Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  We still had a ways to go before we left town. The train backed and switched and finally got on the main track and pulled the passenger cars up next to the depot. We were a good ways behind in the freight section of the train, and the way the track ran and the way the depot set, we couldn’t see the town to tell if anyone was riding our way.

  I said, “If we get delayed, I am going to be mighty upset with you.”

  Chalo just kind of hung his head. Wasn’t anyone could look more remorseful than Chulo, not until he done something else to be remorseful over.

  And then the train finally moved. It was five after nine by my watch when we at last began pulling out of the station. I could see the town after we passed the depot, and I didn’t see anyone who looked like a sheriff or deputy. I said to Chulo, “You are a very lucky Meskin.”

  We settled down for the trip to Brownsville, first having a drink. I pulled my chair over close to the door. It was hotter along the border, and the incoming breeze felt good. I lit a cigarillo and went to thinking ahead. Counting back, I figured Sharp had been gone from Galveston about six days. But that didn’t tell me much about whether he would be at Bodega or gone on ahead to Tampico, because I didn’t know how long it took to sail a boat such a distance. For all I knew a boat was faster than a train. I also didn’t know how long it would take him to gather up his sick cattle. I didn’t know if he was going to wait until he got to Bodega or Tampico and then go to buying the cattle, or if he had some agent already on the job for him and he was just going to sail down, pick them up, and head for Cuba.

  But, of course, that part wasn’t right. He didn’t know that I’d taken his man Mike Hull in hand, and he’d be waiting, wherever he was, with enough cattle to fill three boats, or ships as Mr. Patterson had told me to call them.

  I was also wondering if he’d found a way to establish telegraphic communication with Hull, where he could have kept Hull abreast of his progress. But Hull hadn’t said anything about it, and the telegraph, in Mexico, was a chancy proposition.

  I turned around to Chulo. I said, “Hey!”

  “Sí, señor?”

  “The word is sailor. Understand? Sailor. Not hombre del mar. Man of the sea. And Sharp ain’t a sailor, anyway; he owns ships and handles cargo. That don’t make him a sailor.”

  “Sí, ” Chulo said. He took a delicate sip of rum. “But he steel choot chou, no?”

  It was supposed to be a four-hour trip to Brownsville, and I couldn’t see how they wouldn’t make it, not unless they burned out another journal or something. But there were no stops along the way, mainly because there wasn’t a damn thing between Laredo and Brownsville except some of the ugliest, driest, most inhospitable country around. It was even worse than the sand and cactus and huisache country a little further north, because it got plenty of water and it looked like it ought to amount to something. But it didn’t. You’d see stretches of sandy, rocky wasteland and then acre after acre of solid cedar and mesquite trees in groves so thick a snake would have trouble wiggling through them. Here and there I could see a few poor, half-starved longhorn cattle who were either too stupid or too stubborn to seek pastures where there was something to eat.

  As the sun got up, it became hotter and hotter. April in that part of the country was like June or July in more northern parts of Texas. We were out of food and, worse, we were out of water. The horses had plenty of water, but I was damned if I was going to drink after a horse no matter how thirsty I got, and I was getting pretty damn thirsty.

  Finally I saw Chulo take an empty rum bottle and jam it down deep in the tin horse trough they had in the car. He was getting the bottle down below the slobber and bits of hay and whatnot that had come off the horses’ mouths and was floating on top of the water. When his bottle was full, he took it out and had a good long drink, looking just as pleased with himself as if he had good sense.

  I said, “That water is filthy. Ain’t you got sense enough to know that? It’s going to make you sick.”

  He said, “Pretty soon chou say, ’Chulo, geeve me some agua.’ I gonna say, ’No, no, no, Senor Weelson Jung. It weel make you seek.’ ”

  “Aw, go to hell, you dumb Meskin.”

  A nagging thought had begun working around in the back of my mind, more insistent than my dry throat. Talking to Chulo about complicated matters was better than talking to the horses, but not much. I said, “I’m worrying about something. I may not have made as certain about something as I should have.”

  “Sí?” Chulo said.

  I said, “I told the sheriff that Mike Hull was going to steal those remaining two boats and sail down and join Sharp. And I told Patterson the same thing. What if neither one of them does anything about it?”

  “Sí?” Chulo said. He was used to me talking things out to him. It didn’t make any difference if he knew what I was talking about or not. He just sat there smoking a cigarillo and trying not to go to sleep. That was about the only rule for these discussions: that he not go to sleep.

  I said, “Patterson told me that Sharp took six men on the boat he stole. If Hull was to do the same, that’d be twelve more men. That’d be eighteen in all not counting Sharp.”

  Chulo said, “He’s a preety good chot.”

  I said, with a touch of heat, “Lay off the jokes. I’m serious. That sheriff didn’t look all that impressed when I told him about Mike Hull. I think he just doesn’t want anything to do with that waterfront. He acts like he don’t give a damn what they do down there so long as they leave the rest of the town alone. And what the hell do we know about Mr. Patterson? Not a damn thing, that’s what. He’s sitting there at his desk acting like he’s the one got left holding the bag and he can only pay the creditors ten cents on the dollar and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do and he doesn’t even know how he got to be a part owner of the company and so on and so on. Hell, anybody could sit there and say that. How would I know if he’s lying or not?”

  “Chure,” Chulo said.

  I said, “And all the time he may be waiting for Sharp to get matters all set up in Mexico and then he’s going to get on one of them two ships and sail down with Mike Hull. Not only not keep him from stealing them, but help him. How do we know that ain’t the case?”

  “Chure,” Chulo said.

  I said, “And then there we are in Mexico and we got eighteen men to deal with. I don’t see how we can take on eighteen.”

  “Chure.”

  I gave him a glare. I said, “Hell, if we just knew how long it takes to sail a ship down to the border. I got to figure we’re ahead of Hull right now. We ought to beat him to Bodega unless them damn boats are faster than I thought. If that’s the case, all we’ll have to deal with is Sharp and his six men. We can handle that.”

  “Chure.”

  I said, “How long you figure it takes to round up three or four hundred head of cattle with hoof-and-mouth disease? Hell, where do you go to find that many cattle with hoof-and-mouth disease?”

  “One,” Chulo said.

  I looked at him. “Juan? What the hell are you talking about.”

  He held up a finger. “One.”

  “One what?”

  “One cattles. Chou need choust one cattles with the hoof-an’-mouth. Chou put them in weeth t’ree, four hundred good cattles, en t’ree, four days all cattles got hoof-an’-mouth.”

  I was amazed. I said, “How’d you know that? You don’t know any more about cattle than I do.”

  He said, “When I am joven, yo soy un vaquero.”

  I said, “What a liar. You were not a cowboy when you were young. You were a thief. You’ve always been a thief. But you are right about the hoof-and-mouth.”

  He tapped his forehead. He said, “Chulo berry esmart.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Chulo ’berry’ estupid.”

  I turned around and looked back out the door, watching the sorry landscape go by. It was gaining on twelve noon and I was hungry and I was mighty thirsty. I was also plenty worried. All I
could do was hope that Sharp was still in Bodega and hadn’t sailed for Tampico and that Mike Hull was still a long way from joining him.

  Chulo had laid back down on his pile of straw. When I thought he was asleep, I reached over and got the rum bottle he’d filled with water. I took a long, fast drink and then carefully set the bottle back in the same place. I was so thirsty I would have drunk muddy water out of the Rio Grande.

  Chulo had his sombrero over his face. From underneath it he said, “That make you seek, Senor Weelson Jung.”

  I said, “Shut up, Chulo.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Brownsville, like a lot of other Texas towns, had grown up around a fort, Fort Brown. Fort Brown was the southwesternmost fort in a chain of forts that had been established across Texas to try and control the Comanches back in the 1840s and ’50s and ’60s. But after the Civil War the Comanches had pretty well been rounded up and settled on reservations and the forts had been decommissioned and fallen into ruins. Fort Brown was no exception. It was mostly gone, but for some reason, the town of Brownsville lingered on. In fact, it not only lingered, it appeared, as Chulo and I rode into it, to be prospering.

  Which was a strange matter indeed since there was not the slightest reason for its existence. It was at the very southern tip of the state, surrounded by land that you’d have had to pay somebody to take. You couldn’t raise cattle there, you couldn’t farm, you couldn’t do anything. It was right on the Rio Grande, but the river was too shallow to use as a port even though the Gulf was only twenty or twenty-five miles away. Across the river, in Mexico, was the town of Matamoros, which didn’t seem to have much reason for being either. But there they both stood, full of houses and stores and saloons and cafés and cathouses and even an occasional cathedral. You did see a lot of groves of oranges and limes and grapefruit, but I’d never seen no community founded on citrus fruit.

  But it didn’t mean a damn to me. Bodega was twenty some odd miles away down the Rio Grande, and I was anxious to get started. First me and Chulo hunted up a good café in Brownsville and had a big meal of steak and potatoes and light bread. Then we took the horses to a livery stable and had them grained good while he and I sought us out a general mercantile store. We wasn’t exactly rigged out for the trail, and since I didn’t know what the future might hold, I figured we’d better take along a few supplies, the country being as rough as it was. I bought us a ground sheet and a couple of blankets and two big gallon-and-a-half canteens, along with about thirty feet of soft rope in case we had to tie anything or anybody up. A lariat rope was no good for that; it was too hard, too stiff. After that we bought some canned goods, tomatoes and apricots and peaches and what not, along with a small wheel of goat cheese and some saltine crackers. We both had plenty of cartridges, and I didn’t want to load the horses up too much, so we limited ourselves to those items. The man give us a big sack, and we stuffed our provender in it and then went around and picked up our horses.

  We used the soft rope to tie the pack on the piebald that Chulo was riding and then mounted up and headed across the rickety bridge to Matamoros. We could just as easily have ridden down the river on the American side and found a shallow crossing, but it was better to not take a chance on the Rio Grande. It could be treacherous at times. A long time past I’d lost a partner and a good horse attempting what we’d thought would be a shallow crossing where the water wouldn’t even be up to our horses’ bellies. And then had come a sudden rise, and a friend and his horse were suddenly gone.

  We had bought our supplies in Brownsville because I had never been to Bodega and, consequently, did not know what to expect there. We set out of Matamoros on a little road that ran along the river. The horses were good and rested. In fact they were so anxious to stretch their legs and so glad to get off the train, we had a little trouble holding them at first and getting them to settle down to a gait that would eat up the ground without wearing them out.

  It was a little after three by the time we were well away from Matamoros. I figured we had about three and a half hours of traveling time before it commenced to get dark. In that country a careful man didn’t want to travel after dark on account of the danger to his horse from rocks and thorny cactus and the broken terrain. And you couldn’t ride right down next to the river on account of sudden soft spots. It didn’t much matter, anyway. We could never make Bodega in one day, and I’d have to be content to see another day’s sunrise before I knew if I’d cornered my quarry.

  We stopped the day’s journey with plenty of light left to make a good camp. We found a level place just back from the river and built a little fire of downed mesquite wood. While I got out our new coffeepot and filled it with water from a canteen to make coffee—not wanting to use water from the Rio Grande, which most folks considered too thick to drink and too thin to plow—Chulo took the horses back in the brush to find them what grazing he could and to picket them for the night. We hadn’t brought any grain along with us because I’d figured we wouldn’t be on the trail but one night and they’d been stocked up on corn at the livery stable in Brownsville.

  We did the best with what provisions we had, eating cheese and saltine crackers and some canned beans and drinking coffee. It wasn’t fancy, but it was filling and would take us through the night. Afterwards we sat around smoking cigarillos and drinking brandy and rum. The coffee had been pretty bad. A new pot never does make good coffee. It’s something I’ve known and heard all my life, but I’ve never known the why of it. But, if we were lucky, except for breakfast, we’d never have to use it again. Not if I trapped my man aboard his ship in Bodega. If I didn’t kill him, I’d let him make the coffee while we sailed back to Galveston.

  Chulo said, “You theenk thees man es at Bodega?”

  I said, “Damn you, you ignorant savage, keep your mouth off my luck. Don’t ever say anything like that again. Ain’t you got no better sense?”

  He saw he’d done wrong and he kind of hung his head. He said, “I dun theenk we even get to Bodega. I theenk maybe we get lost.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said. I threw another limb on the fire. I said, “We’ll probably get held up in the middle of the night by bandidos and roasted over this fire.”

  “Chure,” he said.

  We spread out the canvas ground sheet and then each took a blanket and, using our saddles for pillows, made ourselves ready for the night. The stars came out good, and I lay there a minute thinking about the chase I was on. Not often, but sometimes, I wondered if it was worth it. I’d probably lost more than twenty thousand dollars in the casino by just not being there, and the little wound Sharp had given me hadn’t amounted to that much. In the meantime I’d been uncomfortable, lonesome, tired, and without the comfort of Evita and my place of business. Here I was, laying by the damn Rio Grande, riding a borrowed horse, with a hard ride ahead of me the next day just in the hope I might catch up with a man that I maybe wasn’t even going to do anything to.

  It didn’t make a whole bunch of sense. But then, hell, a lot of things I’d done in my life hadn’t either.

  The morning stars were just disappearing when I woke up. I figured it was somewhere between four and five. I raised up. Chulo was just finishing adding wood to the fire. After that I saw him take the coffeepot down to the river to fill it with Rio Grande mud. I shrugged. It didn’t make that much difference. The coffee was going to be lousy anyway. I just hated to drink water that so many bodies had been floating in.

  We made a quick breakfast out of coffee and bread, and then I rolled the camp while Chulo brought in the horses. We got them bridled and saddled and were on the trail just as the false dawn was breaking. I figured we were no more than ten, maybe twelve, miles from Bodega. If we hurried along, we should make it in no more than three hours.

  We stopped once to water the horses and liquor ourselves. An hour later we rode into Bodega. The place wasn’t much. The town itself, if you could call it that, was set back about three or four hundred yards from the little wa
terfront. It consisted of ten or twelve dwellings, a chapel, and a place that was kind of a combination saloon, general merchandise store, café, and rooming house. All of the buildings were adobe except for the chief retail establishment, which had a wooden second story.

  The waterfront wasn’t a dock like the one in Galveston. Instead it was a wharf about ten yards wide sticking out into the bay about twenty paces or so. I figured they’d been trying to get it out as far as they could into water deep enough to handle bigger boats but just couldn’t go no further. It had railings on both sides and a tilted-up chute at the end. The chute was obviously made for loading cattle, since it appeared it could be raised or lowered to suit the deck of the cattle boat they were loading.

  If my luck had been good the Dolphin would have been moored right there at the end of the wharf with Mr. Philip Sharp on board. But my luck must not have been good because he wasn’t there, and neither was the Dolphin. We rode up and down the waterfront, which wasn’t much more than a few rickety piers sticking out into the bay, but there wasn’t nothing that even faintly resembled a two-masted cargo schooner. There were a few single-masted boats with nets hanging on them. I figured they were fishing boats. What I didn’t know was where Mr. Sharp was. He could have been here and gone, or have not arrived yet, or not be coming in the first place on account of Mike Hull.

  But there were some cattle pens back from the waterfront about a hundred yards. Chulo and I rode over and had a look at them. They were holding what I calculated to be between two and three hundred cattle, most of them of slaughter size, meaning they were two or three years old. The cattle were jammed in pretty close, but here and there, we could detect a few of them limping. That is the first sign of hoof-and-mouth disease—sore feet. After about a week of that the cattle would begin to slobber, and about a week later they’d be dead. Sharp was going to have to work fast to get all his cattle gathered and loaded and make it to Cuba before the disease got too out of hand. Ideally, what he’d want would be a few sick cattle mixed in with healthy cattle right before he sailed. By the time they were landed, the healthy cattle would be sick, but they wouldn’t be showing it.