She believed in specializing, did Big Momma, and the whorehouse was just that and no more. A man couldn’t even get a drink there unless he booked in for a couple of days at a time, in which case he could have his back scrubbed by some of the ‘ladies’ as well at no extra charge, though he might have to pay for the hot water.
But the Gaming House paid off well and Big Momma employed tough hombres to see that no one caused any trouble. That way she stayed in line with the law. Plus the forty-five dollars she slipped to the town marshal every fortnight during his night rounds.
She was equipped for long-term games, offering special rooms with facilities for washing, sleeping and generally freshening-up, all at a price, of course. She even employed three Chinamen to launder clothes if necessary.
The main money came from the tables, though, and her housemen were the most honest in the West—which didn’t make them saints by any means. They would use a marked deck or a stacked one when and if they could, but they had to be absolutely certain sure of getting away with it before they tried. They didn’t get a second chance with Big Momma.
The room was hazed with stale tobacco smoke now and even at this time of the afternoon the place was crowded, only a few keno and faro tables being free. Behind a curtained alcove, a game of poker was in progress and had been continuing for four days straight. Some of the players had dropped out and had been replaced by others who wanted to try their luck, but Borden Dysart had been in the game right from the start.
He had paused only for brief naps and a hot tub and change of clothes. He had been shaved and had a hair trim right at the card table, almost getting his throat cut as he lunged forward once to scoop in a big pot he had won. He had been in a good mood and hadn’t knocked the nervous barber down for cutting him but, instead, had tipped him ten dollars.
The barber knew that Dysart would expect free shaves for a couple of months after that, but it had looked like a big gesture to the other red-eyed players around the table. Dysart liked to grandstand when the chance offered.
Right now, he scowled at the cards he held. A lousy hand. King, ace, deuce, seven, four. Not even of the same suit. Muttering, he threw in the hand and glared at the houseman.
“Hit me with five,” he rasped, voice husky from too many cigars and too much raw whisky. He scrubbed a hand around his freshly powdered face and wrinkled his nostrils at the smell of the talcum powder the barber had used.
The gambler kept his face blank but there was surprise in his cold eyes as he dealt five fresh cards to the cattle baron. As the man let them sit before him on the cigarette-burned and whisky-stained cloth, the houseman dealt to the other players. The man on Dysart’s left bought one, causing the cattleman to arch his eyebrows and scowl deeper; the man next to him bought two and the man on the other side of the dealer shook his head: he would stay pat. He smiled slowly across the table at Dysart, a hint of victory on his face. The gambler took three cards himself and, as he set down the remainder of the deck, Borden Dysart picked up his cards, one by one, keeping his face deadpan as he looked at them.
A king, a nine, a jack, a queen, and—a ten. By God, he had a straight. All in spades!
There were plenty of hands that could beat it, of course, but Borden Dysart was a man who was used to bluffing. He had grown rich by his ability to bluff his way out of many a tight corner and through business deals involving thousands when he had nothing more than a silver dollar in his pants. He smiled inwardly. If he couldn’t win this hand by scaring off the others and forcing them to toss in their cards, then he vowed he would give in to Dolores’ wishes and allow her to take a trip to Spain to see her younger brother. By God he would!
He felt as confident as that.
“You to open, Borden,” the house gambler said.
Dysart scowled at him. “Reckon I know the rules by now, mister.” He irritably shoved forward a stack of gold ten dollar pieces. “Someone count ’em,” he said disdainfully as if touching the money was beneath him. “Whatever’s there is what I open with.”
That caused a murmuring round the table and Dysart smiled to himself as he saw two of the others were reacting already. The man opposite, the one who had looked so confident a few minutes back, seemed less sure now of his position and was surreptitiously glancing at the cards fanned out in his hand. He pursed his lips thoughtfully.
Dysart wanted to laugh out loud. It was going to be easier than he had figured. He had ’em scared white right from openers!
“By Godfrey, Mr. Dysart,” one of the house men said as he completed counting the stack of gold pieces, “there’s one hundred, twenty dollars here!”
“Leave it!” Dysart snapped, glaring challengingly around the table. “Them’s my openers. Anyone object?”
The players muttered and shook their heads, sensing that Dysart would not take kindly to anyone wanting to pull out before at least entering the game for one hand. But the house gambler looked dubious.
“I’ll have to check with Big Momma, Borden,” he said.
Dysart swore. “Damn well check, then! You’re holdin’ up the game.”
He was a big man, solid for his age, which was somewhere the other side of fifty. He had a shock of long white hair, neatly combed and slicked back now but, usually, out on the range, wild and fluffed-out. His clothes were simple but expensive and his cigars came all the way from Cuba, hand-rolled especially to his order in Havana. He wore a heavy gold and diamond ring on the little finger of his right hand and his belt buckles and conchas were solid silver and gold. He even had a set of solid silver spurs though he wasn’t wearing them this night. Borden Dysart was a man who believed in letting folk know he had plenty of money.
His face was hard, seamed from the outdoors, his features a little on the coarse side, giving his head the appearance of being bigger than it should be even for his wide shoulders. His big fists were scarred from innumerable fights in the past and there would likely be more in the future. For Borden Dysart was a powerful man physically as well as in terms of money and land-holding. He numbered Lester Dukes, governor of Texas, amongst his friends and acquaintances: no one was too sure just which category the governor fitted into, but Dysart himself referred to him as ‘good ol’ Les’. It could have been more grandstanding ...
He was his own law, he figured, and on his vast holdings, he often acted as judge and jury when required. It was as well the governor of Texas didn’t get to hear of some of the things that happened on the Dysart ranch for, friend or not, Lester Dukes would still make the big man pay if he thought he had flouted the laws of the land.
But Dysart was used to getting his own way and, though he fretted impatiently at the card table, he was not surprised when the house gambler returned and said that Big Momma Judd had approved the unusually high stakes.
“Then let’s get on with the goddamn game!” snarled Dysart, glaring at the man next to him. “You buyin’ in, Nolan?”
The man nodded, but none too eagerly, and studied his cards hard.
“Come on, man! You’ve had long enough. You know if you want to bet or not. It’ll cost you a hundred twenty, plus whatever you want to up the ante. Now let’s get this game rollin’.”
Nolan sighed, began laboriously counting some paper money and Dysart tightened his lips and cussed under his breath. He snapped his head up at a disturbance behind the drapes across the doorway, heard muttered voices and then stood abruptly as Dolores swept into the smoke-filled room. Every man there hastily got to his feet and bowed slightly at the stunning Mexican woman.
“What are you doin’ here?” Dysart said, and the others were surprised that there was not much of an edge to his words. Some, but not what they expected at the interruption.
The woman smiled at them all and then raised herself on tiptoe and her lips lightly brushed Dysart’s seamed cheek. He didn’t seem embarrassed, but a touch of annoyance showed in his eyes.
“Querida, I have seen the furniture I want. A most handsome mahogany chiffonier, i
mported from England, and a polished cedar dining suite from New Orleans that defies description! The polish is so deep, so brilliant, it is almost like a mirror! The chairs are the English spade-back design that you so admired when last we visited New York and—”
“How much is all this enthusiasm going to cost me?” interrupted Dysart, remaining—outwardly, leastways—remarkably calm.
“Five hundred and seventy dollars.”
“What!”
“Well, I bought you a new genuine Cutler roll top desk, in English walnut, and there is a lovely little davenport that will sit beautifully beside my bed, and a folding writing box as well with silver inlay and ...”
He held up his hand, turned to the table and scooped up a double handful of twenty-dollar gold pieces. “Here. Take these. Dunno how much is there, but it’s all you’re gettin’ right now, savvy? Hold your purse open—right. Away with you. Carry on with your marketin’. Buy what you like. But don’t interrupt my card game again.”
She kissed him and smiled, then pouted, holding the now-closed purse with both hands.
“But you’ve been four days, querida! We are due to return to San Antone in another two days and I did so want you to take me to the theater.”
“Mebbe, mebbe. But I’ll never know unless I get to playin’ out this hand. You mind?” He nodded jerkily and sat down. “Adios.”
Dolores looked disappointed and her smile faded as she nodded slightly to the other men and went out through the drapes.
“I declare if there’s one more interruption to this here game, I’ll burn the goddamn place down!” Dysart snarled and the other players knew he had been only holding himself in check while his wife had been here. Inwardly he had been fuming, ready to explode, and they figured now they could expect to get the blast of his pent-up wrath during the course of the game.
“Make your bets, for hellsakes!” snapped Dysart, glaring around the table ...
It had come down to three of them: Dysart, the house man, and the confident townsman who called himself Barry, whether a first or last name Dysart neither knew nor cared. The others had gratefully dropped out and now sat back, still sweating and tense, watching the duel between these three.
Dysart set his cold eyes on the face of the houseman as he pushed a stack of gold coins into the center. “And raise one hundred.”
The man smiled mirthlessly at Dysart. “Would you like to see our hands now, Borden?”
“Like hell!” Dysart shoved a fistful of coins into the pot. “Meet you and raise the ante by whatever’s there. Count ’em, Charley.”
The houseman standing by for just this chore, began stacking and counting with swift expertise. Dysart drummed his fingers impatiently on the table edge, raking his cold stare over the other two, giving the impression he was a man on the verge of a big killing and impatient to get it over with. Barry looked most uncertain now. The house gambler kept his narrow face blank but thin rivers of sweat trickled down from his oiled sideburns and stained his collar.
Just as the count was made and declared and Barry began to shake his head, indicating that he was pulling out, the drapes parted and a tall, lithe, rangy man in cowboy garb came in. Dysart glanced up and swore.
“Good God! What in hell do you want, Kip?”
Kip Grant, ramrod of the Dysart ranch, doffed his hat, revealing sweat-matted brown curly hair. He nodded soberly to his boss and the others, showing no fear of the angry rancher as he faced him.
“Sorry to interrupt, boss …”
“You’re sorry!” Dysart snorted.
“Said I am. But I thought you ought to know that herd from the spread in Galveston is on board the ship for Mexico but Heddison fell overboard and was taken by a shark in the bay. Leaves no one who can negotiate with the greasers in Matamoros.”
Dysart sighed heavily, frowning up at his ramrod. “Well, they was your herd, your responsibility. You better go down there and negotiate a damn good price.”
Grant frowned. “Well, I dunno as I was expectin’ you to want me to go, Mr. Dysart.”
“Like I said, they was your responsibility. You should have trailbossed that herd down to Galveston.”
Kip Grant colored some under the stares of the men and nodded, tight-lipped. He didn’t like being criticized in front of the others and the house gambler saw his knuckles whiten where he held his hat by the brim as he stood by Dysart’s chair.
“Well, boy, you got yourself a choice. Go straighten things out on that ship, or drag your time.”
Grant colored deeper, having it laid on the line this way. “No need to put it like that, boss. I didn’t push Heddison into that shark’s jaws. But I’ll go straighten things out, of course.”
“Of course!” Dysart said with something of a sneer.
Grant chose to ignore that, or tried to. His words came out with difficulty as he said, “I’ll need a ticket, boss.”
Dysart swore, then threw the ramrod a gold piece. Grant caught it deftly in mid-air. “You get a good price from that greaser agent in Matamoros, you hear?”
“Sure. Adios. See you in a week or so.” Kip Grant jammed his hat on his head and swung around abruptly, striding out of the room.
Dysart continued to frown at the drapes as they fell back into place behind the angry foreman and then he spun back to the card game.
“This time we better play it right out!” he growled, slamming a big fist onto the edge of the table and making the piles of coins jump and spill. “Now—let’s play poker!”
They came in from the mountains, a tight-riding bunch, silent and like a breath from the recent past in their blood-stiff, stained and reeking buckskins.
It was a sight that had long disappeared from the streets of Houston, a bunch of buckskinners in town to trade off their furs for whisky and women and more powder and lead for their massive guns.
A quick observer of this group might have noticed that they didn’t have any pack-animals loaded with furs or beaver skins with them, though there was a horse with an empty saddle led by the man last in line.
The buckskinners all wore beaver tail caps, and their hair was shoulder-length, their features almost completely hidden behind bushy, matted beards. Their fringed buckskins left a rancid odor behind them, mixing with the sweat and stench of their passage. The townsfolk counted seven or eight—no one was too certain about it later, some claimed one figure, some the other, but all agreed that there were sure more than six.
Weapons were in evidence, indeed were naked in the hot afternoon sunlight as the group moved down Sherman Street. Mostly they were big Hawken mountain rifles, the brassware of the butts and barrel bands and trigger guards glinting like gold in the amber light. There was also a Remington rolling block and one Sharps buffalo killer, the scarred butt bound together where it had been split by a winding of copper wire. Mountain men had been notorious in their day for climbing the telegraph poles and cutting long lengths of copper wire for use in many things, ingeniously finding work for the heavy gauge cable, unwinding it strand by strand.
Except for the lack of skins for trading, and that extra horse, the bunch seemed pretty much like a band of mountain men from a decade or so ago. They sure drew plenty of stares as they rode down Sherman and dismounted outside of Miller’s Furniture Emporium, of all places. Folk just couldn’t figure what a bunch of buckskinners would want in a plush stuffy furniture store.
Then someone noticed that only three men went inside. The others stood on the porch and their guns were held across their chests in both hands now. Someone heard a ratcheting sound and whispered:
“Oh, my God! That’s a gun hammer cockin’!”
Folk began to scatter and mothers called frantically to playing children, dragging them, bawling and protesting, indoors, off the streets.
“Better fetch the marshal!” a man said.
“You fetch him!” another man replied.
“Not me. I’m boltin’ my door!”
In the store itself, the three buckskin
ners strode in silently, their moccasins slithering along the floor. Then their reek went on before them and sales clerks and customers alike turned their heads to stare.
Dolores Dysart was just paying the sales clerk for the goods she had purchased when her nostrils involuntarily wrinkled as they were assailed by the stench of the buckskinners. Slocum and Gant, leaning against a polished table, rolling cigarettes, glanced up too, blowing out their cheeks. They froze as they saw the heavy-barreled mountain guns—and Slocum was the first to act.
He let the makings of tobacco grains and papers fall from his fingers and his right hand drove down in a blur of speed towards his gun butt. Gant was a scant second behind him.
The leader of the mountain men brought up his Hawken and squeezed the trigger one-handed. The massive gun jumped, the octagonal barrel riding up with the muzzle blast, and a .58 caliber lead ball picked up Slocum’s heavy body and hurled him clear across the table in a tangle of arms and legs. The man smashed furniture as he fell back to the floor and didn’t move again.
Dolores’ scream was drowned in the thundering of the second Hawken, and Gant went down with his six-gun firing into the floorboards between his boots. His face was torn away on one side and Dolores grasped at the edge of a desk to keep from falling.
The furniture sales clerk opened his mouth but the heavy iron barrel of the leader’s Hawken rifle smashed his face to pulp and he fell to his knees, toppling forward against Dolores’ dress front. She jumped back with a small gasp, blood staining her gown. Then the big leader backhanded her across the face and knocked her senseless. He draped her across his shoulder and the third man, holding the Sharps with the wire-bound butt, covered the other customers and employees in the store as they backed out onto the porch.
The unconscious girl was thrown roughly across the saddle of the empty horse and the leader swiftly bound her in place with plaited rawhide ropes. By that time, one of the others had reloaded his Hawken and he swung up onto his mountain pony, eyes raking the empty streets.
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