fifty-two cards on this table—and that we’ll find the others in a holdout on your side!”

  Silence. Echoing eternities of silence, spreading out across the room. The sheepherder and the nondescript sat stiff and shriveled. Adams stared stupidly, jaw hanging, the big doll clasped to his chest.

  Gun poised, feet flat against the floor, Mr. Devereaux waited. He watched the muscles in Park’s bull neck knot, the hairy hands contract. “God help you, you dirty son!” Park rasped thickly. “I’ll have your hide for this!”

  “No doubt,” Mr. Devereaux agreed. He gestured with his Colt to the livery groom. “Look under the table edge for a holdout.”

  The man flicked one nervous glance at the gun, then bent to obey. He came up with two aces and three assorted spades.

  Mr. Devereaux let his thin smile broaden. “I win.” He rose, starting to reach for Alonzo Park’s stack. And he realized, even in that moment, the magnitude of his error.

  That cross-eyed bartender whipped up a sawed-off shotgun with a bore that loomed big as twin water buckets. It seemed to Mr. Devereaux in that moment he could hear the faint, sweet song of angel voices.

  A gun’s roar cut them short.

  Sheer reflex sent Mr. Devereaux floorward, wrapped in vast disbelief at finding himself alive. He glimpsed the scattergun, flying off across the room. He stared at the cross-eyed bartender, while that worthy swore and clutched at a bleeding hand.

  Big Adams, drunk no longer, came to his feet. He still gripped the doll, but now the china head was gone. The muzzle of a .45 protruded from its shredded, smoldering neck. Left-handed, he reached a nickeled star from his pocket and pinned it on. His freckled, good-natured face had gone suddenly cold, his voice hard and level.

  “You’re under arrest, Park. The town council held a private confab last night. They decided Crooked Lance needed a marshal an’ gave me the job. The first chore on the list was to clean up El Dorado.”

  THE DAY DRAGGED drowsily, even for Crooked Lance town. September’s shimmering, brazen sun hung at two o’clock, the straggled clumps of cholla and Spanish bayonet a-ripple in its heat. The choked, close scent of sun on stone, and dust and dirt and baking ’dobe, rose faint yet all-persuasive. Even the thrumming flies droned lethargy, and the tail of breeze from distant, cloud-capped mountains alone kept the sparse shade tolerable.

  Peace came to Mr. Devereaux. He loved such sleepy days as this, days for dreams and smiles and reveries. Relaxed and tranquil, he contemplated the padlocked El Dorado from his chair on the hotel porch. He wondered, in turn, how Alonzo Park liked his cell in the feedstore that served Crooked Lance as a makeshift jail.

  The man was a fool, Mr. Devereaux decided soberly. Else why would he stay here, insisting on trial, instead of thankfully accepting Adams’s offer to let him ride out of town unfettered, on his own agreement never to return? What possible defense could he offer? Did he actually believe he could salvage his fortunes?

  The thought brought Mr. Devereaux’s own financial state to mind. Adams was holding last night’s poker pots as evidence till after the trial this afternoon. It left Mr. Devereaux with only the one twenty-dollar gold piece. He contemplated the coin wryly. He flipped it. His last double eagle, still.

  The scuff of feet and the acrid breath of rising dust cut short his reveries. He looked around to see Crooked Lance’s new marshal and a chubby, fresh-scrubbed cherub in pigtails and starched gingham round the corner hand in hand, the cherub wobbling ludicrously as she vainly tried to make her short legs match the lawman’s long strides.

  Adams nodded greetings, dropped into a chair beside Mr. Devereaux on the porch. He grinned boyishly.

  “This here’s my gal Alice, Devereaux. You better be nice to her, too. That was her doll I was totin’ last night.”

  The cherub giggled and hid her face in her father’s lap.

  “You said you’d get me another dolly, Daddy. You promised.” A tremor of excitement ran through her and she raised her head, eyes shining. “I know just the kind I want, Daddy. Missus Lauck’s got one in her window. Blue eyes that close, and real gold hair.”

  Adams grinned again. He dandled her, gleeful and squealing, on one knee.

  “Don’t push me too fast, honey. Wait’ll I draw at least one pay.” Then, to Mr. Devereaux: “Guess we better mosey on over to the schoolhouse for court. Trial’s set for two-thirty. Soon’s it’s over I can give you back your money.”

  Mr. Devereaux nodded, rose. Flat-crowned Stetson in hand, he stared off across the desert miles. An indefinable weariness washed over him, as if some queer, invisible shadow had crept across the turquoise sky. He caught himself wondering how it would feel to bounce a pigtailed daughter on one’s knee …

  It being Crooked Lance’s first trial, the t
own council had voted in the mayor as judge. He sat behind the teacher’s desk in the little adobe schoolhouse now, a thin, stooped, balding man, gavel in hand, gnawing his lips. He served as a barber, ordinarily, and these new responsibilities rode heavily upon him.

  Mr. Devereaux chuckled benignly and let his gaze travel on. The little room was a babble of voices, the bare wood benches already filled. Whole families were out: fathers, mothers, children. Others, too—and over these he did not chuckle. Silent, too-casual men with guns lounging along the back wall. Last night they’d been lounging the same way at the El Dorado.

  Adams brought in the prisoner.

  Park had recovered his poise. Jaw outthrust, red face bright with what might pass for righteous indignation, he strode aggressively to his place. When, for the fraction of a second, his gaze met Mr. Devereaux’s, his eyes were venomous, mocking, strangely mirthful.

  Mr. Devereaux frowned despite himself. Almost without thinking, he touched his derringer’s butt.

  His Honor rapped for order, peered hesitantly down at the prisoner. “You want someone to help you, Park? You got a right, you know.”

  Park glowered. “I don’t need help for what I’ve got to say.”

  Adams took the stand, told how he’d sat in on the game at Park’s own table, feigning drunkenness. He’d picked that particular game, he explained, because he wanted to find out whether the El Dorado’s owner, personally, was doing the cheating the council had ordered him to investigate. Further, he’d figured that table as most likely for action. Mr. Devereaux being a man who “looked like he knew his way around a deck of cards without no Injun guide, an’ hard to buffalo too!”

  Park’s only comment was a contempt-laden snort.

  As before, Mr. Devereaux frowned. Instinctively, he shrugged the black frock coat smooth about his shoulders. The Colt’s weight stood out sharp in his consciousness. Then the judge was calling him forward to take the stand.

  In an instant Alonzo Park was on his feet. “Your Honor!” he bellowed.

  His Honor started, cringed. Finally he made a feeble pass at pounding with his gavel. “Now, Park—”

  “Don’t ‘Now Park’ me!” the prisoner roared, his face the hue of a too-ripe plum. “Now’s the time I speak my piece.” He glowered and his eyes swept the room. Yet somehow, to Mr. Devereaux, there seemed to be a certain theatrical note about it all, as if the man were carefully building up a part.

  Park went on. “You’ve called me a crooked tinhorn on the say of that jackass Charlie Adams, and I’ve kept quiet. But I’m damned if I’ll let you ring in this gun-wolf, too!”

  The judge chewed his lips, looked uneasily from Park to Adams to Mr. Devereaux and back again. “What you got agin’ him, Lon?” he queried uneasily.

  Mr. Devereaux saw the triumph in Park’s eyes, then—the murderous glee the front of indignation veiled. He stared in dismay as the man whipped out a flimsy, too-familiar pamphlet.

  “This is the ‘wanted’ list of the Adjutant General of Texas!” Park bellowed. “You’ve brought me up for crooked gambling, but your chief witness is a card shark and a killer, on the dodge from a murderous charge!”

  Mr. Devereaux could feel the tension leap within the room. His own breath came too fast. As from afar he heard the El Dorado’s owner shout on, work himself into a frenzy.

  “Your haywire marshal gave me a chance to run out if I wanted to, but I stayed. I guess that shows whether I’m guilty or not! This tinhorn planted that holdout under the table. He figured to chase me out of town so he could take over the El Dorado—”

  Somewhere at the back of the room a man yelled, “Park’s right! Turn him loose! That Devereaux’s the one should be in jail!”

  The schoolroom exploded to a screaming madhouse. A tribute, Mr. Devereaux thought dourly as he maneuvered himself against the nearest wall, to Alonzo Park and his carefully stationed loungers.

  The judge brought down his gavel with a bang. It was the first time since the beginning of the trial that he had showed such force and vigor.

  “Case dismissed!”

  “What about Devereaux?” somebody yelled.

  As if in answer, Charlie Adams shoved forward, gun out. His good-natured face had gone worried and grim.

  “I got no choice, Devereaux. You’re under arrest!”

  A CLOUD HAD swept down during that stormy schoolhouse session, Mr. Devereaux discovered. Already it impinged on the sun’s bright sphere, a scudding wall of night stretched off to the distant mountains. The wind had quickened, too; freshened. Now it came whipping through Crooked Lance in gusts and buffets, sucking up little geysers of sand that swirled and rustled like dry leaves.

  “Let’s go, Devereaux,” Adams said. His voice was flat.

  Carefully, Mr. Devereaux adjusted his flat-crowned Stetson, shrugged smooth the black frock coat. It was a useless gesture, really, now that the heavy Colt was gone. Its absence gave him a queer, off-balance feeling. The sleeve-rigged derringer alone remained to comfort. That, and the gold piece. One double eagle. He laughed without mirth and flipped it in a glittering arc. Together, Devereaux and Adams moved out into the street.

  The storm came faster now, blotting out light, racing hungrily on across the desert. The wind increased with it, drove tiny stones into Mr. Devereaux’s face. Dust choked him. Sand gritted between his teeth.

  Voiceless, he strode on. The thing was inevitable, he supposed, a peril that went with notoriety. Periodically he was bound to be recognized. The only marvel was that any lobo vindictive as Park had been content to leave an enemy to the law.

  They passed the shuttered, padlocked El Dorado. The Silver Lady, too. Grant’s Drygoods. Lettie Lauck’s millinery.

  Lettie Lauck. Mr. Devereaux pondered the name, remembered Alice and her doll. Alice, the fresh-scrubbed cherub in her pigtails and starched gingham. He wondered, a bit wistful, if he would ever see her again.

  “Turn here,” Adams said.

  The feedstore that served as jail had an inner storage room—zinc-lined against rats—for a cell. The marshal prodded Mr. Devereaux toward it.

  Mr. Devereaux sighed. It was coming now. It had to come. He touched the derringer’s butt.

  Marshal Adams swung open the storeroom’s heavy door. “In there.”

  Mr. Devereaux studied him, caressed the derringer. “You believe it, then, Charlie?” He made his voice very gentle.

  “Believe what?

  “The things Alonzo Park said.”

  Adams laughed. It had a harsh, unhappy sound. “What does it matter? Your name was in that book. You’re on the owlhoot.”

  “A packed jury might call things murder that you wouldn’t, Charlie.”

  He could see the sweat come to Adam’s broad forehead. Then the jaw tightened.

  “Sorry, Devereaux. That’s twixt you an’ the Adjutant Gen’ral of Texas. Folks here just hired me to hold up the law, not judge it.”

  Again Mr. Devereaux sighed. Nodded. The loose-holstered years went into his draw. “I’m sorry, too, Marshal. I can’t take that chance.” Cat-footed, he backed towards the open door.

  Behind him a gun roared.

  Mr. Devereaux leaped sidewise—swiveling; firing. He glimpsed only a blur of motion as the gunman jumped away. That, and Adams pitching to the floor.

  THE MINUTES THAT followed never came quite clear to Mr. Devereaux. He acted by instinct, rather than logic, reloading the derringer as he ran. No need to ask himelf what would happen if Crooked Lance’s shouting citizenry should find him here by the fallen marshal, gun in hand.

  But the townsmen were out already, a dozen or more of them, headed across the street towards him at a dead run even as he broke cover. Mr. Devereaux turned hastily, to the tune of oaths and bullets. He ducked between two buildings, to come out seconds later in an alley.

  The jail-and-feedstore combination was of frame construction set on low, stone corner posts close to the ground. Mr. Devereaux dropped, rolled into the shallow space beneath the building. />
  There followed an eternity of dust and rocks and cobwebs, lasting well over an hour. When his pursuers finally gave up and silence once more reigned, he wriggled forth and stumbled stiffly to his feet.

  The storm had brought with it an early dusk. Wind whipped the black frock coat tight about his legs as he tried to dust away the worst of the debris from beneath the building. Aching, irritable—and infinitely cautious—he gave it up, headed for the livery barn on down the alley.

  The nondescript groom sprawled asleep in the haymow. Ever wary, Mr. Devereaux prodded him awake.

  Grumbling, bleary-eyed, the man rose, peered at Mr. Devereaux through the stable’s gloom. His lantern jaw dropped. “You!”

  Mr. Devereaux favored him with one curt nod, brought up the derringer. “At your service. And now, if you’ll saddle my black stallion …”

  The nondescript swayed, still staring. His words came out a half-coherent mumble. “I thought you was over there at Park’s.”

  “Park’s?”

  “Sure. The El Dorado. One o’ Park’s boys got scared about you bein’ holed up there. He come round huntin’ Adams.”

  Mr. Devereaux compressed his lips to a thin, straight line.

  “Adams is dead.”

  “Dead?” The groom eyed him queerly. “Who says he’s dead? He come in here lookin’ for you not half a hour ago. Doc Brand patched up that hole in his shoulder.”

  “He … wasn’t killed?”

  “Uh-uh. Not even crippled bad.”

  One o’ Park’s boys come huntin’ …

  Mr. Devereaux stood very still. Discovered, with a strange abstraction, that he was hanging on the beats of his own heart. All of a sudden his mouth grew dry.

  The nondescript was speaking again now, eyeing the derringer as he rubbed his lantern jaw. “You carry that thing in a sleeve-rig, don’t you? Adams was tellin’ ’bout it while Doc Brand fixed him up.”

  “Indeed?” Mr. Devereaux stiffened. “In that case, perhaps you’ll favor me with the loan of your Colt.” He stepped close, reached the rusting gun from its holster.