Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  I said to Chulo, “Let’s go into the town and see what we can find out.”

  We tied up in front of the all-purpose establishment and went into the cantina part. They had Spanish brandy, which surprised me, and I bought a bottle and a bottle of rum for Chulo. Then we took a couple of glasses and sat down at one of the few tables in the place. We were the only customers, and there wasn’t any real bartender because he kept going into the merchandise part to wait on customers there. There didn’t actually seem to be that many people in town, and most of the ones we’d seen had been women. I figured the place was mainly a fishing village and most of the men were out fishing or maybe some of them were still rounding up cattle for Sharp. I let Chulo get about two drinks down and then told him to go hunt up the jefe and find out all he could about the Dolphin and about Sharp and about the cattle.

  Chulo said, “Mabe they ain’t got no jefe?”

  I said, “Place like this has always got a jefe. He may not be an alcalde, elected, but he’s still the boss. I bet it’s the man that owns this place. Go on in there to the mercantile part and ask around. Find out everything you can.”

  “Why doan you go?”

  I gave him a glare. I wasn’t in a good mood. Even though I’d known it was a long shot, I’d hoped, in the back of my mind, that I was going to be able to make quick work of Sharp and get home. Instead, here I sat in a place that smelled like dead fish and was miles from anywhere, and no closer to my quarry. I said, “Because I told you to. Also, in case you ain’t noticed, I’m a gringo and Meskins talk better to Meskins than they do to gringos. And you speak better Meskin than I do. Now get on.”

  I sat there drinking and waiting. Chulo was gone a good long half an hour. When he finally came back, he took the time to light a cigarillo and pour himself out a drink.

  I said, “Well?”

  “Chou was right. Es el jefe here. I talk weeth hem. A very esmart man. Every time I geeve him a dollar he remember a leetle more. That is esmart, no?”

  “What’d he say?”

  Chulo shrugged. “He leeeve this day before. We be here then, he be es here.”

  “He was here yesterday?”

  “Sí.”

  “Damn!” I said. I slammed my hand on the tabletop, making the glasses jump. I said, “My luck has gone to hell. What else?”

  “He has thees cattles in the corrals. He leeve the message that two more chips are coming. He tell el jefe theese chips are to take thees cattles. They bring in more of thees cattles. El jefe don’t like thees cattles here because they are seeck. But thees Senor Charp pays hem moneys to not care.”

  I said, my pateince getting damn thin, “Where the hell is Sharp?”

  Chulo said, “El jefe says he wait an’ wait for thees other two chips, but they don’t come. He says Senor Charp is nerbous. He say he drink a lot and walk around in circles a lot. How you say?”

  “Worried. Now where in hell is Sharp?”

  “Chure. Worried. El Jefe say Charp is plenty worried to wait so long. So he geeves thees moneys to el jefe for more cattles and to tell the man named Hull to put thees cattles on hes chips and to come to Tampico. El jefe say the people don’ like thees cattles here because they are seeck.”

  “He went to Tampico? Yesterday?”

  “Chure. You din’t heer me choust tell chou?”

  “Goddammit!” I said. I slammed the tabletop again. I didn’t know a hell of a lot more than I had before. I knew Sharp was on his way to Tampico, but I still didn’t know if Hull was on the way with two more ships. And I couldn’t afford to wait around and find out. I didn’t know how long it was going to take Sharp to sail to Tampico and load up cattle. Or how long he’d wait for Hull, but I knew we didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of time to waste. I tried to visualize the map in my head. I’d been all over this part of Mexico. I figured it had to be at least a hundred and fifty miles by land to Tampico, a hundred and fifty miles of rough, damn inhospitable terrain. Even pushing the horses as hard as we dared, we’d never make it there in less than three days, and more likely four. By that time Hull could join Sharp, if such was to be the case, they could have all three ships loaded and be on their way to Cuba.

  We walked outside while I thought. We could go back to Matamoros and take the train from there. I knew there was one that ran to Tampico. But that would take us until the afternoon of the next day, and we might have missed the last train.

  The railroad from Matamoros to Tampico ran mostly to the south. Where we were, in Bodega, was not much further from Ciudad Victoria than from Matamoros. I figured it to be about forty miles. We could start right away, and if there was no night train, we’d be sure to get out first thing in the morning. We walked on down toward the waterfront while I thought about it. You could see far out in the calm bay. Now and then I’d catch sight of a sail, its mast split by the horizon. The water was blue-green, and here and there were patches of sandy beach, Off to our left the Rio Grande came curling around a bend and then spread its brown waters out into the bay. There were no real waves to be seen, no breakers with white tops, just gentle swells that rode in and then lapped gently at the beach, at the docks, and made the fishing boats at anchor ride up and down.

  I said to Chulo, “We got to go cross-country and try and hit Ciudad Victoria.”

  He shrugged. He said, “Preety bad country. Keel horses.”

  “We’ll take it easy,” I said. “I wonder if we can buy any corn to take with us.”

  “No mucho water,” he said.

  “Got to be some watering holes. Hell, I don’t think it’s but about forty miles. Why don’t you go talk to your friend, el jefe? Find out what you can about the trip.”

  “Hokay.”

  He turned around and went back to the town. I stayed there staring out at the sea, looking at the boats. The biggest of them was anchored right next to a rickety little pier that was built out into the bay about seventy or eighty feet. The boat was painted blue with a little white stripe along her hull, right where it met the water. It looked like a big boat to me, but I didn’t know much more about boats than I did about circuses, and I hadn’t ever been to no circus. I figured the boat was about fifty or sixty feet long. It had one mast in the middle with another pole coming off it at a right angle. Up front a long pole stuck out from the bow. For some reason it seemed I’d heard it called a bowsprit, though I didn’t know why.

  I just kept studying that boat. It had a cabin of sorts. I couldn’t judge how big it was, but it appeared big enough to hold four or five folks. I just kept looking at it and thinking. But what I was thinking was so ridiculous that I turned my mind off it and started walking back up towards the huddle of buildings they called town.

  I met Chulo coming back. He said that el jefe had told him that Ciudad Victoria was about eighty kilometers, but no one could be sure since there was no road. Chulo said that el jefe had said it was a very bad eighty kilometers and that water was very chancy, especially water enough for the horses.

  I always had trouble figuring kilometers into miles, and I always wondered how come people couldn’t just get one system and stick to it. I finally worked it out that eighty kilometers was around fifty miles. But I didn’t need el jefe to tell me they were going to be a rough eighty kilometers. I knew the country. It was cut and slashed by barrancas and canyons and cliffs and arroyos. There was sand, there was big rocks, and there was every kind of plant known to man so long as it had big thorns growing out of it. Oh, yes, I knew that country. I’d killed horses crossing that kind of country with a chase party in hot pursuit. I sure as hell wasn’t anxious to take two of Justa’s horses across it, especially the little bay mare. The piebald might be able to handle it, but the bay just wasn’t tough enough.

  Chulo said, “El jefe will sell us a burro and two canvas bags which carry a lot of water. The burro will carry the water. He has the corn, tambien. He es a good mans, thees el jefe.”

  I said, “I am going in the cantina and drink some more brandy.
Go ask el jefe who owns the big blue boat in the harbor.”

  He said, “Leesen, Senor Don Weelson Jung, por que usted—”

  I said, “Go on and ask him. You always want to argue.”

  I went in the cantina and sat down. My bottle of brandy and glass were still where I’d left them. I poured myself out a drink and knocked it back. I was doing some hard thinking, and some of it was scaring me to death.

  Chulo wasn’t long. Pretty soon he came walking out of the mercantile part of the establishment followed by a dapper young man with long sideburns and shiny, slicked back hair. The man was well dressed and obviously of quality. He came up to the table and gave me a short bow. He said, “Romando Reyes, at your service, sir.”

  I said, “You speak English.”

  He said, “Yes. I was born in Mexico, but I lived many years in your town of Corpus Christi. You know it?”

  I smiled and nodded and thought, small world. I said, “Are you the jefe?”

  He shrugged. “The office is purely honorary. We have no formal government here. I own this business, which is the only one in town, and most of the people come to me for advice. Some of them are like children. My father owned this place before me.”

  I looked around at Chulo. I said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me he spoke such good English?”

  Chulo shrugged. He said, “You din’ say nuthing about Ainglish. Chou said I speak better Espanish.”

  I gave him a hard look and then switched back to Senor Reyes. I said, “Sit down and have a drink with us.”

  He pulled out a chair. He said, “I will talk with you, but it is not my custom to drink until my day’s work is finished.”

  I said, “If I followed that rule, I’d never get a drink because my work just seems to keep on going. Like right now. I want to talk to you about that blue boat out in the harbor. Is that your boat?”

  He nodded. “Yes, that is my boat. She is a sixty-foot fishing sloop with a mainsail and a foresail. She is well founded.”

  I said, “Now you are speaking a foreign language. What I want to know is could you sail me to Tampico in that boat and how long would it take?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I have sailed the boat to Tampico many times.”

  “How fast?”

  He frowned. “It is not always the same. There is the will of God, the wind, the tide, the currents.”

  “Well, give me some idea.”

  He thought a moment. He said, “At the fastest, thirty hours. At the worst....” He shrugged. “Maybe double that.”

  I said, “That’s quicker than I thought. There was a big ship in here the other day, the—”

  “The Dolphin, yes.” He got a worried look on his face. “I think that ship has brought us trouble.”

  I said, “I know about your trouble. I’ve seen your trouble. What I want to know is how fast that ship could get to Tampico.”

  Senor Reyes shrugged. He said, “Not so much faster. It is bigger, but it is not the kind of ship, you understand, that is built to sail fast. It is a shallow draft ship for heavy cargo. It can no ... how you say? It cannot sail close to the wind. It cannot tip ... No, that is not right. Are you a sailor?”

  I said, promptly, “Never been on a boat in my life. Whole idea scares the hell out of me.”

  He held his hand out and angled it. He said, “This ship, the Dolphin, cannot . . . heel over! Yes, that is it. She cannot sail close to the wind that makes her heel over so her cargo shifts. Do you understand?”

  I said, “It don’t matter if I understand. I just want to hire you and your boat to take us to Tampico.”

  He frowned. “When?”

  “Right now,” I said. “Quick as I can get enough of this brandy in me to get my nerve up.”

  He frowned and shook his head. He said, “I cannot do that now, señor. I have the problem of the cattle. You have seen them and I am sure you can see there is a problem.”

  I said, “You want to wait here for two more ships that are coming to pick up the cattle and probably pay you some more money. Is that about right?”

  He nodded, trying not to show I’d surprised him a little. I said, “Well, you can forget that. Those ships won’t be coming. They are all part of a plan of this man who sailed the Dolphin here. His name is Sharp, though I don’t know what he called himself with you.”

  Senor Reyes was looking unhappy. He said, “Something like that. He gave me a little money to start rounding up cattle. And he said the ships that were coming would load the cattle and we would get the rest of the money. Now you say these ships are not coming. How do you know this?”

  I said, “I have a matter to settle with this man Sharp. His business is in Galveston, but he does not own the business now. The ship he was sailing in doesn’t belong to him anymore. I am going to Tampico to get that ship back and settle matters with Mr. Sharp. But before I left Galveston, I arranged it so those two ships would never sail and you better be glad of that.”

  He looked worried. “It does not sound like a thing I should be glad of. There are still those sick cattle. If we leave them there, they will lay down and die. Can you imagine, senor, what a mess two hundred and forty dead cattle will make? Right in the town.”

  I said, “If those two ships had got here, they would have taken the cattle all right, but they wouldn’t have paid you any more money and they might well have robbed your town.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  I laughed. “Because they are bandidos, señor. Very bad bandidos.”

  Senor Reyes said, “Are you a sheriff?”

  Chulo laughed.

  I gave him a hard look and then said, to Senor Reyes, “No. I am involved because I have a personal matter with Sharp to settle. And he owes me money. I am going to take the Dolphin back to Galveston, and the company he used to own will give me my money in exchange for the ship. That’s why I need to get to Tampico so quickly. You know yourself what a hard trip it would be to go overland and try to catch the train. And it would take so much longer.”

  Senor Reyes was looking worried. He said, “I don’t know. These cattle . . .”

  I said, “Tell me how these cattle came to be here. Did Mr. Sharp bring just a few cattle with him?”

  “It was not exactly like that. One day a man, a Mexican, came down the river driving five cattle. He put them in our pens and said a ship would be along to load those cattle and any more we wanted to gather up. Well, naturally we were uncertain, but the vaqueros did bring in a few. And then this Sharp, as you call him, arrived in the ship and said he’d take six hundred head and would pay ten dollars a head. American! Señors, that is an amazing price! He gave me a sum of money, five hundred dollars, and said two more ships were coming and they would load the cattle, that he had other cattle to pick up in Tampico. He stayed two, three, maybe four days waiting on the other ships. Then he sailed yesterday. And even now our vaqueros are out in the hills and the barrancas gathering more cattle.”

  I said, “You better get word to them to stop. Unless you want more sick cattle.” I said, “I suppose you can see how it was done.”

  He nodded sadly. He said, “Yes, the cattle the man brought down the river were already sick. And now the healthy cattle we have penned in with them are sick also.”

  “And getting sicker every day.” I said.

  He wrinkled his brow and looked very unhappy. He said, “There is so much about this I don’t understand. Why would a man want sick cattle?”

  I didn’t much want to, but I needed Senor Reyes’s cooperation so I told him what Mike Hull had told me. I said, “So that apparently is the plan. The ships behind would gather up these cattle, and Sharp would go on ahead to Tampico to make up another load. But now you are stuck with these sick cattle.”

  He got excited and a little Mexican accent edged in. He said, “Thees man is loco! Thees man is going to hurt us verry bad! Do you know that sometimes ships come from Cuba and buy our cattle? Now they will not come no more. And what of these ca
ttle that have been gathered? This is a very poor village. We all rejoiced when this man Sharp came. We thought of all the cattle at ten dollars American each. Six thousand dollars! Six thousand if we gather the six hundred he asked for.”

  I said, “You better stop your vaqueros from gathering any more. I don’t think there are that many cattle around here. If you keep bringing them in and getting them infected by these sick cattle, you won’t have any.”

  He sighed and put his head in both his hands. He said, “This village is too poor for a matter such as this. What am I to do?”

  I poured myself out a drink and knocked it back. I said, “You get me to Tampico, and if I get my hands on Sharp, I’ll make him pay you for the cattle you’ve already got gathered. That would be around twenty-four, twenty-five hundred dollars American.”

  But he was still looking overly worried. I figured the full extent of his trouble was just starting to sink in. He said, “But what are we to do with the sick cattle? We can’t just turn them loose. They would infect every cow on our range. We would have no cattle. These people would starve.”

  I said, “You get me to Tampico, and when I get possesion of the Dolphin, I’ll sail her back here and load those cattle and take them way out to sea and dump them overboard.”

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling and blew out a breath. He said, “I had thought that, for once, this village was going to have some luck.”

  “It still might,” I said. “What about it?”

  He put his fingers to his forehead, his head bent, his elbows on the table. He sat like that for a long time, thinking. I didn’t rush him any. He was a man with a lot to consider, and the only information he was getting was from a stranger.

  He said, “We have so little here. Just the fish in the sea and the cattle back in the hills. If we lose the cattle, it could be very serious for the people of this village. Some of the campesinos grow good corn, but that is not very much.”