Riders on the Storm

by Rob Blackwell

  There were some little details to consider as well. A player could “copper” a bet, reversing it so that whatever was drawn first by the dealer was the winning card for players, while the second one would be the losing one. And all play was tracked by a case-keeper, the abacus-like device that sat next to Graves. It tallied what cards had been drawn, allowing all players to know if, for example, all the fours in the deck had already been played.

  “Luke, you want to serve as coffin driver?” Jules asked.

  Graves nodded his assent as Luke walked over to stand behind him, his fingers on the case-keeper. Normally that job fell to an employee of the saloon or gambling house, but either Graves had refused one from Rita or she’d never sent one back. Jules suspected the former.

  The real reason Jules wanted Luke there had nothing to do with tracking the cards. She wanted to make sure Graves wasn’t cheating. In theory, the game was one of pure chance, with only a nominal advantage to the dealer. But cheating was common. Graves could have a mirror hidden in the box, allowing him to see what card would be drawn first, or he could have a stacked deck, with certain cards marked on the edges in a way that only he could readily detect.

  “So we’re clear on the stakes,” Graves said, “you’ll each start with $100 worth of chips. We’ll play 25 turns, one deck. The person with the most chips at the end wins."

  Jules started to object—she didn’t have $100 on her person, even after the bank job—but Graves waved his hand.

  “Your keys will be your admission fee,” he said.

  It was ridiculous. The gold key alone was worth far more than $100. But she gritted her teeth and nodded her head. There was no going back now.

  The other men at the table had gone pale.

  “Come, friends,” Graves said to them. “What’s a hundred more greenbacks to experienced gamblers such as yourself?”

  She watched them fork over the money with obvious reluctance. Graves gave each player twenty-five white chips, worth $1 each, five red chips, worth $5, and five black ones, worth $10.

  “Wait a second,” Jules said. “Shouldn’t one of Rita’s girls be the dealer? This is decidedly unfair.”

  “My game, my rules,” Graves said. “Are you in or out?”

  Jules bit her lip. The situation was getting worse all the time. The game might be pure chance, but the odds were now against her. As the dealer, he stood to make up for anyone’s losses of the three players at the table. That meant that she could win her bets every time, but still lose the game if the other two players lost to the dealer. It was a disastrous situation to be in, the kind her father would have never allowed.

  “In,” she said.

  “Excellent. The deck is already shuffled,” Graves said, still smiling. “Place your bets.”

  Jules took a deep breath before beginning, trying not to think about how her future—and maybe her father’s life—now depended on a card game.

  Chapter Ten

  “While Trent Castle gained some notoriety, he never rose to the same heights as the Kid. That could be because his identity wasn’t a secret. But I think it was likely because Castle was more cautious than his former leader. The Kid was brash, known for his bold thefts and expert getaways. Castle was known for not taking risks.”

  — Stephen Kaper, “Legends of the Old West,” 2015

  Jules placed three red chips on the queen, betting heavily out of the gate. She wanted to gain the upper hand quickly, putting an end to this charade. As a cover, she put two white chips each on the five and the ten. The other players bet on three, six, seven and the Ace.

  Graves drew the first card, and automatically discarded it. The first card in a game of Faro, called the soda, never counted. The last card only mattered in certain circumstances, since anyone paying attention should know what it was.

  The next card Graves drew—the losing card for players—was the queen. Jules grimaced, trying not to let her disappointment show. She’d just lost $15 in a single turn. Graves turned the player’s card over, handing a victory to the man who’d bet $5 on the seven. Luke moved two beads over, one for the queen and the other for a seven. Graves collected the bet on the queen with a grin on his face. He was up $10 after one hand.

  But it wouldn’t do to play conservatively now. Jules bet two more red chips on the king, while her companions adjusted their bids. Graves drew a king and a nine—and Jules lost another $10. Two turns and she’d just lost a quarter of her money. The player on her left, meanwhile, had moved his bet from the nine before the turn started, meaning that Graves had a clean win. She heard a sigh behind her, and turned to see Miranda with her head in her hands.

  “Place your bets,” Graves said.

  Jules lost the next three turns in a row, losing another $25. She was tempted to believe Graves was cheating, but she doubted it. The man looked both surprised and delighted every time she lost. Miranda had gone from sighing dramatically to making barely masked sounds of exasperation. Jules glared at her, but it didn’t do any good.

  Within the space of six turns—with nineteen more to go—Jules was down to her last $25. Graves was grinning ear to ear, as he continued to rack up bets from the other players. Jules was reduced to making $1 bets on cards just to ensure she didn’t lose all her cash. There was little chance of her recovering now.

  “Tell me about the vase,” Jules said after the seventh turn, interested in seeing if she could at least parlay this disaster into more information.

  As she’d hoped, Graves proved graciously willing to talk as his victory grew more certain. “Ah, the vase. One of the most elusive finds of my career. You know what it is I do?”

  “You find antiquities of a certain nature,” Jules said. “Valuable ones, to be precise.”

  Graves held up a single finger, and Jules had an irrational urge to shoot it off as he wagged it at her.

  “Ah, it’s not just their value,” he said, “though that’s a common misconception. It’s items of power.”

  “Power?” Miranda asked. She was staring at Jules’ chips in dismay.

  “Indeed,” Graves replied in his haughty British accent. “I deal in what some might call supernatural artifacts. Items that don’t necessarily follow the natural laws of the world.”

  Miranda’s skeptical look seemed to say it all.

  “Come now,” he said. “From the look of you, you are Oglala Sioux, are you not? Your people have objects they believe have powerful medicine, don’t they? I heard Crazy Horse had one that protected him from oncoming projectiles.”

  “So you buy Indian pieces?” Miranda asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “if they work as intended. I’m afraid that usually these items don’t live up to their reputation.”

  “But some do?” Jules asked.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve heard of a gem that can bend time itself, though I’ve never seen that one personally. Most of the ones that come into my possession are less stupendous than that. A possessed spirit box, for example. Or a cursed totem.”

  Jules was almost glad she was losing this game. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in the supernatural. She’d encountered quite a number of strange things over the years–not the least of which were the creatures she’d killed in the bank.

  But cursed totems? Possessed boxes? Gems that could play with time? They sounded like fairy tales to her.

  “I can see you don’t believe me,” Graves said. “Not to worry. I’m no priest or Baptist minister. Belief is not required. You bring me the item, and I find the buyer who believes.”

  “This vase has power?” Jules asked.

  While they talked, they played another three turns. Jules managed to win one of them, making herself a measly $2, but lost it on the next two. She was down to $20. When she glanced behind her, she saw Miranda biting her lip in an effort not to say something.

  “Oh yes,” Graves said, and Jules turned back to see the greed in his eyes. “If its legend is any indication, it can do many things. It’s o
ld, very old. How it came to be in this area, I’m not certain. Some say it was hidden out here to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.”

  Watching Graves as he snatched up the winning bets from the other players, Jules knew he was most definitely the “wrong hands.” But she’d help him steal it if meant finding her father.

  “How much is it worth?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? To be quite honest, I’m not sure. If the stories of its power weren’t enough, it’s allegedly made from a precious metal and encrusted in jewels. I’ve had an offer in the hundreds of thousands. But if I were to circulate word of this vase’s discovery among certain parts of Europe, I believe I could get more than a million for it.”

  Jules’ jaw dropped. A million-dollar heist. An unfathomable amount. No wonder her father had been interested.

  “Why do you need a crew to get it? Who’s holding it?”

  Two more turns had gone by, and Jules was down to $16. Miranda was now pacing behind her. Graves appeared ebullient. Jules figured that was why he answered her question.

  “It’s in an area that’s hard to reach, guarded by some very nasty people,” Graves said. “What’s more, it’s hidden in an underground vault behind an impenetrable door. To open it, you need three keys made of different metals.”

  Graves grinned at her then, a smug self-satisfied look on his face. She knew what he was thinking. She was about to lose the keys to him, the only thing of real value in this card game.

  “It’s a shame that Faro’s not your game,” Graves added.

  In the next turn, Jules slipped down to $13. With only thirteen turns left, there was no real chance she could recover, not unless she played the best game of Faro known to man. That was impossible for her. It was at that moment that Jules decided to play the proverbial ace up her sleeve.

  She sighed dramatically. “Would you mind if I gave up my place at the table? Apparently Lady Luck is not favoring me tonight.”

  Graves spread his arms wide. “Be my guest. You want your coffin driver to take a turn?”

  Jules instead turned to Miranda, who smiled demurely. “From the sounds of it, it seems my sister believes she can do better,” Jules said. “It’s all hers.”

  Jules stood up while Miranda sat down at the table. Graves grinned the whole while.

  Jules resisted her own smile as Miranda took her seat.

  Miranda bet the remainder of their chips on a queen, and won the turn, doubling their holdings to $26. She bet the full amount on the ten in the next turn, turning it into $52.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Miranda said innocently.

  Graves’ smile held, but not for much longer. $52 turned into $104 after another successful bet of an eight. Graves belatedly placed a limit on the amount they could bet after that, something he should have done by rights at the start of the game. But neither Miranda nor Jules complained. Graves had already lost. He just didn’t know it yet.

  When Jules had turned out to be so bad at cards, Trent had turned to training Miranda. Whereas Jules was a poor student, Miranda was the best one any of their tutors had ever seen. She mastered any card game within minutes—and appeared to have an instinctive knack, some might have even suggested preternatural ability, for knowing what cards would be played next. Jules had never seen her lose a game.

  Unfortunately, Miranda’s skills were sometimes more of a curse than a blessing. Men barely tolerated one another winning fortunes at the gambling tables, which often resulted in bloodshed. They were even less accommodating to women, particularly ones who weren’t white. While Jules might have been tempted to use Miranda’s skills to make them a fortune and retire rich, it was far too dangerous. Even if they endeavored to keep her talent secret, word would eventually spread—and some bar room brawl would most likely end in death.

  But Jules could safely savor this moment. Graves had no idea what hit him.

  Miranda won the next nine turns with ease. She even put a penny on a few, reversing the bets so that what would have been a losing bet turned into a winner. The two players next to her stared at her in awe. Graves, meanwhile, was seething with quiet fury, glaring at Miranda as if he could will her to fail.

  She didn’t. In the final round, Miranda correctly guessed the three remaining cards in the correct order, quadrupling the allowed maximum bet. The game ended with Miranda holding more than $350 worth of chips. She’d won.

  Jules permitted herself a small smile.

  “Guess we’ll be working together on this job after all,” she said.

  She reached over to take the pile of money at the center, only for Graves to lash out his hand and grab hers. Jules yanked the gun from her holster with her free left hand and pointed it at Graves’ head.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  The other two gamblers immediately jumped from the table, leaving their mediocre winnings there, and practically fell over themselves fleeing from the room.

  Graves released her and sat back in his chair, still seething. Jules waited a beat, twirled the gun on her finger and slid it back to its holster.

  “You think you’ve won,” he said. “But I was doing you a kindness. I haven’t told you where the vase is located, where your father went to retrieve it.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “I made a mistake with your father,” Graves said. “I told him he needed to retrieve three keys first, but he paid no heed once he knew where the vase was. He didn’t want to plan or strategize. Instead, he rode off that very day, promising he’d be back shortly with my prize. I never saw him again.”

  Jules searched for a lie in his eyes but found none.

  “Where did you send him?”

  “It’d be best to let me have my keys and go your own way, prairie girl,” Graves said. “If you’re hoping to find your father, I can tell you—he’s dead.”

  She held his gaze.

  “How would you know?”

  “Because I know where he went—and he never came back,” Graves said. “He went to the one place nobody ever goes. The place where death is certain. He rode off toward it like the stories weren’t true. Stories about a large cloud that moved in a whirlpool just above a mountain, a place constantly rent by fierce winds and lightning, a place where the thunder itself can shatter your eardrums because of the way it echoes in the canyons nearby. A place said to be haunted by dark creatures that can fly and whose very bite is poisonous. Creatures that guard a treasure.”

  Jules stared at him in horror.

  “No. No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t—” she started.

  “He did,” Graves finished. “He rode off at noon toward the closest thing we have to hell on earth. He rode into the Maelstrom.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Attempts have been made to erase evidence of the Maelstrom, but there is evidence to be found in contemporary journals and even a secret report given to Congress. The first references to it turn up in oral histories of a nearby Sioux tribe in the early 1860s. They speak of a massive earthquake, followed by a beam of light that shot into the sky—and the formation of a huge, foreboding cloud that never dissipated.”

  — Terry Jacobsen, “A History of the Supernatural,” 2013

  Jules stared at Graves in shock, momentarily speechless.

  Her immediate thought was that it was a lie. It had to be. Her father, the man who had taught her that survival mattered above all else, would not have ridden into the most dangerous place on earth.

  But memories swum around her mind, clouding the picture. He’d acted strange for a couple weeks leading up to his sudden disappearance. Their final conversation felt wrong. Was it possible he would do this? And what did it mean if it was true? Why would her father risk everything?

  Graves visibly relaxed, realizing just how alarmed Jules was. He had the upper hand again and he knew it.

  “So this is your plan?” Miranda asked. “You’re forming a team to go into the Maelstrom? Are you insane?”

  Graves smile
d again. “Maybe. But that’s why we’re better off parting ways. This is an impossible task. Your father couldn’t do it. I’ll happily pay you for the keys and you can go your merry way. If I see your father’s bones, I’ll even give them a decent burial. I’ve waited three years for this. When your father failed, it took me quite some time to locate the keys. By the time I did, I knew you were searching for them. I thought you might make up for his foolhardiness, repay his debt to me.”

  “He owed you no debt, and neither do I,” Jules spat.

  But his plan was suicide. Jules understood that. What he was proposing couldn’t be done. And yet, if he was telling the truth, her father had attempted it anyway. Even for a million dollars, it didn’t make sense.

  “Walk away,” Graves repeated.

  “No,” Jules said.

  Graves scowled at her. “No?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Jules said. “I’ll ride into the Maelstrom myself. If my father went there, that’s where I’m going.”

  Graves splayed his fingers before him, leaning back in his chair. He seemed to be weighing a decision. Finally, he leaned forward.

  “Very well,” he said. “I don’t like it, but you’ve proven yourself resourceful. First with the keys and now this. I have no idea how the two of you managed to win that game, but I can recognize talent. If I can’t dissuade you, we’ll be partners.”

  Jules didn’t like his change of heart, which felt entirely too abrupt for her taste.

  “And why would I want to partner with you when you’ve told me what I need to know?” she asked.

  “Because I have something you don’t.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A map to the vault,” Graves said.

  They stared at each other in silence for a few moments. Jules didn’t want to partner with this man. She hated him.

  But if there was a vault in the Maelstrom, she had no idea where to find it. It was a large place, far too big to go wandering about in the hopes of stumbling over buried treasure.