King of Spades

by Frederick Manfred

  He undulated once, as if to offer himself up. Then, riding backwards willy-nilly, toes up, he drifted off, sleep coming over him as silently as night itself.

  He dreamed of Mother again. Dad was gone. When he told Mother that he was lonesome and when he asked her if he could sleep in Dad’s place, Mom said, “Come over then, if that’s what you want.” He’d just barely got in beside his mother, between different sheets, when all of a sudden Dad thundered him back into his own bed. And he awoke.

  “Murderer!” Pause. “Better skip the country!” There was always that pause between the two dark cries.

  He returned home the next evening.

  Katherine was seething white. Her occasional odd grimace had become a fixed sneer. In taut silence she set out the supper for him: potatoes and gravy, beef, onions, dried- apple pie, coffee.

  He was hungry and so ate up.

  She gathered up the dishes and carried them out to the kitchen and washed them alone.

  He went out to the front room and sat down in his easy chair and looked out through the bay window and mused on his miseries.

  A large fern hung drooped from an iron stand in front of the south window. A September breeze pushed in cool through the open door. The mountain stream trickled steadily over its old stones.

  Katherine swept up the kitchen; and then went after him. She began sweetly enough. “Another cup of coffee? There’s more in the pot.”

  “Thanks. I’ve had a sufficiency.”

  She stood behind him. “I was uptown today.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Everybody was asking where you were.”

  “Mmm”

  She came around the chair to stand in front of him. She tried to catch his eye. “Ransom, I want to ask you something.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Ransom, you aren’t some kind of road agent, are you?” “What?”

  “Tied up with that nest of outlaws near Harney’s Peak? A lookout for them?”

  “Good God!” He was thoroughly astounded that she should think that of him.

  “Well, people have begun to wonder uptown a little. And somebody has been tipping off Curly Griffin about when the treasure coach is to run.”

  “Are you off your rocker, woman? Me a road agent? When I don’t even drink or smoke?”

  “But you do love poker. And you have shot down men.”

  “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

  “Ransom, listen to me. I’ve made up my mind about something. I want us to get out of here. Right now. Today. Before it’s too late.” She began to pace back and forth in front of him. Her long green dress flourished about her legs. Shadows moved in her gold hair as light fell on it from different angles. Torment wrinkled up her face, gave her face a very haggard look. “Oh, Ransom, I don’t know, but I’ve got such a terrible funny feeling about all this.”

  “When is the baby due again?”

  The question startled her. “Oh. Oh, that. Well, I haven’t sat down and figured it out yet. Down to the last day, that is. I’ve been too busy worrying over you.” She picked at the belt of her green dress. “Anyway, if this keeps up, I’ll probably lose it from all the strain.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “But I have been worrying, you know.”

  He hardened. “Lady, I like the Hills. I’m going to stick it out here.”

  She rubbed her hands together until they squeaked. “Ransom, don’t you love me any more?”

  “Oh, for godsakes, woman.”

  “Don’t you love me any more?”

  He stared out of the green bay window. Mists of darkness were dropping down on Deadwood outside.

  Then with a wonderful effort, somehow, Katherine managed to put on a sweet face, with an appealing touch of winsome petulance in it. “Aren’t you ever going to wash my feet again?”

  Oh God.

  “Don’t you really love me any more, Ransom?”

  What could one say to a woman who was to bear one’s child?

  “Ransom?”

  “Oh, shut up. If you want to leave, go ahead. But I’m going to tough it through here.”

  She made a strangled sound. Then suddenly with a pounce she stuck her face into his. “You son of a bitch!” Hate pulled up her mouth and eyes into a tight net of wriggling wrinkles. “You bastard!” Her single brown eye glittered bluish. Scent of puccoons wafted out of her bosom. “Mr. Earl Ransom, I spit on you.” She spat. “Oh, how I wish I hadn’t listened to all your sweet talk back then. Giving up my Stinging Lizard for you!” She began to yell at him, hoarse with passion. “I’d give anything to have that back again, right now, Hermie included!”

  “That whorehouse full of hogs.”

  “Don’t you dare to say anything bad about my girls! At least they were true blue. Besides being kind and tenderhearted.”

  “A place for cowboys to shoot off their mouths. And guns.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “True blue? Kind and tenderhearted? Hell. What about that story I heard back in Denver last year, where, after their hog ranch’d burned down, whores were seen panning the ashes for gold fillings.”

  “Oh. Oh.” She flounced off to the water closet. “Oh. I’ll fix you for that, Mr. Ransom. After all I gave up for you.”

  He wished he had a drink.

  Noises came from the water closet, as well as Katherine’s voice. “Oh, God, what an empty house this has become!”

  He longed for Erden.

  Finished in the water closet, Katherine slammed the lid to with a loud bang.

  The slamming set him off. A rush of savage rage hemorrhaged all through him. He came up out of the easy chair swearing like a madman. He couldn’t hold it back. He swore a streak for a solid minute.

  Then, grinding his teeth, and clapping on gun and belt, he in turn slammed out of the house.

  “God damn her to hell forever.”

  Ransom went straight to No. 10, got himself a corner stool at the bar, ordered a bottle of American whiskey.

  The red whiskey went down as hot as liniment. He had to swallow twice to tolerate it. Once he even rose a little on his stool to get it down.

  The long bar was ringed tight with hardneck stiffs. All wore guns. All drank hard liquor. All wore broad-brimmed miner’s hats. In some instances gangs of friends were lined up four deep behind their anchor man at the bar.

  Talk was kindly, sometimes hilarious.

  “Hey, Toby, where did our old pard Farncomb go? Hain’t seen him around lately.”

  “He went to New York to cut a swell.”

  “Well, good for him. He can afford it.”

  “Sure wish somebody would take hold of my property and develop it like they did his.”

  “Yeh, but is yours any good?”

  “What? Listen, when they finally get my property built up into a company, they’ll have to use four lead pencils a day to keep up with the business. Why.”

  “Bence, another round all around.”

  The fresh whiskey fumes blended well with sawdust scent.

  “Lafe had a pet hand of jacks full on red sevens and still lost the pot. It had to be a crooked game.”

  “Somebody ought to show that son of a bitch that the muzzle to a mad forty-five is the entrance to the tunnel of hell itself.”

  “I’ll thank you for the salt, Bence.”

  “Salt?”

  “I always dust my beer with a little salt.”

  “Coming up.”

  “Well, me, I’m thankful that out here this is still a country where a man can switch his tail in peace.”

  One of the men along the bar had a duskier face than usual. In the gaslight Ransom made out he was a Southerner with some Negro blood in him. He looked a little like a smoked Swede.

  Ransom poured himself a second glass. He sipped slowly.

  But the drinking and the jolly talk didn’t help much. That sudden jolt of rage was still racing through him.

  He thought: “May
be I ought to get out of here before I get into trouble again.”

  He concentrated on the merry faces around him. But look and listen as he might, he couldn’t help but see in the faces lives as sad as his own.

  After a while, as he swung around on his stool, his eyes happened to fall on a group of men sitting immediately behind him at a big round table. Some of them Ransom recognized: Sumner Todd, a judge, Clifford Maule, a lawyer, Carleton Ames, editor of the new Deadwood Pioneer, John Clemens, another lawyer, and several members of a mining combine just in from California.

  Looking them over, it struck Ransom as unusual that for middle-aged men there wasn’t a gray hair in the bunch. Even baldheaded Maule had completely black brows and a heavy black beard. All were in the prime of life. Ransom had never been East, to New York or Philadelphia, but he imagined that this was the way the Eastern bigwigs looked as they sat around drinking at their clubs.

  Newspaperman Ames was talking, one eye on the California investors. “One thing about it. Extinguishment of the Indian title to the Black Hills is bound to make us all rich.”

  Maule drank up with a noisy swallow. “Ha.” Maule’s bald head had the hue of a peeled egg. “At the same time that it’ll fill our lovely valley with every crazy kind of prospector in the world.” Maule had a wide mouth that was always in motion, writhing, smiling, pouting. He also had the habit of punctuating everything he said with a stubborn roll of his head. “No form of lunacy can equal the damned-fool craziness of the damned-fool prospector.”

  Ames shook his head. His blond hair slid out of place a little. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Clifford. Just take a look around here tonight. Taking them all in all, this is a pretty good class of people. They may wear their hair a little long maybe. A few could use a shave. Clothes are a little roughneck, yes. Those big leather boots and big hats might be a little out of place in a city like Chicago. But otherwise, why, look at ’em. A bunch of real virile characters. Proud. Fearless. And what dignity, what patience, in their faces. No complaints. If things aren’t any better today, it’s because they can’t be any better. No blame on anyone.”

  “Then what about that shooting here the other night? That Bullneck fellow getting gunned down?”

  Ransom sat a little straighter. He wondered if the group had recognized him.

  “Bullneck had it coming. He was so crooked he could spit around a corner.” Ames turned to Judge Todd. “By the way, Judge, nobody’s brought in a complaint on that yet, have they?”

  “No.”

  Ames nodded. “You see, there you go. No complaints. The coward never started West, the weak died on the way.”

  Maule sneered. “What about those road agents hereabouts? That Curly Griffin and his gang, for instance?”

  “Look, when we finally become a full-fledged state, we’ll take care of the Curly Griffins in our own good time.”

  “Lord, let’s hope so.”

  John Clemens had nothing to say. He drank moderately. The California investors sat smiling to themselves and waggling fat brown cigars.

  Judge Todd mused aloud. “Strange case, that Curly Griffin fellow. They say he’s a whale of a fellow when sober, and hell turned loose when drunk.”

  Ames held up his whiskey as if in toast. “Gentlemen, Deadwood has to be a great place. It just simply has to be. It is the one hope left in the Western Hemisphere that man shall erect, in time, a society in which no one individual and no one clan shall be accounted superior to the other.”

  Ransom spotted a gray louse wriggling on the soiled woolen shirt of the miner next to him along the bar. The louse was fat, couldn’t quite make it over the prickly edge of the miner’s gray shirt collar. It wriggled and struggled. It made Ransom feel delicate in the belly and he shrank from the miner. As he watched, yet another louse appeared from under the fold of the collar. It crawled as if following a well- marked route. It bumped into the rear of the first louse; stopped. It waited for the first louse to make it over the edge. The two of them were exactly like a pair of fat ewes, one waiting for the other to make it over a low spot in a prickly fence. Had there been more lice, Ransom was sure they too would have waited in line.

  A thought abruptly shot through Ransom’s mind: “It was terrible of me to fall into Katherine’s arms the minute I got woman hungry.”

  Ransom poured himself another tumbler of red whiskey, drank half of it down in a single draft. His stomach reacted with a single hopping motion.

  Another thought shot through his mind. “Better get rid of Katherine, somehow.”

  Ransom downed the rest of the whiskey. He gripped his empty glass so hard it began to scrinch in his hand.

  When he looked again at the miner’s soiled collar, the two lice had vanished.

  There was suddenly a hell-fired commotion outside No. 10. The next thing, a man on horseback came larruping in, banging the swing doors apart.

  “Speaking of the devil!” Maule exclaimed.

  Ransom instantly recognized the wild horsebacker. Curly Griffin. Ransom slowly sat very erect.

  People in the front part of the saloon scrambled out of the way. Chairs upset, tables tipped over. The horse craned up its head, its eyes wild opals. Foam lay sprettled over its roan coat. The rider too had wild eyes, of such a light-blue cast it was hard to see where the blue began and the white left off. Curly had been drinking.

  Curly was a handsome fellow. A lash of silver-blond hair lay across his forehead, his shoulders swung wide on each toss of the horse, his clean-run legs held the horse clipped close. His clothes were flashy: a bossy felt hat, blue-serge suit, high black leather boots, silver spurs. He was armed with gun and bowie knife and wore a pair of dried human ears on his watch chain.

  Curly’s eyes roved savagely silver over the crowd. He gave himself a great stretch, insulting.

  For a moment all sound fell away.

  Curly called out loud and clear. “Bence, set me up a horse’s neck.” Curly gave his roan a lash over the butt with the ends of the reins. “Hup-up, Queenie, we’ll take it right at the bar.”

  The horse moved forward in a series of restrained prancings. It couldn’t rear because of the hanging gas lamps and it couldn’t run even tight-stepped because of the crowd. Its shod hoofs crunched rolls of thunder into the board floor.

  Bence blinked; then, equal to the occasion, set out a bottle.

  Curly sneered. “Now, Bence, don’t rouse me up with the sight of just one bottle. Set ’em all out. Every last one of your whiskeys. I’m particular about my firewater. I likes a chance to select.”

  Bence obliged him.

  “Bence, friends, this is my night to howl.” Curly poured himself a full glass of whiskey and downed it all in one fluid motion. “Bence, I’m a wolf on a horse tonight.”

  Bence nodded suavely. It was all in the course of business.

  The roan kept stepping and staging about. Its never-slip caulks cut little half-moons into the wooden floor. Curly rode her with a snug rein.

  Bence waited.

  Curly rose in his stirrups and hurled his empty glass completely across the saloon into the fireplace. There was a crash and a tinkle of glass. “Well, Bence, friend, who shall I shoot tonight?”

  “How would I know? I don’t know what’s your mind.”

  “Bence, I’ve decided it’s gonna be you.”

  “Hold on, why me?”

  Curly threw back his head and laughed. “C’mon, Bence, you know why.”

  “No, I don’t. Why?”

  “Or would you rather I ate you blood raw?”

  “What’d I do?”

  “Bence, you blowed on me and my boys. So I’m going to tongue you.”

  “Naw, now.”

  “You peached on me, Bence. Told the Army where I was hiding.”

  “Naw.”

  “Bence, where do you want to be shot? In the head or the heart?”

  “The jury won’t go for either one, Curly. They’ll hang you as sure as shootin’.”

  “I’d
like to see the goddam jury that’ll hang Curly Griffin.” Curly tipped back his bossy felt hat. “C’mon, Bence, where do you want to be shot? In the head or the heart?”

  Bence could be as cool as the next man in the face of a young bully’s black caprice. “I’ll take the head.”

  “Why the head?”

  “I don’t like holes in my shirt.”

  “Goddam the shirt.”

  “But a hole will spoil it, Curly.”

  “All right, damn you, then remove it. Because I favor the heart.”

  Bence obliged him. Bence soon stood waiting in his red underwear.

  “By God, Bence, you’re the only true bullhead here. All the rest of these honyockers are yellow-bellied cowards. Terrible Turks in speech but white mice in action. Bence, maybe you didn’t blow on me after all.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Everybody waited for something awful to happen.

  Horse and man undulated at the bar. “But I want to tell you something though, Bence. If you ever open that big loose blab of yours again, I’m gonna shoot you down for sure at last.” Again the horse reared and Curly rode it easy.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Curly sulked with his insulting smile for a moment; then, exploding within, came up a raging cat. “Damn you, Bence, I’m gonna shoot you anyhow.” There was a yellow flashing pop at Curly’s side.

  Suddenly Bence began to squeal his anguish as he slowly crippled down out of sight behind the bar. Bence hadn’t believed Curly was going to do it.

  Curly leaped off his horse onto the bar. He lay his smoking gun down. Then he jumped down behind the bar and hauled up Bence’s head. Holding Bence’s head viselike down on the round edge of the bar, Curly reached into the flaccid mouth and pulled out the tongue by its tip and cut it off with his bowie knife. He threw the tongue on the bar. Like a little red pepper it lay for all to see. With a cry of triumph Curly picked up his smoking gun and leaped back on his horse.

  There were awful gasps.

  Somebody had to do something.

  Ransom found himself standing in a cleared space in front of Curly and his horse. Ransom stood quietly. A fatherly voice spoke in Ransom’s mind: “Aim with the eyes, never the gun. Gut-shoot him.”