Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  We all went into the office and sat around. Ben passed the whiskey bottle, and everybody got himself a tumblerful and got comfortable.

  Ben said, to me, “How you figure to go after this man?”

  I shook my head. I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know enough yet. Justa is going to do some scouting for me, and then I’ll have a little look myself if everything appears all right.”

  “Hell, I’d just call him out and blow a hole in him.”

  I said, “No, I want to talk to him first.”

  “Talk to him?” Ben looked at me in some amazement. “What the hell you want to talk to him about? Hell, the man bushwhacked you. He deserves the same. It’s only a miracle and his bad aim you ain’t dead right now.”

  I said, “I want to know why he did it. I want to make sure it was just the twenty thousand dollars. Justa has got me thinking.” I took a drink of whiskey. I said, “Anyway, I want to talk to him, see what he has to say.” I half smiled. “After all, he was a good customer. Maybe I did something that set him off. I need to find out so I don’t make the same mistake again.”

  Norris said, “Excuse me, Mr. Young, but I find your manner of speech and your demeanor difficult to reconcile with your legend.”

  I was pretty sure what he meant, but I looked over at Justa just to be sure. Justa said, “He means you don’t talk and act like the kill-crazy, gun-happy, bank-robbing son of a bitch that everybody always heard you were.”

  I said, dryly, “I appreciate you putting it so well, Mr. Justa Williams.” I got out a cigarillo and lit it and looked at Norris with a kind of amused smile on my face. I said, “I can’t tell from the way you put that, Mr. Williams, if you are disappointed or just surprised.”

  Ben laughed, but Norris barely smiled. He didn’t appear to me to be a man who was ever likely to break anything from laughing too hard. He said, “I didn’t mean it so much personal, Mr. Young, as an inquiry into the stuff of myths and how they begin and grow.”

  I was about to say something when Justa broke in. He said, quietly, “I’d be a little sparing with that word myth, Norris, was I you. You just ain’t seen Wilson in the right situation and circumstances. I have.”

  I was getting a little tired of being talked about, so I got up and said I thought I’d go out and sit on the porch, it being such a fine day. Justa said, “Go ahead. I’ll just hunt me up something to smoke and be right along.”

  I went out on the porch and sat down on the steps. I had the feeling I had just been high-hatted by Norris, but I couldn’t be sure. The way he talked, you couldn’t be sure of anything he said. But I had got the distinct impression that he was hinting that I might not be the real goods.

  Down the row of buildings that led to the big barn I could see a group of men squatting around and talking and whittling and spitting tobacco juice. They would be the hired hands that had the day off. While I watched, one of them detached himself and came walking my way. I recognized him right off as Ray Hays. He came up and touched his hat brim and said, “Well, howdy, Mr. Young. You look like you be perkin’ up more every day.”

  I said, “The undertaker has give up on me and gone back to town.”

  About then Justa came out and set down beside me. He said, to Hays, “Ray, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Hays kind of jerked back. He said, “Why, Boss, I’m off. It’s Sunday. Them boys down there in front of the bunkhouse is off too.”

  Justa said, “The working hands get the day off. What’s that got to do with you?”

  Hays said, “Why, I—”

  Justa said, “Never mind. I want you to go hunt up two empty whiskey bottles. Might be some in the cellar under the kitchen.”

  “Empty whiskey bottles?”

  “Empty. And be quick about it.”

  Hays said, “Boss, a empty whiskey bottle is about as much good as a dry cow.”

  Justa said, “Hays!”

  “I’m goin’, I’m goin’.”

  When he’d gone into the house, Justa looked around at me. He said, “Ben wants to draw against you.”

  I made a face. I said, “Aw, hell, Justa. You know I don’t care for that kind of foolishness. It’s silly.”

  Justa said, “He’s been dying to do it ever since you got here. He’s just barely been able to hold himself in until you got healed up some.”

  I said, “Oh, hell! What am I, some kind of prize pig at a fair?”

  Justa said, “Indulge him. It ain’t going to hurt you none. Besides, he might surprise you. He is damn fast, the fastest around here by a country mile.”

  I gave him a sour look.

  Justa said, “Quit being a bastard. Hell, you’re his hero.”

  He had the good grace to laugh when he said it.

  Ben came out just then. He stepped off the porch and down to the ground. He said, “Did Justa ask you?”

  I nodded.

  “Will you? I know it sounds kind of childish, but I ain’t ever likely to get this kind of opportunity again. I’d just kind of like to know how I stack up against the best.”

  I took my cigarillo out of my mouth. I said, “What makes you think I’m the best?”

  “That’s what they say,” he said.

  I glanced at the way he had his gun rig set up. He was wearing a cutaway holster, but I still couldn’t make out the caliber of his gun. I thought he was wearing the holster rig set a little too far back. I said, “You get slower when you get older, Ben. I might not can give you a fair showing.”

  He said, “I sort of doubt that for some reason.”

  I said, “Well, it’s something to do on a spring afternoon. Justa has sent Hays for a couple of whiskey bottles. I reckon that is their purpose. Where you want to do this?”

  He looked around. Not too far from the front of the house there was a small catch pen with posts sticking up about four feet. He said, “How about over there? Nothing behind except the barn. We can’t hit no cattle by mistake.”

  About then Hays came out with the empty whiskey bottles. I dropped my cigarillo, ground it out with my boot heel, and then started off toward the little pen with Ben and Justa and Hays. The posts were about ten feet apart. Justa had Hays put one bottle on top of each post. I said, to Ben, “What distance?”

  He shrugged. He said, “I don’t care.”

  I said, “Well, what are you after, speed or accuracy or both?”

  “I guess a little of both.”

  I said, “Then I’d say about five paces. You won’t get into many gunfights at a much longer range and them whiskey bottles is pretty small targets for a handgun. Ain’t exactly the size of a man’s chest.”

  I took the bottle on my right and stepped off the distance. Ben lined up to my left in front of the other bottle. Out of the corner of my left eye I could see Ben standing there, his right hand twitching toward his holster. That was a mistake. A man wanted his hand nice and calm, nice and relaxed as he drew. Twitching around just got the muscles confused. I said, “Justa?”

  “I’ll just say go.”

  “That suit you, Ben?”

  “Yeah.” His voice sounded tense. I could see the men from the bunkhouse starting to wander our way. We were kind of facing away from them at an angle, but they could see us and see the bottles on the fence, and they could figure out what was going on.

  I don’t have a trigger guard on my pistol. As I draw, I am cocking it with my thumb, and I’m using my trigger finger to point toward my target as I’m clearing the holster with my revolver. Just an instant before I come level with my target, my trigger finger comes back in a smooth pull and the gun fires as it bears on the target. It’s all one motion. I’ve practiced it maybe a million times. Maybe more.

  Justa said, “Go!” and my bottle exploded in time with the explosion of Justa’s word and my revolver. I stood there, the smoke curling slowly out of the barrel of my revolver. Ben hadn’t fired. I looked over at him. He was standing there with his gun clear of the holster, but not quite leveled on the ta
rget. He looked at me and said, “My gawd!”

  Justa said, “Satisfied?”

  I could hear the hired hands, who’d moved close enough to see, murmuring among themselves. Ray Hays said, “I think I saw that.”

  I put my revolver back in the holster. I said, to Ben, “Let’s go talk. Maybe I can show you a few things.”

  “Hell!” he said. He put his revolver away. “What’s the point? Not after what I just seen.”

  I got him to walk on around the house with me. I said, “Let’s get out back here where we don’t have so damn much of a crowd.”

  He was still shaking his head. He said, “When Justa came back from Del Rio, he told a story about when you and him were sitting in a saloon in Del Rio and some man on the prod come up looking for trouble. Justa said that one second your hand was just laying on the table and the next instant it had a revolver in it. He said it just kind of appeared there. I didn’t believe him then, but I do now. Hell! I been thinking all this time I was fast! Son of a bitch!”

  “Just let me show you a few things,” I said. “You ain’t all that far off. The main thing you are doing is making too many moves. Just needs to be that one.”

  * * *

  Nora cooked supper for us that night. She fixed us pork chops and fried potatoes and sliced tomatoes. Justa said, poking at a slice of tomato, “Nora has got a garden full of tomatoes and such truck, and she is determined we are going to eat them up if we have to have tomatoes for breakfast. How’d you like to get up to a breakfast of tomatoes and peas?”

  Nora turned to me. She said, “My husband contents himself with the Stockman’s Journal and other publications that specialize in the price of cattle. If he’d ever read a newspaper—and I don’t mean that rag they put out in Blessing—but a good newspaper, like the Houston Post or the Galveston Gazette, that comes in every day on the train, or even a good magazine, he’d know that medical science is discovering that vitamins are very important and can affect our health. And fresh vegetables are very heavy in vitamins.”

  Justa said, “Show me a vitamin. Just point out a vitamin on this here tomato.”

  Nora gave him a look. She said, “Well, of course, you can’t see a vitamin.”

  He said, “I don’t see how something I can’t see can affect me.”

  She put her fork down. She said, “Oh, really? Can you see a bushwhacker?”

  He said, “Awww, that ain’t the same thing.”

  “Just answer me. Can you see a bushwhacker?”

  I laughed. I could see that she had him.

  He said, “Well, hell no, you can’t see a bushwhacker. He wouldn’t be a bushwhacker if you could see him.”

  “But he can affect you?”

  He threw up his hands. He said, “Don’t ever argue with a woman, Wilson. Just eat your damn vegetables and don’t argue. You can’t win.”

  It was a treat for me to eat fresh produce. Them Mexican girls of mine were in the habit of throwing every kind of hot sauce on hand at anything that even looked like a vegetable. When they were done, the poor little onion or whatever didn’t look a thing like it had when it started out. My girls figured if a meal didn’t have grease and chili powder on it, it wasn’t fit to eat.

  After supper we sat around the parlor for a time. Me and Justa were having a drink, and Nora was doing a little fancy sewing. Out of the blue Nora asked me practically the same question Norris had. Well, Norris’s hadn’t been exactly a question, more like a bald statement. But it amounted to the same thing. Nora said, “Wilson, I confess I am more than consumed by how your feet found the outlaw trail. Was it an accident? Was it forced upon you? It seems so alien to your nature, at least what I’ve seen of it these few days.”

  Justa laughed and shook his head. He said, “Boy howdy, must be something wrong with my eyes. Ain’t never crossed my mind to wonder about your ’nature,’ Wilson.”

  Mindful that Nora had been to church services that day, I kind of tempered the truth enough in my favor to reach a sympathetic ear, but not so much that the roof of the house might fall in. I said, “Well, Miss Nora, it was some of both. I know that when I ran away from home at the age of fourteen, having just completed the tenth grade in school, I never done so with the express purpose of being a outlaw. I won’t go into the circumstances that forced me to leave my home with my old-maid aunt in Corpus Christi, but I felt they were sufficient.”

  Nora said, “That’s a very tender age for one to set out on his own. Especially if he has come from a genteel background.”

  Justa made some kind of a sound, putting his hand over his face so as to cover his mouth. I never let it bother me. I said, “But once set on that course, I left that comfortable home with scarcely more than the clothes on my back. I was riding an old nag that had once carried me back and forth from the school I had attended with such pleasure. Other than that, all I had to my name was the legacy my daddy had left me: a U.S. Army issue .44-caliber revolver. Well, as fate would have it, I wasn’t but five miles from home, already hungry, when I chanced upon a rancher driving a buggy down the little road into Corpus. I knew this man by sight, though I didn’t know his name. But I knew he was a man of means. Miss Nora, I do not know how it happened or why it happened, but the next thing I knew I had stopped that man on the road and was pointing that big revolver at him and demanding money. I remember as if it was yesterday. I can still see the surprise on that poor man’s face. He said, ’Boy, are you crazy? You’re nothing but a kid!’ I recall replying, ’Yes, but this here revolver don’t know it. Now I’ll have your money!’ ”

  Nora said, “Oh, my!”

  Justa made that sound again like he was suffocating.

  I said, “Yes, ma’am. I am sorry to tell you, but I taken nine dollars and change off that rancher and, to add to that, took his buggy horse as well.”

  Justa said, “I guess that was a surprise to you too, stealing his horse so as to get a better getaway time.”

  I ignored him. I said, “So, Miss Nora, that was my first step on the outlaw trail. I don’t know if you could call it an accident or the devil working through a young, bewildered boy.”

  Justa said, loudly, “Most people call it robbery.”

  Nora said, “Hush, Justa. Can’t you see it’s painful for Wilson to talk about it?”

  Justa said, “Oh, my aching—”

  I said, “After that, try as I would, I couldn’t find a place to stop for many long years.”

  Nora said, “Well, you’re all right now. You’ve found the right path now.”

  Justa muttered something. Nora turned on him. She said, “What?”

  He said, “Nothing, honey. I was just wondering when Wilson was going to be called to the ministry. I know for a fact he’s already got a place in Del Rio he can hold services.”

  She gave him a severe look. She said, “You just must be sacrilegious. One of these days, Justa, it’s all going to catch up to you.”

  I just sat there looking pious and going, “tsk, tsk, tsk.”

  It wasn’t long before Nora retired for the night. I knew Justa wasn’t going to be long behind her because he’d have to be up really early. He and Lew Vara were taking the eight o’clock train next morning for Galveston, and it was a good hour and a half ride into Blessing. I got a piece of paper and a pencil from Justa. I wanted him to send a telegram for me when he got into town. I addressed it to Evita Obregon care of the Border Palace in Del Rio. The message instructed her to put Chulo on the first train to Blessing, as I wanted him here as soon as possible. I instructed her to have him go to the sheriff’s office as soon as he got to town and wait for me to show up. I sent the message to Evita because Chulo couldn’t read. I knew the idea of going to a sheriff’s office on purpose was going to be a little strange to him, but I told Evita to be sure that Chulo went there and stayed there and that word would be brought to me of his arrival. I especially instructed her to instruct Chulo to behave himself and to speak to no one but the sheriff and not to drink any whiskey
.

  Justa looked at the message. He said, “Border Palace! Is that what you call that honky-tonk and whorehouse you got down there? Palace?”

  “Send the telegram.”

  He said, “Did you listen to yourself telling that story to Nora about how you come to be an outlaw?”

  I said, “It’s the way it happened.”

  He said, “A little of it might be true. But you make it sound like they was six men holding shotguns on you forcing you to stick that rancher up. My word, I never heard such a line of bull. Don’t shoot Phil Sharp, talk him to death. It will be a much crueler fate.”

  I said, “I wouldn’t say too much was I you. Remember what Nora said, it’s all going to catch up with you some sweet day.”

  He tapped the piece of paper. “This Chulo. What are you sending for him for?”

  “Little help,” I said.

  “We got plenty around here.”

  I said, “Let’s play it out as the cards get dealt. You be careful in Galveston.”

  He said, “They ain’t looking for me. I’m just going to be a rancher looking to ship some cattle.”

  I said, “You will ask Sheriff Vara to keep an eye out for Chulo in the next couple of days? He ought to get to Blessing the day after tomorrow if he ain’t off somewhere.”

  “What does he look like?”

  I said, “Oh, he’ll know him. Just tell the sheriff that Chulo will look like someone that ought to be in jail if anyone does.”

  CHAPTER 5

  It was a long day spent waiting on Justa to return. He thought they’d be back on the four o’clock train, which would put him back at the ranch sometime after five in the afternoon. I killed as much of the day as I could by saddling the little roan I’d ridden the day before and wandering over the ranch. Whenever I’d come upon a cowboy working a bunch of cattle, I’d wave and he’d touch his hat and then watch me like I was going to suddenly draw on him. One of them gave me directions for the closest route down to the coast. It was a distance of about three miles, the grass changing to the coarser salt grass the nearer I got to the coast. I finally ended up on a shallow bluff about five feet high and looked down and out at the blue water. There was a little sandy strip of beach, not much like what I’d seen in my days in Corpus Christi, but the breakers came rolling in and toppled over in a froth of white water and then gentled out to wash in on the wet sand. I sat my horse there for the better part of a half an hour, just smelling the salt air and remembering younger days. I didn’t exactly wonder what I would have turned out as if I’d finished school and stayed in Corpus, but the thoughts flittered across my mind of me as a merchant or a storekeeper or maybe even a banker. But they just flittered, none of them staying for very long. I couldn’t see myself as being anything but what I was.