Dead Man's Poker
Page 4
I looked at the little bottle. I said, “Did he mention why he didn’t give me some of that when he was digging around in me with them running irons he carries in that little bag of tricks?”
Wayne said, “I don’t know, sir. Reckon he forgot it.”
I just nodded and put the cigarillo out and tasted the stew. It was good, good and hearty. Wayne was standing, looking at me. He said, “I’m mighty glad to see you lookin’ better, Mr. Young. When you was at the desk, I declare I was a-feared you was going to swoon.”
I looked up at him. I said, “Wayne—Your name is Wayne, ain’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
I said, “Well, Wayne, you want to get along with me, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
I said, “Well, Wayne, if we are to get along, I am going to have to straighten you out about something. Ladies swoon. Men pass out. Or fall over on their heads. Or drop over like a dead horse. They don’t swoon. You understand?”
“Yes, sir!”
“So if you should have occasion to tell anybody about how I looked when I was checking in, especially if that anybody happens to be Justa Williams, you’ll be careful and not say swoon, won’t you?”
“No, sir! I mean, yes, sir.”
I said, “Now you did get that note off?”
“Nathan taken it. He’s a colored boy works here. Got a good fast mule.”
“A mule? Shit! Hell, he’ll be till Sunday getting that message out there.”
“That’s a mighty fast mule. I reckon he’s at the Half-Moon by now. That’s the Williams ranch.”
With a little effort I got out my roll and pulled off two twenty-dollar notes. I said, “Wayne, I wonder if they’s anybody can go out and gather me up a few things.”
Wayne said, “Well, I reckon I could. Things is kind of quiet right now. If I wouldn’t be gone too long.”
I said, “Ain’t much. I’d appreciate it if you’d buy me a couple of good-quality shirts. White, Western cut if they got it. Either good-quality cotton or linen.”
“Yes, sir.”
I looked at him, figuring him at about a slim 150 pounds. I said, “Get the shirts about two sizes bigger than what you take.” I give him another look. He was pretty young, but he looked like he’d be a dandy if he had the money for the clothes. He was wearing that high, starched collar and a cutaway coat that might have looked good on him except it didn’t fit. I figured it had been cut down from one of his daddy’s or some other relative’s. I said, “Don’t get nothing fancy. Just plain shirts, but good ones.” I nodded my head to where I’d pitched the two shirts I’d been bandaged with and wearing. I said, “Like them. And you might want to throw them out when you leave.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
I said, “And get me a couple of bottles of the best brandy you can find. Is there a saloon here in the hotel?”
“No, sir. Just the dining room. Don’t serve no liquor. Good saloon just down the street. Crook’s.”
I said, “All right. And get me a box of .40-caliber cartridges. Rim fire. Make damn sure they are rim fire. Now, can you tend to that for me? I don’t feel like going out just right yet.” I held the two twenties out.
He said, “That’s too much money, Mr. Young.”
I said, “You can bring me the change. Or put it on my bill. I know it seems puzzling, but it generally works out better if you have more money than you need ’stead of less. Like having an extra girlfriend.”
He suddenly blushed like I’d struck home. He said, “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but that ain’t always for the best.”
“Well, take too much money, anyway, and figure it out later. I’ll help you.” If I hadn’t been hurting and not feeling just all that well, the kid would have been tickling my funny bone. He was trying to act so serious and grown-up.
Now he said, “Mr. Young, Dr. Adams told me I was to tell you you couldn’t have no whiskey with that laudanum. He said you could take the laudanum and not hurt or you could get drunk. But you couldn’t do both.”
I said, “Brandy ain’t whiskey, son.”
“Brandy ain’t strong spirits?”
I shook my head. “Naw. Why they give it to little babies and ol’ folks.”
He give me a little frown. I didn’t think he exactly believed me. I reached out and picked up the little brown bottle with my right hand. My left arm still didn’t care to be used over much. I said, “How much this stuff can I take?”
Wayne said, “Dr. Adams said you could have two tablespoonfuls if you got to hurtin’ real bad. But he said to tell you he’d never known Mr. Justa Williams to ever take more than one.”
I looked up at him. I said, “Where did this doctor come from, a circus or some such?”
“No, sir. He’s from up east. Some high-class school. Mr. Norris, that’s Mr. Justa’s brother, was the one got him to come to Blessing. We ain’t supposed to have no such high-class doctor in this here kind of town. You better eat that stew, Mr. Young. I’ll see to them things you want.” He picked up my bloody shirts and started toward the open door. Before he left he said, “About meals, Mr. Young—hotel runs a boardinghouse style of dining room, meals at regular times. If you ain’t going to feel like coming out to eat, I reckon I can fix it up so you get yours brought to you till you’re back on your feet.”
Before I could answer, a big, hard-looking man with a tin star on his chest suddenly filled the door. I was about half-afraid he was going to tell Wayne for me that he could just plan to deliver my eats over to the jail.
But he said, “Wayne, yore patient feeling all right?”
Wayne said, “Sheriff Vara. Howdy.”
“Wayne,” he said. Wayne passed by him, and I took note that he was taking a good look at the bloody white shirt I’d been shot in, Wayne not having had enough sense to try and conceal it.
I sat still and just went on eating my stew. There wasn’t much else I could do. I was hurt and my revolver was empty. And even if I hadn’t been hurt, there didn’t seem to be much I could do against the sheriff. He was near six foot tall, but he had heavy shoulders and big, muscled-up arms. From one direction his face looked Mexican; from another it looked Indian. Straight on it didn’t look either one. He came into the room, his hat pushed back on his head, a big Colt revolver in a very handy position on his hip. He said, “You’d be Wilson Young. Least that’s what Dr. Adams said.”
I nodded. I said, “I would.”
He said, “My name is Lew Vara. I’m the sheriff in this county.”
“Howdy,” I said. I took another spoonful of stew and just sat there.
Vara pulled up a chair and sat down opposite me. He said, “Would you be the Wilson Young from Del Rio?”
There didn’t seem to be much point in denying it. The fact was easy enough to check. I was surprised he hadn’t recognized my name already. I said, “I would.”
He pointed at my bandage. He said, “You get that around here?”
I shook my head. I said, “No. Didn’t happen in your county.”
He looked at me for a long moment. Finally he said, “I’ve heard considerable about you.”
That didn’t come as much of a surprise. I figured he had a Wanted poster on me somewheres in his desk if he just looked far enough back. I said, “Is that a fact?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We got a friend in common. Justa Williams. He come back here from Del Rio and told me you helped him out of a pretty good spot of trouble.”
I shrugged. It hurt my side. I said, “Man was slightly outnumbered. And I didn’t much care for the folks as was giving him trouble.”
Vara said, “Justa says you went a little further out of yore way than most Christians would have. Like I say, Justa is a friend of mine. He’s the man put me in this office, and he’s helped out more folks around here than I’d care to name. Including me. I hear you sent word out to him you was in town.”
I was still not certain where I stood with this sheriff. I said, “They sent a boy on a mu
le. He might get there this month.”
Vara nodded. He said, “Yeah, that would be Nathan. He’s a good boy, but he ain’t real fast-moving. You ought to have come by my office. I’d’ve got word to Justa in a hurry.”
I didn’t mention that I was still a kind of wanted outlaw and he was the sheriff. I just nodded my chin down toward my bandaged chest and said, “Well, there was this. I figured on a doctor as a first thing.”
“Doc Adams says you ain’t hurt too bad.”
I said, “Doc Adams ain’t got a bullet hole in him.”
Vara laughed. He got up. He said, “Maybe me and you and Justa can have a drink together when you get up and around.”
I said, “Sheriff . . .”
He was about to start for the door. He stopped. I put the spoon in the bowl of stew. I said, “Do you know who I am other than a friend of Justa’s?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You’re Wilson Young. You’ve robbed just about everything in the state. Hell, I been hearing about you for ten years. Never thought I’d meet you. Heard you got off the owlhoot trail and went to helping the poor and needy.”
I said, “What about me being here?” I said it carefully, letting nothing get in my voice.
He said, “What about it?”
I said, “Might still be some paper out on me.”
He shrugged. He said, “I ain’t got any. I don’t care what you do so long as it ain’t illegal and don’t scare the horses.”
“I’ll be careful about the horses,” I said.
He pointed at my bandage again. He said, “Anybody else involved that come off the worse for it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Close around here?”
“Not real close.”
“You figure they’ll be looking for you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I looked up at him. I said, “I acted in self-defense, but with the folks that was involved, I don’t think that fact will help much.”
He nodded. He said, “Sometimes it’s like that. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know first thing. You better eat that stew and get well as quick as you can.”
I watched him go out, shutting the door behind him. It appeared that Justa Williams pulled considerable weight in his part of the world. Well, I wasn’t going to complain about that so long as it didn’t scare the horses, as the sheriff had said.
I set in to finish the big bowl of stew. I wasn’t all that hungry, but I figured I needed it, even if that meant agreeing with that doctor. I ate some of the bread and then downed a short pull of whiskey. The laudanum was still sitting in front of me, but I was damned if I was going to take any, even though my side was doing its best to make certain I knew it had been shot. I had every intention of returning the bottle to the good doctor unopened and unused. Which, I’d expect him to note, was a tablespoonful less than Justa.
Wayne came back with my purchases. I had him just pitch it all on the bed. He said, “There’s a little over twelve dollars in change.”
“Hang on to it, boy,” I said. “We’ll get it spent yet.”
He went out with the tray and I opened one of the bottles of brandy and had a good drink out of a glass. I didn’t mind pulling on a whiskey bottle like some damn border ruffian, but I didn’t drink brandy that way.
I started to light another cigarillo and then changed my mind. I was passing weary. Pain will do that to you. And then I’d had to get up damn early to catch that blasted train to Galveston. It wasn’t a thing I ordinarily did, but I wheeled around on the bed and lay back. I figured I’d sleep a minute or two and then load my revolver. It had been empty a little longer than it was used to.
Sometime later I come half awake, conscious that there was someone in the room. My revolver was in my holster at the foot of the bed, but it wasn’t going to do me any good on account of I’d never got around to loading it. Little by little I come full awake. I was laying on my back, but I didn’t betray my waking by either opening my eyes or changing the pattern of my slow breathing. It wasn’t that I’d heard a noise or anything else that would have caused me to suddenly come alert; it was just that I could feel someone in the room. They weren’t moving around, and I couldn’t hear whoever it was fumbling with anything or breathing. Whoever it was was being mighty still. I let my eyelids just flutter open a slit, to where I could just barely see through my eyelashes. I could tell I must have slept longer than I’d thought because the room was dim. I figured it must be dark outside. But that wouldn’t tell me what time it was. It being April, it got dark a little after six, so it could be anywhere from that time to six the next morning.
I nearly jumped because a voice suddenly said, “Why don’t you quit playing possum? I know you’re awake, you faker.”
I opened my eyes and looked to my left. There, sitting in a chair that he’d turned backwards so he could rest his arms on the top of the back and straddle it, was Justa Williams. I could just barely make him out in the dimness.
I said, “What are you doing in here? I didn’t hear you knock. This is a sickroom, you know.”
He said, “Hell, it’s my hotel. I don’t have to knock.” He got up off the chair and struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp that hung from the ceiling. The light ran most of the dimness out of the room, and I could get a good look at Justa. He hadn’t changed much since I’d seen him last. He was a little over six foot tall with big shoulders and hands and not much waist to speak of. He’d told me in Del Rio that his weight generally come in at around 190 pounds, and I didn’t see much change. His face was like that of most men who made their living out of doors—tanned and weathered with wrinkles around the eyes. I guessed there were women who’d figure his face might not scare small children, but he wasn’t nowhere near as handsome as I was—a fact I’d reminded him of several times.
He shook out the match after he got the lamp lit and came back to straddle the chair. I said, “If I owned a hotel that was still using coal-oil lamps, I wouldn’t be going around bragging about it. Every hick-town hotel I’ve been in for the last five years has had gaslights.”
He said, “I thought you was partial to jails, not hotels. They got gaslights in them? Who shot you anyway, the guitar player?”
“One of the dancing girls,” I said. “Or I shot myself on purpose. I forget. What the hell you doing here? Lose a horse race because you couldn’t find a good jockey?”
He said, “Naw, I got some whining, moaning message from somebody sounded like he needed help. This would have been the last place I’d come looking for a man to ride a horse for me.”
That was the way of it between me and Justa. Wasn’t either one of us about to let on we was glad to see the other.
I said, “You taken any trips lately that you didn’t want to make?”
I was digging him about being herded out to Del Rio by the hired guns of a vicious little cripple named J. C. Flood. Flood had been trying to extort a good deal of money out of him by threatening his family and his ranch, but we’d finally settled the whole business with three horse races and a gunfight. I’d ridden two of the races for Justa, winning both of them, and, in the gunfight, he and I had taken on Flood and six of his hirelings. They had lost. I’d killed four and had given Justa credit for two and a half, counting Flood, on account of him being a cripple, as just a half. Justa had irately insisted that there wasn’t nothing crippled about the shotgun Mr. Flood was carrying. As he was leaving Del Rio, he’d given me a black Thoroughbred racehorse that he’d come by as a present. The horse was the fastest thing I’d ever ridden and was, at that moment, stabled back at my ranch in Mexico just across from Del Rio. I hadn’t wanted to take the horse because he was worth four or five thousand dollars, but Justa had given me the bill-of-sale transfer just as his train was pulling out of the station. It is damn hard to give a horse back to a man that is on a moving train.
He ignored my question about being herded and said, “What have you done with my Thoroughbred racehorse, lost him in a poker game?”
He suddenly laughed and reached out and got a glass and what was left of the bottle of whiskey and poured himself out a drink. I swung around on the bed and sat up, and Justa poured me out a stiff belt of brandy and handed it to me. We clinked glasses, said, “Luck,” and then knocked them back as befitted the toast. When we’d both had the benefit of the liquor, Justa said, “Well, I am glad to see you, though I’m damned if I know why. What kind of a mess you in?”
I told him what had happened. It didn’t take long. I said, “Your sheriff has already been by. I think the doctor told him I’d been shot.”
“Yeah,” Justa said. He rubbed his chin. “You ain’t got nothing to worry about from Lew. I run into him on the street coming here. He knows you’re a friend of mine.”
I was feeling stronger, but I was still weak. I didn’t much feel like sitting up, but I didn’t want to lay back down while Justa was there. I said, “He may be your friend, and he may know we’re friends. But if Wanted notices start coming out on me, he’s still the sheriff.”
Justa said, “Don’t worry about that. I kind of doubt that this here Phil Sharp is going to go to the regular law. They ain’t, from what I’ve heard, all that fond of those vigilante groups. And he’s going to have a hell of a time explaining how one man come to gun down three of them. Not to mention what they were doing there in the first place. But the thing I don’t understand is how you come to let this Sharp fellow run up twenty thousand dollars in gambling debts. You gone into charity work?”
I started to shrug and then stopped myself. My side didn’t want me shrugging. I said, “Hell, he’d been a damn good customer from almost the day the place opened. I figure he’d been through there five or six times and always lost a bundle of cash. He was a good customer and, from what I could gather, was a well-to-do man in the shipping business. He showed me a wad of cash but said he was going on into Mexico on business and needed the cash, and could he wire me the money when he got back to Galveston. I figured, why not.”