Red River Showdown

by J. R. Roberts

  The other woman also had blond hair, but with a few hints of red through it. She locked her eyes on Clint almost immediately and leaned over to say something to Gretchen. Although he couldn’t hear what the women were saying, Clint knew it was pretty good considering the smiles on both of their faces.

  As if that sight wasn’t good enough for him, Clint picked up his cards and found that three threes had been dealt to him. “I’m feeling lucky,” he said. Ignoring the glare from Mia, he opened the betting by tossing five dollars into the middle of the table.

  Mia called the bet and muttered, “It seems like the captain of this boat provided some company for his guests along with the liquor.”

  Having allowed himself to look back toward the two blondes, Jones realized Mia was staring at him, and he quickly tossed in some money. After looking down at his cards, he even threw in a raise. “Sorry. I was distracted.”

  “My guess is that’s what they’re there for, Jones.” Barry chuckled. He took a moment to fan his cards and then called the raised bet. “I’m enjoying the show myself.”

  Clint sat in his chair and focused on the game long enough to appear as if he needed to think about calling, and then tossed in the extra money.

  “Go ahead and look, Clint,” Mia said. “I’d prefer to have you as distracted as possible. In fact,” she added while covering the bet, “you might want to pay for their company. Nobody would blame you.”

  Discards were tossed toward Barry, and he dealt out the replacements. As those cards were being sent around the table, Clint said, “I didn’t come here to buy anyone’s company. My guess is that women like that will have more offers than they’d know what to do with.”

  “Women like what?” a rough yet feminine voice asked from over Clint’s shoulder.

  Mia smirked and looked at her cards.

  Seeing the smug grin on Mia’s face, Clint didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder to see who’d just spoken. Without looking at his cards, he tossed ten dollars into the pot and said, “We were just discussing the woman’s perspective on poker. Some think they’re distracting.”

  “And some of us,” Barry said, “just like to be distracted.”

  Mia rolled her eyes and tossed her cards onto the table. “I’m out. ”

  Jones glanced up and down between his own cards and Clint so many times that he nearly strained something. Before Clint could look at his cards, Jones raised the bet another ten dollars.

  “Care to have a seat, ma’am?” Barry asked. “I’ve got one right next to me with your name on it.”

  “Call or fold,” Jones said impatiently.

  After glancing at the one new card he’d gotten, Barry chose the latter and tossed his cards onto Mia’s.

  Clint still didn’t look at his cards before calling the bet. He flipped over the two replacements, found nothing of interest and then showed the three threes. “Medium pair,” Clint said as he pointed at Jones. “More than sevens, but no paint. Am I right?”

  Jones threw his cards away without showing.

  “I think I’ll be staying,” Gretchen’s sister said as she settled into the seat between Jones and Barry.

  NINETEEN

  Her name was Elsa. When she’d introduced herself, she spoke the name in her deep, sultry voice as though it was a promise for later. She shook each man’s hand, saving Mia for last. Even though Mia gave her a bit of a hard stare, Elsa got her to smile with some quick joke that Clint wasn’t able to hear.

  Mia laughed despite herself and lost the coldness that had been in her eyes when Elsa and Gretchen had first made their entrance. After that, it was all about the cards.

  As if to keep the stakes low for a while, no chips were offered at any of the tables. That didn’t prevent any of the gamblers from piling stacks of cash in a few pots, but it did keep things in line for the first few hours. The only reason Clint noticed that it had any effect at all was because Jones kept nervously patting his pocket every time he needed to dive in there to pull out some additional funds.

  As people started lighting the room with lanterns since there was no longer as much sunlight, Clint found himself sitting behind a fairly good-sized stack of money. Most of it was his own that had been broken down, circulated among the other players and won back again, but some was straight profit. Considering how much fun he’d had, that was a good deal in his eyes.

  Gretchen spent a lot of time behind Clint, rubbing his shoulder and whispering into his ear. Most of that was simple conversation, but Clint found he could get under Barry’s skin if he acted like Gretchen was saying something a little more interesting.

  Elsa and Mia were finding out a lot about their competition as well. Although they’d started off by passing some barbed glances back and forth, they soon were able to lead Barry around by the nose and get him to fold or raise at will. Jones wasn’t so easy to sway, which came as a surprise to practically everyone at the table.

  For his part, Jones seemed only to be interested in playing his cards. He kept his nose down and stayed out of most of the friendly banter. Although the ladies at the table got a little frustrated with him, Jones provided Clint with plenty of insight that could be put to use later.

  Looking down at a busted flush, Clint folded his cards just in time to feel the room move differently around him. “Feels like we’re slowing down,” he said.

  “Stopping is more like it,” Barry grunted. “Good time for it, too. I’m about ready to get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh, don’t say that,” Elsa purred as she stroked the top of Barry’s hand. “I was just getting used to your face.”

  Barry tried to keep his tough expression intact, but only managed to hold out for a few seconds before grinning. “I was just fooling,” he said. “Why the hell would I want to leave a fine table like this? Any chance your sister might come pay me a visit?”

  “You just never know,” she said with a wink.

  Clint could feel the rumble of the water bumping against the side of the boat as the paddle wheel slowed to a halt. The shift in motion wasn’t much, but it was noticeable to anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention.

  “Does anyone know how many more stops we’re going to be making?” Clint asked.

  “Not many,” Mia replied. “I think this is the last one.”

  “Probably to pick up supplies,” Jones said. “They were running low on food and such before they made the last stop, but there’re only a few more passengers set to board.”

  Barry stared at Jones with the same mix of surprise and amusement that had been on his face all night when looking at the smaller man. “And just how the hell would you know all that?”

  Jones looked around at the others sitting at the table as if he was surprised everyone didn’t know that information. Finally, he said, “I asked.”

  “Well, that explains everything.”

  Folding his cards and gathering up his money, Clint stood up from the table. By the time his legs were fully straightened, he had the attention of everyone else sitting there.

  Although she looked at him with some disappointment, Elsa wasn’t laying it on so thick as she had been for Barry when she asked, “Now you want to leave?”

  “I’m done for this game, but that’s only so I can save some money for later,” Clint said. “There’s still plenty of river ahead of us.”

  “Good point,” Barry said. He then looped an arm around Elsa and added, “Why don’t you and me get better acquainted before the big money starts to flow?”

  Elsa shrugged off Barry’s arm before it even had a chance to settle fully around her. “I’m not going anywhere. In fact, I’m just getting started.”

  TWENTY

  Clint had his money counted by the time he made it to the main door. He considered leaving his gun with the guards, but then remembered what happened the last time he’d wandered the ship on his own. After collecting his Colt, he walked up the stairs and stepped once again into the fresh river air.

&n
bsp; “Jesus,” he said as he saw the starry sky overhead. He checked his pocket watch, as if the sun was somehow in error rather than his own sense of how much time had passed. Sure enough, it was nearly eight o’clock at night.

  The banks of the Red River drifted slowly by as the Misty Morning eased forward thanks to the current and its own momentum. They were approaching a small dock that didn’t have much of anything connected to it. A few small shacks were scattered along the shore. A pair of wagons also waited there. The passengers of those wagons stepped down and calmly waited for the riverboat to stop.

  Clint let his eyes wander as the same set of ropes were cast to allow the passengers to board. When he glanced toward the opposite end of the deck, he saw a slender figure leaning against the rail. The figure was covered in shadow, but slunk away before Clint could get a look at his face.

  But Clint didn’t need to see the man’s face to recognize the figure as the same one who’d attacked him in the laundry. Those quick steps and stooped posture were unmistakable.

  “Gotcha,” Clint muttered as he slowly turned to get a little closer before starting the chase in earnest.

  Since he was still a ways off, Clint kept the slender figure in the corner of his eye while working his way slowly along the deck. Once the people from the shore were making their way onto the boat, Clint used them for a bit of cover and headed toward the other end. When he wove through the new arrivals, there wasn’t a trace of the slender man who’d been there before.

  Clint picked up his pace and made it to the spot where he’d seen the man. His hand was on his gun, but there wasn’t a target in sight. Just because he couldn’t see the other man, Clint didn’t relax for a second. He quickly turned his back to the rail, so nobody could sneak up behind him, and continued searching for the route the other man had used to get away.

  There were a few doors close to the spot, but the longer Clint thought about it, the more possibilities he came up with. Since choosing any one of them would be nothing more than a shot in the dark, Clint cursed under his breath and walked away.

  The new passengers were on the deck and shaking hands with a few men in nice suits. The gangplank was already being hauled back onto the boat, and the hands were pulling in the ropes that tied the Misty Morning to the little dock. Clint was about to head back down the stairs when he saw another familiar, slender figure walking along the rail.

  Mia stood in roughly the same spot where Clint had been while the riverboat approached the dock. She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed them to keep warm in the cool night air. When she saw him, Mia smiled at Clint and waited for him to come to her.

  “Looks like they weren’t after food after all,” Clint said as he approached her. “Just a few more passengers.”

  “They got food, as well,” she replied. “I watched them carry on some barrels and boxes while you were busy running along the deck.”

  “Oh. I guess I got a little distracted.”

  “You mind telling me what distracted you? I might be able to use that when the stakes get higher.”

  Clint laughed and shook his head. “Not on your life. You’re already a big enough threat to my bankroll.”

  “All right, then,” Mia said as she ran her fingers along Clint’s lapel. “Then perhaps you could explain this suit. When you first walked in wearing it, you looked like something was wrong.”

  “It may be just some bad luck, but I did stumble into a situation.” Without spelling out every last detail of what had happened, Clint told Mia about his scuffle in the laundry. She listened carefully and wound up pulling in a quick breath when he told her about the man’s aptitude with a knife.

  “Good God,” she said. “And you just came back up to play cards after all that?”

  “I couldn’t find him on my own. I told the men who guard the doors, so there really wasn’t much else for me to do. He’s probably just some thief out to steal someone’s winnings.”

  “Or he could be something a lot worse,” Mia pointed out. “He could have killed you, Clint.”

  Shrugging, Clint said, “I’ve seen worse fights in saloons over much less money than what’s being thrown around here. Even with guns being taken before cards are dealt, there could be more trouble than some lunatic hiding in a pile of dirty clothes.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “Sure. He was skinny. Moved like a snake and was damn good with a blade.”

  “Did he talk funny?”

  Clint was about to answer that right away, but he paused as something came to mind. “Come to think of it, he might have had an accent. It may have been a British accent, but it sounded a lot sloppier than other Englishmen I’ve heard. How did you know about that?”

  “I didn’t,” Mia replied. “I’m just trying to think of some way you could narrow it down. Maybe if we ask around, someone can help us find him.”

  Even though Clint hadn’t played very much poker with her, he thought he caught the faint scent of a bluff coming from Mia just then. Deciding not to call her on it, he let it pass and headed down to the laundry to check on his suit.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The door to the laundry was locked. Since there was barely a soul in the hallways anywhere near that room, Clint honestly didn’t expect anything else. And he didn’t expect one of the doors clear down at the other end of the hall to pop open after he’d only rattled the laundry’s door a few times.

  It was the Chinese lady who popped her head out, and she smiled widely when she saw who was making the little bit of noise. “I’m glad it is you,” she exclaimed. “Stay there. I fixed your suit.”

  Clint took a few steps toward her door, but didn’t even make it halfway before she stepped out again. The lady had Clint’s suit draped over her arm as if it was a royal cloak.

  “I stitched it up as best I could,” she said. “I cleaned, too, but it wasn’t that dirty. Just wrinkled.” When she saw Clint hold the suit and look at it, she asked, “Is it all right?”

  “It’s better than all right,” he told her. “Honestly, I was just hoping to get my own clothes back. This loaner doesn’t exactly suit me.”

  “Come in here and try it on,” she said. “If I missed something, I can fix before you go.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll just take—”

  “Come in here now!” she snapped.

  Before Clint could get another word out, he found himself running toward the Chinese woman like a kid being threatened with a freshly cut switch. Her room was small, but meticulously clean. Tapping a stool with one hand, she quickly gathered up a needle and thread.

  Clint shed the suit jacket and put his own on in its place. The Chinese woman looked over every last inch and then wound up smiling in front of him.

  “Good as new,” she said.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  “I owe you my life,” she replied. “Fixing your suit is the least I can do. Don’t insult me by offering money, too.”

  “All right. Thanks so much.” After stepping down from the stool, Clint said, “There is one more thing.”

  Her eyes widened expectantly, but she waited quietly for Clint to continue.

  “Has that man with the knife been around here any more?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I think I might know what room he’s in.”

  Clint stood there for a moment to figure out if he’d heard her correctly. Although the lady spoke with a slight accent, there wasn’t enough of one to make her hard to understand.

  “How would you know that?” he asked.

  She walked to her door and motioned for him to follow. Using a key she took from her pocket, she led him into the laundry and turned the knob on the only lamp in the room. That lamp didn’t produce very much light, but she maneuvered around the piles of clothes and stacks of baskets as if she could have done so in her sleep.

  “Look,” she said as she took a hanger from one of the hooks on the wall. “See?”

  All Clin
t saw was a set of clothes on a hanger. Looking a bit closer, he picked out a red stain on the collar of the shirt. “Is that blood?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Blood on a shirt that man with the knife was wearing. You hit him in the face, remember?”

  Clint remembered, but he didn’t recall seeing the man bleed. He sure as hell didn’t remember if some blood had dripped onto his collar. “This could have come from someone else,” he pointed out. “How are you so sure it’s his?”

  “This one has cream-colored buttons and not black. It has a shorter collar and these sleeves were rolled up just as far as the ones on that man’s shirt when he was down here swinging that knife around. I wouldn’t forget anything about that crazy man.”

  The longer he stared at that shirt, the less Clint seemed to recall what that man had been wearing. He remembered the knife in his hand and the way he’d fought. The rest just hadn’t seemed all that important.

  It was obvious that the Chinese woman wasn’t lying to him. She spoke with as much conviction as a preacher quoting the scripture. Clint supposed that made sense since she was talking about things she saw and worked with every day. If someone needed to know about a model of a gun or how to modify a rifle’s sights, they would probably get a similar earful from Clint.

  “All right,” he said. “Suppose that is his shirt.”

  “It is! And look,” she said while holding the hanger a little closer to Clint. “There’s the room it came from.”

  There was a tag pinned to the shirt with the number five written on it. “Is there a way for me to get into that room and have a look?” Clint asked.

  “I don’t have a key, but I can get one from the maid. She’s sleeping now, but I could go wake her up.”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  The Chinese lady nodded and hurried out of the room. Before Clint could finish going through the pockets of the bloody shirt and put it back on its hook, the lady returned.