Lily

by Greenwood, Leigh

  “It’s customary for one man to be the dealer,” Chet said.

  “But it’s not fair. Lizzie,” she called over her shoulder, “bring us some fresh cards. You can deal this time,” Lily said to the man on Chet’s right.

  “I’m the dealer,” Chet said.

  “But if you deal all the time, I won’t get to,” Lily said, trying to pout. She’d never done it before, and she had no idea if she was getting it right.

  One of the men said, “Aw, let’s pass the deal, Chet. It won’t do no harm.”

  Chet still looked mulish.

  “Will you do it as a favor to me?” Lily wheedled.

  Chet still looked suspicious.

  “Come on, Chet. Let the little lady deal.”

  Lizzie returned with the cards. She’d brought six packs, all unopened.

  “Give one to Mr. Greene,” Lily said, pointing to the man on Chet’s right. She smiled brightly. “Now we can get started.”

  Chet Lee looked furious, but he must have decided it would be foolish to continue to object. Besides, he’d already been a heavy winner.

  Over the next few games. Lily continued to study each of her opponents until she could almost gauge the strength of their hands. She never bet when Chet Lee was the dealer. She didn’t know how he did it, but he always managed to deal himself a strong hand. When she felt a tiny scratch on one of the aces, she realized Chet was beginning to mark the new deck. After that she broke out a new deal every time the deal came around to her.

  “Something wrong?” Chet Lee demanded angrily when she opened her third new deck.

  “I like the feel of new cards,” Lily said, “even though they’re harder to shuffle.” She shuffled with enough clumsiness to keep the men off their guard. They were so busy watching Chet and each other, it never entered their minds that she might be just as dangerous.

  Over the next two hours, Lily was a steady winner. She would have been the first to admit the cards were running in her favor, but she was also very careful. She figured the odds on any player drawing a particular card. She never forgot a card played or discarded. She took that information, along with what she knew of each man’s unconscious gestures, and made a guess as to the strength of his hand. She wasn’t always right, but she was close. She even learned that one man tended to hold on to face cards when he’d have had better luck taking whatever came his way.

  As the pile of money in front of Chet decreased, his temper turned sour. The tension at the table increased. Lily was exhausted. She didn’t know how anyone had the energy to gamble all night. She felt as if she could collapse in bed and sleep for a week.

  Instead she increased the rate of her chatter and continued to smile as brightly as she could. The only man who seemed immune was Chet Lee.

  “Do you have to talk so much?” he snapped.

  “I don’t see how you can just sit there never saying a word,” Lily said. “It’s so exciting I can hardly sit still.”

  “You haven’t,” Chet pointed out.

  “I sure wish my papa could see me now.”

  “Did he teach you to play cards?” Chet asked, seriously annoyed at her wins.

  “Heavens, no! Papa’s a preacher. He’d be horrified if he could see me.” She giggled again. “That’s why I wish he was here. Papa turns red when he–”

  “Hell’s bells, woman! Don’t you ever shut up?”

  “Well, if you’re going to be like that . . . “

  Lily placed her bet, called, and won the hand.

  Chet’s comment was unprintable.

  “Let’s take a break and get more drinks.” one of the men said. He got to his feet before anyone could object. Everyone left the table but Lily.

  “How’s Dodie?” she asked Lizzie when she brought Lily another cup of the black coffee she’d been drinking all night.

  “She’s okay. She wanted to get back into the game, but I told her you were doing fine.”

  “I want to talk to her.” Lily hurried to Zac’s office.

  Dodie was sitting on the sofa scowling. She didn’t look so fine to Lily.

  “Lizzie tells me you’ve turned into a regular cardsharp,” Dodie said. “I taught you better than I thought.”

  “The cards have been running my way,” Lily confessed.

  “I wish I’d thought to rotate the deal and use fresh cards. That son-of-a-bitch was cheating me blind.”

  Lily winced at Dodie’s language.

  “I’d better get back. You lie back down. You’re still looking rather green.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Dodie said.

  The clock on Zac’s desk said 2:48 a.m. Lily didn’t know how much longer she could last.

  “You can do that later if I’m still winning.” Lily dashed for the door. She wanted to be at the table when the men returned.

  Lily’s luck continued to hold, but by four o’clock her strength was fading fast. “I don’t want to spoil the party, gentlemen, but I’m afraid this is going to have to be my last hand. I’m about to go to sleep over my cards.”

  “I wondered why it had been so quiet,” Chet Lee said.

  “I’m not used to such late hours. I have to go to work in the morning.”

  “I think you can take the day off,” Cht said glaring at the money piled before here. “I think you’ve got more than a day’s wages there.”

  “This is Dodie’s money,” Lily said. “I wouldn’t think of taking a cent.”

  “Let’s play,” Chet snarled, “before all this moral rectitude makes me sick.”

  Lily was dealt junk. She discarded everything but two hearts and asked for three cards. She nearly fainted when she received three more hearts. She held a straight flush, six high. Only a higher flush could beat her hand. She quickly tried to cover her excitement by pretending she was about to fall sleep.

  “Goodness, maybe we should quit not.”

  “No.”

  The single syllable told her all she needed to know. She didn’t have to look up and see the gleam in the back of Chet’s eyes to know he had a great hand.

  “Okay, but if I start to nod, somebody poke me to keep me awake.”

  “Zac would kill anybody who tried,” Dodie said.

  Lily whipped around. “You’re supposed to be lying down.”

  “I couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on out here.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to sit somewhere else,” Lily said. “If you start looking over my shoulder, I’ll be too nervous to play my hand.”

  “You ain’t been nervous all night,” Chet complained.

  “I’ll go sit next to Walter,” Dodie said.

  Lily wondered if Dodie had seen her hand. She didn’t want her to give it away. But Dodie lit up one of her thin cigars and seemed interested only in talking to Walter.

  The betting was steep. Several men had good hands. Before long there were four thousand dollars in the pot. Chet kept raising by increments of one to five hundred dollars a round. One by one the others dropped out until only Lily and Chet were left.

  Lily was getting nervous. She knew she had a good hand. She knew Chet had a good hand. But how good? The flame at the back of his eyes threatened to burst into a blaze. Maybe she had depended on her luck one time too many.

  Still, she couldn’t back down. When Chet raised a thousand, she covered her shock by exclaiming loudly, “Lord have mercy! Are you trying to take all my money at once?”

  “Yes,” Chet hissed.

  She fanned herself and chattered away. She could beat almost any hand. She dithered and chattered, then bet her thousand and raised Chet a thousand. She felt confident he would have to call or fold. He didn’t have any more money. Even if she lost now, Dodie wouldn’t owe him anything.

  “It’s a good thing I came prepared,” Chet said. He reached inside his coat and pulled out a thick wad of bills. He peeled off a thousand and raised her another thousand.

  Lily felt perspiration threaten to pop out all over her forehead.
She didn’t have another thousand. She had only four hundred left. If she couldn’t meet his bet, she would have to forfeit. She felt desperate.

  “Why, Mr. Lee, shame on you. You know I don’t have that much money. It’s not nice of you to raise me when you know I can’t equal you bid.”

  “That’s part of the game, ma’am. If you can’t stay with the pace, you have to fold.”

  “But I can’t just fold and give you all that money. Why, goodness gracious! I’d have nightmares just thinking about it.”

  “I’ll cover my wife’s bet,” a deep voice said from behind Lily. “She’ll match your thousand and raise you a thousand.”

  Lily nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Zac’s voice. A hundred different emotions clamored for primacy. Relief won. Zac was there. Everything would be all right now. No matter what happened with this hand, no matter what he said to her or Dodie, everything would be all right.

  Zac was there.

  “You can’t lend her money,” Chet objected.

  “If I’m correct, the marriage contract says what’s mine is hers,” Zac said. “I’m just bringing it to the table.”

  “We had an agreement. You could only use the money on the table.”

  “But you bet money that wasn’t on the table,” Lily pointed out. “If you interpret the rule strictly, you can’t meet my bet, and I win by default.”

  Chet was cornered and he knew it.

  “You can borrow some money if you need it,” Lily offered, magnanimously. “I don’t mind.”

  “I don’t need to borrow.”

  Chet bet a thousand and raised two. Zac equaled his two thousand and raised him two more. Chet was clearly sweating now. “You broke the rules, damn you. That pot ought to be mine.”

  “Maybe somebody will lend you the money.”

  “Sorry,” the men around the table said. “We ain’t got that much.”

  “How much do you have?” Lily asked.

  “Fifteen hundred.”

  Lily took five hundred from the pile and handed it back to Zac. “Now you can equal my raise and call.”

  Chet suddenly broke out into a smile. “This will teach you a lesson, ma’am. Once you get your victim on the prongs of your pitchfork, don’t let him off. I got four aces.”

  He spread them out. With a loud laugh he reached for the money.

  “I believe that’s my money,” Lily purred. “My cards may be little, but they pack the house full.” She laid down her straight flush.

  One of the men let out a crack of laughter. “Well, I’ll be damned. Four aces beat by five little ones. I never seen that before.”

  “You cheated,” Chet shouted.

  “No, you did,” Lily replied calmly. She could say that, knowing Zac stood behind her. As long as he was there, she could do just about anything. “That’s why I insisted we rotate the deal. It’s also why I changed cards so often. You were marking the aces with that big ring you’re wearing.”

  “You saying I cheated?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m saying it too,” Dodie said. “I just wasn’t smart enough to catch you.”

  Chet jumped to his feet. “I ain’t taking that from no man.”

  “Chet, Chet,” Zac said in a gently chiding manner. “Can’t you tell these are women?”

  “Damn you,” Chet growled. “You’ve made fun of me for the last time.”

  He started to reach inside his coat, but before he could extract whatever he was reaching for, he was looking into the business end of a double-barreled derringer.

  “If you want to keep that hand, you’ll take it out of your coat very slowly, and it won’t have anything in it.”

  Chet lowered his head to his side.

  “I don’t know why I’ve put up with you for so long,” Zac said, “but I don’t mean to do it any longer. As of this moment, you’re banned from the Little Corner of Heaven. If you attempt to force your way in, I’ll have you thrown into the street.”

  Chet Lee was so furious, his face was dark and mottled.

  “I’ll get you back for this, damn you!” he shouted. “I’ll get you both back for everything!”

  “If you want to leave here with your arms in working order, I suggest you do it before you say anything else,” Zac warned. “I’ve had a very long and frustrating trip, and I’m in just the mood to take you apart piece by piece.”

  Chet was mean, vicious, and in a rage, but he wasn’t fool enough to go up against a derringer pointed at a spot between his eyes.

  “This is not the end,” he said, backing away. “I swear I’ll get even.”

  Chet left the saloon at a stumbling run, bumping into tables and chairs without apology.

  “You,” Zac said sternly, looking directly at Lily, “into my office. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  "I'm coming, too," Dodie stated. "This is all my fault."

  "You weren't playing poker with the biggest cheat in town."

  "I was, and I was drunk to boot. Lily saved my bacon."

  Zac glared at Dodie. "Both of you, into my office now!"

  Zac's heart was still beating too rapidly. He hadn't gotten over the shock of entering the saloon and seeing Lily in the middle of a poker game with nearly twenty thousand dollars on the table. He got lightheaded just thinking about it. People got killed for far less than money that.

  He hadn't even known she could play poker.

  What was she doing here, and why was it that every time he turned his back, she got into trouble? She was going to give him grey hairs before he was thirty. If he'd had any doubts before, they were erased. He had to get her completely away from the saloon.

  Even if it meant selling out.

  That thought had haunted him all the way back from Virginia City and his abortive attempt to locate Windy Dumbarton.

  "Now let's have this story from the beginning," he said as she closed the door to his office. He directed his gaze at Dodie. "I assume you were the one to teach her to play poker."

  "I asked her to," Lily said.

  "When?"

  "All those mornings and afternoons while she sat here waiting for you to wake up," Dodie said. "She would do it by the hour."

  "I wanted to find out what was so fascinating," Lily said, "what could keep you and hundreds of other men glued to the table half the night." She massaged a crick in her neck. "I don't see how you can keep it up till dawn. I'm so sleepy I can hardly hold my head up."

  "That's because it's after four o'clock, and you've been up all day," Zac said. "But that's getting away from the subject. What were you doing at that table?"

  "I came to see you," Lily said. "I decided it was time we talked."

  "Why couldn't we talk any of the times I tried to see you?"

  "I wasn't ready."

  "But you are now?"

  "Yes."

  "This sounds like a cue for me to leave," Dodie said.

  "We'll skip that part for a moment," Zac said. "Tell me about the poker game."

  "I let Chet Lee sucker me into a game too deep for me," Dodie said. "When Lily came in, I passed out."

  "You've got better sense than that," Zac said. "You know Chet would kill you if you didn't pay him."

  "I wasn't thinking."

  "Dodie had a real good hand," Lily said. "That's why I took her place. I couldn't let her lose."

  "But why did you keep playing?"

  "I wanted to get her money back. Besides, you told me all about studying people, looking for the little signs that give them away. I did, and it was easy to tell when they had a good hand."

  "She had the good sense to rotate the deal and keep using new cards so Chet couldn't mark the deck," Dodie said.

  "But why did you keep playing?" Zac repeated. "You could have lost even more."

  "I wasn't losing. I was winning," Lily said. "It was fun. I liked being able to beat those men, to prove I wasn't just some silly woman. Besides, Chet Lee made me mad. I want
ed to take as much of his money as I could."

  Zac felt his heart sink. He had waited too long. Not only did Lily know how to play poker, she enjoyed it.

  He had only himself to blame. He'd spent so much time gambling, insisting it was perfectly all right for him to keep doing it, why shouldn't she think it was okay for the gambler's wife. She had absolutely no understanding of what it could mean to her.

  "I was playing the last hand when you came in," Lily said.

  "You still could have lost everything."

  "I know. You don't know how grateful I am you arrived when you did."

  "What would you have done if I hadn't arrived?"

  "Asked some of the other men to lend me the money."

  "They would have," Dodie said. "They adore her."

  That was it. He'd be damned if his wife was going to become the darling of a bunch of gamblers. He certainly wasn't going to have them falling over themselves to lend her money. He could just hear Rose now!

  "Okay, Dodie. You can go back outside, but I want to talk with you before you leave." He had to get to the bottom of this sudden return to drinking. It worried him more than he wanted to admit.

  "If it's about the drinking--"

  "It is, but it's about something else, too. Now leave us alone. Lily and I have a lot to work out."

  "Don't you yell at her."

  "I probably will, but I won't hurt her if that's what you're worried about."

  "I never thought you'd do that," Dodie said. "But if you've got to yell at somebody, yell at me. She did that for me. I ought to take the blame."

  "Don't worry. This isn't about the poker game."

  "But it is," Lily said when the door closed behind Dodie. "It's about that and all the other things you've told me not to do."

  "Yes, I guess it is, but it's all my fault. I should have realized from the first you couldn't be left on your own. It was stupid of me. No, it was selfish. I was only thinking of what would be the most comfortable for me, what would upset my routine the least. I never once thought about you."

  "You thought about me all the time," Lily protested. "I worried you sick."

  "I worried after things happened. Never before. If I'd been a decent husband, none of this would have happened. But I wasn't trying to be a husband. I was just trying to keep things the way they were. I realize now that's impossible."