Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  Except I’d forgotten how cold that artesian well water was. She said that Justa had rigged up a shower bath outside in a stall with a cistern over the top, but she couldn’t take it except in the hottest months of the year, preferring to heat water on the stove and then have a proper bath. She said that Justa used the outside shower winter and summer, and she just couldn’t see how he stood it in the cold months, but that was Justa for you. She was just grateful to have water piped into the house even if it was cold.

  She cooked me ham and eggs, Juanita being occupied washing floors, and then sat down with a cup of coffee to keep me company at the kitchen table. She said, “How did you sleep, Mr. Young?”

  “Just fine, Mrs. Williams.” I flexed my left arm. “This little inconvenience is coming along mighty nicely.”

  With Justa out of the house it seemed fitting that we go back to formal names.

  “Are your eggs all right?”

  I nodded. “Couldn’t be better.”

  “I’m sorry about the biscuits. I should have whipped up a fresh batch. My mother would have a hissy fit if she knew I’d served a guest warmed-over biscuits.”

  I shook my head, chewing as fast as I could. I said, “Uh-huh. I wouldn’t have these biscuits any other way. No, ma’am! Mrs. Williams, you are talking to a man who only got biscuits on Christmas morning for a good many years of his life. Why, I’d rather have these biscuits than cake.”

  She laughed. Lord, she was a looker. She was wearing a little lightweight robin’s-egg-blue frock that did nothing to hide that figure that I reckoned Justa was generally anxious to get alone with. She had her hair pulled back and tied off so that it just kind of hung down in one bunch. I asked about their son, going on two if I recollected right, but I hadn’t seen him about the place.

  Nora said, “Oh, he’s in town staying with grandma and granddaddy. I may have to take a shotgun to go in and get him back. And then they just spoil him something rotten. He’s starting to talk, and he’s just ever so sassy when he comes back from grandma and granddaddy’s. Wants sweets all the time. I tell Mother not to let Daddy bring him all that candy home from the store, but it does no good.” She sighed. “They will be grandparents, and I suppose there is nothing can be done about it.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, though I didn’t have much idea what she was talking about. I’d barely had parents, much less grandparents. I knew she’d been a schoolteacher, so I asked if she missed it.

  She said, “Oh, not as much as I’d thought. I do miss town, though. I wish we’d get in more, but Justa’s work keeps him so close.”

  I said, “I don’t know if you could call it that in my case, but I was mostly raised by a schoolteacher. My old-maid aunt. Used to crack my head with her thimble if I didn’t get my lessons up.”

  Nora said, “I could tell by your speech, Mr. Young, that you have been exposed to education to quite an extent. Or at least for this part of the country.” She all of a sudden cocked her head to one side and stared at me for a few seconds. She said, “You know, Mr. Young, you don’t favor yourself.”

  I was a little startled. Near as I could figure, I’d favored myself the last time I’d looked in a mirror. I said, “What?”

  She laughed as she realized what she’d said. She said, “No, I don’t mean that of course. I mean you don’t look like I’d pictured you. Of course I’d heard of you for a number of years. Wilson Young, outlaw! Wilson Young, bank robber! It hasn’t been that many years ago when my sister and I used to hear my parents talking about you. Then they’d hush up when we came into the room.”

  “Not fit conversation for a young girl’s ears,” I said dryly.

  She said, hastily, “Oh, I’m not trying to make it sound like you’re going on ninety. I’m younger than you and Justa, and my father is a storekeeper, and I think my mother has the key to the front door of the church. So my sister and I were rather protected. But I had heard of you for some time, even before Justa came home from Del Rio to tell me how you’d helped him.”

  I said, “Well, now you’ve got my curiosity up. Just how did you see me, Mrs. Williams? With a gray beard?”

  She laughed, but she said, “No, not with a beard, but with a mustache. A great big black, drooping mustache. And I thought you’d be bigger and much meaner-looking, and just bristling with guns and knives. Maybe even with a knife cut on your face or something.”

  I said, “Well, you’ve done a pretty good job of describing Chulo. I got to say I’m glad I don’t look like him.”

  “Chulo?”

  I said, “I guess you could have called him one of my gang, though I never thought of us as a gang, just a bunch of people in the same line of work. Chulo is the biggest, meanest-looking, ugliest Mexican you ever saw. He’s got the mustache and the scar on his face and a big, hooked nose, and he just fairly bristles with guns and knives, as you say. He’s the only one left out of my old bunch.”

  “Where is he now?”

  I said, “He’s at my establishment in Del Rio, works there. Sort of helps folks to remember their manners.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Tell me, Mr. Young, exactly what sort of establishment do you have? I’ve never quite got the straight of that yet.”

  I had finished my breakfast and pushed my plate back. I got out a cigarillo and lit it. I said, “Uh, it’s kind of like a saloon. Little, uh, gambling.”

  “You mean it’s a casino?”

  I cleared my throat. I said, “Well, uh, yes, yes, we do have gambling. Yes, you might call it a saloon.”

  “Justa says you have a whorehouse.”

  That give me a fit of coughing. It carried on so long that Mrs. Williams got up and got me a glass of water. I drank it down, trying to think what to say. I said, “Well, uh, no, uh, not really, Mrs. Williams. That was, uh, a kind of little joke I told Justa.”

  She looked at me, smiling slightly. She said, “I see.”

  “Yes . . . ,” I said, “them jokes will backfire on you sometimes.” I tried desperately to change the subject. I said, “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Williams, about my looks. I’d have looked meaner if I could have.”

  “No, no,” she said, “I didn’t say I didn’t like your appearance; I do. Very much. It’s just that you are so gentle-acting and so pleasant. It’s hard to believe you are this feared outlaw who makes men tremble in their boots.”

  I raised a finger in contradiction. “Ex-outlaw, Mrs. Williams, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  I stood up. I said, “Well, I reckon I ought to go out and walk around a bit. Try and work some of the stiffness out.”

  I was about half out of the kitchen when she said, “Mr. Young?”

  I turned back. “Yes ma’am?”

  She said, “I want you to know that I am very much beholden to you for helping Justa in Del Rio. I was away on a family reunion when it all took place. I’ve gotten a few of the details from Justa and a little of the story from his brothers. I know I’ll never know it all because that’s Justa’s way of protecting me from some of the things he has to do. But I know that it was very bad and very serious, and I know from Justa that if it hadn’t been for you . . . Well, let’s just say that you have my gratitude and I am in your debt. As we all are.”

  I shook my head and gave a self-deprecating look. I said, “Mrs. Williams, I appreciate praise as well as the next fellow, but it ain’t due me. Justa was in a little bit of a tight place, but he could have got out without no interference from me. All I did was hold the horses, so to speak.”

  She said, steadily, “In a gunfight against seven men, you were holding the horses?”

  I opened my mouth. I said, “Uh, well . . .”

  She said, “Mr. Young, I’m sure my husband has sworn you to secrecy. He goes off and gets himself shot and then tries to tell me that he’s been looking at ranches. Or cattle. Or something. It usually takes me a day or so, but between him and his brothers, I catch them out in enough lies, so that I finally
get most of the truth. I know what happened, Mr. Young, and you were not holding the horses. Now, what would please you for lunch? Chili and tamales?”

  “Be fine.”

  “With lemonade?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “With brandy in it?”

  I got out of there before she picked me clean.

  I walked out on a fine spring day. I knew that Justa’s house was at least three miles from the gulf, but with the breeze blowing in off the water, it seemed as if I could hear the waves breaking onto the shore. It had been a long time since I’d seen a beach with breakers rolling in, and I determined to borrow a horse and ride down to the nearest point before I left.

  I just walked aimlessly, heading, more or less, in the direction of the headquarters house. My strength was returning rapidly, and my side, other than an occasional twinge when I caught it wrong, seemed almost back to normal.

  After a while I began seeing cattle. I figured they were steers that weren’t involved in the calving operation going on on the south side of the range and had drifted toward the north. But as little as I knew about cattle it was obvious, even to my ignorant eye, that Justa’s cattle were a world and gone from the Mexican beef we had down in Del Rio, even after it had been fattened up. These cattle had been improved and it was easy to see.

  I hadn’t been walking far when I saw a rider coming my way, loping his horse. I figured he was about to ask what a stranger was doing on Half-Moon land, so I stopped and waited for him to come up. He skidded his horse to a stop and said, “I’ll jest bet you are Wilson Young, ain’t you?”

  I nodded and said I was. He leaned out of the saddle and put out his hand. He said, “My name is Ray Hays. Me and Ben run the remuda.”

  I smiled. Hays was a man of about my age with sandy hair and a light build and a friendly face. Justa had told me about him. Some years back he’d been instrumental in getting Justa out of a tight scrape, and Justa had brought him back to work at the ranch. Or at least, Justa had said, that had been his intention. But, as it turned out, Hays had taken up a position as a member of the family and Ben’s best friend, and Justa wasn’t sure exactly what it was he drew wages for. But Justa said he was a mighty good man to have on your side in a fight and that, next to Ben, he was the best with a gun on the place.

  Hays said, “Say, you don’t look like you been shot.”

  I half smiled. I said, “Well, for a while there I did.”

  “Taking a little air this mornin’?”

  “Getting out.”

  “Ought to walk up to the big house. Mr. Howard Williams is settin’ out on the front porch in his rockin’ chair. Reckon he’d welcome some company. Ain’t but a quarter mile up there.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” I said.

  Hays said, “I’d show you the way, but I got to turn these here steers back. Some of ’em is startin’ to drift down towards the salt grass, and they ain’t got no better sense than to eat it.”

  “Mighty glad to have made your acquaintance,” I said.

  He was about to rein his horse around when he suddenly said, “Say, lemme see you draw.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about for a second. I said, “What?”

  He made a motion toward his own holster. He said, “You know, draw yore weapon like you do. I always heared you was the fastest thing alive. I jest wanted to see it.”

  Justa had told me that, aside from his usefulness in a fight, Hays was a lot like owning a good pet dog with fleas. You liked the dog, but you wished the fleas would go away. Asking me to show him my draw was his fleas. I said, “Well, Ray, I’d like to accomodate you, but I’m still a little stiff and sore. You understand.”

  “Aw, yeah,” he said. He touched his hat. “Well, I better git.”

  I walked on toward the main house shaking my head. Justa said Hays was funny as a pet raccoon except he was too easy to kid. He said, “Ain’t no sport in it. He takes everything I say seriously.”

  The old man acted like he was glad for the company. I dragged me up a wicker chair beside him and lit a cigarillo, and we set out to have a visit. Mr. Williams looked out over the rolling plains and said, “You know, Mr. Young, won’t be long before this country won’t be ours anymore. It’s getting civilized. Won’t be room in it for men like me and you. Pretty soon the most important people will be the schoolteacher and the preacher. And maybe the lawyers. Yes, the lawyers. They’ll do our fighting for us with papers and writs and such instead of guns.”

  I reckoned he was still thinking of me as a desperado and was doing me the honor of fitting me into the rough life he must have led while he was founding the ranch in the early days. I figured he could tell some tales if he was so inclined.

  But, besides that, he was talking about how civilized matters were becoming, and I was sitting there with a bullet hole in me. I said, “I don’t know, Mr. Williams, that all these here modern improvements like gaslights and piped-in water and icehouses and that kind of truck are really ever going to civilize this country. Men are still going to be men. Some are going to cause trouble one way or the other.”

  Mr. Williams worked his mouth and then put his nose up like he was scenting the air. He said, “Mr. Young, what I think we need on a fine morning like this is something to work us up a spit with. Now, if you was to just step through the front door there and go on down the hall and into the office where we was last night, you’d find a bottle of whiskey and some glasses. If you was to fetch them out here, why I think we’d be set for the morning.”

  I didn’t say anything for a second and I didn’t move. Finally I said, “Mr. Williams, are you trying to get me in trouble?”

  He give me the innocent look of a horse thief about to be hung. He said, “Why, whatever do you mean, Mr. Young?”

  I said, “Justa told me about you not being allowed but one drink a day.”

  “And this is it.”

  “In the morning?”

  “That’s when I prefer it.”

  I got up slowly. I said, “If I catch hell from Justa about this I’m going to tell him you out-and-out lied to me.”

  He gave me that same look. He said, “Ain’t a man’s word good no more?”

  I went, but reluctantly. I poured myself a small one because I really wasn’t in a drinking mood. And I watered Mr. Williams’s. I knew he was expecting it straight, but I also knew he wasn’t supposed to have it that way.

  When I brought him his drink, he looked pleased at the size of it, but then he took a big swallow and said, disgustedly, “You watered it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I did. I don’t want them sons of yours on my back.”

  “Damn doctors,” he said. “Worse than old women.”

  But after a few minutes he brightened up and said, “By God, sir, I know what this house needs tonight! A poker game. Damn right! We’ll have a good game of cutthroat poker tonight.” He looked sideways at me. He said, “Justa tells me that’s your line of work now.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  He said, “Well, we’ll have to see about that.”

  I got away when I could and got back to the house just as Nora and the maid were commencing to fix lunch. I got myself a brandy and then sat down in the parlor to sort matters out. I was healing faster than I’d expected, and it was coming to the time to think about how and when to go and visit Mr. Philip Sharp. I was not planning on informing him of my visit this time.

  Justa came in not too long later, and we all went in and sat down to a lunch of chili and tamales and onion-and-tomato salad. About halfway through the meal Justa put his fork down and said, “I been into town this morning. To see Lew Vara. Him and me are going to go to Galveston to see what’s up with your Mr. Sharp.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I said, “The hell you are! Mr. Sharp is my business.”

  Justa said, “Now, don’t talk like a fool, Wilson. You ain’t got the slightest idea what’s up with Sharp or the law in Galveston. For all you know they’ll arr
est you the minute you get near the place. It ain’t been four days since you shot three members of the vigilante committee, or have you forgot?”

  I said, “Ain’t got nothing to do with it. This is my trouble and I’ll tend to it.”

  Then Nora surprised me by saying, “Just like you let Justa tend to his in Del Rio?”

  I had been surprised by Justa speaking of going to Galveston on my behalf in front of Nora. I had been more surprised at him doing it after having told me her attitude about him involving himself in any uncivil program that could get him shot. He’d told me that he had to constantly be lying to her about his doings because she just couldn’t stand that sort of thing. She wanted the country civilized, and she wanted the guns put away and all the differences settled by a show of hands. Justa had said that she’d once grown so tired of his involvement in dangerous practices that she’d refused to let him court her anymore and had nearly run off with a Kansas City drummer that traveled in yard goods.

  And now here she was taking the position that Justa should involve himself in my trouble. I just stared at her for a second. Then I said, “Mrs. Williams—Nora—Justa is a family man. I’m not. He don’t need to be getting himself in this particular horse race.”

  She said, “He’s not going down there to shoot this Mr. Sharp. He and Lew are only going to get you some information.”

  It sounded to me like they’d already talked it over.

  She said, “Of course I wouldn’t want Justa going into a dangerous situation—not that what I want has ever stopped him.” And she gave him a good, hard look. “But that’s not the purpose of the trip, not according to the way he explained it to me. Sheriff Vara will see the Galveston sheriff and, without letting him know he knows anything about you, sound him out about the shooting. See if it was ever reported. And find out how he feels about the vigilantes. Many sheriffs don’t like them, you know. And, of course, he’ll try and find out if your name has come up. Meanwhile, Justa is going to go over and see Sharp, maybe on the pretext of shipping some cattle to New Orleans. Just talk business with him. Your name will never come up unless Sharp mentions it. So I don’t see where that’s so dangerous. And it’s the least we can do.”