Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  All along I’d gone looking for Philip Sharp to let him have a little taste of his own medicine, a bullet in the belly. But that had bothered me. All my life I’d lived by a code that I never took on anyone that didn’t have a chance with me; even when I was a kid I’d been that way. And now here was this problem of Sharp. The only way he’d have a chance with me was if I turned my back, gave him a ten-second head start, and had Chulo help him to aim the gun. So I was reckoning that was what had caused me to have the talk with Mr. Patterson about the ship Sharp had taken and what he’d give me for it and about returning Mr. Sharp to Galveston to help stand up to the creditors with Patterson, and also, maybe, the sheriff, about them goods and cargo that had been making their way off the dock by foul means.

  But I couldn’t shoot Sharp and still fetch him and his ship back, not, at least, in any condition to be of any benefit to Mr. Patterson or to be worth putting in jail.

  Chulo was leaning so far out the car door I thought he was going to fall out. He said, “I see thees chaquita puebla.”

  I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to one. The only little town we could be coming up on was Blessing. I leaned a little further out the door, pushing Chulo back so I could see, and, sure enough, I saw the auction barn and then some other buildings I was familiar with. The train was already slowing more than it would have slowed if it was just going to pass on through, so I figured we’d be stopping. Which actually wasn’t no great surprise. For some reason the little town of Blessing was where the line out of Galveston switched, one line going on to Laredo, the other on up to San Antonio. So the train had to stop to let off the San Antonio-bound passengers.

  When Chulo and I jumped out of the stock car, I saw a brakeman just getting down from the caboose. I yelled and asked him how long we’d be stopped. He yelled back ten minutes and it might be a short ten minutes on account of we were behind schedule. I told Chulo to run like hell to the first place he figured to get any kind of grub and then hustle back as fast as he could.

  After that I went in the depot and into the telegraph office. I asked the telegrapher if he could get a message to Justa Williams. He said, “Shore. You don’t mean a telegram, because he’s at the ranch.”

  I said, “No, I just want to write out a message and get it to him. I’m a friend of his.”

  He said, “Get you one of them blanks. There’s a pencil. Mr. Norris, that’s Justa’s brother, stops by ever’ evenin’ on his way back to the ranch to pick up any wires they might have got. I’ll give it to him.”

  I just wrote out a little note about having located the guitar player down in Mexico, probably Tampico, and that I was going down there to see if I could get him to play for a little dance I was trying to arrange. I handed it to the telegrapher. I said, “Tell Norris that Wilson Young said hello.”

  The train blew its whistle. There was an “I ain’t kidding” sound about it.

  The telegrapher said, “If you’re off that train, you better get back on. That engineer hates to be late.”

  I went out the door and back to the stock car and jumped up into the door. Chulo wasn’t there. I craned my neck and looked down the train, toward the engine, looking for him. Not a sign. The track ran behind the east side of the town, the side toward Justa’s ranch. I kept looking and there was still no sign of him. I was commencing to get nervous when the train whistle blew again and I felt the cars start to creak. Hell, we were leaving! I didn’t know what to do. I could jump off and we could catch a later train, but I didn’t know when that would be. The next day maybe, and I was already worrying about the time, hoping to catch Sharp in Bodega so we wouldn’t have to go so far inland, all the way down to Tampico. It was going to take Sharp time to find and gather a bunch of sick cattle in just the first stages of hoof-and-mouth and then to load them. But he’d already had a pretty good start. The one thing I didn’t know was how long it took to sail from Galveston to Bodega.

  The train was no longer just creaking, it was moving. My car was already coming opposite of the depot, and it had been a hundred yards back of it when we’d stopped. In another minute or so the train would be going so fast I wouldn’t be able to jump off.

  And then I remembered the horses. Hell, I couldn’t leave Justa’s horses to the mercy of the railroad. I’d just have to get along without that dumb Meskin.

  And then I saw him running across the main street of the town with a flour sack slung over his shoulders. He was running awkwardly in his high-heeled boots, but he was covering some ground. The only question was would the train be going too fast by the time he intercepted it.

  I leaned out the door and waved at him so he’d know where to aim. The train was still just going at walking speed, but it was gathering momentum. It appeared that Chulo was about forty yards away, quartering toward the train from the southwest. I could see it was going to be close. It appeared to me that the flour sack he had over his shoulder was impeding his progress, and I yelled for him to throw it away, but he never made no sign that he’d heard, just kept running.

  I figured he and the train were making about the same speed when he arrived at the door. He heaved the sack inside and then grabbed onto the side of the door and tried to pull himself aboard. I leaned out as far as I could and got hold of the back of his belt and tried to pull him up. Lord, the son of a bitch was heavy. Finally he got in the worst position he could get in. He was nearly on the train, but not quite, and he was completely off the ground. If he fell now, he’d more than likely fall under the wheels, and the train was now really starting to roll. Cussing him at the top of my voice, I pulled on his belt, and he pulled with his arms, and finally, inch by inch, we worked him back in the car.

  For a good long few minutes we just sat there, across from each other, both of us with our heads down, panting. Finally I said, “You dumb Meskin, how come you didn’t come when they blew the damn whistle? Ain’t you never rode on no train before?” Of course I knew he had; he’d been on at least a hundred with me.

  He said, looking guilty, “I doan hear the first wheesel.”

  I said, “Then how did you know it was the first one? When are you going to quit trying to lie to me?”

  I reached over and got his flour sack. There was a big chunk of cheese and some bread and two bottles of rum. I held up one of the bottles. I said, “This here is why you nearly missed the train, ain’t it?”

  He looked down. He’d been caught all right and he knew it. He said, “They don’t sell thees rum in la comida estore.”

  I said, “So, since they didn’t sell rum in the food store, you went and found a saloon. Didn’t you?”

  “Et es possible,” he said.

  I said, “You dumb Meskin, I ought to throw you off this train for that stunt. By God, I’m going to cut your pay! You make ten dollars a week less now.”

  He reached in his saddlebag and came out with a nearly empty bottle of rum. He said, “Señor Weelson, this is all Chulo have. Es very leetle.”

  “Shit!” I said. I give him a hard look, but my heart wasn’t in it. He was just being Chulo. I said, “Well, dammit, break out the grub and let’s eat something.”

  He’d also bought a long, tough sausage. We made a meal out of that and bread and the cheese. As hungry as we both were, it went down mighty easy. I finished my meal with a drink of brandy, noticing, for the first time, that I was getting a little low on drinking material. I said, to Chulo, “You damn peon, how come you got two bottles of that rotgut rum and didn’t get me no brandy? Hell, I ought to stop your salary altogether.”

  He shrugged. He said, “Next time we stop, I go for the brandy. Thees time I listen for the wheesel.”

  The next time we stopped was in Victoria, a town about three times the size of Blessing. We got in there at right around six o’clock in the evening and left, by my watch, at eight-thirty-five. Two hours and thirty-five minutes. We had what the brakeman told me was a burnt-out journal, which is a kind of bearing, on one of the cars. He started out saying it wo
uldn’t take more than a half an hour to fix but that they couldn’t go on until the problem was corrected.

  Every thirty minutes he was certain it would be fixed in the next ten or fifteen minutes. In that two hours and thirty-five minutes me and Chulo could have gone into town and had a seven-course meal at the finest resturant in town, taken in a stage show if one had been playing, and still got back in time to have that brakeman tell us it would be only another “ten or fifteen minutes.”

  About all the good that came out of the matter was that I got a couple of bottles of brandy and we replenished our supply of grub with some more bread and cheese. I figured the sausage was going to last us about six months.

  We rolled along through the night. Sometime after we’d got started again Chulo and I made what passed for supper and then he bunched up some straw and went back to sleep. I sat in the doorway of the car, feeling the cool breeze, and watching the country start to take on that hard look it got the closer to the border you went.

  I was still troubled about what I was going to do about Philip Sharp, assuming I actually did find him. It was strange to tell, but even during my outlaw days I’d never considered myself a wrong one. Certainly not mean or vicious or apt to cut up more ugly than I had to. I’d shot people, yes, but it had always been fair. And I’d robbed banks and other places where money was likely to accumulate. But I’d never thought of myself as robbing people, but robbing buildings and institutions and companies. Other than that first time when, as a kid, I’d robbed that rancher on the road into Corpus, I’d never robbed another individual. And even the robbery of that rancher had not been to my profit. I had later been so ashamed that I’d buried the few dollars I’d got off him (obviously to hide it from the eyes of God in hopes he’d think it was some other fourteen-year-old had done the deed) and turned his horse loose, knowing it would probably find its way home.

  But I was angry as hell at Sharp. I’d trusted him, given him credit in my casino, gone to him in good faith—and run into an ambush. And on top of that the son of a bitch was just no good in a lot of other ways besides. There was all that thievery and murder on the docks, the vigilantes. There was the crookedness of him making contracts with folks he had no intention of keeping. And now there was this business of running a bunch of sick cattle in on a island full of poor folks who damn sure didn’t need no more trouble.

  Thinking of the cattle made me reflect for a moment on how it was I’d come to meet Justa Williams. He’d gotten crossways with a man who was intent on driving a herd of Mexican cattle across his range. Justa hadn’t cared for the idea because the cattle hadn’t been quarantined to make sure they didn’t have tick fever, and as a consequence, he’d stopped the man and his illegal Mexican cattle. Unfortunately the man had borne a grudge, and three years later, he’d managed to get Justa to Del Rio, where I was living. We’d met and that had been that.

  And now here was Sharp and his sick Mexican cattle. I liked Mexico. I liked Mexicans, even Chulo. I especially liked Mexican women, especially ones that looked like Evita and Lupita. But it looked like they ought to do a better job of taking care of their livestock. I wouldn’t have been a rancher if they’d given me the whole state of Texas for grazing land, but I still figured I could do a better job of keeping cattle from getting sick than them Mexican rancheros did.

  The horses were stamping around and plainly showing they’d had enough of riding the train for the time being. I didn’t blame them. There are better ways to pass the time.

  I looked at my watch and noted it was after ten. We were originally supposed to have been in Laredo at a quarter after midnight, but I reckoned, what with the delay in Victoria, that we wouldn’t arrive until the smaller hours of the morning. One good thing was that we wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of moving the horses. They’d shunt our car and any other cars that were headed for Brownsville off on a siding and then hook them up to the Brownsville train when it got made up. I wasn’t exactly sure what time the train left Laredo for Brownsville, but it kind of stuck in my mind that it was somewhere around nine or ten o’clock. We’d been so rushed getting away from Galveston that I hadn’t gotten straight about all the answers the ticket agent had given me.

  After a while I took one last drink of brandy and then flipped the glowing butt of the cigarillo I’d been smoking out into the fast-moving darkness and closed and locked the door of the car. Might be we’d be asleep when we got shunted off onto the siding in Laredo, and I didn’t want to make it too easy for somebody to just enter and relieve us of our belongings. I was carrying about a thousand dollars in my pockets, and I wanted to keep it. There were thieves everywhere, but there was a bunch more along the border.

  CHAPTER 9

  I came awake to the banging and jolting of our car and the clanging of steel against steel. For a second I couldn’t think where I was, and then I thought we were in a train wreck. But after I got awake, I realized it was just our car being spotted on the siding and joined in with the rest of the cars there.

  It was still plenty dark. The noise had woke the horses up, and they were moving around nervously and whinnying kind of quietly. I looked over at Chulo. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have figured he was dead. He could sleep through an earthquake if it didn’t have anything to do with him, but you’d better not try and slip up on him with intent to do him harm. He’d hear you if you didn’t make any noise at all. That was one of the reasons he’d lived as long as he had. That and the fact that he was a hell of a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for. He could play the dumb Meskin with a rare style and fool just about everybody. He even tried it with me, for practice I figured, because he knew that I knew better.

  I reached over and gave him a hard nudge. He was sleeping with his sombrero over his face, though God only knew why, because it was as dark as the inside of a cow. He made a noise, but it didn’t sound like the kind of a noise somebody makes that is awake. I give him a harder nudge.

  He said, “Hey, what chou bother me for?”

  I said, “Wake up, you lazy son of a bitch. I’m the boss, remember? Anybody sleeps it’s supposed to be me. Comprende?”

  He sat up and his hat fell off. He yawned and looked around. He said, “The ferrocarrilas don’t go no more.”

  I said, “No. We’re in Laredo.” I got out my watch and a match and struck the match. It was exactly four-thirty in the morning. I said, “You awake?”

  He shook his head and blinked his eyes. “Chure.”

  “Chure,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  He said, “Et es not Weelson Jung because nobody choot me like the leetle nino.”

  I said, “All right, you smart-mouth pendejo, you’re awake. Now stay that way. I’m going to send a telegram to Evita to let her know where we’re going, and I want to find the horses here when I get back. There are thieves in Laredo, you know.”

  I unlocked the car door and pulled it back enough to jump to the ground. Then I took the time to pull it back to. Chulo might be suddenly struck down by sleep again.

  I could see the lights of the depot about fifty yards away, but I had to pick my way over what seemed to be about a hundred railroad tracks to reach it. The waiting room was bare, and the only people that were around were a couple of yardmen and the ticket agent and the telegrapher. I got hold of a telegraph blank and wrote out a message to Evita telling her where we were and where we were going. I ended by saying that I was hoping to wrap up the business in a hurry. Until then she was to continue to manage my affairs and not to smile until I returned.

  The telegrapher looked at the last a little funny, but he just shrugged and sent it. I reckoned he could tell some stories if he was of a mind to.

  The ticket agent said the train for Brownsville was due to leave at eight o’clock, but it might be a little late on account of a connecting train due in from San Antonio that was running late.

  I was beginning to wonder why the railroad even bothered to print up timetables. I said, “Has a tra
in ever run on time?”

  He just give me a cold look, and I let it go and wandered over and sat down on a bench. I got out a cigarillo and lit it. I wasn’t in no hurry. The waiting room was a lot more comfortable than the stock car and smelled better too. And, even though it was late April, there was just the touch of a nip in the air. I figured to let it get a little later and then go fetch Chulo and go downtown somewheres and have breakfast. Laredo was an old stomping grounds for both of us, and there was always the good chance we’d run into an old acquaintance, friendly or not.

  But my mind kept playing with the problem of what to do about Philip Sharp. Killing him would be a lot easier and safer than trying to subdue him and however many waterlogged hooligans he had with him and getting them to sail the boat back to Galveston. That in itself was a problem. I might get them all under gun and they might say they’d sail us back to Galveston, but how would I know they were doing it? I didn’t know any more about sailing than a bull does about giving milk. I wondered if we would be able to find some sailors in Tampico or Bodega or wherever Sharp was that could do the job for us. It could also be that I might not have any choice in the matter. When I first confronted Sharp and his crew, they might not give me no selection; I might have to kill them all right then and there. And then there’d be no chance of getting the boat back to Galveston and getting my twenty thousand dollars.

  Though, strange be it to say, the money was the least of it. I wanted the money, but I wanted to settle up with Sharp, one way or the other, more. Thinking about it was making me weary. Besides, I knew I’d better catch my rabbit before I decided how I wanted to cook him.

  I went on outside and managed to make it across the rows of tracks without killing myself or falling on my head. It was still dark, but I could see the faint promise of light in the east. I got to the car and slid back the door. Chulo was sitting there smoking a cigarillo. He’d put his sombrero back on, but I couldn’t see if he was wearing his eye patch. I said, “You trying to set this car on fire? Let’s go get some breakfast. Be light pretty quick and I’ve seen plenty of trainmen around. The horses will be all right.”