Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  Two of the men were dead, but one of them was still alive. I didn’t have time to mess with him, but I turned him over so he could hear me good and said, “Tell Phil Sharp I ain’t through with him. Nor your bunch either.”

  Then I got out of there and started making my way for the train depot. At first the wound bothered me hardly at all. In fact at first I thought I’d just been grazed. But then, once outside, I saw the blood spreading all over the front of my shirt and I knew that I was indeed hit. I figured I’d been shot by nothing heavier than a .32-caliber revolver but a .32 can kill you just as quick as a cannon if it hits you in the right place.

  The men I’d shot were members of the Galveston Citizen’s Vigilante Committee. I knew that because Phil Sharp had been bragging about it the last time he’d been in Del Rio. He’d bragged that he’d organized it and was the leader and that the committee was more powerful than any other form of law in all of Galveston. He’d even told me about the hoods they wore. Said his was black because he was the head honcho.

  So I hadn’t just shot three men; I’d shot three members of a law and order organization that might or might not have been legal. And if the men were, indeed, considered law, it wasn’t going to make a hairpin’s worth of difference that I’d shot them in self-defense. Galveston, it seemed, was a rough town on account of all the sailors from different countries and different ports. Sharp had said most of the sailors were rough trade and that they’d caused so many killings and holdups and beatings and such that the local law couldn’t handle them. He and other important men in the shipping business had decided that something had to be done so they organized the vigilante committee.

  But it appeared to me that Mr. Sharp wasn’t above using his committee for something other than good works for the city. I wondered if the man I’d only wounded would pass on my words to Mr. Sharp that our business wasn’t concluded. I had gut-shot the man, and he might not live to pass on any messages.

  As I might not live to do much of anything, if I didn’t get some relief soon. My whole left side was now on fire and throbbing so that I figured anybody looking would be able to see the beat of the pounding pain. And I was starting to feel more and more weak, a sure sign I was losing too much blood and a sure sign I’d be a walking advertisement, as soon as I got off the train, of a man who’d been shot. That was going to cause just some little curiosity, people being what they were.

  And I was armed with an empty revolver and no extra cartridges. The reason I had not brought along any extra ammunition was that I’d taken too long saying good-bye to Evita, the woman who ran the bordello part of my operation, and whom I thought of as my girlfriend—or at least my main girlfriend. As a consequence I’d rushed my packing, and the box of cartridges I’d meant to bring was still sitting on top of the bureau in the bedroom of my ranch house in Mexico, just across the river from Del Rio.

  About then the conductor came walking through the car. He said, “Bay City, Bay City, next stop. Bay City, ten minutes. Bay City, ten minutes.”

  I thought, Only to Bay City. Only sixty miles. And God knew how much further to the junction where the train switched lines to head for San Antonio. Of course I could get off in Bay City and try and find some help. Maybe they had a whorehouse, and I could get one of the girls to fix me up. Give her a few dollars and at least get bandaged up so I wouldn’t be showing blood through my clothes.

  But I didn’t know if they had a whorehouse in Bay City. Besides, all whores weren’t good-hearted. In fact, some of the meanest women I’d ever met had been whores.

  I wondered if I had any friends in Bay City. I couldn’t remember any. It seemed like all my friends were as far away from me as I was from them.

  I began to notice I was feeling a little feverish. I put my palm to my forehead and felt it clammy with sweat. It was becoming damn clear I was going to have to do something and in pretty short order.

  I had lost weight since my outlaw days. I didn’t know how that had worked out, but it had. Back a few years I’d been about six foot tall and weighed 190 pounds. I was still six foot tall, but now my weight had dropped to 175, and that had been muscle. I couldn’t figure it. In my owlhoot days I’d never done no what you might call physical work. The heaviest thing I ever lifted was somebody else’s money. But once I’d given it up and sort of settled down, I’d began to drop muscle. It was a thought to ponder on. My eyes were another. Sometimes they were gray and sometimes green. I could never be sure which color they’d be when I got up in the morning. A rich woman had once told me I was handsome in an unimportant way. I hadn’t understood what she’d meant by that, but I’d figured that any woman who could get rich on her own without either stealing or going on her back must be pretty smart. I had taken to using it after that. The only surviving member of my gang was a black Mexican named Chulo. He was, without a doubt, the meanest-looking, ugliest Mexican outlaw you ever saw. I used to tell him he was ugly in an unimportant way. He didn’t understand it either.

  But I damn sure knew I wished I had him with me right then and there. But he was back in Del Rio watching the store. Chulo wasn’t very smart, but he was hell for loyal.

  The train began slowing and then slowed some more and finally jolted to a stop. The conductor come through again saying, “Bay City, Bay City, all out for Bay City.”

  The jolt hadn’t done my side no good, but the stillness of the car after all the swaying and shifting was a relief. Across the aisle the spinsterish woman got up and got her little carpetbag valise off the overhead rack and went down the aisle. It was a temptation to get up and follow her, but I figured if her kind lived in the town, I wouldn’t make it five steps before I got throwed in jail. Give a man a dirty look for taking a drink when his whole side was on fire. She reminded me of my old-maid aunt back in Corpus Christi who’d raised me after my parents had died. Or at least she’d thought she was raising me. In actual fact I’d been handling most of that job myself. But I was grateful to her for one thing: She’d been a schoolteacher, and one way or the other, she’d kept me in school through the tenth grade. I hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but I’d come to later in life when I could see what benefit an education was to a man. Of course it hadn’t helped much robbing banks, but it had put me a cut above most of the other riffraff I was running with and had consequently brought me some respect before I’d begun to earn it with a revolver.

  I took advantage of the stillness of the train to have another pretty good pull off the whiskey bottle. It helped a little, but I was more worried about the way I was feeling feverish and faint. I didn’t know how long it took for a gunshot wound to get infected, but I didn’t reckon it was long. And then there was the matter of all the blood I was losing. The hole in the front of my chest had maybe clotted, but I doubted damn serious that the exit wound was going to close itself without some medical help. I moved a little against the seat, trying to see what would happen if I eased off the pressure I’d been holding against my back, holding it tight against the seat in hopes it would help stop the bleeding. All the movement did was make the wound start throbbing anew.

  Pretty soon the train started up, and the first jolt, as the couplings between the cars took up slack, damn near fetched me. I sucked in air through my gritted teeth and just kind of steeled myself against the pain. I thought of the distance ahead to San Antonio and the time that would be involved. It was a long way and a lot of hours. And even after the train got there, there was going to be the problem of getting to a doctor or some kind of infirmary or a hotel or a friend’s house.

  And, all of a sudden, I knew I just wasn’t going to last. I was either going to pass out before then or I was going to bleed to death. I was going to have to do something, and I was going to have to do it the next opportunity.

  It all made me angry as hell. I reckoned a man couldn’t remember pain, and I ought to know, but it seemed like this little old piddling gunshot was hurting worse and giving me more trouble than any of the others I’d experienced.
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  I kind of laid my head back against the seat rest and tried to think. It ain’t as easy to think when you are hurting like hell and kind of light-headed, not as easy as it is when you are in first-class condition. I was hoping like hell the plug I’d tried to stick in the hole in my back was still in place and stopping some of the blood. If it wasn’t, the blood was going to run down my leg and fill up my boot when I stood up.

  I was trying to think what might be the best stop for me to get off at, a stop where I might have some hope of catching a doctor. But the hell of it was that I didn’t know the line all that well. I’d come from Del Rio direct to San Antonio and then direct from San Antonio to Galveston. This little spur line I was on was really the route to the border at Laredo, and if I’d had time to catch it, there was an express that ran straight from Galveston to the border. But this little bucket I was on seemed to want to stop at every crossroads or where the last man watered a horse. I couldn’t think what the next town after Bay City was likely to be or how big it would be.

  The train had been going for about another twenty or twenty-five minutes. It was hard for me to really know because I was getting weaker and feeling more and more like I was fixing to fall over on my head or just plain slip out of the coach seat. Outside the window the country was getting lusher. It was all rolling pasture and prairie with green, green grass anywhere from a foot to a foot-and-a-half high. Here and there were little thickets of mesquite trees and some post oak and live oak and now and then a tall cottonwood. It was the kind of country does a cattleman’s heart good to just look at, but since I wasn’t no cattleman, what I wanted to see was some buildings and some people, at least one of which was a doctor. I didn’t know much about infection, but I figured I was getting it judging from the way I felt. I reckoned I could put a mirror up in front of my face and I’d be pale. I felt the sweat on my forehead again, and I could damn near feel the fever running through my body. It was only late April and the weather was very mild, so I knew 1 wasn’t sweating on account of any heat on the outside of my body. As best I could with one arm I cracked the window beside me and leaned my head down to the opening at the bottom and breathed some of the outside air. Generally the ladies riding in the coach didn’t like the windows opened all the way on account of the danger of the wind blowing their hair or blowing their hats off or cinders from the engine’s smokestack blowing in and burning holes in their clothes.

  So I had just opened the window a little, but the fresh air wasn’t doing me much good, mainly because fresh air wasn’t what I needed. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get off the train without attracting attention. I figured I could maybe carry my hat and kind of hold it over my heart like the flag was passing, but even as faint as I was getting, I realized that would look sort of ridiculous. No, the thing to do was get up, get off, and go on about my business as if I’d never had a bloodstain on my clothes in my life. That was if I could get up and go about my business.

  Just then I saw the conductor coming through our car. He said, “Blessing, Blessing. Ten minutes to Blessing.”

  Blessing!

  My God, was a place ever better named? There was help in Blessing. I didn’t know if they had a doctor, but I knew I had a friend there, a man named Justa Williams. He and his family were ranchers, big ranchers, and wealthy. I figured they owned about half the town also. I knew they owned the bank, because I’d had occassion to rob it some six or seven years past, when I was still in that line of work.

  But that was done and forgotten. Not more than a year past I’d had occasion to do Justa a good turn when he’d been down in my part of the country. In the couple of weeks I’d known him then, we’d become what you might call friends. He was near about my age and of a like character and temperament, though he hadn’t ever robbed any banks so far as I knew. But I’d helped him with a sort of tricky situation, and he’d said if he could ever help me, just to get him word. And I figured he was good for it or else I was a mighty poor judge of character. He just hadn’t struck me as the kind of man who’d forget a turn in his favor.

  So it was with some hope that I felt the train slowing as we started to come into Blessing. Out the window I could see a few outlying shacks and a big cattle auction barn and then some more houses, and then the train was beginning to brake as we headed into the depot. I took a quick, hard slug out of the bottle and shoved it back in my valise and got ready to see if I was capable of getting off a train. The whiskey hit the bottom of my stomach and commenced to spread, and I felt a little better. Whiskey will do that, give you a little boost right off the bat, but it don’t last. I figured the long slug I’d taken down would give me strength for about ten minutes. I didn’t reckon to waste any of it.

  Then I could hear the wheels squealing as iron skidded on iron and the train slowly came to a halt. The conductor was coming back through saying, “Blessing, Blessing, all out for Blessing.”

  I got slowly to my feet, gripping the seat in front of me with my left hand and holding my valise in my right. I stood like that for a second or two, making sure I wasn’t too light-headed. I was the only passenger for Blessing, at least in that car, and I made my way carefully back to the door, holding onto the backs of the seats as I passed. The door at the end was heavy and hard to open. I was trying to use my right hand only, having transferred my valise to my left, and I was having trouble. I couldn’t believe I was so weak I couldn’t handle a passenger car door, but that was the fact of the matter. About the time I got it half-open and was trying to wedge it further back with the toe of my boot, it was suddenly taken out of my hand and swung wide. The conductor was behind me. He said, “There you go, sir.”

  I looked back at him. I said, “Thanks.”

  He give me a good, hard stare. He said, “Ain’t you ticketed to San Antonio?”

  I swallowed. I didn’t have no time for an extended discussion of my travel plans. I said, “Friend here. Forgot about him. Stop off.”

  He looked at me even closer, but fortunately he was just looking me in the face. He said, “You all right, sir?”

  I said, “Yeah, fine.”

  “You are mighty white. You sick?”

  “Get train sick,” I said. “Motion. Be all right on the ground.” Actually, it wasn’t that much of a lie. There had been a time when I got train sick. Once me and some friends of mine had tried to rob a train, and the barrage of fire we’d got from the guards in the mail car had made more than one of us sick.

  But I didn’t explain that to the conductor, and he helped me down the steps and onto the depot platform. He said, “Hope you get to feeling better, sir.”

  I nodded my head and set off walking toward what I reckoned to be the center of town. I was looking for a hotel. As I was about to leave the depot platform, I chanced to spot a railroad hired hand unloading some freight. I asked him about a hotel, and he pointed me toward town. He said, “Be right thar in the middle.”

  “What’s the name?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t matter. Onliest one we got. Jest says hotel. Right thar on the front.”

  It was about a quarter of a mile to the hotel. It looked like about the longest quarter of a mile I’d ever seen. Just into the main part of the town a wooden boardwalk ran along in front of the stores. I couldn’t tell how big Blessing was, but I figured it to be somewhere around a thousand folks. Surely a town of that size would have a doctor, but then a man never knew.

  Walking along the wide boardwalk, I passed saloons and mercantile stores and a ladies store and a café and a smithy. I could feel the sweat pouring off me, and I was growing more and more faint with every step. If that hotel was much further, I didn’t reckon I was going to make it.

  And then I passed an office that said Sheriff Lew Vara on the door, and I picked up my step as best I could. As I walked, I was meeting people. They seemed to be giving me an exceptionally thorough going over, and I didn’t know if it was because of the way I looked or because I was a stranger.

 
Then, finally, I crossed an open space between buildings, stepped back up on the boardwalk, and the door to the hotel was there. It was a light screen door, and I managed it without any trouble and stepped into the lobby. It was cool and dim inside, and I paused for a moment to gather my strength and then headed for the counter where the desk clerk was. He looked up as I come up to him. “Yes, sir?” he said. He was a youngish sort of man wearing a dandy’s high collar and a necktie.

  I set my valise down and leaned against the counter. I said, “Need a room. On the first floor.”

  He spun the register around for me. He said, “Will you be wanting that for just the one night?” I could see him glancing at my front where the stain was showing through.

  I signed the register as best I could. I used my real name, but I doubted it made much difference, my script being what it was. I said, “Would you know a Mr. Justa Williams?”

  He give me a kind of startled look. He said, “Why, yes. Of course I would. The Williams family is well known hereabouts.”

  I was holding myself together. I said, trying to sound like I was just fine, “I need to get message to Mr. Williams.” I took my roll of bills out of my pocket and peeled off a ten. I put it on the desk counter. I said, “You reckon you could arrange to get a message taken out to him? It’s mighty important. I need it done quick.”

  He looked at the ten dollars. He said, “Why, that could be handled, sir. But I don’t know how fast. The Williams ranch is seven miles out of town, about, and it being the middle of the afternoon, he is most likely out on his ranch somewheres.”