Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  “I notice he come running first thing so as to get his licks in early. That ought to tell you something.”

  The sheriff looked around again. He said, “Bennet said you had a big Mexican with you was going to break his fingers. You got a big Mexican with you?”

  I tried to look as innocent as I could. I said, “A man don’t see a lot of big Mexicans, Sheriff. You seen any real big Mexicans lately? They are mostly a small people.”

  He smiled slightly. He said, “You ain’t going to call that an answer are you, Mr. Young?”

  I said, “I just think Ross Bennet ought to be a little more careful before he goes charging around accusing folks of God only knows what. Bennet might be answering some charges himself before he knows it.”

  The sheriff said, “There was one other matter. A man named Oliver was found floating in the water down by the docks. Had a bullet hole square in his chest. Kind of shot a man was real handy with a gun would make. Now Oliver ain’t no big loss. Fact of the business is I’ve had my eye on him for a long time. His business was buying damaged goods from some of these shippers down here. Mostly took them to Houston. We knowed something was wrong, but we never could catch him at anything crooked.”

  I said, dryly, “I bet the shippers he was buying the so-called damaged cargo from was either Bennet or Sharp. And I bet you was gettin’ some inquiries from the insurance companies involved.”

  The sheriff looked at me. Then he took a pouch of tobacco out of his pocket and put a chew in his mouth. He looked around the room, and I got up and found a cuspidor over by the bed and took it over and set it by his chair. He nodded his thanks.

  When he had his chaw worked down, he said, “You seem to have gotten hold of some information in a pretty short time.”

  I said, “I can tell you the main business of that vigilante committee was to make sure everybody on the docks kept his mouth shut about them damaged goods that Bennet and Sharp was collecting insurance money on and then selling. I hear it’s right hard to tell sea-damaged goods if the insurance inspector ain’t real thorough.”

  The sheriff spat. He said, “They was some talk around the docks concerning the demise of this here Oliver feller. They said something about some cowboy being around. That wouldn’t have been you, would it?”

  I poured a little brandy in my empty coffee cup and sipped it. I said, “Hell, Sheriff, I run a casino and a cathouse. Do I look like a cowboy?”

  The sheriff said, “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of you so much. Just kind of unusual fer them folks down at the docks to talk much about their business. They generally keep it to theyselves, handle it theyselves. But they seemed a little—what would you call it?—impressed by this, uh, cowboy. I don’t guess you was down at the docks last night?”

  I said, “Sheriff, I believe you warned me about going down there, didn’t you? Said you didn’t even let your own deputies go around the place after dark. Ain’t that a fact?”

  The sheriff spit and then chuckled. He said, “I can’t seem to think up any questions will get an answer out of you. I’ll just say I ain’t concerned about what Bennet claims and I don’t give a damn about this Oliver. But, Mr. Young, I wouldn’t let this business of yours go on much further.”

  I said, “I’m leaving on the ten o’clock train. But I’ll be back.”

  The sheriff picked up his hat and put it on his head. He said, “Yeah?”

  “I’m going down to Mexico and gather up Philip Sharp. I’m going to bring him back here and give him to Mr. Patterson, who is having considerable trouble with the books and creditors that Sharp left.”

  “He gonna have any holes in him when you fetch him back?”

  “That’s up to him,” I said. “But I will tell you one thing: You get Sharp and Bennet in jail and your troubles with these here vigilantes will stop. And so will all these sea-damaged goods and cargoes.”

  “You don’t say.”

  I nodded toward Chulo’s room. I said, “I got the chief ringleader of the vigilantes right in that there next room. Got him tied to a chair in the closet. He talked his head off last night.”

  “I see,” the sheriff said. He didn’t even so much as glance at the connecting door.

  I said, “But right now ain’t the time to arrest him. Either tonight or tomorrow night him and a bunch of them other vigilantes is going to try and steal them last two ships that Sharp’s company has tied up at the dock. This head honcho, name of Mike Hull, is going to sail them two ships down to Mexico to join Sharp. I plan to get word to Mr. Patterson before we leave town.”

  “We?”

  I kept my face straight. “Yeah, me and my horse.”

  Sheriff Mills said, “Well, can’t say I’ll be sorry to see you go. Have a good trip, Mr. Young.”

  I stood up. “Glad you dropped by, Sheriff.”

  He opened the door and then stepped out in the hall. Before he closed it, he stuck his head back in. He said, “You might want to take a look out here, Mr. Young. Yonder comes the biggest Mexican you ever saw. Thought you said they was all little.”

  Then he closed the door.

  Chulo entered his room off the hall and then came through the connecting door. He said, “Eres the shereef.”

  “Yeah.”

  He motioned toward the closet in the other room. “What about thees sumbeetch in la chiquita aparatada?”

  I said, “I told him he was in there, but he didn’t seem much interested. Listen, you go and unlock the door and pull him out in the middle of the room. I got to get dressed and we got to get moving. It’s past eight-thirty, and we got to arrange to get a stock car for the horses and check out of the hotel and three or four other things. I got to see Patterson for one. We got to hurry.”

  “But thees shereef....”

  I said, “Dammit, Chulo, get a move on.”

  Just before we left the rooms I stepped in to see Hull. He was still gagged and I intended to leave him that way. I said, “You’re going to say it’s cheating, but we’re going to get us a little head start in our little race. I don’t know how long it will take you to sail to Bodega and then maybe on to Tampico, but we’re going by train and then by horse. So you better hurry as soon as you get loose. If I beat you down there, they won’t be no Philip Sharp waiting.”

  He want to bobbing his head and moaning and groaning as best he could with the gag in his mouth, but I just gave him a little wave and said, “Nice to have met you, Mr. Hull. I wish you luck. All bad.”

  * * *

  Time was so short that I sent Chulo to fetch Mr. Patterson while I bought the tickets and arranged for a stock car for us and our horses. Not having the influence of the Williams family, I had to pay the same price for the car as if I’d been shipping eight horses instead of just the two. We were taking the express train to Laredo. In Laredo we’d change and get shuttled on to the line to Brownsville. Matamoras was right across from Brownsville, and Bodega was just a twenty-five-mile ride down to the gulf. If Sharp was in Bodega and if the railroads kept up their end of the bargain, I figured to have Mr. Sharp in hand within forty-eight hours.

  I was standing on the far end of the depot platform, near where our horses were waiting to be loaded, when Chulo came up dragging a thoroughly bewildered and about half-frightened Mr. Patterson. I sent Chulo on down to watch the railroad hands load our horses and make sure they had plenty of hay and fresh water, and then I turned to Mr. Patterson. As briefly as I could I explained about my meeting with Bennet and then about my extended interview with Mike Hull.

  I said, “You know Mike Hull?”

  “Of course, of course! He was first mate on the biggest of our steamboats. I can’t believe he’s in this.”

  I said, “You better believe it, and you better either chain up them last two ships you got or get to the sheriff and get some help, because Hull is going to steal them and join Sharp. If not tonight, then tomorrow night.”

  Mr. Patterson looked even more nervous and tired than the first time I’d seen him. He
said, “I’m just amazed he’d tell you all this, not only about the ships and Sharp but about the thefts and the insurance fraud.”

  I said, “Get him to take his boot off and show you the bottom of his right foot.”

  Mr. Patterson looked at me questioningly. He said, “Show me the bottom of his foot?”

  I said, gently, “We skinned the sole off his right foot. To encourage him to talk.”

  He stared at me, his mouth open. No words came out.

  I said, “He’ll be the one limping when they go to stealing your boats.”

  “Ships.”

  “Ships, boats, what difference does it make?”

  The whistle of the train blew, announcing it would be starting pretty quick.

  Patterson said, “And he’s still tied up in a room in the Galvez Hotel?”

  I shrugged. “Unless somebody has let him out.”

  “Oh, my,” Mr. Patterson said. He put his hand to his cheek. “I should go to the sheriff.”

  “That’s what I’d do,” I said. Behind me, Chulo whistled. I looked around. I could see the horses were loaded. I said, “Mr. Patterson, what is that ship worth that Sharp stole, the Dolphin?”

  It took him a second to change directions in his brain. “The Dolphin? I think we carry her on our books for sixty thousand dollars.”

  I said, “Would it be worth twenty thousand dollars to you if I brought it back?”

  “Her. Ships are feminine.”

  I was getting impatient. I said, “All right, her, dammit. Would it be worth twenty thousand dollars to your company if I returned her to this dock?”

  He said, “I should think so. I don’t know what Mr. Sharp would say, but—Oh, that’s right. Mr. Sharp has her.”

  I said, “I’m planning on bringing back Sharp too. Will you give me twenty thousand dollars for the pair of them? Sharp would then be here to answer for most of the debt. If he gets away, it’s all on your shoulders.”

  “I see,” he said, nodding. “I see.”

  The train whistled again, a long, urgent blast.

  I said, “Have we got a deal?”

  He finally come to a decision. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I don’t know how I’m going to juggle the books to keep that much money free, but I think I can do it. Yes, we have an agreement.”

  I turned around, ran down the platform, jumped to the ground, and ran to the door of our stock car. The train was beginning to move even as Chulo helped me aboard.

  I scrambled in. From somewhere Chulo had found a couple of chairs. They weren’t much, just old cane-bottomed wooden chairs, but they were something to sit on. I figured Chulo had stolen then out of the depot waiting room, but I didn’t care, not after the price they’d charged me for the stock car. I looked at Chulo. I said, “Well, we’re heading for the border. Back to Mexico.”

  Chulo raised a finger. He said, “I like to rob one Mesican bank.”

  We laughed. Back when we were in the outlaw trade, Chulo was always wanting to rob a bank in Mexico. I never could get him to understand that we couldn’t rob banks on both sides of the border because that wouldn’t leave us anyplace to flee. I looked at him, seeing what Hull must have seen when he was getting skinned alive. He had a knife scar that ran down one cheek nearly to the corner of his mouth. This morning he had his black eye patch on. He’d been blinded when a splinter of hot lead had bounced off a strongbox padlock and hit him in the eye. He was blind as a bat in his left eye. The giveaway was that it never turned, just kept staring, unseeing, straight ahead. Sometimes Chulo wore the patch and sometimes he didn’t. I think it was more a question of style than anything else. But this morning he had it on and he looked even fiercer than usual.

  The train was gathering speed as we left Galveston and started on our southbound journey. The trip would take us through Blessing, although I didn’t know if the train would stop or not. If it did, I planned to leave a note for Justa telling him of our plans and destination.

  We had the loading door open, and the wind was whistling through the cracks pretty good and blowing around the straw and hay and dust. I said, “Break out the drinking material, Chulo, and let’s have a swallow or two for luck.”

  But an hour into the trip I could tell it was going to be a long journey. Chulo had curled up on the floor of the car and gone to sleep. Apparently his concern over the condition of his new clothes had evaporated. But who could blame him? He’d worn them better than a day, so they were no longer new, so what was the sense of worrying about their appearance? I didn’t mind him sleeping. He was about as good a conversationalist asleep as he was awake, maybe better asleep, because then he couldn’t say anything that irritated me.

  So I just sat there and watched the scenery go by, a chore that didn’t require a whole lot of concentration since it never changed from mile to mile.

  I thought of Evita. I’d been away from her for going on a week so it was necessary to think very carefully and purely about her. I was in no situation to go to getting myself aroused. Evita had been my woman for going on two years and, other than Marianne, the woman I’d married, she was as close to me as anybody ever had been in my life. I’d come by her in a way that some might have thought odd. She’d been a flamenco dancer in a cabaret in Monterrey, a member of a dancing troupe that included six girls. The owner of that troupe was a man who knew more about dancing than he did about poker. When I’d won all his money, he threw Evita in the pot against a five-hundred-dollar bet. Well, I didn’t quite know how to take that. I asked him what the girl was supposed to do for me, seeing as how I didn’t have no openings for a dancer right then. The man said simply that she’d do anything I wanted. I looked at her, and I got her aside and talked to her. I couldn’t believe she was a puta, a whore, but her father had sold her to the man when she was fifteen, and he’d set out to make a dancer out of her, a practice that was not too uncommon. Not meaning that all the girls that got sold turned into dancers; it was just the way it happened to Evita.

  But I talked to her and asked her how she’d felt about it. She was quite content with the arrangement. Her only wish was that her cousin, Lupita, be able to come also.

  So I worked it that way. I won them both. According to the bet I was only supposed to keep them for a month, but they didn’t wanted to go back. On one occasion the man came looking for them, but I convinced him they were happier with me and he went away. When I’d won her, Evita had been not quite twenty years of age. She was now going on twenty-two. Lupita was two years younger, and the two girls were more like sisters than cousins. They even looked something alike. Both of them had shining black hair and dancing eyes and olive complexions and skin so smooth it felt like satin.

  I had slept in the same bed with each of them, but all I’d ever done with Lupita was sleep. I could have done more with her if I’d wanted to wake up some morning with a knife between my ribs. But not being crazy, I never gave Evita no reason to feel jealous.

  Not that it was easy. On hot days both of them would sometimes walk around my hacienda without a stitch on. A sight like that could very often test a man’s character, and where a beautiful woman was concerned, I didn’t have much.

  But Evita was more than beautiful; she was smart as hell and was maybe a better businessman than I was. I had no fears about leaving my establishment in her hands while I went off on errands. I knew the casino part would suffer, but every dollar would be accounted for.

  I had another man besides Chulo to handle the heavy work. He had been a vaquero on my ranch, Seveano, until I opened the Palace. After that I’d brought him in and showed him the ropes about keeping order, and with Evita to direct him, he was making a good hand. Besides, Evita was the last one I’d want to come up against. The woman was tough. She could shoot and she could use a knife.

  And she could do other things, also, extremely well, things that I didn’t have any business thinking about. Especially about her breasts or the shape of her small body.

  I was commencing to get hungry. N
aturally we’d got away in such a hurry that we’d forgot to buy any provisions. It wasn’t bothering Chulo, him being asleep, but it was gnawing at my belly.

  And, the train being an express, we weren’t going to stop at many towns, and what few we did stop at, we weren’t going to be there long. I tried to think of all the towns of enough size we might stop at between where we were and Laredo, but I just couldn’t visualize the route. The map in my head was all turned around. And, naturally, back in the stock cars, there wasn’t any conductor to come through calling out the next town.

  After about a half an hour we slowed up a little to go through a town I thought was Bay City. We didn’t stop, but if I remembered correctly, the next town ought to be Blessing. I wouldn’t know if we were going to stop there until we actually did. If we did, maybe Chulo could run and find us something to eat while I left a message for Justa.

  I got out of my chair and sat in the open door watching the range country go by, trying not to think of Evita. She had a kind of fine-boned body that was soft and round, and yet she was lithe and strong too. She was one of those small girls who had breasts just a touch larger than a man might expect. Someday they might begin to sag, but now they were erect and full with large nipples.

  I turned around and woke Chulo up. I said, “Get up, man. We have plans to make, matters to study. You can’t lay there sleeping like some lazy peon. Wake up, you pendejo!”

  He didn’t want to wake up, but he did. I gave him no choice. Having him for company was better than thinking about Evita when there was no chance I could get at her for at least a week. How I was going to hold out that long I had no idea.

  How I was going to keep from starving to death in the next hour was something I also had no idea about. I took a swallow of brandy and told Chulo the plan if we stopped at Blessing.

  Something was nagging at the back of my mind, worrying me. I didn’t want to bring it out and examine it, but it had been going around in my head ever since I talked with Patterson. It had to do with having my cake and eating it too, only, in this case, the cake was Philip Sharp.