Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  I was starting to have a little trouble breathing. I said, “Just give me a piece of paper so I can write a note.” I put another ten dollars on the countertop. I said, “For that kind of money somebody ought to be found who will make an effort.”

  “Yes, sir!” he said. He whipped around and put a piece of paper and a pencil in front of me. I printed out

  JUSTA

  I APPEAR TO BE HERE IN YOUR TOWN AGAIN THOUGH I AIN’T NOWHERE NEAR YOUR BANK. I’D APPRECIATE YOU GETTING ON INTO TOWN AND PAYING ME A VISIT AT THE HOTEL. DON’T BOTHER TO LOOK FOR THE GUITAR PLAYER AS I DON’T FEEL MUCH LIKE DANCING. YOU MIGHT HURRY.

  I just signed it “WILSON” and then folded it and handed it to the clerk. He’d read it, but I didn’t much give a damn. It wouldn’t tell him anything. The reference to the guitar player was a joke me and Justa had kept running while he was down in Del Rio. I wanted him to understand that the part about me not feeling like dancing meant I wasn’t in too good of a shape. I said, as the clerk took the note, “I’ll appreciate this.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  I nodded my head at the two ten-dollar bills. “Pick up the money,” I said.

  The clerk was looking at me hard. He said, “Are you a friend of Mr. Williams?”

  I nodded. Even if I wasn’t swaying on my feet, I felt like I was. I said, “I think I am. I reckon he’d agree with me.”

  The clerk looked hesitant. He said, “Then I really shouldn’t take this money, sir. You see, the Williams family owns this hotel and—”

  I wiped at my brow. I said, “Look, fella, I don’t give a damn about the money. Buy yourself a horse or something, but just get somebody started for Justa Williams. You got a doctor in this town?”

  “Yes, sir, we got a fine doctor, Dr. Adams.”

  I leaned up against the desk. “Send for him. Right away. And point me at my room. I ain’t feeling just real good.”

  He was looking at my shirt where the blood was. He said, “Are you hurt, sir?”

  “Boy,” I said a little unsteadily, “I can’t talk much longer. I’m hurt. Fell on a railroad spike. Now will you get a doctor over here and get me to bed and get that note off to Justa!”

  He finally moved. I didn’t know if it was because he got scared I was going to pitch over on my head or because I was a friend of Justa’s, but he finally come out from behind the desk and helped me to my room, which was on the first floor, just across the lobby. It was good that it was close because I wasn’t going much further. I sat down on the bed and pitched my hat over on a little table. The desk clerk kept standing around looking worried. He asked me if he could give me any help with anything. I finally took pity on him and let him help me off with my boots and my coat. I figured if he got a look at all the blood on my shirt, it would speed him along. He just saw the front side, but he said, “Oh, my!” He really was younger than I’d thought. He said, “I think I’d better hurry for the doctor.”

  As he was going out of the room, I said, “Get that note off to Mr. Williams.”

  He said, “Yes, sir!” from the hall, and then I heard him yelling for somebody named Nathan. “Nathan!” he yelled. “Nathan! Damn you! Where are you?”

  I took a drink of whiskey and then, as best I could, worked my shirt off, leaving just the other shirt that I’d wrapped around me as a bandage. Of course I was bloody as hell. The bandage-shirt hadn’t held all the blood, and little runlets of it had trickled down my side and my belly. Fortunately they’d been light and had dried. I didn’t bother taking off the shirt-bandage. The doctor would do that, and besides, I didn’t want to see. I took another drink of whiskey, set the bottle on the bed stand, and then lay back sideways across the bed. I was very hopeful that Justa would get the message quick and then lose no time in getting into town. The doctor was not going to believe I’d fell on a railroad spike. He was going to know I’d been shot, and he might just mention it to the local law, and the law just might come around wondering how I’d managed to get myself shot. The local law might even have a telegram from Galveston to be on the lookout for a wounded man who’d killed at least two of Mr. Phil Sharp’s Vigilante Committee. I figured if Sharp had gone to the law, they’d have sent out word to every lawman within reasonable reach of any escape route I’d take.

  And if the law came and I was called upon to do some explaining, I wanted Justa there, because I figured he had influence in the town. I knew he couldn’t bend the law, but I reckoned he could get me a fair hearing and maybe even see to my comfort. The only thing I knew that was worse than being in jail was being in jail with a gunshot wound. The last can be a mighty uncomfortable experience if the folks running the jail ain’t especially disposed to worry about whether you are enjoying yourself or not.

  While I waited for the doctor, I lay there and thought about Phil Sharp. There had been a time, in my younger days, when I’d been a very angry man. But, as the years had passed, I had done my fair share of mellowing and taking a different view of events. Not that I had ever been what you might call a vicious man or a vengeful man or even all that dangerous. I wasn’t a good man to go to messing with, but I could honestly say that I had never shot nobody that wasn’t trying to shoot me, and I had even walked away from situations where I knew the man or men lined up against me didn’t have much of a chance. For whatever reason, I had been gifted with an extraordinary speed and reflexes and a sense of premonition that let me know of danger even before it presented itself.

  I knew, from the two weeks that I’d spent with Justa Williams down at my place in Del Rio, that we shared many of those same characteristics and viewpoints. Not that he was as fast as I was or as good a shot; few were. In fact I had never met my equal in that respect. Most of the gun hands of reputation that I knew were either backshooters or men who always arranged to have the odds on their side in some manner or other. Without exception they were ruffians and thieves and murderers and scoundrels, mostly without a single redeeming quality to offer society. I had met a few of them in my time. Suffice it to say that they were dead and I wasn’t.

  But Justa Williams was a man I could respect. Even without the natural gifts that I had been given, he was not a man I would want to be at cross-purposes with. I figured that, like myself, he made a damn good friend and a mighty bad enemy. I was content that we just go on being friends. Justa Williams had a natural gift that I figured was more important than my hand speed or the way a bullet always went exactly where I wanted it to. His gift was his brains. He could out-think the devil and steal his pitchfork and tie a knot in his tail while he was doing it. I knew because I’d watched him do that very thing to a man named J. C. Flood down in Del Rio who was the closest thing to the devil we had to display.

  So I wanted him in town as quick as he could get there in case there was to be trouble of any kind. Meanwhile I just lay there and wondered if the doctor was ever going to come.

  He came bustling in, not even bothering to knock, about a year later. He had his little black bag with him and was wearing a vest with an open-collared shirt. He was a little sort of short man with quick movements and not a hell of a lot of hair, though I didn’t figure him to be much over thirty years of age. He said, “Well, what have we got here? Heard you got yourself stuck with a railroad spike. How did you manage to do that? Here, turn around and lay lengthwise on the bed.”

  All the time he was talking, he was opening his bag and taking stuff out and laying it on the bed. I got turned around like he told me and got my head on the pillow. He leaned over and took off the makeshift bandage I’d made out of the shirt I’d got shot in. He looked at the wound. He said, “Hmmmmm.” Then he had me roll over on my right side and looked at my back. He said, “Hmmmm” again.

  When he had me back on my back, he got out of his bag a bottle of some kind of clear liquid and then took something that appeared to be a funnel of some kind and rammed the end of it in the hole in my side. I kind of sucked in my breath. He said, “Oh, you haven’t felt anything yet. You like a
lcohol, don’t you?”

  I was kind of clenching my teeth. I said, “Yeah.”

  He said, “You can’t drink this kind. Grain alcohol. Very strong.” About then he poured some of that clear liquid into that funnel kind of thing, and it felt like someone had run a red-hot poker right clean through me. I let out just a little smothered moan and kind of shook all over.

  The doctor said, “That hurt?”

  My teeth were still clenched together. As best I could I said, “Seemed like it did. Might have just imagined it.”

  He said, “That’s funny. I didn’t feel a thing.”

  That was enough to make me want to shoot him. I reckoned he’d used that old saw about a thousand times. But I didn’t say anything. I figured we was just getting started, and I didn’t see no point in getting crossways with him.

  He said, “That alcohol was just to kind of clean things out inside. That must have been a damn long railroad spike you fell on. Went completely through you.”

  “That so,” I said. I was kind of panting a little.

  He said, “Yeah. If Wayne, the desk clerk, hadn’t told me different, I’d have swore somebody shot you.”

  He had a kind of dry way of speaking that I favored in a situation that was on the serious side. “That so,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. He got some more gadgets out of his bag of tricks and said, “Now, this might hurt a little. I’m going to kind of probe around in there and see what kind of damage got done. How long since you got shot?”

  I was still panting a little. I said, “What . . . what time is it?”

  “Near four o’clock.”

  “Almost five hours ago. Doc, is it infected yet? I feel kind of feverish and I been sweating pretty good.”

  He said, “It would take a good deal longer than five hours for it to get infected. You’re suffering from what we call shock.”

  I said, “You damn right I was shocked. Man like that is not supposed to be able to get a shot in at me. Not and hit me in the front.”

  He was leaning over. He said, “I meant shock in the medical sense.”

  I could see some long, shiny instruments in his hands. He said, “Lay as still as you can.”

  That was easy for him to say, but it was another proposition for me to do. Finally, after a couple of days had gone by and I’d come near passing out, he straightened up and said, “Now let me have a look from the back. That won’t be so bad. It came out much bigger. How did you know to put a cloth plug in the holes to keep them from bleeding so much?”

  I started to answer him, and then I reckoned he saw a few of the scars from some other gunshot wounds I’d suffered. He said, “Oh, I see you have experience in these matters.”

  I was very anxious to ask him how bad the damage was. I was considerably concerned that the bullet might have nicked something vital there in the inside of me. But he was busy with the damn instruments of his, and I didn’t feel much like even opening my mouth, much less asking questions.

  Finally it was over with, and he let me lay quietly while he got some bandages ready. He said, “You are a very lucky man.”

  That wasn’t the way I would have described it, but I asked him how he figured such.

  He said, “The angle you got shot at caused that slug to hit your lowest rib and then just follow it on around and come out the back. If it had gone on through between the ribs, it would have got your liver and your lungs and maybe a little of your spleen. If it had, you wouldn’t be here in this hotel. You’d have been dead an hour after you got shot.”

  I kind of halfway raised up on my elbows. I said, “You say the slug just run along on top of my rib?”

  “Yes. That lowest rib on that side is a floating rib. In other words it’s not attached to what you call your chest bone. It gave with the slug. Fortunately it was a small-caliber bullet. A .45-caliber or .44 would have broken on through and made one hell of a mess.”

  I let out a long breath. I’d done considerable worrying about just how bad I’d been hit. I said, “So I’ll be all right, Doc?”

  He was still busy with the bandages. He said, “Yeah, if you don’t get sepsis.”

  That startled me. I said, “Sepsis? What the hell is that?”

  “Another name for infection.”

  “What happens then?”

  He shrugged. “You die. Now I’m going to put some drain cloths in both of those holes so the outside of the wound won’t heal over and leave the inside to supperate. Then I’m—”

  “Tents,” I said. “I always heard them called tents.”

  He gave me a look, a kind of half smile. He said, “Very good. I see you are a very experienced man in these matters. You might want to set up shop on your own. But I think we’ll give you one more wash through with that alcohol and then bandage you up. After that you’ll need some food and some rest.”

  When he was done, he let me sit up on the bed so I could take down a stiff drink of whiskey. He pointed at the bed. He said, “Looks like you’ve pretty well ruined those bed clothes.”

  I looked around. The bedspread was soaked with blood. I figured it had gone on through and got the sheets too. I said, “I reckon the hotel will allow me to pay for them.” I was feeling considerably better, though there was no good reason for it. All the doctor had done was cleaned out the wound and bandaged it. I reckoned the biggest thing he’d done was relieved my mind that I really wasn’t shot all that bad. I’d asked him how such a shallow wound—because that was really what it had been, on account of the bullet never getting more than half an inch deep in me as it had tracked along on my rib—could bleed so much, and he’d said superficial wounds always bled a great deal.

  He said, as he was gathering up his gear, “I hear you are a friend of Justa Williams.”

  I said, kind of hesitantly, “Yeah, I reckon you could say that.” I was hoping the doctor wouldn’t have occasion to speak to Justa before I could see him. Me and Justa kind of rode each other pretty hard, given the opportunity, and I had been a kind of a baby while the doc was working on me. If Justa got ahold of that, he’d make it pretty warm for me. I said, “Uh, Dr. Adams, I know I kind of played the calf when you was digging around in them holes I got punched in me. But I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t feel called upon to mention any of that to Mr. Williams. He might not understand how serious matters was.”

  Dr. Adams give me a smile I didn’t much like. He said, “Oh! You mean you wouldn’t want me mentioning that you screamed out like a woman or got tears in your eyes?”

  “Now, Dr. Adams . . . ,” I said.

  He shut his bag and put on his hat. He said, “You need rest and food, plenty of food. You’ve got a lot of blood to replace. Come by my office tomorrow afternoon and I’ll see how you’re getting along. We may not have to cauterize those wounds if we get lucky.”

  “Cauterize! Damn, Dr. Adams, I—”

  “I’ll tell them to send you some food. If we do have to cauterize, I’m sure we can get your friend Justa to help hold you.”

  I said, “Now, look here, Dr. Adams . . .” But it was too late; he was already closing the door behind him. I lay back down and reflected on my luck. If the bullet hadn’t taken the path it had, Phil Sharp would have killed me. It made me angry as hell to think of some pipsqueak like him killing me.

  My side was commencing to throb again. While the doctor had been working on me, the pain I’d endured on the train had been replaced by a whole new kind of hurt that the good doctor had brought with him in his little black bag. When he’d finally quit, I’d been so relieved that I hadn’t felt like I was hurting at all.

  But then he’d left and my old friend from the train had come back. I eyed the bottle of whiskey where it was setting on the little bedside table. It was nearly about gone and didn’t seem to do that much good anyway. Besides, brandy was my drink of preference. I only had the whiskey because I’d had to buy what was handy in a low-class saloon near the depot as I was leaving San Antonio for Galveston. They had
n’t had anything but whiskey and tequilla, so I’d made the best of a bad choice.

  It kind of surprised me when I realized that it had only been that morning when I’d left San Antonio and gone to Galveston. The night before I’d come up late from Del Rio and spent the night in San Antone, taking an early train out the next morning to see Phil Sharp. The whole matter had left me kind of weary. Since I’d gotten into the casino and cathouse business, I’d taken to keeping late hours and then sleeping late. But I had to get up that morning earlier than I wanted, to catch that train to Galveston, a train that had not turned out to be very lucky. Well, I thought, if a thing ain’t lucky, it’s unlucky.

  Of course getting shot will make you wearier than losing sleep, and it ain’t a damn bit lucky.

  CHAPTER 2

  The doctor hadn’t been gone very long when there came a knock at my door. I called out to come in, and the door opened, and the young desk clerk came in, balancing a tray on one hand. I was sitting on the side of the bed with a proper bandage around my chest, smoking a cigarillo. I had just been on the point of putting out the smoke and laying down for a little rest when the knock came.

  The desk clerk, Wayne I thought his name was, came across the room and set the tray on the little bedside table. He had to remove some of my paraphernalia to get it all the way on, but he managed by setting the whiskey bottle on the floor, and the ashtray and a glass or two that had been there. There was a bowl of stew on the tray and a plate with some thick slices of bread. Wayne said, “Dr. Adams said you was to eat all of this.” He set the table in front of me so I could help myself and eat while I was sitting on the bed. I noticed a little brown bottle with a tablespoon beside it. I said, “What’s that?”

  Wayne said, “That’s laudanum. For the pain. Dr. Adams said he didn’t have any when he was here so he fetched some back. He said you might want to save it for tonight. Said he expects that’s when you will really be hurting.”