by J. T. Edson
‘Leave it be!’ Madam commanded, bringing out her Webley Bulldog revolver with a speed similar to that employed when dealing with Wallace earlier in the evening. This time, however, she drew back the hammer with her thumb even though the ‘double action’ mechanism did not require this to be done before it could operate. With her left hand joining the right on the ‘bird’s head’ style, ivory gripped butt, she elevated the two and a half inch barrel of the weapon until at arms’ length and shoulder height, permitting a more accurate aim to be taken. ‘If that hog-leg comes clear of the sash, I’ll blow your god-damned head off!’
Despite the dizziness which was swirling inside his throbbing skull, the gambler could hear and understand what was being said. Furthermore, staring through eyes partially dazzled by what appeared to be brightly flashing lights, he realized he could be in deadly danger. He did not doubt the woman he had insulted meant and was fully capable of doing what she had threatened. There was not the slightest wavering in the heavy caliber, British-made weapon, nor any suggestion on the part of its owner that there would be any hesitation before using it. Shaking his head, in an attempt to clear it, he snatched his hand well clear of the revolver it had just touched. Then he struggled erect with the aid of the table. Using this for support, due to the wobbly condition of his legs, he waited with anxiety to find out what was in store for him next.
‘I thought you’d see things my way!’ Madam stated, returning the Webley to its shoulder holster. Swinging her gaze around the other gamblers, she challenged, ‘Has anybody else got anything to say on those lines?’
‘It shouldn’t’ve been said in the first place, ma’am,’ Abel Fletcher asserted. Having been told by Turner of the decision reached with regards to himself and his twin brother, he had no desire for their future to be jeopardized. ‘Which, I reckon Matt McDonald there’s wishing he hadn’t been so smart-assed and said it.’ ‘I reckon you could just about be right at that,’ the blonde declared.
‘What did you have in mind for us house-men, ma’am?’ Cain Fletcher inquired, sharing the sentiments of his sibling and wanting to show his gratitude by bringing about a resumption of the conversation which had been interrupted.
‘I thought nobody was going to ask,’ Madam answered. ‘But, seeing’s somebody did, I’m willing to keep on any of you who’ve a mind to stay.’
‘Doing what we done for Leo Wallace?’ asked the tall and skinny operator of the Wheel Of Fortune, being the oldest of the group.
‘No!’ the blonde corrected emphatically. ‘Strange as it might make some of you reckon I am, I’ll expect you to play fair and we’ll let the house’s percentages take care of making the profits.’
‘You saying we ain’t been playing fair?’ growled the gambler who had posed the first question, without any real justification.
‘I don’t give a damn whether you have or haven’t,’ Madam claimed, showing no sign of being disturbed by the hostile glare to which she was being subjected. ‘I’m only telling you how it’s going to be from now on.’
‘I reckon Brother Cain ‘n’ me’re willing to go along with that, ma’am!’ Abel announced, never having been comfortable while following the orders received from Wallace and employing dishonest methods. ‘We’ve thought some on it and conclude you was right about which kind of dealer box’s best to use.’
‘Which being, we’re wanting to stay on, ma’am,’ Cain supported his sibling. ‘Flappen you’ll have us, that is.’
‘Then, damned if I don’t give it a whirl with you,’ Madam accepted and stated how much she was willing to pay to any of the group who elected to remain in her employment. Sensing that all of them considered it better than they had been receiving from Wallace, she went on without asking who was willing to stay, There’s something else, though. Sam, will you and Sonny fetch down the big black trunk from my rooms, please?’
‘Sure thing, ma’am,’ the waiter replied and crossed the barroom accompanied by the second of the elderly swampers. On their return, they were carrying the requested bulky item from the baggage which had been sent to the saloon that afternoon by the agent of the Wells Fargo depot. ‘Is this the one you’re wanting?’
‘That’s the one,’ the blonde confirmed, having spent the collection time being introduced to, and learning something about, each of the gamblers. Unlocking the trunk with a key on the small bunch she took from the pocket of her jacket, she reached inside and announced, ‘Unless it makes some of you change your mind about staying on, this’s what I’ll expect you to wear while you’re running your games.’
After looking at the items removed from the trunk by the woman, the gamblers exchanged glances. Shaking out the folded black shirt and trousers, she held them up after the fashion of an assistant in a big city store specializing in masculine attire. Displaying the garments for a few seconds, while her gaze passed from one to another of them, she brought it to a halt upon the tall, well built and youngest of the group, whose name she had learned was Charles Henderson.
‘Yes,’ Madam said, nodding in approval. ‘I reckon we’ve got your fit without needing too many alterations, Charlie.’
‘Why’d they need to fit?’ queried Jabez Wilmott, the man who had been subjected to the intervention of the cowhands.
‘All the fellers working the games will be dressed in these kind of shirts and pants,’ the blonde explained. ‘But I’ll leave what kind of boots you have on to you.’
‘Does the same apply to hats, ma’am?’ inquired Cain Fletcher, bare headed as was his brother.
‘No gentleman would wear his hat indoors, for shame,’ Madam pointed out, matching the amiability with which the question had been posed. ‘And I aim to have well-dressed gentlemen handling the tables.’
‘What’s wrong with our own clothes?’ asked the burly and black haired gambler, Otis Chiffoner, looking downwards at his somewhat stained attire.
‘Nothing, for outside,’ the blonde admitted, then she indicated the marks caused by the drinks which had been spilled by the waiter. ‘In here, wearing my gear, happen you have another accident like that, you can easy enough go change in the backroom I’ll have set out for you and it’ll be the house who has to pay to get them cleaned.’
‘Hey!’ Henderson put in, having stepped forward to take and examine the garments. They were well made from good quality and durable material. Being a snappy dresser, he approved of the double breasted cut of the shirt. However, on examining the trousers, he noticed they differed in one aspect from any others he had seen. ‘There’s only this one lil pocket in the pants!’
‘I know,’ Madam admitted. ‘For one thing, Izzy Cohen, the tailor up to Cowtown, said it would save him, and everybody else he could get to handle a needle and stitching thread, time to make them that way. Which, I didn’t leave him a whole heap of time to get enough made ready to give me a start here.’
‘That’s as maybe!’ Matthew McDonald mumbled, speaking slowly to reduce the throbbing in his bruised jaw. Like all the others in the group, he was aware that there was another reason for the insistence on wearing the exhibited attire, the lack of pockets in the trousers and being bare headed. ‘Only there’s some’s might reckon you’re as good’s saying you don’t trust us!’
‘Perish the thought!’ the blonde asserted, with such a disarming smile she might have been sincere in the protestation. ‘Whoever heard of a house man who wasn’t to be trusted?’
‘Then why the fancy duds, ma’am?’ asked Barney Clifton, the operator of the Wheel Of Fortune, but his tone was more friendly than when he had previously spoken.
‘Could be so the bouncers will be able to pick you out from the customers and won’t whomp you by mistake in a ruckus,’ Madam suggested.
‘Now that’s something I’m all for!’ Abel Fletcher claimed. ‘Moe Stern near on hit me one time when there was fuss with some of the cowhands and I don’t even dress like they do.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me, what I saw of him,’ the blonde declared. ‘An
d, speaking of Moe Stern, he won’t be coming back again either.’
‘I heard he got something in his belly that didn’t agree with him, ma’am,’ Henderson put in, eyeing his new employer with frank admiration.
‘Or he didn’t agree with,’ Chiffoner supplemented, also having been told of how the blonde had dealt with the former head bouncer. He realized that, in addition to her ability to defend herself, she was also shrewd and well versed in the problems of running the gambling activities of a saloon. Reaching a decision, he went on, ‘Would you have a shirt and pants that’ll fit me, ma’am?’
‘There should be,’ Madam replied. ‘At least, close enough until Saul Bernstein can take measurements and make up a good fit.’
‘How about for Brother Abel and me?’ the second Fletcher twin asked.
‘You can try for some comes morning,’ the blonde promised.
‘By golly, ma’am,’ Wilmott commented, also with greater amiability. ‘We’ll look as fancy as the house men at the Silver Bell in Cowtown!’
‘And a heap more handsome, Jabez,’ Madam answered, having noticed the use of the word, ‘we’; she did not mention that it was she who had suggested the wearing of such attire by the gambling crew to the owner of the Silver Bell in the first place.
Nor did the blonde intend, at that time, to say anything about her intention of matching something else for which the Silver Bell Saloon in Fort Worth was famous!
Nine – I’ll Get Back That Saloon
‘Well, god damn it, I’ll say one thing!’ Wanda Higgins spat out furiously, her voice, which was sometimes sultry and enticing, holding no suggestion of its usual seductive promise. Looking with undisguised loathing from her half-brother to her brother and back, as they stood sheepishly before her in the expensively furnished sitting-room of her home, she continued just as harshly, ‘You pair certainly showed just what you’re worth yesterday, going by what you’ve just told me!’
Five foot seven in her bare feet, which she was at that moment, the wife of the Hide and Horn Saloon’s previous owner had only recently passed her thirtieth birthday. Generally elegant and glamorous, albeit in a way which was indicative of her former occupation as an entertainer in the middle echelons of the theatrical profession, she was far from looking at her best at that moment. Her normally stylishly coiffured henna red hair was disheveled, and the makeup on her arrogantly beautiful face, invariably far more extensive than was considered socially acceptable for a “good” woman, was badly in need of renovation. She had a full bosomed Junoesque figure which was remarkably firm—in view of her generally slothful and self-indulgent way of life—and still nearly as well muscled as when she had been noted as an exceptionally active and vigorous dancer on the stage. The robe she had draped over an almost transparent black silk nightgown and left unfastened did little to conceal her eye-catching contours.
Never at its best in the early morning, or even close to noon—the time she usually left her bed—Wanda’s temper was far from improved by the unwonted activity which had been thrust upon her the previous afternoon, and by having been compelled to rise long before her usual hour. Looking forward to a more extensive dalliance in Garnett, improving her far from platonic relationship with County Sheriff Lloyd Bowman and indulging in some instruction of a special nature he had arranged for her, the telegraph message sent by the gambler to inform her of the situation at home had caused her to return to Tennyson in considerable haste.
On arriving at her home late the previous night, and finding neither Wallace—whose relationship stemmed only from her father having married a widow with a son after the death of her mother—nor Moses Stern present, the red head had gone to bed in no amiable frame of mind. Having slept indifferently and been woken much earlier than she would have preferred, her mood had grown increasingly malevolent on hearing the information they had to impart when they put in an appearance, and the disdain she felt, particularly for her hulking full brother, was becoming more apparent by the minute.
‘Aw hell, Wan’!’ Stern mumbled, feeling gingerly at his still aching stomach. He had missed inheriting both the good looks and the intelligence of his sister. ‘She hit me when I wasn’t looking!’
‘She’d probably have found it even easier if you had been looking!’ Wanda snorted and changed the baleful glare to her half-brother. ‘And I suppose you wasn’t looking when she took your god-damned gun away from you?’
‘I was trying to find out what’d happened to Barry Norman,’ Wallace excused himself sullenly and with no greater veracity than had been displayed by the former head bouncer. Somewhat less in awe of the arrogantly beautiful woman, he went on irritably, ‘Who the hell could’ve figured she’d grab my gun?’
‘Not you, obviously!’ Wanda hissed, clenching her fists in anger. ‘And those two god damned hard-cases you’ve been spending my money on didn’t show to any great shakes as bodyguards!’
‘They got took by surprise—!’ the gambler began, keeping a wary eye on the red head’s knotted hands as he was well aware of her proclivity to use them impartially when her temper was aroused.
‘For the “mother-something” money they’ve been getting, I wouldn’t have expected them to get “took by surprise”!’ Wanda answered, practically spitting out the last three words. ‘Or taken any other god darned way, comes to that. And I suppose all those over paid tinhorns you insisted on bringing in “got took by surprise” like you three?’
‘Joe Turner and just about every other son-of-a-bitch in the place took cards to stop them cutting in,’ Wallace asserted, with somewhat more truth than previously. ‘And that includes Maxie’s girl, Vi Grant.’
‘I’d expect some god damned grandstand play from her, the stinking, tail peddling calico cat!’ the red head claimed viciously and thought with satisfaction of certain preparations she had been making to deal with the woman she had heard was on intimate terms with her husband. Driving her right fist into the palm of the left hand she had opened with a solid ‘thwack!’, she went on, ‘Just wait until I get her down to the Barnhof and in Rudy Schanz’s r—!’
‘What I’ve heard,’ the gambler interrupted, although he found the proposal to which his half-sister was referring not without interest. ‘It’s lucky they got stopped.’
‘Why?’
‘From all accounts, seems like this Madam Bulldog’s got Tune Collier licking her feet same as Lawyer Scrope.’
‘God damn it!’ Wanda snapped, reaching with a jeweled hand to run its fingers through the disheveled hair. ‘She didn’t waste any time!’
‘Not a god damned minute, was I asked,’ Wallace confirmed. However, with his half-sister in her present mood, he considered he would be ill-advised to mention she had failed to achieve anything like a similar friendship with either the peace officer or the attorney, despite having tried for a longer period than Madam Bulldog had been in Tennyson. ‘And not only with them two!’
‘How do you mean?’ the red head demanded.
‘She’d even got Josh Gilmore and his bunch ready to back her,’ the gambler lied, unable to resist the temptation of supplying incorrect information which he knew would annoy the arrogant beauty. Seeing the savage glint which came into her eyes at the suggestion that one of her conquests had seemingly transferred his affections, he went on hurriedly, ‘Which being, the last thing I wanted was a ruckus between them and our house men.’
‘Why not?’ Wanda challenged. ‘It wouldn’t have done this Madam Bulldog any good with the stuffed shirts around this god-damned one horse town to have a roughhouse brawl in the saloon the first night she took over.’
‘It wouldn’t have done us any good, either,’ Wallace warned. ‘Fact being, we’d likely have come out of it worse than her.’
‘How come?’
‘She’d busted up what she’d knowed was a second dealer box and, seeing’s how the game was still going on, she must’ve guessed about the drawer, and she made the Fletcher boys play with a straight ‘n’ and a deck of clean c
ards from out of it. So the last thing I wanted was for Collier brought in by a ruckus.’
‘It wouldn’t have been all that bad for us,’ Wanda estimated. ‘What with the table having showed up and put in so soon before she arrived, there’s plenty who’d have thought it was her who’d sent it.’
‘No they wouldn’t, or at least they’d soon’ve learned they was wrong,’ the gambler contradicted, looking even more ill at ease as he realized his confession was unlikely to improve the bad temper shown by the red head. ‘She’d already suckered me into admitting it was our table. With that known, seeing Collier let me know how things stood ‘twixt him and her when I came out, it’d’ve gone bad for us happen he’d got showed a secret drawer with the other second dealers and some decks of readers [18] in it on our faro table.’
‘Do you reckon she was telling the truth about how she got the Hide from that no account husband of mine?’ Wanda inquired, holding her temper in check with an effort as she noticed the emphasis placed upon the words, ‘us’ and ‘our’. She deduced correctly, that her half-brother would not have absolved her of complicity if he had been arrested for operating the cheating devices. ‘Hell, I know he was a lousy poker player, but I’d’ve thought he’d know enough to quit before he got in that deep!’
‘Scrope and Collier don’t reckon he did,’ Wallace pointed out. ‘Which’s what counts!’
‘Like hell it is!’ the red head denied heatedly. ‘All right, so it might here, but it won’t down to the county seat.’
‘If he didn’t lose it to her,’ Stern put in, striving with his limited intelligence and imagination to keep track of the conversation. ‘How come she’s here telling everybody’s he did?’
‘He’d send her here with fake papers, making out she’d won it from him in the Big One,’ the red head explained, with a blatant patience which a person of greater perception would have found more annoying than openly displayed irritation or animosity. That’s how!’