Big Win

by Tony Masero

  For no good reason it reminded Joe of the Wexford No. 3 Saloon back in Wyoming and he drew a deep breath of the tobacco stained air rich with the close odor of workingmen and felt for a moment the need to go home and rest easy. It was a strange sensation to come over him of a sudden, almost as if a curtain had fallen across his thoughts and he guessed the miles of country they had crossed engineered it together with all the backbreaking time spent in the saddle.

  Joe had determined that if he ever made his way out of this business alive he would make Justine his wife. He would take the five thousand he still kept carefully stashed away and the two of them would make a go of it somewhere.

  ‘You know?’ said Fetch, downing his shot in a quick go. ‘Right now I could do with a woman and some cards.’

  ‘Card playing at the back,’ said the barman, overhearing him. ‘They got a poker game playing there. Dealer come over from Creede and he’ll be only too willing to take your cash.’ The barman said it with a smile but there was an underlying warning there.

  ‘Lets go take a look,’ said Fetch, peering over the heads of the crowd and trying to find the card players.

  ‘You got any money left to lose?’ asked Joe.

  ‘I ain’t going to lose,’ said Fetch with determination.

  Taking their beer glasses they burrowed their way through the press and arrived at the gloomy rear of the bar room.

  There, they both stopped suddenly, frozen in surprise.

  Seated at a large round card table and facing them with his back to the wall and four other players around him, sat Soapy Smith.

  He was dealing a hand with practiced ease, still wearing his black beard and dressed smartly in somber clothes.

  ‘Holy shit!’ breathed Fetch. ‘Will you look who’s here?’

  Soapy’s eyes slid up from the deal, his gaze closing solemnly on Fetch and Joe.

  ‘I declare,’ he said softly.

  ‘Soapy,’ Fetch burst out. ‘We was just on our way to see you.’

  ‘That a fact,’ said Soapy, his eyes dropping and continuing the deal. ‘And what have you to tell me?’

  The four others at the table looked around curiously before returning their attention to the cards in their hands.

  ‘We lost a few men along the way,’ Fetch confessed. ‘Couldn’t find that bugger Dupree nowhere, not a hair of him. He’s cunning as a rattler and led us a merry chase.’

  ‘You look it,’ sniffed Soapy.

  ‘We tried, Soapy. I can tell you we sure tried. But this old boy he changes his face as easy as you put on your jacket in the morning.’

  ‘And you, Mister Alberplas,’ said Soapy, raising one eyebrow to peek at Joe. ‘What do you say?’

  Joe snuffed a laugh, ‘I say, what the hell. It just ain’t worth it.’

  ‘A million in green ain’t worth it?’

  ‘No sir, it ain’t. Don’t mean a patch to me no more.’

  ‘You’d rather give it up?’

  ‘I would. I’m done with this.’

  ‘What do you think of that?’ Soapy asked Fetch.

  Fetch wrinkled an ironical lip, ‘The boy’s a quitter but I’m ready to go on, Soapy.’

  ‘Then what should we do with poor Mister Alberplas, do you think?’

  The other players were beginning to get a little troubled with the conversation going backwards and forwards across the table and one pugnacious miner piped up, ‘We playing or conversing here? What’s this about? You want to go talk, then quit the game and leave the table.’

  Soapy’s eyes slid sideways to glance at the man, ‘I suggest you mind your cards and your manners,’ he warned the miner coolly.

  ‘Look, tinhorn. Don’t you go telling me what to do.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ sighed Soapy.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Fetch growled at the miner, who looked big and tough enough to take care of the both of them. ‘You know who you’re talking to?’

  The miner glowered at Fetch, ‘I don’t know that, as there ain’t no label on the tin.’

  ‘That there is Mister Soapy Smith and if I were you I wouldn’t push it,’ warned Fetch.

  ‘Soapy!’ cried the miner in mocking surprise. ‘That mean he don’t wash regular?’

  ‘A sight more than you, I reckon.’

  The miner pushed back his chair loudly, ‘You’re beginning to piss me off, fellow,’ he said.

  Fetch laid his beer glass on the table and took a step back, ‘Not as much as you are me,’ he said, his gun hand dropping level with his pistol grip.

  Soapy ran a few fingers through his beard and laid his cards face down flat on the table. ‘I do believe there’s going to be trouble.’

  The three others players quickly slid from the chairs and made an exit leaving Soapy sitting alone at the table.

  ‘Come on then, asshole,’ sneered Fetch. ‘You going to make something of it or just stand around looking pretty.’

  Joe stepped back out of the way as the miner went for the cross-draw pistol held clumsily in his waistband. ‘Shit on you!’ he shouted, pulling out the gun.

  Fetch was fast, a sight faster than the miner and his gun barked with a flat harsh sound. The bullet slapped into the miner’s side twisting the man as it ripped across his ribs. But it was not a finishing shot and the miner replied with a boom from his pistol that knocked Fetch’s hat from his head as it caught him in the temple. As the gunman began to fall, he let loose with a final shot and that one struck home. It took the miner high in the chest; tearing a hole clean through and shattering his shoulder blade as it went. The miner still lived and before he fell he fired three times more, each time planting a bullet in Fetch’s tottering frame.

  The two men dropped simultaneously, crashing to the floor through the reeking cloud of gun smoke. There was a collective cry from the watching crowd and men clambered to gather around.

  ‘He’s still breathing!’ cried a man bending over the miner.

  ‘Quick, lets get him to the doc!’ said another and a few of them grouped around lifting the heavy flopping body.

  Joe glanced across at Soapy, who sat quite calmly and unmoved as he watched the scene.

  As the bar crowd clattered away, some of them lifting Fetch’s still frame and carrying it out after the miner, Joe and Soapy were left facing each other in a sudden space full of silence.

  Joe stepped forward and set down the glass he still held on the table next to Fetch’s.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘How do we stand now?’

  Soapy raised both eyebrows, ‘This actor fellow is gone in the wind, would you say?’

  ‘He’s gone,’ Joe affirmed.

  ‘And there’s no catching him?’

  ‘I doubt it, unless you want to spend some years of your life in the search. He’s a right smart fellow, tricked me out of my inheritance and played the part leading me over hill and valley ‘til I’m plumb wore out.’

  Soapy toyed with the cards before him on the table, flipping them over and looking at what could have been a winning hand.

  ‘Looks like we’ve both been cheated out of our winnings then,’ he said, nodding at the full house ruefully.

  Joe felt Justine’s tentative hand on his arm. ‘You alright?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine, honey. So what do you say, Mister Smith? We finished here?’

  Soapy allowed a thin smile to play on his lips, ‘I reckon so, cowboy. You head along and take that fine lady with you, maybe you’ll make a go of it yet.’

  ‘We will, don’t you worry on that,’ Joe laid his hand over Justine’s on his arm. ‘We already won big,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Not even a million dollars could buy what we’ve got.’

  Soapy nodded and watched them walk away and out of the saloon. He shook out a cheroot and lit it slowly, then he slid from the stack of thick ledgers that were piled on his chair so he sat high and could see over the table. Once safely on the floor he made his way over to the now almost empty bar.

  Monty Dupree, for it was he, smiled to him
self as he ordered up a double. He was thinking of what to appear as next as it was certainly working out well. Perhaps a politician or society figure, but then, did he really need to? Not really, he was more than wealthy enough. No, it was just the fun of it and it certainly was fun. He had one regret. If only he had been born taller.

  Epilogue

  And how did it work out for them. The real and not so real, for some it was like this, for others it may have been like this….

  Some say that both Jefferson Randolph ‘Soapy’ Smith (1860-1898) and Monty Dupree headed up to Alaska for the great gold rush of 1897. Soapy and Monty would often be seen around Skagway together, the two con artists became firm friends and Monty would dress up in his disguise as Soapy and the two of them would walk around amusing the townsfolk by looking like twin brothers. The only difference being that one was a darn sight shorter than the other.

  That was until Soapy overplayed his hand and was shot dead in a gunfight with Frank Reid of the vigilance committee in the July of 1898.

  After that, it is said that Monty travelled to Europe. In England he attempted to act with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford on Avon but was rejected by the theatre committee. The cause given being his stature and therefore it was felt he was unable to play major roles. Thoroughly put out by the rejection, Monty swore vengeance on the British and after a spell working in Paris at the Folies Begère, at the beginning of the Great War in 1914, Monty took up espionage and began life as a secret agent for the Germans. He operated for some years using various disguises until being captured by officers of the British Secret Service Bureau. Condemned to death by hanging in the Tower of London for his spying, Monty was saved by his U.S. citizenship and extradited back to his own country.

  Although purportedly imprisoned for life, no record exists of his imprisonment and he vanished from history on landing back in America. There is a moot possibility that he continued life as an espionage agent but this time working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

  Joe married Justine and their marriage was a happy one producing three sons. After buying a smallholding, Joe went back to work for Mister Aimes at the Double-Ought. By hard work and saving assiduously, Joe finally joined up with his old friends Brad Dexter and Lemon Dire and together they created the Big Win Ranch.

  Whilst Monty Dupree was working for the enemy, Joe’s eldest boy was serving with the American forces in France and was reported missing in action during the Battle of Cantigny in late 1918. His body was never recovered and it was a blow that struck deep at Joe and Justine, marring what was otherwise a perfect time together.

  Lemon Dire met a girl and gave up his part of the ranch to move away with his new wife. Brad passed away in 1921, leaving his share of the property to Joe.

  Joe and Justine lived on to old age and died within a three-month of each other, Joe in 1937 at the age of 80 and Justine not long afterwards.

  Joe’s great grandson Vic still runs the remaining elements of the Big Win Ranch, much reduced now in size due to economical strictures. He badly busted a leg bronco riding for third place in the National Finals Rodeo, strangely enough attempting to win the prize money of 250,000 dollars, the exact same sum his great grandfather had been left by his estranged brother. A soft spoken and uncomplaining man, Vic has to use a brace to get around for his work on the ranch, he doubles up with another job to keep the ranch going. Married to a nurse, Vic also works nights at his daughter’s school as a cleaner. These people are hard done by and receive little help from outside agencies and survive mainly by their determination and the generosity of the community. A sad reflection that by dint of all the hardship of their forbearers so little is left for them to enjoy after all those past generations of effort and love of country.

  William Sydney ‘Cap’ Light (c.1863-1893)

  A tough lawman with notches on his gun was originally out of Texas and brother-in-law to Soapy Smith, he was urged by Soapy into the job as camp deputy marshal of Creede mining town where he shot and killed the faro dealer William ‘Reddy’ McCann in the Branch Saloon in Creede and not as stated here The Orleans. Whilst travelling on a train during the Christmas Eve of 1893, Cap accidentally fired off his revolver and shot himself in the leg and through the femoral artery. He bled to death in minutes.

  David J Cook (c.1840 – 1907)

  A cavalryman during the Civil War he later worked for the Union tracking down Confederate spies. His success led him to found the Rocky Mountain Detective Association. He served as marshal of Denver as well as federal marshal and detective. He lived all his life in Denver and is buried in the Riverside Cemetery. Cook, as temporarily elected police chief and with the assistance of fifteen of his own men plus other hardened gunmen of his acquaintance were the driving force in quelling the Hop Alley Riots of 1880.

  Victorio (c.1825 – 1880)

  A Warm Springs Apache chief, who after fleeing the deplorable conditions in the San Carlos Reservation continued to evade capture and in April of 1880 led the Alma Massacre killing a number of settlers. He and his band were eventually cornered by the Mexican Army in the Tres Castilos Mountains and all killed.

  Lozen (c.1840 – 1890)

  Sister of Victorio, was a renowned Apache seer and strategist who could ride, shoot and fight like a warrior and was said to have been blessed by the spirits with the ability to determine the position of the enemy from far off. On the death of her brother she joined up with Geronimo and continued to fight. Taken into custody by the military she was held imprisoned in Alabama and there died of tuberculosis.

  Animas Forks

  Founded around 1873 the locality was busily mined for gold and silver in its prime days but it has been a ghost town since the 1920’s. It exists today as a tourist attraction in San Juan County although the rough mountain weather is gradually taking its toll on the remaining wooden structures.

  A note on the Denver of 1879:

  Holladay Street in Denver, once center of the town’s red light district – is now re-named Market Street.

  Denver’s Riverside Cemetery – This once lush and well-maintained cemetery in the city’s heyday now enjoys none of those former splendors. Surrounded by industrial sites and receiving no water supply or maintenance from the city the cemetery has fallen into disrepair and is overgrown with scrub grass and weeds. Now only a group of volunteers attempt to retain some of the dignity of the historic cemetery.

  But the adventure doesn’t end here …

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