Dead Man's Poker

by Giles Tippette

  I could hear Romando yelling at me. It was just coming dawn. There was a kind of yellowish mist all around, with a blackness just hanging over it. I staggered across the cockpit and plopped down beside Romando. Spray was breaking over the bow and flying back on us. It came with such force that it actually stung when it hit my face. I could taste the salt of it.

  Romando put his mouth close to my ear. He yelled, “You must steer!”

  I said, “You’re crazy! I can’t drive this thing. I’ll kill us all!”

  He said, “You must only hold it into the wind! As it is now. I have to go forward and help Rodriquez get down the foresail! We could capsize if I don’t!”

  For the first time I looked toward the front of the boat. I could see the little figure of Rodriquez struggling with what looked to be about an acre of canvas. Just about the time it appeared he was making headway in gathering it in, a gust of wind would come along and jerk it out of his hands.

  I said, “Hold it into the wind?”

  “Yes!” he said, nodding. He took my hands and put them on the spokes of the wheel. “You must hold it just as it is. Into the wind. If we turn sideways to the wind we will capsize.”

  Hell, he couldn’t have scared me any worse if he’d put a pistol to my head. I said, “Hold it just like it is.”

  “Into the wind.”

  I gripped the spokes. The wheel was like a live thing, wanting to twist first left and then right. It took more strength than I’d have thought Romando had to hold the damn thing.

  He watched me for a second and then said, “I will be back quickly. You must hold it.”

  I watched him go forward and, with Rodriquez, wrestle with the damn foresail. I hadn’t the slightest idea what they were doing, but they acted like it was mighty important, so I figured it was.

  I just hung onto the damn wheel and tried to keep it positioned so the wind was blowing straight in my face. The damn boat was still climbing up waves and then falling over the other side. Sometimes I wasn’t hanging onto the wheel so much to steer the damn boat as to have something to hold onto.

  I had never seen such a mess in my life. The sun was up good, but that dark gray mist still hung in the air, and all around, big dark waves rolled up to us higher than our mast. I figured every one of them was going to sink us, but the little boat would climb up their side, somehow keeping her balance, and then point her nose straight down like she was going to dive to the bottom. Then, somehow, she’d rise and start back up the next wave. Hell, some of them waves were bigger than a hell of a lot of hills I’d seen.

  It took Romando and Rodriquez about a year and a half to get that foresail down. When they finally had it all gathered up, they slid back some kind of wooden cover on the deck, dropped it through, and then slid the cover back.

  Amazingly enough, once the foresail was down, the boat got a whole lot easier to handle. And the relief didn’t come too soon, either. I was near about give out trying to hold that helm like I was supposed to.

  Then Romando and Rodriquez came back and did something with some ropes around the mast, and the mainsail came down. However, they didn’t let it all the way down, just partway. That left some loose canvas, and they tied that around the boom with some little ropes that were already hanging there. After that the steering got even easier.

  Finally Romando came back and took over from me. When I let go of the spokes, my hands were so clenched it took me a moment or two to get them straightened out again.

  Then the wind started to die down and some of the dark gray mist began to disappear. Before I knew it, we were riding along nearly as smoothly as a buckboard over a bumpy road. I let out a long breath. My hands were damn near trembling. I couldn’t recall ever being much more scared in all of my life, and that included some pretty fearful scrapes. I said, to Romando, “So that was a hurricane. I’d heard of ’em, but that was the first one I’ve ever been in. Hell, I thought we was goners.”

  He looked at me with a strange expression on his face. “Hurricane?” he said. “You thought that was a hurricane? That little squall.”

  I stared back at him. I said, “That wasn’t no big storm?”

  He laughed. “If I’d had my regular crew on board, we would have had the sails down in five minutes and hardly noticed the wind. It came and went in half an hour.”

  The sun was out good now and the haze was gone. The water was calm and gentle and the breeze was steady. I said, “Well, hell.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  Romando said, “You should go down and get some breakfast. Rodriquez is in the cabin. He will help you. As soon as we have had a little something to eat, we will put the sails back up. How is your freend?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I got up, not having any difficulty now, and made my way to the cabin and down the steps. Chulo was sitting on his bunk, his head in his hands. I said, “Amigo, que paso?”

  He looked up and he looked awful. He wasn’t pale no longer; he’d kind of turned a shade of green. He said, “I theenk I goan die.”

  I said, “You ought to get up on deck. Breathe some fresh air. The storm is over.”

  He said, “Storm? There es the storm?”

  I said, “Maybe you ought to try and eat.” Rodriquez was at the little place you would have called a tiny kitchen. He was slicing dried beef and cheese and getting out some tortillas. I said, to Chulo, “You want something to eat?”

  He turned his head away and groaned. He said, “Chou crazy? I doan ever eat no more.”

  I got some bread and cheese and beef and went back up to the cockpit. Romando had a jug of fresh water, and we made a good meal and washed it down with the water while he steered us toward Tampico. I said, “We making pretty good time?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know yet. How long have we been sailing?”

  “About fourteen hours. It’s a little past eight of the morning.”

  He said, “There is a little island about halfway. We could have already passed it, but I don’t think so. The squall slowed us down because the wind was from the south. For a time it blew us backwards.”

  I was just about to ask Romando some questions concerning the harbor at Tampico when a hell of a squabble broke out from the inside of the cabin. “Now what?” I said.

  Romando said, “What a noise!”

  I rushed down the cabin steps. Chulo was backed up on one of the forward bunks. Rodriquez was on a bunk opposite him, looking dazed. He had a bottle of something in his hand. I said, to Chulo, “What the hell is going on here? You been fighting?”

  Chulo said, “Thees man tries to keel me. I poush heem away.”

  I looked at Rodriquez. He was about half Chulo’s size. He held up the little bottle. He said, “Por mal de mar. Solo. Es bueno por mal de mar.”

  I said, “Shit, you crazy Meskin. Chulo, he was only trying to help you. That stuff he’s got is for seasickness.”

  Chulo said, indignantly, “Es benigar! He es tryin’ to make me drink benigar.”

  “Sí,” Rodriquez said, waving the bottle. “Es binegar. En Ainglish es benigar.”

  I said, “Chulo, it’s only vinegar. Hell, a man would have thought he was trying to poison you.”

  Chulo said, “I am berry seek. Binegar make me seeker.”

  “Here,” I said to Rodriquez. “Give me the bottle. I’ll make him drink it.”

  The little man handed over the little bottle, and I pulled the cork out and held it out to Chulo. He shrank back on the bunk. I said, “Goddammit, I can’t have you sick. Now this man is a sailor. He knows about this seasickness matter. Now you take a good swig of this or, so help me, I’ll throw you over the side.”

  Romando had come to the top of the cabin stairs. He said, “The first he drinks will not stay with him. But then, if he drinks a little more, he will be all right very quickly.” Then, in Spanish, he told Rodriquez to come on deck, that they had to get the sails back up.

  That left me with Chulo. I said, shoving the bottle at him, “Now, goddammit
, quit being such a baby. You’re gonna throw up again, soon as this hits bottom. But then you drink a little more and you’ll be all right. Now do it!”

  He took the bottle, but he didn’t want to. He took a drink, but he didn’t want to. For a minute he sat there, looking worried, and then, all of a sudden, he shoved the bottle at me and went tearing up the stairs. Even down in the cabin I could hear him heaving over the side. While I waited for him to come back, I had a small drink of brandy. Then I tasted a little of the vinegar. I didn’t much blame Chulo. It wasn’t any stuff that I’d choose to drink.

  Getting the second drink in him was easier than I thought. I guess because he was too give out to put up much of a fight. I left him laying on a bunk and went up on deck. Romando and Rodriquez had both sails back up, and it appeared to me that we were just flying along.

  We passed the little island around eleven o’clock of the morning. That put us seventeen hours out from Bodega. If the island was halfway, we ought to be getting to Tampico at around five o’clock the next morning.

  Romando said, “Perhaps later. We do not have such a favorable wind because we have to swing more to the southwest and we will not go so fast. I think maybe by daylight unless there is more trouble.”

  “Like squalls?”

  He nodded. “The weather is very uncertain in the Gulf.”

  About an hour later Chulo came up and took a kind of shaky seat on the little bench that ran around the sides of the cockpit. His color had returned to normal, but he appeared to have lost about ten pounds. He looked at me with the eyes of a betrayed friend. I said, “Chulo, dammit, this was the only way I could figure to get there fast without going overland.”

  “Chure,” he said. “Chou don’t want to keel no horses so chou keel Chulo. Es hokay to keel Chulo. Chulo choust a dumb Meskin.”

  Romando said, “He ought to eat something.”

  Chulo got a look of horror in his eyes.

  Romando said, “You will not be sick again. You have lost strength. Now you must eat to get it back.”

  I said, “Go take a swig of rum, Chulo.”

  He shook his head. “I neber goan drink rum again long es I leeve.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Then go and eat something. I got a good feeling that Sharp is going to be there.”

  Chulo said, “Maybe thees time he choot me ’n’ I doan feel so bad.”

  We sailed on through the evening and into the night. Somewhere around midnight Chulo and I went down into the cabin and lay down to get as much rest as we could. I slept fitfully, not so much because of the motion of the boat or because I was on a boat, but because I was getting ready for Philip Sharp.

  If he was there.

  Sometime in the gray dawn Romando called me up on deck. Chulo came with me. The sun was just struggling up from the horizon. There was a low mist on the water. Romando said, “We are very near Tampico. We are about to enter the harbor.”

  “Where?” I said. I couldn’t see a damn thing for the fog.

  He pointed in the direction we were sailing. “Straight ahead. In a moment you should be able to see the masts of the ships. It is a matter of only two or three more miles.”

  Chulo said to me, even while I was straining my eyes to see where Romando was pointing, “Say, how comes chou don’t get thees seekness from the sea?”

  I said, “Because I have been up and down on so many women. The motion is the same.”

  He said, “Awwww, chit!”

  We kept coasting along in the still water. The sun was burning off some of the fog. I could see the land, low hills, and then, suddenly, I could see the tall masts of a lot of ships. I said, “Is that it?”

  “Yes. What do we do now?”

  I said, “I don’t know. Just get up close and let’s try and spot the Dolphin. But don’t get too close to her. If Sharp sees me, he’ll run like a rabbit.”

  Romando turned the wheel. He said, “I will go to one end of the docks and then sail down the other way. That way we will pass all of the vessels that are moored there.”

  I was getting excited. I said, “Just be damn careful. I can feel he’s close. I don’t want to spook him too soon.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Rodriquez dropped the foresail, and we went cruising slowly down the line of ships tied up at the Tampico docks. There must have been at least twenty-five of them, but only about ten were of a size to match the Dolphin. A few were three-masters, but the majority of the big ships were two-masted like Sharp’s boat. The smaller boats were tied up to piers and wharves, but the big ones were moored in a line along the dock, where you could just step down a gangplank and be right on shore.

  The big wooden dock appeared to me to be about five or six hundred yards long. It reminded me of the Galveston dock with its forest of masts and then all the big warehouses set up close to where the boats would be unloaded. As we eased our way along, I noticed a big set of corrals shoved in between two warehouses. I couldn’t see how many cattle were in the pens, but they had the corrals placed nice and handy for loading the ships.

  But my heart was in my mouth looking for the Dolphin. We passed two, three, four, five, six big ships and no sign of her. Then we passed a couple more and there she was. No mistake. Her name was painted bold as brass on her bow. She was kind of worn and scruffy-looking like she hadn’t had no good grooming in a while, but Romando said that was the look of all cargo boats, especially cattle boats.

  But there she was. Romando got excited and let his accent creep into his nearly perfect English. He said, “Now we feex hem.”

  I said, instantly, “Don’t say that, Romando. Don’t mouth your luck. That’s the boat, but we ain’t after the boat. We’re after Sharp and we ain’t seen him yet.”

  We eased on down the line until we passed the last boat, and then Rodriquez dropped the main sail and Romando steered in for the dock. Rodriquez had gone up in the bow with an oar to fend us off from hitting too hard, but that wasn’t going to be necessary. As we got closer, we started losing momentum and were just kind of drifting until a dockhand threw us a rope with a weight on the end. Rodriquez caught it, and he and Chulo pulled us in hand over hand. When we hit the dock, Rodriquez jumped out and tied our bow to a post that looked like it would have held a locomotive. Our stern drifted in, and the dockhand heaved Romando another line and pulled our stem in so that we were lined up like the big ships.

  I was the first one off the boat. I wasn’t more anxious than Chulo; I was just better situated, at the middle of the boat. I heaved a sigh of relief as I stepped on the solid planks of the dock, but then I discovered the damn thing was moving. Romando was just behind me. I said, “This damn dock is floating. I can feel it going up and down.”

  He said, “That is from the boat. You will feel the motion for several hours.”

  The dockhand came up to Romando and said something in rapid Spanish that I didn’t get. I asked him what the man had said. Romando said, “He says we would be wiser to dock at one of the piers for boats of our size. He says it is much less expensive.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “About a hundred pesos.”

  I said, “Screw the difference. This is the best place for us.” I reached into my pocket and gave the dockhand a twenty-dollar bill. I said, to Romando, “Tell him when that runs out to let me know.”

  Romando just smiled. He said, “You have just paid the wrong man. But, never mind, I will get it straightened out. What is our plan now?”

  All of a sudden I realized I was standing there in my bare feet with my pants rolled up. Chulo had just gotten off the boat, looking a little unsteady, and he was barefoot also. I was hoping I didn’t look as silly as he did. I said, “Well, the first thing I’m going to do is go back on the boat and put on my boots and hat, and then, when this here dock quits bobbing around, I’ll figure out something.”

  Chulo went back aboard with me. We sat in the cabin and pulled on our boots and put on our gunbelts. I’d been mighty careful to sta
y low as we’d passed the Dolphin, but I hadn’t seen anybody on deck, certainly not Mr. Sharp. By my watch it was a little after eight o’clock. Could have been they were already up and about their business, except I didn’t know what their business was. What I figured Sharp was mainly doing was waiting for Mike Hull and his other ships. Well, I was feeling much easier in my mind about that. Enough time had passed that they would have arrived if they’d managed to get away with the ships. But it appeared that Patterson and the sheriff had done their jobs.

  I said, to Chulo, “You keep a close eye on little Mr. Reyes. He’s liable to try and do something on his own, and I can’t have that. He’s got a little too much pride to suit me.”

  We went back to the dock. The damn thing was still rocking up and down, even after I’d put on my boots. I took a good look around. We were about a hundred and fifty yards down from the Dolphin, but as busy as the dock was, there wasn’t much likelihood of us being spotted at long distance. The dock was working alive with hired hands busy at various jobs. Some of them were wheeling barrels of stuff on board one ship; others were trundling big heaps of sacked corn. I could even see cases of rum and tequilla and brandy and other spirits. All that stuff was disappearing down into the bellies of the ships, ready to be shipped to God only knew where.

  I said, to Romando, “Let’s go get some breakfast. Do you know a little joint near here that wouldn’t be high-class enough for Mr. Sharp? I ain’t quite ready to run into him just yet.”