Ace in the Hole

by J. R. Roberts

  “Ain’t nobody goin’ ta scream,” one of the black hostages said.

  “Lookit this,” Coffin said. “Four women and two black men. Don’t you fellas know you was freed by the war?”

  “We’s freemen, suh,” one of them said. “We gets paid.”

  “Not enough, I’ll bet,” Calhoun said.

  “No, suh,” the other one said, “not hardly enuff.”

  While Clint was sitting out a hand, he noticed Mrs. Pyatt call John Deal over to the bar. They put their heads together and she spoke urgently. He nodded and moved away. Clint stood up and walked over to the man.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Somebody was supposed to have brought up sandwiches a while ago,” he said. “Mrs. Pyatt wanted to go find out why they haven’t done so, but I told her to stay put, I’d go.”

  “Is your staff usually prompt?”

  “Very. This is unusual. Somebody’s going to get fired. One or the other of my security men was also to have checked in with me every hour. We’re into hour two, and I haven’t seen any of them. Yes, someone is going to get fired.”

  He started to turn away, but Clint grabbed his arm.

  “Tell me your security setup.”

  Deal outlined it briefly, inside and out, and Clint realized how woefully inadequate it was. He should have asked before.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go and check.”

  “You think something may be wrong?” Deal asked.

  “You tell me,” Clint said. “Your house staff and security have failed to do their job. Why would that be?”

  “Oh, dear,” John Deal said. “I had assumed they were simply inept.”

  “Well,” Clint said, “that could be. It could also be that they’re all dead.”

  “But…this is a private game.” Deal sounded puzzled. “I kept it all very hush-hush.”

  “How many people work in the house?”

  “Seven.”

  “That, and the security men you brought in—somebody had to have talked.” Clint was thinking about Arliss Morgan’s young wife.

  “How many guns are in this room?” Clint asked.

  “Just you and Mr. Conrad, the younger.”

  “That’s what I thought. Stay in this room, and keep everyone else in.”

  Clint waved his hand at Johnny, got his attention and called him over.

  “You and me are going to check the house.”

  “Somethin’ wrong?”

  “Maybe. We’re the only ones with guns.”

  Johnny turned to look at his brother, who was concentrating on his cards.

  “Let’s go,” Johnny said.

  As he opened the door, Clint heard Micah McCall ask, “Now where’s he goin’?…”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Clint and Johnny Conrad slipped out of the room and into the hall, moving as silently as possible. Clint signaled for Johnny to go to the back stairs while Clint would check the front. Johnny nodded. They separated, both with their guns in hand. Clint watched as Johnny reached the end of the hall and started down.

  There was no way to see down to the first floor, and even from the top of the stairs Clint would not be able to see much of the second. He cursed inwardly. He should have told Johnny not to go down, just to wait. If there was somebody in the house with the intention of taking down the game, they’d have to come up. All Clint and Johnny had to do was wait. Of course, there were the lives of the staff and the guards to consider. By going down, they might end up saving lives.

  And, of course, there was always the possibility John Deal’s staff actually was inept.

  Clint decided to chance it and go down the stairs to the second floor. No one could get past him, and if Johnny got into trouble, he’d be able to hear it. As quickly as the younger man had been moving, he was probably already down one level.

  Clint started moving toward the head of the stairs…

  Calhoun, Coffin and the other four had made it as far as the second floor. They could see the stairs leading up to the third. They did not see, nor did they know, that there was another staircase in the back.

  “There might be anther stairway in a house this size,” Calhoun said.

  “What does that matter?” Coffin asked. “Here’s the stairs. The directions we got to the room are from this staircase. Let’s just go up and do this.”

  “Okay,” Calhoun said. “You four go up first. When you get to the top, wait.”

  None of the four men cared who went up first. The staircase was wide enough for them to go two or three abreast, so they went three with the fourth man behind them. Calhoun and Coffin brought up the rear, coming side by side.

  None of them had their guns out.

  Johnny Conrad made it to the second floor quickly and without incident. He hadn’t taken the time to think about it that Clint had. He’d gone straight down, and now he had a decision. Keep going down to the first, or check out the rest of the second? He decided to go down to the first, and he did so as fast and quietly as he could. When he got there, he discovered he was in the kitchen. And when he saw the assemblage of people lying on the floor, good and hogtied, he turned and ran back up, yelling, “Somebody’s in the house! Adams!”

  Clint was being infinitely more deliberate than Johnny Conrad was. He was moving slowly, making his way to the head of the stairs. As he reached there and started down, he saw three men abreast starting up. He stopped short. They hadn’t seen him yet, but all they had to do was look up. He had started to back up when he heard Johnny shouting something. He couldn’t make it out, but the other men heard it as well. They looked up, and froze.

  Calhoun heard the shouting and knew, somehow, the people in the kitchen had been discovered.

  “Go, go, go!” he shouted to the men ahead of him. He had not yet seen Clint Adams.

  Clint had no choice. He drew and fired in one swift motion. The three-man plateau below him all went for guns, but they were slow, and they were getting in one another’s way. It took three shots from Clint’s gun to stop them all.

  As the three men came tumbling back down the stairs, they knocked the fourth man down. Coffin leaped back, avoiding the spill, and Calhoun was behind him.

  “Damn it!” Calhoun said. “There’s got to be another stairway. Hold him!” he shouted.

  Coffin turned, but Calhoun was already running to the other end of the floor. Coffin grabbed the fourth man and pulled him to his feet, firing blindly up the stairs as he did.

  Calhoun was only thinking about the money on the floor above him. He reached the back stairway and saw a man running up ahead of him. He had no qualms about shooting a man in the back, and that’s what he did.

  Johnny Conrad had no idea what had happened to him. He’d never been shot before. Something slammed into his back and then he was falling, tumbling back down the stairs, his gun flying from his hand…

  Clint ducked the shots coming from the bottom of the stairs. The shot from the back stairs had blended in. He didn’t know how many more men were there, but his best play now was to stay on the third floor and let them come to him.

  Suddenly, it got quiet, and a voice called from downstairs.

  “Adams? Is that you? Clint Adams? You ain’t got a chance. We got a dozen men in the house.”

  Clint knew that was a lie, but he still didn’t know how many men there were.

  “Come on down, Adams,” the voice said. “Come on down and we’ll talk. We’ll cut you in.”

  Clint froze at the top of the stairs, waiting.

  Calhoun reached the third floor and slowed himself down. He didn’t want to run headlong into anything. He stuck his head around so he could look down the hall, saw a man standing at the top of the stairs and assumed it had to be Clint Adams. If he’d been looking for a reputation, he would have shot the man, but Adams was staring down and Calhoun could hear Coffin talking to him. Firing a shot would alert the man to his presence. If he moved quickly and quietly enough, he could get to the room with the mon
ey.

  He stepped into the hall and started down it as fast as he could without attracting Clint Adams’s attention.

  Inside the room all the players and spectators had frozen and were now simply listening for the shots.

  “Somebody go out there and help them!” Charlotte Thurmond shouted.

  “Mrs. Thurmond,” Micah McCall said, “thanks to Mr. Deal, we have no guns. We’d just get in the way.”

  Charlotte glared at Dick Clark.

  “Well,” he said, standing, “I guess we should try to do something.”

  He caught some movement from the corner of his eyes and saw Mrs. Pyatt waving to him from the bar.

  Clint decided to try something else. If he could get to the back stairs and down to the second floor, he could come up behind the gunmen—however many of them were left.

  As he turned to move up the hallway, he saw a man in front of the door to the game. He had a gun in one hand and the doorknob in another.

  “Hold it!”

  If that man got inside the room, he’d have a host of hostages.

  Clint brought his gun around to fire, and as he did two men appeared at the bottom of the stairs…

  Coffin heard Clint Adams shout, figured Calhoun had gotten around behind him.

  “Take him! Take him!” he shouted to the one man he had left.

  They both mounted the stairs and aimed their guns at Clint.

  Again, Clint had no choice. If he fired at the man in the hall, the two on the stairs would kill him.

  “Damn it!”

  He turned his gun to the stairs and he and the two men there all fired at the same time, only the men fired once each and Clint fired twice. He felt something lick at his left arm, but he stood fast and put a bullet into each man’s chest, then ran down the hall.

  Calhoun entered the room without a shot from Clint Adams. The first thing he saw was the green felt table filled with chips. He looked around, didn’t see a gun pointed at him.

  “Where’s the money?” he demanded.

  “My good man—” Deal started.

  Calhoun turned on him and decided to make him the example for the rest. Before he could fire, there was a shot and something stung him in the side of the neck. The strength went out of his arm and he groped for his gun as his mouth filled with blood.

  At that moment Clint rushed in, just in time to see Calhoun fall.

  FORTY-SIX

  They sent for a lawman from Gardner. In a conversation with Clint, the sheriff mentioned that they’d had a murder in town, a man named Tom Kent.

  “Kent?” Clint asked.

  “That’s right. You know him?” Sheriff Jeff Owen asked.

  “Well, yes, he’s the sheriff of Virginia City.”

  Sheriff Owen assumed that Kent had followed the gang to Gardner, tried to stop them from robbing the game, and was killed for his trouble. Clint thought there could have been another possibility—that Kent was in on it with them—but decided to keep his mouth shut.

  The sheriff and some of his men loaded the bodies onto a buckboard and took them to town for the undertaker.

  Clint joined John Deal on the front steps as the sheriff and his men pulled away.

  “It was my fault,” Deal said.

  “How so?”

  “My security measures were…inadequate.”

  “Well, yes,” Clint said.

  “If not for you, we’d all be dead,” Deal said. “Not just my guards.” Deal turned to Clint. “You saved me, my staff and everybody in that room.”

  “Johnny Conrad had something to do with that,” Clint said.

  “Yes, he did. His brother is taking his body home, so he won’t be playing tonight.”

  “The game is going to go on?” Clint asked.

  “Well, yes,” Deal said. “There is a lot of money involved.”

  “That’s what those men thought,” Clint said. “They didn’t know that the money was in a bank in Sacramento and that the only thing on the table in that room were chips.”

  “The winner will have to go to Sacramento, to Mr. Green’s bank, to collect the money.”

  “So all those men were killed for nothing,” Clint said.

  “Yes,” Deal said.

  “You’re right, Mr. Deal,” Clint said.

  “About what?”

  “It was your fault.”

  Clint went down the steps and headed for the livery to saddle Eclipse. He didn’t want anything further to do with this game.

  “Clint!”

  He turned when he heard his name, and saw Arliss Morgan trotting toward him.

  “You’re not leaving,” the banker said.

  “I am.”

  “But what about the game?”

  “You’ll have to play for yourself,” Clint said. “A lot of men were killed last night. I can’t just forget that and sit down to play poker.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Arliss,” Clint said. “And if I were you, I’d check with your wife when you get back to Virginia City.”

  “My wife?”

  “She’s the only one you gave all the details to, right?”

  “She wouldn’t—”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Clint said. “Most women would for that much money.”

  “Look, I’ll make your end bigger—”

  “It’s not the money, Arliss,” Clint said. “I don’t need the money.”

  “Well, I do,” the man hissed. “I need to cover certain…reversals.”

  “You did steal money from your own bank, didn’t you?”

  Morgan stood speechless.

  “It’s all in your hands now, Arliss,” Clint said. “I’m done.”

  He left the banker standing there with his mouth open, then Clint headed for the barn.

  He didn’t know how many of the other players were staying, and it really didn’t matter. He wouldn’t think any less of them. There was a lot of money involved, as Morgan and Deal both said. And for men who gambled for a living—like Dick Clark and Micah McCall—it was all about the money.

  It just wasn’t about the money for him.