Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
Bottom of the Deck
The man was taking Clint’s gun belt to a narrow room guarded by more gunmen.
“Is anyone expecting trouble on this boat?” Clint asked.
The big man shook his head and crossed his arms. “This is all just a precaution. Just have a seat and play some cards. Leave the rest to us.”
“Someone may have stowed away,” Clint said. “And I don’t think it was just so he could sit in on a game.”
That caused all the gunmen to straighten up and take notice. Their hands drifted toward their pistols, making Clint feel practically naked since his gun wasn’t even in his possession.
“We’ll look into it,” the big man said. “Anything else you want to tell us?”
“Just that he’s dangerous and good with a knife.”
“Thank you. Good luck with your game.”
Clint walked toward Mia’s table. Now he just needed to figure out why nobody had asked what the stowaway looked like or where he was headed.
One possibility was that the guards were overly confident that they could find anyone who didn’t belong on the riverboat.
Another possibility was that they already knew about the man with the knife. Either way, Clint decided to keep what he’d seen under his hat until he was talking to someone he knew he could trust. On a riverboat full of poker players, someone like that might be a little hard to come by.
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RED RIVER SHOWDOWN
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Jove edition / July 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Robert J. Randisi.
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ONE
Clint received the letter in an envelope sealed with wax. When Rick Hartman handed it to him, he did so with a raised pinky and an exaggerated flourish.
“A letter for you, sire,” Rick said as he waved the envelope in front of Clint’s face.
Clint was sitting at a small table in Hartman’s saloon. Sometimes, Rick’s Place felt like the closest thing Clint had to a home. And sometimes, that home came complete with a brother that seemed to thrive on getting under his skin.
“Are you going to hand that to me or dance around with it some more?” Clint asked.
“Go on and take it, my lord.”
After making a slow reach for the envelope and having it pulled away at the last second, Clint snatched it from Rick’s hand so quickly that the saloon owner didn’t even realize right away that the envelope was gone. When he finally noticed his hand was empty, Rick chuckled and walked back around his bar.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the West Texas heat was bad enough to keep even the serious gamblers away. That meant the saloon was practically empty except for Rick, Clint and a few regulars that were too drunk to move.
“Who’s it from?” Rick asked from across the room.
Clint was finishing up a plate of fried chicken and wiping his hands as he said, “If you’d give me a mo
ment, I’ll open it and see. Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t already take a look for yourself.”
“I almost did. It ain’t too often that I get mail as fancy as that. What’s that on the back?”
“Wax.”
“I know that, smart ass,” Rick replied. “What’s that seal?”
After wiping his hands clean, Clint picked up the envelope and took a closer look. “Looks just like a fancy M.”
“You recognize it?”
“No. Should I recognize it?”
Rick walked around the bar again and brought a beer along with him. He sat down across from Clint. “In the old days, them seals meant something. Sometimes, it was even a royal . . . uhh . . .”
“Crest,” Clint said before Rick could swing in the breeze for too long. “You mean a royal crest.”
Rick snapped his fingers and nodded. “That’s right!” In a thick, almost theatrical drawl, he added, “Us Texas boys don’t know too much about kings and such.”
“And I do?” Clint asked.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to open it?”
“After all this buildup, I thought I should savor the moment.”
Lifting his beer to his mouth, Rick grumbled, “Jesus, he gets one royal decree and he thinks he’s something special.”
Although Clint had been purposely dragging this on because he could practically feel Rick’s curiosity boiling over, he couldn’t get himself to wait much longer. Clint slipped one finger beneath the envelope’s flap and pulled until the wax snapped free of the paper. Most of the ornate M remained intact, leaving a red stain where it had once been stuck.
Clint removed the small, folded piece of paper inside the envelope and was careful to keep it hidden behind his own hand.
“Well?” Rick asked. “What is it?”
“Do you recall what curiosity did to the cat?”
“Yeah. The same thing I’m gonna do to you if you don’t stop acting like a jackass.”
Clint finally allowed himself to laugh as he dropped his hand and leaned back in his chair to read the card. The writing was as ornate as the seal and done in a much more flowing script than the lettering on the front of the envelope. It took a few seconds for Clint to adjust to the script after reading so many newspapers and hastily scribbled notes. Once his eyes got used to the elegant lettering, he nodded and looked back to Rick.
“It seems that I am cordially invited to the Misty Morning ,” Clint said.
Rick’s brow furrowed and he asked, “The Misty Morning ? What the hell is that?”
“A riverboat. It seems there’s going to be some high-stakes games held on this boat to christen its first trip along the Red River.”
“Good Lord Almighty,” Rick said. “You mean to tell me all that fancy presentation was to announce a card game?”
“Not just a card game. There’s going to be tournaments held from the minute the boat gets moving. According to this, there’s going to be poker, roulette, dice, faro and just about anything else that a man can lose money on.”
Shaking his head, Rick said, “Lose is right. That boat’s probably got its own supply of cheats and cardsharps just as sure as it’s got a supply of booze to keep the suckers’ purse strings loose.”
“Good thing I’m no sucker,” Clint replied. “In fact, my luck’s been running pretty good lately.”
“That why you haven’t played more’n a few hands of poker since you’ve been back in Labyrinth?”
Clint spread his arms to motion toward the rest of the nearly empty saloon. “It’s kind of hard to play a few hands of anything when there isn’t anyone around.”
Rick was still shaking his head as he got to his feet and walked back to his bar. It seemed that he soon found the task of straightening the bottles more interesting than the letter in Clint’s hand. “So it’s been slow. You wanna gamble? There’s plenty of places around here to do it. You want a poker tournament? I can throw one anytime you like.”
Hearing that, one of the drunks at the bar lifted his head and asked, “There gonna be a poker tournament?”
Rick didn’t even bother answering the drunk’s question. All he had to do was wait another few seconds and the man’s head drooped forward once more. “Sorry I wasted your time,” Rick said to Clint. “If I’d known what was in that envelope, I wouldn’t have made such a fuss.”
After waiting a few seconds, Clint said, “You know, a man who owned a saloon could get a lot of business if more gamblers knew about his place.” He fanned himself with the invitation and nodded as if he was simply talking to himself. “Gamblers on a boat like that might even drop enough money at a nice enough place to make the owner rich.”
“What’s your angle, Adams?” Rick asked sternly.
“If a certain saloon owner could put up half my stake, I might just talk his place up to make sure at least a few of them headed that way after the Misty Morning docked again. The Red River landing isn’t too far of a ride from here, after all.”
“You got the gambling itch, huh?”
“Things have been a bit slow for me, also. There aren’t even enough prospects around to make it worth getting my old tools and wagon out of the livery right now. A healthy win or two would go a long way to keep my finances stable.”
“And what about the finances of a potential partner who doesn’t have lots of money to risk staking a lousy gambler?” Rick asked.
Clint smirked and replied, “Staking a lousy gambler would be stupid.”
Slowly, Rick started to nod. “You got a point. You also got yer partner. Hell, it’ll be worth the money just to get you out of my place for a while.”
TWO
The Misty Morning was supposed to be docked at a spot along the Red River that was fifty miles southeast of Amarillo. Clint covered the first twenty-five of those miles without seeing more than a few other riders along the way. Although he was in good spirits, Clint was carrying a hefty amount of Rick Hartman’s money, so he greeted those other riders with a friendly tip of his hat and moved on.
After covering mile number thirty, Clint spotted another horse a little ways in front of him. The horse was moving at a steady pace and had kept its back to Eclipse the entire time. Without much else to look at, Clint watched that horse run in front of him the way he would watch the sun slowly set in a few hours.
The show got a little more interesting as three other riders approached from the south, split up and closed in on the first rider from three different angles. Clint recognized the way the other riders approached as though he could see the hungry look in their eyes. Reflexively, Clint snapped Eclipse’s reins to get the Darley Arabian moving at something closer to running speed. He didn’t know if those other three had spotted him yet, so Clint wasn’t anxious to make noise or kick up dust to draw attention to himself.
Since the three riders weren’t too concerned about keeping quiet, it wasn’t long before the one who’d been there originally noticed the others closing in. That first rider twisted in the saddle and looked around to pick out each of the other three.
Clint spotted the glint of sunlight off of iron and knew that one of the three riders had drawn a gun. He touched his heels to Eclipse’s sides and hung on as the stallion burst into a full gallop and thundered over the dry Texas soil.
By this time, the first rider had drawn a gun as well. In fact, that rider even got off the first shot. The sound was lost amid the pounding in Clint’s ears, but he could see the smoke easily enough from where he was. Even though the modified Colt had been drawn from the holster at his hip, Clint kept from pulling his trigger until he got a little closer.
The gunfire cracked through the air like a Fourth of July celebration as all three riders opened fire and the first one answered right back. The four horses didn’t seem to be rattled by the commotion, but they were moving fast enough to make it difficult for the riders to hit their targets. That didn’t keep the three from firing again and again as the first one turned back aro
und to pay closer attention to the trail ahead.
Clint felt like he’d been shot from a cannon. Eclipse covered the distance between him and the nearest of the three riders in no time at all. Even as he closed to within pistol range, Clint held off on firing until he got a better look at the man in front of him.
The rider wore a blue bandanna wrapped around the lower half of his face. As soon as he turned around to look at Clint with wide, surprised eyes, he aimed quickly and sent a bullet in Clint’s direction.
It was Clint’s impulse to duck low, but that wasn’t necessary to dodge the incoming lead. The shot had been taken quickly and from the back of a running horse, which meant it had little to no chance of hitting anything but open air. Just to be safe, Clint pulled Eclipse’s reins to the left and steered between two of the three riders.
The next rider’s face was also mostly covered by a bandanna. Now that Clint was close enough, he could see that the third wore a bandanna as well. He was also close enough to see that the slender shape in the first horse’s saddle was much too attractive to belong to a man.
Having watched the first rider for several miles, Clint had suspected it might be a woman. None of that came from her riding style, however, since she handled her horse better than most men. Her shoulders and waist were just a little too narrow, which had made Clint wonder about her ever since he’d first spotted that horse in front of him.
As much as Clint wanted to lend a hand, he realized that he didn’t even know who any of these people were. For all he knew, those three men were a posse closing in on a wanted murderer. The woman could just as well be in the right, but there was no way for Clint to know for certain.
It did help sway his thinking when the closest of the three masked riders looked to the other two and shouted, “Shoot this son of a bitch!”
THREE
Suddenly, lead filled the air around Clint’s head. Shots blazed all around him and drew closer with every pull of the trigger. Clint fired back as well, but he was too busy steering Eclipse and hanging onto the stallion’s neck to take very careful aim.
Red River Showdown Page 1
