by Short, Luke;
Yates looked at his companions. “Fresh money,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling just a little to indicate he was smiling. He turned to Jimmy and Seay. “Ain’t you the one Bonal broke the other night?” When Seay nodded, Yates said dryly, “Well, maybe this is somethin’ I’m just a little better at than Charlie Bonal. Sure, sit in.”
The others murmured assent, and Jimmy introduced Seay around. Yates, Curtin, Feldhake, House and Hugh Mathias were the names. Of them, Seay observed and noted two things, that Mathias wore immaculate clothes, and that Chris Feldhake could mangle a man’s hand when he shook it.
Introductions finished, Jimmy said, “Start off, boys, and learn how to play stud from the man who invented it.”
Seay took off his coat and sat down between Yates and Mathias, and while he bought his chips, Mathias courteously explained the limit.
Soon the game was under way, and over this room came a feeling of concentrated reticence which is the universal atmosphere of gambling. When Seay backed out of three pots Jimmy snorted in disgust, grinned and left.
Seay gambled with lazy attention, playing dull poker and studying everyone’s hands but his own. It was Feldhake’s hands that he studied most minutely, and how he played them. And slowly, he got a knowledge of the man. Feldhake, at first sight, fitted only that part of Jimmy’s description that called him a moose. Big he was, with a breadth of shoulder and thickness of neck that were massive, ponderous. His half-clenched fist could hide all his cards. At first sight, his face was pleasantly oafish, almost stupid, with its thick lips, bulbous nose and rough leathery skin. A permanent smile, uneasy almost, seemed stamped on the man’s face. He smiled at everything and at everyone until a man watching him had the conviction that he thought the world a hugely pleasant place. That was a deception his eyes did not bear out, for they were deep set, alert, wary, surface lighted and opaque when a man looked squarely at them. A rough and untidy shock of blond hair, the slow speech of the man, the clumsy, bearlike movements of him, seemed to give him an air of stupid simplicity. But it was quickly evident to Seay that Feldhake was gambling with a driving cunning, and a card sense that was nearly intuitive. Mathias was the only expert there. Yates, the quiet merchant, House and the bluff and talkative Curtin were nonentities, playing for stakes that were too high for them.
Presently, Seay leaned back and pulled out his watch and laid it beside him.
“I pull out at three,” he said to the table. “That agreeable with you gentlemen?”
They said it was. Seay won the next pot, and the one after that, which recouped a fifth of what he had lost. Slowly, the game lost its air of feisty good nature, with which most men gamble, and settled down in earnest.
At midnight, Curtin lost his last chip and left, and Jimmy Hamp presently brought up a man named Trueblood to take his place. There was a swollen stack of chips in front of Seay. Jimmy chuckled at sight of them and said, “Boys, it costs a lot of money to learn poker the way he teaches it.”
Feldhake laughed loudly at this. Jimmy went out, and Trueblood bought his chips. At one, Trueblood was losing badly and suggested to Feldhake they change seats. Feldhake agreed. In half an hour Trueblood was cleaned. His and Curtin’s and House’s chips were about evenly divided between Feldhake and Seay, who both had a sizeable share of Yates’s and Mathias’ too.
When Trueblood left, Feldhake rose and said, “Deal me out this round. I want a drink.”
He went over to the buffet, poured a straight whisky and then walked to the window. He stood there, his great shoulders shoved through the window, breathing of the hot but comparatively clean air until Yates called wearily, “The deal’s yours, Chris.”
Feldhake pulled down the shade and returned to his seat.
At two-thirty House and Mathias had lost half their chips to Seay and Feldhake, and Yates was playing a losing game in desperation. At quarter to three Yates threw down his cards, conceded the pot and rose to mix himself a drink.
“I never liked four-handed poker,” Mathias observed.
“We’ve only got fifteen minutes of it,” Seay countered, looking at Feldhake.
“Your luck’s out, Mathias,” House put in. “So’s mine. Want to bank some blackjack?”
“Sorry, gentlemen, but that’s not my game,” Seay said. “I’ll stay with it fifteen minutes.”
Feldhake shrugged. “Pull out if you want.”
Seay got a nod from Mathias and leaned back, stuffing his watch in his pocket. Yates returned with a drink and opened a cigar box to cash in Seay’s chips. The box was packed with bank notes.
“Paper,” Yates said scornfully. “Where’s it comin’ from? Paper in a gold camp. Is it any good?”
They laughed at him. Paper money was a rarity in Tronah, and many workmen at the mines and mills would not accept it. Yates said to Seay, “You’re the winner, Seay. You ought to take it.”
Seay said he would, knowing he would have to get it changed in the morning. Seay rose then and left, just as the game was settling down to blackjack.
Out in the corridor, he felt weary, this night’s heat slugging at his temples with every beat of his heart. But in this canvas sack which he held loosely at his side was something over three thousand dollars in banknotes. In a smaller sack in his hip pocket was another thousand in gold pieces. The intolerable strain of knowing that for the last five hours he had been gambling with Charles Bonal’s whole tunnel scheme was gone now, and he felt drained of everything but the dregs of that vicious excitement.
Downstairs, the bar was less jammed, but it still held a thick crowd. He got a drink at the bar, then stepped out into the street. It, too, showed less people and less movement, and he turned down toward the feed corral, the heat of the night close and almost gagging.
A lantern hung in its arch. Tilted against the frame was an old man who roused from his doze as he heard Seay approach.
Seay flipped him a coin and said, “Sit tight, Dad,” and tramped through the stable’s long centerway to the corral in the rear. There had been a lantern hanging in the rear entrance when he put up his horse, but it was gone now, leaving the stable and its corral in darkness.
Once by the corral, Seay turned and groped toward the hook on which the lantern hung.
He heard a sudden whisper of boots on the floor and wheeled, his hand driving toward his gun, and something crashed into the base of his skull.
Wave after wave of nausea coiled his stomach, and he was fighting to his knees when he suddenly tried to open his eyes and found that he could.
First he saw the grained floor, dusted with wheat husks, and then he peered up into a lantern, held by the stable attendant. Reed Tober stood beside him, cursing in a bitter monotone.
Reed took his hand and hoisted him to his feet and then held his elbow while the room circled once and settled, and he shook his head.
“I got here too late,” Tober said with quiet fury. “I got a shot, but it was a miss.”
Seay raised a hand to the back of his neck and then brought it across his eyes and shook off Tober’s hand.
“That was a sucker trick,” he said mildly.
“They get it all?”
Seay reached in his hip pocket where the gold had been. It was empty. He nodded and turned around to look for his hat. It lay over against a stall. Leaning to pick it up, he nearly fell, but he caught himself and then, straightened and looked out into the street; his eyes narrowed. He shot one swift glance at the old man, and opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.
“Come on,” he said to Tober.
Tober fell in beside him. Seay’s long stride took him upstreet.
Before they reached Jimmy Hamp’s Keno Parlor, Seay paused and studied the second story of the building. Then he turned and cut in between two buildings, whose narrow way was littered with trash.
Once in the alley, Seay turned up it, and by the time Tober had caught up with him, he had stopped again. He was looking up at three lighted curtained windows, those of t
he gambling room he had just left.
“Give me all your matches,” he said to Tober, and when he had them he walked up close to the building and struck a light. Tober watched him examine the ground in a wide circle, lighting a dozen matches in the process.
Then Seay came back and stood beside Tober and looked up at the windows again. Tober heard his deep breathing.
“All right. Come along,” Seay said quietly then.
They went into Jimmy Hamp’s and up the stairs, turned the corridor angle. Before they reached the door of the gambling room, Seay said, “This’ll be rough, Reed. Don’t let anyone surprise you from the corridor.”
As he opened the door, Seay palmed up the gun and held it low, stepping in the room and aside for Tober to enter.
Mathias, Yates, House and Feldhake were still playing. They looked up at Seay, and then they were motionless. Only Yates bothered to notice Tober’s presence.
“Stand up, Feldhake,” Seay said gently.
Tober drew his gun now, perhaps warned of what was coming, and without noticing him, Seay rammed his own gun in his belt. Feldhake didn’t move, and his uneasy smile didn’t change.
“You played the wrong man for a Hiram this trip, Feldhake,” Seay said. “It was pretty—only it was crude.”
He glanced down at the stack of chips in front of Feldhake. “Cash his chips, Yates, and give me the money—four thousand.”
Yates turned his head slowly, and when he was looking full at Feldhake, he said, “What is this, Chris?”
“Robbery, maybe,” Feldhake said idly, softly.
“Two in twenty minutes then, Yates,” Seay said, not looking at the marshal. “A couple of buckos knocked me over the head in the corral lot downstreet and took the money. It’ll get back to Feldhake, so I’ll take it now.”
“But—” Yates began, when Seay cut in, “Jimmy Hamp, Marshal. First I thought Feldhake threw a note out the window, but it was Hamp that Feldhake got to. Cash those chips, Yates.”
“But it could have been plain robbery,” Yates said mildly.
“That was tomorrow’s pay roll for the tunnel crew,” Seay murmured. “I don’t know who told Feldhake we were short, but I’ll find out. Cash those chips, Yates.”
Feldhake said mildly, “You do, Ferd, and it’s trouble.”
Seay put a hand on Mathias’ chair and wrenched it, and Mathias was out of the way to let him stride over to Feldhake.
Feldhake was half risen, his hand brushing the skirt of his coat aside when Seay hit him, and he crashed over his chair to sprawl on the floor.
Seay followed him and stamped on the wrist of his hand that had hold of his gun, and when the gun fell he kicked it across the room.
Feldhake rose, lunging against the buffet, and he turned and grabbed a bottle by its neck, just as Seay crashed into him. The buffet went over, and Feldhake, off balance, dropped the bottle to claw at the sofa arm, which braced him.
The impact of Seay’s body against Feldhake made the lamp overhead dance, and Yates dodged aside. The sound of knuckle-studded fist in unpadded flesh smacked loud against an echoing grunt, and then the two men met, both upright, both slugging.
Each savage drive of Seay’s fist caught Feldhake in the face, but it only served to keep him where he was, not to drive him back, and then Seay missed, and they clinched. For five long seconds there was that gagging sound of indrawn breath as they wrestled, and then Feldhake heaved. When Seay crashed against the thin wall then, a window slammed down with a crack like the report of a gun.
Seay came in again, this time more quickly, lacing over long whipping blows that caromed off Feldhake’s lowered head. Feldhake stumbled forward, his big arms flailing, and on the heel of a bone-cracking uppercut from Seay, his head came up. Seay was to the side now, and the blow behind Feldhake’s ear that was given so quickly Yates could not see was what sent Feldhake to the floor.
Seay was on him, and then under him, dragged by those thick arms whose muscles ripped through the sleeve of Feldhake’s shirt as they coiled and sawed and steadied. For a long moment they lay tied up side by side, and then slowly Seay’s head went back under Feldhake’s outspread palm, and then Feldhake’s fist came down on Seay’s jaw, with the motion of a man stamping a letter with doubled fist. It gave Feldhake time to try to rise; but coming off the floor Seay caught him at his knees and rose, and in one terrific heave, lifted him clear of the floor, shoulder high. Feldhake hung there for one dragging second, and then he crashed to the floor.
His breath went out in a cough, and he tried to move, but Seay was astride him, pumping both fists into his face. Feldhake made a tentative, awkward move to rise, then lay back, quiet. Still Seay slugged at his face.
“That’s enough, Phil,” Tober said.
Obediently, Seay stopped and rested both hands on Feldhake’s chest and dragged in great sobs of breath, head hung. The others waited, silent, until he looked up and then got unsteadily to his feet.
Somehow, the table had been shoved into a corner. The three blackjack hands lay still undisturbed.
“The cash, Yates,” Seay said, still panting.
Yates was regarding Feldhake, who had not moved. He shifted his gaze to Seay and said, “Is that straight? Did Jimmy Hamp put them on you?”
Seay nodded.
“All right,” Yates said.
Hugh Mathias cleared his throat, and Yates counted out four thousand dollars, mostly in gold pieces, which he took out of the cigar box in the overturned buffet.
He didn’t say anything as Seay wheeled and went out the door. Tober closed it gently on these three men who were looking at each other, and then at the man on the floor.
Downstairs, Seay approached Jimmy Hamp’s office and flung open the door, and Tober slid in before it swung shut.
Jimmy Hamp was having a drink with a man, and when the door opened he looked up at Seay. Slowly his face settled into slackness; only his eyes were wary and defeated.
Seay said, “It didn’t work, Jimmy.”
Jimmy looked at Tober and then, almost idly, he noted the torn clothes, the ribboned shirt, the ripped trousers of Seay. Presently he dragged his gaze up to Seay’s face.
“No,” he said quietly. “It didn’t work.” He put a soft hand to his face and scoured his cheek with it and said, “I’m sorry Phil. I guess I don’t have to tell you the rest.”
Seay went out quietly, the anguish in his eyes as eloquent as that in Jimmy Hamp’s, and Reed Tober closed the door without cursing.
Chapter Five
After the women had left the room Hugh Mathias signaled the waiter for more port. He accepted the box of cigars from the waiter and passed them around himself. Abe Comber belched and refused one, and while Blaine Mack and John Widows lighted up Abe gnawed off a corner of a thin plug of tobacco and tucked the remainder in the pocket of his dress waistcoat. As the waiter leaned over his shoulder to pour his wine, Abe put a rough hand over his glass and said, “Bring me rye,” and then regarded Hugh, who was lighting his own cigar before he sat down. Pleasant smoke filled this paneled lamplit room.
Abe Combers’s seat was at the foot of the table, opposite Sharon, but now that she was gone the center of attention seemed to devolve on him. It always did, for his rough backwoods frame and hard muscular face reflected a careless knowledge of power. If he had been only a mine manager, as these others here were, rather than the richest man on the Tronah Lode, he still would have commanded this room. And he achieved it by seeming to have a bullheaded disregard for things that were conventional and expected of him. Above all, he thoroughly enjoyed a total immunity from boredom; perhaps that was the secret of his power.
“Hugh,” Abe began casually, breaking right into a conversation between Mack and Widows and silencing it, “I damn near got in a fight today. Mighty, mighty close.”
Hugh raised his eyebrows and waited for Abe to go on.
“A funny thing, too,” Abe continued. “I didn’t understand it rightly until it was too late.” He tilt
ed back in his chair. “Over you,” he added.
“Over me?”
“Unh-huh. It was up in Judge Baily’s law office. We were talking about the disappearance of three witnesses to a claim jumping. Know anything about it?”
Hugh scowled and then laughed shortly. “I never saw a claim jumped in my life. Was I a witness?”
“No, Judge Baily went at it kind of backhanded. I claimed I wouldn’t blame a witness for disappearing if he knew he’d only get in trouble by testifying. Baily claimed that it was his duty to testify, and that the safest thing to do was lay the information before the authorities and ask for protection. If he didn’t do it, he was criminally negligible.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Hugh inquired, frowning good-naturedly.
Abe regarded him with sober speculation. Mack and Widows were looking puzzled. “Nothing then. Only later, down at the Fifty Two Club, it came to me that Baily was directly defaming you.”
“But I never saw a claim jumped in my life,” Hugh protested.
“This man at the club was talkin’ about a poker game he’d heard about,” Abe drawled. “He contends a properly staked claim was jumped—and with both feet.” A trace of a smile played at the corners of Abe’s wide mouth.
“In fact,” Abe went on solemnly, “he claims you were one of the three-four witnesses.”
For a moment, Hugh’s face was plainly blank, and then something clicked, and he took his cigar from his mouth and laughed. Abe laughed with him, leaving Mack and Widows completely in the dark.
“That,” Hugh said, “is substantially correct. I refuse to testify.”
“Then it did happen?” Abe asked.
Hugh inclined his head. “It did.”
“How?”
Hugh tapped the ashes of his cigar into the tray and rose, looking down at Abe. “I learned something at that poker game, Abe. A man can have eyes and still can’t see. It stood me so well that I still believe in it.”
“But what happened?”
“You ask the other three witnesses.” He tapped his shirt front with his thumb. “I let the claim jumpers talk first.”
