King of Spades

by Frederick Manfred

Troy Barb downed half of his glass. “By God, pardner, when you drink this brand, you mean business.” Troy Barb wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “It’s burning a hole through my bladder right this minute.”

  Ransom drank, bottoms up. His green eyes slicked over. He pointed his empty glass at the poker players. “Who’s the pig with them?”

  “Rose.”

  “Kind of a compliment to say she’s uglier than a bighorn sheep.”

  Troy Barb laughed.

  “Though her eyes make you feel she’s good people.”

  “Yeh.”

  “Probably ain’t got enough brains to pour pee out of a shoe, even if you was to print the instructions on the heel.”

  Barkeep Bence hacked up a rattling cough. “Better not cheat on her though. She’s got a voice on her like a pig under a gate.”

  “Ha, that’s Rose all right.” Troy Barb mused over his glass. “Looks like she’s fell in love with that red-faced farmer. Clean through to the basement.”

  “You jealous, Troy?” Ransom asked.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “You like Rose, Troy?” Ransom asked further.

  “It gravels me to see what was once a nice sukey throw herself away on such trash.”

  “Then you do like her.”

  “Yeh, hell, I guess I do.” Troy Barb set his glass down with a light thump. “Set ’em up again, Bence.”

  Bence did, and they drank up.

  The third red whiskey went down like a racing flame. Ransom had the feeling that his mustache was multiplying right under his nose. Prickles came alive in his earlobes. It was just like that time in Denver when he’d gone hog wild. So Katherine couldn’t stand his dreams, eh? Well, he couldn’t stand Katherine in the first place. The old witch. The hell with her. The hell with everybody.

  The red-faced farmer seemed to be the only one of the three farmers who knew something crooked was going on and he slowly became purple-faced. Rose hung over him like a foolish ewe.

  Bence growled, “That son of a bitch Bullneck. He deserves to be dry-gulched. He ain’t doing business any good in this place. Too bad Wild Bill is dead or I’d sick him onto him.”

  Ransom smiled a young man’s whiskey smile. “Why Old Bill? What’s wrong with me?”

  Bence took him up on it. “Do it, by God, and you can drink on the house for the rest of the year.”

  “It’s a whack.” Ransom touched a hand to his right eye. “There’s nothing I hate more than an overproud bully. But first pour us another drink.”

  Troy Barb didn’t like it. “You ain’t used to drinking much, kid.”

  Ransom bent hot green eyes on his partner. “You giving the orders now?”

  Troy Barb backed down. “No.” Then he shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

  “Pour, Bence.”

  Whiskey trickled with a sweetish smell.

  Again they drank up.

  Ransom’s ears clicked. Who the hell was Katherine to be kicking him out of his own bed when he didn’t want to sleep there in the first place? A man had a right to love his mother and dream about her if he wanted to.

  Rose finally placed a hand on the shoulder of the purple-faced farmer. “Arlo, let’s go home.”

  “No.”

  “C’mon, Arlo.”

  “No!” Arlo snapped around at her so hard his blond hair lashed out like a swath of cut wheat. “Dammit, I’m staying here till I get some of my money back. Or catch him in the act.”

  Bullneck’s high neck bristled. “I take it you’re calling me a crook, Arlo.”

  Arlo surged up out of his chair. “I’m standing a pat hand on what I just said.”

  The other two greenhorn farmers thickened in their chairs. Their ears flopped.

  Ransom set down his glass. “Whoops. Maybe we better take the play away before it gets ripe.” He swung his holster and gun handy. “Arlo’s hotter’n a burnt boot and he’s no match for Bullneck.”

  “I’d stay out of that,” Troy Barb warned.

  Bence said, “Let him go. Be good riddance if he was to plug Bullneck.”

  Ransom stepped slowly over to the poker players. “Some trouble here, boys?” Looking over Bullneck’s shoulder, he saw that Bullneck was holding a spade flush king high.

  Rose backed away, squeaking.

  Bullneck lunged around. “Ha. Look who’s buttin’ in. A mama’s boy who’s struck it lucky.”

  “What’s wrong with being a mama’s boy?”

  “If that’s what you want, nothing, I guess.”

  “It’s better than being born to a mule, ain’t it?”

  Bullneck’s tan beard curled like a cat’s. His sneer deepened. He backed his chair away from the table a little. “So old Kate’s fancy boy is all growed up, is he?”

  “Old Kate is it? What do you know about her?”

  “I know all about her. I’m from Cheyenne myself, you know.”

  Troy Barb broke in from the bar. “Hey, Rose, why don’t you favor us with a song?”

  Rose quavered, “Oh, Troy.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink if it’ll help you clear your valves.”

  “I can’t sing now.”

  “C’mon. Before all the horses get out.”

  “I can’t.”

  Ransom said, “Let’s hear more about that mama’s-boy business, Bullneck.”

  “What about it?”

  “Did you know my mother?”

  “If I did’ve, it wouldn’t be to my credit. She was probably a whore like all our mothers.”

  “Nobody says that about my mother. Fill your hand.”

  Bullneck laughed, instead spat into the spittoon at his feet.

  Arlo still stood across the table from Bullneck. Gold hair hung partway down his red nose. He hadn’t liked the way Ransom had butted in. He tried to wave Ransom off. “I don’t know who you are, and I appreciates your stepping in here and wanting to help. But this is my ramble, kid, so kindly stay out. I’ll handle Bullneck myself.”

  The two other farmers suddenly broke to their feet and got the hell out of there. The swing doors slapped to several times behind them.

  Ransom said, “Bullneck, fill your hand.”

  Arlo again tried to wave Ransom off. “Get out, kid. This is my fight.”

  Ransom said yet again, “Bullneck, fill your hand.”

  Arlo stepped between Ransom and Bullneck. Arlo had a gun tucked in his belt and his hand slowly edged toward it. “Bullneck, you bastard, I’m standing pat on what I knows.”

  Bullneck waved his fistful of cards at Arlo. “Sit down. And let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.” Bullneck eyed what was left of Arlo’s sack of gold dust.

  Arlo’s hand touched the butt of his gun. “Bullneck, you’re a crook. And, by God, you can’t make a mark I won’t come to.”

  Bullneck gradually put his cards face down. He mocked Arlo with a horse sneer. “Sit down before you get hurt, Arlo.”

  Then Arlo, black-faced he was so mad, made a grab for it. But the gunsight of his six-shooter caught in his belt.

  Bullneck watched Arlo jerking at his gun a moment, then got to his feet and coolly drew his own gun and shot Arlo in the belly.

  Arlo’s eyes swam up his forehead for a second and then they slowly closed over and a suddenly lonely look spread over his face and then he slumped to the plank floor.

  There was another click of a gun.

  Bullneck turned, gun still leveled.

  Ransom shot Bullneck from the hip without aiming.

  Bullneck, shot through the temple, eyeballs suddenly hanging out, slid to the floor.

  The place was full of banging echoes for a moment. The gleaming brown whiskey bottles and the glistening clear glasses shimmered with echoes.

  Then Bence got out an old shammy skin and began to shine his mahogany bar. “Yep, it’s like I say. Good riddance. Thanks a lot, Ransom. We could use more men like you.”

  6

  Ransom didn’t stir from the house for a week. Dogs
could bark at others for a while. He sat with his feet up on the kitchen range drinking coffee.

  The brook below the house ran sweetly over its stones.

  Katherine swung between two poles. One moment she was in a worried fret over what he might do next; a moment later she was in a raging seethe over what she called their disgrace. When she tried to kiss him and mother him, he pushed her away; when she cursed him and called him killer, he sat sipping coffee.

  “Maybe we ought to pull up stakes and take a trip somewhere,” she said, standing behind him. “Get out of this awful place. I know some terrible things have been on your mind lately, the way you’ve been having nightmares, but really, darlin’, I don’t want my husband in trouble with the law. In Cheyenne I could help you. But not here.”

  Ransom sipped more coffee.

  “Killing that Horses was bad enough, deserve it as he did.” Katherine wrung her hands. “But to shoot a man down in a barroom brawl like it was no more than shooting down a jackrabbit … even if he had just killed poor Arlo … why! ohh! Because one killing doesn’t deserve another. Just like that. That kind of thinking is against God Himself.”

  Ransom crossed his legs up on the kitchen range.

  “And then the way you used to hit me in your sleep.” She paced back and forth. “Ransom! You’ve got to do something about yourself. You’ve got to have a change of heart. Or something. Because if you don’t, it can only lead to one thing. That you become a habitual killer!” She raged back and forth behind him. “If they don’t pick you up first and throw you in the hoosegow.”

  Ransom crossed his feet the other way.

  “Just what are you going to do when they come knocking on our door and ask you to come along with them? Kill the law too?”

  Silence. Bence had said Deadwood could use more men like him.

  She stood directly behind him, her breath stirring the hair on the back of his head. “There’s one thing I’m going to ask you to do. Right now. Because it’s something you’ve got to do. Got to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to sell your holdings. Right now.”

  “I’d sort of had that in mind. Provided the right offer came along.”

  “And when you get the money for it, I want you to put it safe in a bank in Cheyenne. We can send it over in the treasure coach.”

  Ransom dropped his feet to the floor. “All right. That I’ll do.”

  “Good. Now you’re being sensible. Civilized.”

  “And I think Troy Barb will go along with that. He’s got half-share in our beaver-dam claim, you know.”

  “I know Troy Barb will. He told me just yesterday that he’s anxious to go back home and put his wife up in style.”

  Long ago Ransom had decided he would never tell Katherine about that other claim, the white-quartz holding. Erden and her spirit gods were going to keep that. Untouched.

  Katherine said, “Now I’m proud of you, my husband.”

  Ransom thought: “This is no life. Better that I should take a bottle of poison and lay down under a bush somewhere and die. Because I’m never going to get out of this. It’s all going from bad to worse.”

  Outside a junkman in a buckboard went rattling by, bawling, “Rags! Bottles! Sacks!”

  One morning early Ransom packed a canteen of water, a bedroll, some jerky, and swung aboard Prince to have a look at Bear Butte. Bear Butte was a lonely peak standing out in the prairies apart from the Black Hills. Indians regarded it as their high holy place and often climbed it for their vigils. Ransom thought a night spent up there alone might help him.

  He arrived below the butte about midafternoon. When he saw how the little mountain loomed above him like some bear asleep with its head tucked under a paw, he understood why it was called Bear Butte. There was no trail up for a horse; it was too thickly strewn with sharp volcanic rock. He found a spring in an open shelving area with some fresh buffalo grass, and put Prince out to graze. Prince would stay put until he came back. Ransom hid the saddle and bridle under a pile of black rocks.

  “Oh, God, how could I have gone to bed with Katherine again so soon after that holy time with Erden?”

  Ransom also decided to leave his gun and belt behind. He did it out of respect for Erden’s Indian religion. One hardly went to any kind of shrine with a gun on the hip. Besides, he wanted to have a go at the peak with his bare hands.

  “Something awful has got to happen to me to make up for all this.”

  Carefully he picked his way up a shallow gully on the south side. Good stands of pine grew on the south slope, though the steep west and east sides were mostly barren. Here and there, near trickling springs, clumps of wild plum and wild grape grew. He found several warm spots where deer had nested. Chickadees flittered across small flat slabs of weathered lava. The lava was exactly the color of their brown caps.

  “I miss my little Swallow so terribly much.”

  A turtledove koo-kooed high above him. For a second he thought it might be one of Erden’s whistling spirits, warning him off.

  He paused for breath. The clear higher air had a slightly burnt savor in his nose. It felt good to be alone and high again.

  “I see nothing but bad ahead.”

  The sloping gully ahead steepened. He veered off to the right through several clumps of spine cactus and irregular rugs of silver sage. Spalled rock lay loose at every step. He had to be careful with his footing. The soles of his boots were almost too slick for climbing.

  The prairies fell away on all sides. Both he and the dark Hills behind rose into the blue skies. His breath came harsh and cleansing. He sweat. It was good to be laboring up and up.

  By accident he found some black honey in a fallen pine. He scooped out a piece and ate it. The honey was very old.

  “Lord, this is the best yet. None of that sticky sweetness you sometimes get. Mmm.” He ate more. “More like a dark liqueur with the alcohol boiled out.” He ate and ate with an almost bearish lust. It was the best he’d ever had. It was like a gift of flesh from Erden.

  He stopped to sip at a spring. The water wasn’t good. It had a taste like it might have come out of an old coffeepot with a burnt bottom.

  He climbed upward. He wondered if Erden had ever climbed Bear Butte.

  “I love her. I love her. Yet I can’t have her. She’s out of my reach forever.”

  He climbed past a pine split by lightning and tor The little boy apart by tomadic winds.

  He heard the voice of a little boy in his head. The little-boy words seemed to float off before him like soap bubbles. He stopped and held his head to one side to observe them the better.

  “Murderer.” Pause. “You better skip the country.”

  He wiped sweat from his brow. He puffed.

  His hand reached down for it before he was aware of what it was. What at first appeared to be a fallen willow leaf turned out to be an arrowhead. It was a beauty. Worked by a master arrowsmith. The point was more smoky glass than flint. Erden would have appreciated it. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger until it shone. He lingered over it even as he dropped it in his pocket.

  He reached a swayback between the two main humps of the peak. He paused to catch his breath. Ahead of him to the north, prairies unrolled below for miles all the way to the Belle Fourche River. Behind him the other way, prairies unrolled out all the way to Elk Creek.

  The hump to the west was the highest and presently he headed for it. He leaned forward from the hips to climb the better, nose almost touching the steeping path. It was like climbing the bony spine of an enormous razorback wild hog. One wrong step either way and down he would roll.

  It took him two hours to reach the summit.

  He turned to take it all in. The instant view in the stark falling sunlight was so vast in all directions he forgot he was breathless. He was too high to sweat. To the east, many sleeps away, the Cheyenne River seemed to shimmer off into confluence with the Missouri. To the west, twenty miles off, the Hills resembled a
herd of monster buffalo bulls kneeled in sleep.

  He recognized the place as the Indian holy ground he’d been looking for. Bits of painted leather, even tattered and decorated buckskin, lay pegged to the ground in bizarre geometric design. Stones had also been placed in the crotches of pines, in some instances so long ago that lips of red bark had almost swallowed them up. The silence was still heavy with old vigils, old prayers, old visions.

  “Murderer.” Pause. “Better skip the country.”

  Just before the sun sank a last time, he found three pines so placed in a row and close together that with the help of some flat rock and forest duff he made himself a level spot on which to roll out his suggans. The spine of the summit itself came to too sharp a point to sleep on.

  Not a solitary smidgen of a sign of Erden anywhere. He heard the faint dee-dee of the chickadee far below. He heard the soft sooling of the wind in the pines nearby. He heard the thumping of his own heart.

  “Erden?”

  Nothing.

  “Swallow? Blue Swallow?”

  Not even an echo.

  There was no place to sit. He chewed a little on a strip of jerky; found he wasn’t hungry. He sipped some water from his canteen.

  Night came on swiftly. Darkness bloomed out of the east like thunderhead rain ahead of its own shadow. As the brown shadow came on, the horizon below rose to meet it.

  He rode standing high on the point.

  At last, when even Bear Butte went under, he turned and stooped and slid into his suggans.

  He lay stretched flat on his back. The aromatic duff beneath was soft enough to make even a good bed for an invalid. He ran his hands up and down the shiny slick buckskin over his thighs. He stared up at the brittle stars above.

  He recalled the story of Abraham and Isaac, of how Abraham was about to offer up Isaac at a burnt offering, when Jehovah Himself intervened and provided Abraham with a ram caught in a thicket for his sacrifice.

  He longed with a great aching longing that Erden might somehow come and wake him from sleep. Like that first time. It was almost a year ago since they’d met. By now, if Erden were still alive, she would have borne them their baby. A boy, he hoped. To start the new line off with. It would be older than the one that Katherine would bear him. And it would be the one. If he could ever find it.