Hook pursed his lips then took a swallow of whiskey from his glass. “I see. You figure you’ve got a hand good enough to beat me?”
“Let’s call and see. What do you say, Jonah?”
He wagged a hand. “Not so fast, Major. If you think you’ve got a good hand—I want you to know I’ve got a better hand. And I’m willing to see just how much a gambler you are. But—you’re out of money … so I guess you don’t really want to play for high stakes.”
Wiser leaned back in his seat, for a moment listening to the muttering of some of the spectators, soldiers and Danites both.
With a flair, he stood, pulling back the flaps of his rumpled coat to expose the two pistols. “You want my custom guns, don’t you? Had your eye on them, I know. They are fine specimens—”
“I got guns, Major. Don’t really need yours.”
“Then …” And he looked over himself, wondering what he could offer. He was growing a bit edgy, from the hours in the chair, enough whiskey to put a sharpness to everything, and from this hired man’s cocky attitude. “What is it you want me to wager?” His words no longer had that silver smoothness to them.
And that crooked smile Hook gave him made Wiser want to take the man’s thin, sinewy neck in both his hands right now and squeeze until the smile was gone and the eyes bugged out, tongue lolling, gasping for air—
“You ain’t got anything I really want. I s’pose the game’s over—”
“More money? Take my marker! When we get to Laramie to rendezvous with the colonel—I’ll honor my note.” He quickly turned to one of the men. “Get me paper and a pencil. I’ll write Mr. Hook my draft—”
“Don’t want any more of your money, Major. Told you. ’Sides, what can a man do with just so much money?”
Boothog slammed a flat palm down on the table, exasperated with the Southerner. He was thumping the clubfoot on the floor noisily, drumming in rhythm with his warning. “You’re trying to goad me, Jonah. And I won’t stand for goading from any man.”
Hook smiled back at the tongue-lashing, which vexed Wiser all the more.
“Few days back, you was telling me how much a gambler you was—how good you was too. Good at gambling in life too. I didn’t figure you’d buckle under and go belly up like this, Major. Just ’cause a man whipped you at cards.”
“You haven’t whipped me at cards, Hook!” he roared, wiping beads of sweat from his brow, swiping the finger off on his vest gone damp in the sticky, still air of the saloon.
Hook peered carefully at the table. “I don’t see you with any money left to call me. Appears I win this hand, and the whole game. It’s over.”
When the Confederate reached in with one long arm to rake back the pot, Wiser caught his wrist. “Hold it right there, Jonah,” he said quietly through his teeth, desperately trying to maintain control of himself and the situation.
“What’s that, Major?”
He started to choke on it. As much as he wanted to crack the man’s skull—it just might have to come to that later. But for now, in front of all these people … in front of these men he would one day command from the top—Lemuel Wiser would have to be just what he claimed he was: a gambler.
“Yes. I do have something you might be interested in, Jonah,” he said, releasing the Southerner’s wrist.
Wiser leaned back, smoothing his vest lapels. “You been a long time without a woman?”
Hook stared at him without expression. “Long time, Major. Why?”
“I have a prize. I mean a really rich prize I can offer you.” Wiser stared down at the money on Hook’s side of the table, glanced at the old soldier who had folded and sat watching them both, and then back to the Confederate. “You say I’m not a gambler? Well, let’s see if you are the gambler you claim to be. I’ll wager what special treasure I have against everything you have—all that money sitting in front of you.”
Hook dragged a hand through his long hair, then scratched a cheek as he gazed down on the pile of money. “This is a lot of money. But you got my interest up, I will admit. Just what you got that could be worth all this money? And what’s this talk of me not having had a woman got to do with it?”
Wiser felt himself leap joyous inside. His tactic would work, he was sure of it.
“Palmer,” he called out, wagging a finger to one of his men. Wiser whispered his orders in Sam Palmer’s ear and watched the man go.
Seeing Hook’s eyes follow Palmer’s exit, Wiser said, “I’m having my wager brought here now to show you, Jonah. I think a man of your needs … you’ll approve.”
Minutes later there was a hush that came over the group, a scraping of boot soles as men moved back and a grin that crept across Wiser’s lips.
“Here is my wager—against everything you’ve got. Winner takes all.”
He watched Jonah turn and look at the girl.
She stood weaving between Palmer and Colby, one of Hastings’s men, groggy and stupefied on laudanum. It was the safest thing to do, Usher had decided years ago. Keep the girl and her mother drugged so there was never any danger of them escaping. He had always wondered what the stuff would one day do to the girl’s brain. But it did not matter now. Jubilee Usher wanted that deserter Riley Fordham so bad that the colonel had promised the girl as a reward to the man who brought back Fordham’s head in a burlap sack.
The girl no longer mattered.
At last, Wiser looked at Hook, finding on the Southerner’s face a strange, pinched look.
“You don’t want the girl?”
Hook swallowed hard, trying to grin, not being able to. “This one—is she … is she still … a—”
“A virgin, Mr. Hook?” Wiser replied, then laughed easily. “Of course. That’s the very reason she’s worth all that money you’ve got in front of you.”
Eloy Hastings edged from the spectators to bend at Wiser’s ear. “Major, just how you gonna square this with Colonel Usher?” he asked. “I mean—he’s got her promised to the man who brings in Fordham—”
“That’s my concern, Captain,” Wiser snapped.
He’d let the southerner win, if that’s the way the cards ran against him this last hand. Wiser ran his hands over his five cards, lying face down on the table. Then tapped his fingers on them. And after Hook had gone off with the girl—he’d have the men kill the Confederate, just as he was about to sully his young, virginal prize. Wiser would have the girl back before Usher was any the wiser.
“Jonah?”
Hook gazed at Wiser, his eyes narrow, dark slits in his bony face.
“What’s it to be?”
“Let’s play this hand through, Wiser.”
There was something to the tone in Hook’s voice that struck Wiser as different from what he had heard up to this moment. Perhaps it was because Hook knew he might be beat—bested here at the last by a better man. A true gambler. Not just a man who played with money, especially other men’s money. No, Wiser told himself, I’m a true gambler—making a wager on life itself.
“What do you have, Jonah?”
“A full house …”
Wiser felt his throat constrict, swearing he would not let any of the men see him sweat.
“Three tens …”
Seeing those cards, Wiser sighed in relief. That was the best Hook had. And Boothog looked down at his own three kings.
“And two aces.”
Wiser’s throat seized, a hot lump choking him. Very conscious of moving slowly now, to keep from lunging across the table, he leaned forward casually and studied the Confederate’s cards. Then he sank back in his chair, standing finally, turning over his own cards.
“You have me beat,” Boothog said. Then, with a wave of his hand he whispered, “You win the girl.”
Jonah had brought Hattie here as quickly as he could, only briefly joining in the shrill laughter of the others as he dragged her out of that dingy, murky saloon into the clear, cool night air. Heading for the livery at the end of the dry, dusty street, where he told the o
thers he would be bedding down his new-won prize.
That news had inspired more lewd cheering as the others gathered at the yellow-splashed doorway in those dark early-morning moments, bidding him luck, others saying he needed no luck now—all he needed was stamina. Then more crude jokes as the voices slowly faded behind him.
Hook glanced quickly over his shoulder. No one out on the street now. They had all gone back inside. He could hear them yelling and laughing back there, but only faintly.
He could make it out onto the prairie. Sure of it. Get two horses saddled. Get his daughter tied onto one so that she wouldn’t fall when and if they had to make a race of it.
He prayed they would not be faced with that.
Yet he knew Wiser was not the sort to let Hattie stay with him. Never mind that it was Hattie … or any young woman for that matter. Boothog Wiser didn’t seem like the kind of man who took easily to losing at all. Especially losing everything.
He had a pocket filled with Wiser’s money. And he had the reward Jubilee Usher had promised to the man who found and killed Riley Fordham. There was no doubt in Jonah’s mind that Wiser would be coming to get it all back.
With Boothog’s money, Jonah could get someone to take care of Hattie for a few weeks. Maybe a few months. However long it would take to double back and ride west to Fort Laramie—where he would find Usher and … reclaim Gritta from her captor.
His stomach went sour.
Then he looked at Hattie as they pushed through the short door into the fragrant livery. Beyond, a half mile away or more on the flat prairie, he heard someone playing a mouth harp. Maybe a lonely soldier. Maybe one of Wiser’s men in their camp by the river. Jonah could not be sure. He only had to find two horses now. Any two. Saddle them. And get lost going east.
Jonah set his daughter gently down among the aromatic hay in a vacant stall, listening to the snorts and pawing of hooves. He lit a single lamp and hung it on a nail, quickly looking over the stable, finding bit and saddle for two mounts. And hung from a nail some short lengths of rope that he would use to lash her atop her mount for their hard ride.
Better that they head south. He knew some of that country: the Republican, Solomon, Saline, and down to the Smoky Hill. Keep Hattie safe until he could finish with Usher and bring Hattie’s mother home.
Get the girl safe and then he’d have to return to the Platte. It was here he would come to deal with Boothog Wiser.
After that—farther west. To the place called Laramie. Then he’d finally look in the eye of Jubilee Usher.
But first, he had to get Hattie atop this horse, tied on, and led out onto the trackless prairie, praying no man would follow them into the night as black as the heart of hell itself.
47
July, 1868
WISER SENT HASTINGS with a half dozen of his scouts around to the back.
Boothog himself would go in the front door of the livery stable. Backed up by four of his own men.
He knew they enjoyed this. Every last one of them. He had seen it burn in their eyes more than once. Whenever Wiser had been crossed and wronged and felt the burning need for taking revenge on one of the men. The rest—especially these most trusted by him—they all watched unflinchingly as Wiser had taken his pound of flesh each and every time.
He could remember seeing that love of it in their eyes. They had enjoyed watching the torture and the blood, the begging by the victim.
And Boothog Wiser knew they would take no small pleasure in what he, Wiser, now had in store for this simple homespun Southern sodbuster named Jonah Hook.
Wiser figured he had given Hastings enough time to get around by the run-down stable’s double-wing back door, a stable that slightly listed to one side with age and the incessant prairie wind.
Silently moving to the small door, he tested the latch and hinges gently for noise. He wanted to be in the stable before Hook knew he had arrived. As Wiser was pushing in on the short door, a hollow shot echoed from within.
Wiser froze. A quick exchange of gunfire, intermingled with a pair of grunts. Then shouts swamping over everything from out back. Calling for him.
He glanced at his own men, then shoved his way into the stable, both hands filled with the fancy pistols.
It was dark in here—dimly lit at best. Four horses milled about, pawing, rearing at the noise. Some gun smoke hung in a murky haze at the far end of the stable, swaying with the rocking light of the disturbed lantern hung upon a long nail. Hay dust stirred, making it hard to see. Wiser could not make out what was happening.
“Major Wiser!”
It was Hastings’s voice.
“Captain! What’s going on? Where is he?”
“He’s in here! Got two of my men! Get the sonofabitch!”
Wiser read the panic in Hastings’s voice. Strange that a man as proven as the captain should express so much fear. Perhaps only the tension coming now at the end of a long scout. Then Wiser’s belly convinced him of something different. Hastings would know, better than any, about the enemy they were up against.
“What’s he got for weapons, Captain?”
“Those two pistols—all I saw him carrying.”
“He’s got something more,” someone said from the darkness.
“What?”
“Dunno.”
“Shuddup! Now get your boys to rush him,” Wiser ordered, with his pistol waving two of his own to go down either side of the center aisle between the two rows of stables.
Boothog could read more than reluctance on their faces. He pointed the pistol at one of them. The man moved on into the murky darkness, carefully, his head pulled back in his shoulders like a gun-shy tortoise.
Wiser watched as a pair of Hastings’s men argued with their captain at the far end of things.
“Get them moving! This can be over in a matter of seconds, Captain!”
Hastings shoved the two forward with his big, fleshy hands. They dived into the dim light shed from the solitary oil lamp. Something flickered across the corona of light—the shadow of a man. A bevy of shots rattled through the stable. Three of the gunmen fell. Two of them screaming before they passed out. The third crumpled silently.
The fourth lay wounded in the dust and hay, dragging himself back toward Wiser. A hand over a dirty blotch on his shirt.
“Bastard got us in our own cross fire!” hollered the wounded man.
“You think you’re gonna die—that it?” Wiser shouted back at the man.
“I’m gut-shot, Major,” he begged, crawling close to Wiser’s legs. “It’s a slow, mean way to go.”
“Go to hell then!” Boothog cried, instantly aiming his pistol at the man’s face below him and pulling the trigger.
The back of the gunman’s head exploded in a spray of red that splattered the hay and dust with gore and crimson. Wiser stepped over the quivering body, waving the last two ahead with him.
“Hastings!”
“Major?”
“You and me gotta see to this—don’t we now?”
“I suppose we do.”
“You especially, Captain. You brought him in.”
There was a moment of quiet reflection from the far end of the livery. “You’re right. It’s my doing. I’ll … clean things up for you, Major.”
“That’s a good soldier.”
A wild laugh split the shadows. “Ain’t that just like you goddamned officers!” the drawl called out from the darkness.
“Ah, Mr. Hook!” Wiser replied. “How good of you to let us know that you plan to join the celebration.”
“All you officers can do is send good soldiers to their death, ain’t that so? And now you’re gonna follow orders like the rest, Hastings? Or you gonna get out while you still can?”
“Go ahead, Captain,” Wiser reminded stiffly. “Let’s see you tidy this matter up.”
“Sure—c’mon in here, Hastings. I’ll put a couple of holes in you before any of the rest of your boys get close enough to finish me off. And what’s it
get you, Captain? A decent burial in a hero’s grave back in Zion? Shit—you know damned well Wiser will leave you rot where you lay. Like he done with all the rest before you.”
“Don’t listen to him, Hastings! That’s the devil’s own hand servant in there! Let’s finish this and get the girl.”
“That’s right, Hastings,” the Southerner’s voice called out. “The girl is all that Wiser wants. He don’t care a good goddamn about you at all.”
“Goddamn you, Hook!” Wiser spat.
“Say, Major—where’s Hattie’s mother?”
That stopped Wiser. And the major saw it had stopped Hastings in his tracks as well.
Hook called out again. “The woman’s with Usher, ain’t she?”
Wiser was slow making sense of it. How did the man know?
“I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about, Hook. Perhaps if you come out and give the girl up, we can sort—”
“The girl’s name is Hattie. She has a name, Wiser.”
Boothog smiled. He had it fitting together nicely. “And the woman? What was her name?”
“Gritta.”
Wiser listened to the rumble of the two men left with him, and those still with Hastings. If they had been spooked by a man hiding in the dark before, they now were a little less than anxious to tackle someone who had tracked them across more than three years and hundreds of miles of wilderness.
“Three winters gone, Wiser. I been waiting a long time to put a name on the bastards come and stole my family. Now I got names. And I got you here with me. Whyn’t you send the rest of these hired killers out of here, and you and me finish his—like the big man you’re always bragging you are.”
“You’re a back-shooter, Hook. I saw it in your eyes when we first met. You’d never fight me fair.”
“Shit—I’d never expect you to fight fair, you bastard. Your kind never does. You run and hide less’n the odds are in your favor.”
“Live to fight another day has always been my credo.”
“And let other men do your dying for you.”
“I’m done talking with him, Hastings! Finish it!”
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