Smith's Monthly #10

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  It took someone smart to figure out how to do all this.

  People had always tried to cheat casinos. Over the years, people had put in signals in their shoes, small electrodes on their arms, and so on to help them count cards in blackjack or get information from spotters. But this guy didn’t seem to have any of that and the Grand Casino’s normal security systems were designed to block most electronic signals, or at least spot odd ones.

  And from what little I knew about tiny cameras like these, they didn’t have a very large broadcast range. In fact, they were so tiny, I couldn’t imagine them broadcasting much beyond the edge of the table, which would guarantee that the signals from that many small cameras would not be picked up by casino electronic scanning.

  The dealer took the cards out of the shuffling machine, cut and started to deal.

  I glanced over at the woman with the long black hair sitting in the back of the room. She was reading on some sort of tablet and she had it turned so no camera over her could see what she was reading.

  Suddenly I knew I had it figured out. And I had a sinking feeling it was a lot larger cheating scam than anyone had first figured. A lot more than one bad player winning too many hands.

  I mucked my cards without looking at them and stood up. “Back in a second,” I said to the dealer.

  Then I again turned and headed out of the poker area and toward the casino. Again the popcorn smell filled the air and shouting from the direction of the craps table seemed to cover almost everything.

  Out of sight of the table, Fleet and Annie and Webster caught up with me.

  “So that’s playing blind, huh?” Fleet asked as we stopped near the hotel lobby.

  Annie laughed. “Doc drives people crazy doing that in tournaments when he spots someone who really cares too much.”

  “He drives a lot of us crazy like that,” Fleet said, shaking his head.

  “Well, Doc?” Webster asked.

  “I got him,” I said, smiling. “When did you switch out those shuffling machines?”

  Webster looked puzzled. “A month or so ago, if I remember right. But they are carefully checked.”

  “I know,” I said, nodding. “That’s why this is so amazing, more than likely there’s more teams involved in this working other casinos right now.”

  “Oh, crap,” Webster said.

  Annie squeezed my arm and smiled.

  Fleet just shook his head as he often did when I said outrageous things.

  I just smiled. “Get security to surround the entire area and hold that woman in the back with the tablet as well. She’s the spotter, so you had better take that tablet away from her quickly before she erases anything. And my sense is that the guy who calls himself Big Ed is also in this, since he never played against the guy in the cap. He’s just a better player is all and harder to notice.”

  “You’re sure about all this?” Webster asked, his voice sounding even more full of gravel than normal.

  “Positive,” I said, smiling at the frown on the casino manager’s face. “I’ll show you. It’s actually pretty damn smart system. Just get your people in place and keep a lid on this until you can warn other casinos.”

  Three

  IT TOOK WEBSTER five minutes to carefully put his men into position around the poker room without anyone seeming to notice. His guys were good.

  “Introduce me when we walk up to the table would you? I want to see their faces.”

  He laughed. “Gladly.”

  “Just make sure your guy gets that tablet quickly.”

  Webster nodded at his guy standing behind the woman and I smiled. She wouldn’t even see that guy coming.

  Fleet and Annie followed us a few steps back.

  As we neared the table, Webster signaled for the dealer to stop play.

  “Folks, I’d like to introduce you to Doc Hill, the top ranked Texas Hold’em player on the planet.”

  I did a slight bow, smiling at how the guy in the Reds’ baseball cap had gulped and his face had gone white.

  The guy named Big Ed just shook his head and muttered something about how he thought he recognized me.

  Webster’s man had taken the woman’s tablet and was holding it and blocking her escape.

  “I asked Doc to join this table,” Webster said, “because it felt like something was wrong with the play.”

  I reached forward, under the edge of the leather near my chips, and pulled out a tiny pin and held it up.

  “Camera. Three at each spot,” I said to the table. “Pretty nifty, huh?”

  All the regular players except Big Ed and the guy in the Reds’ cap started feeling under the edge of the table in front of them and pulling out camera pins.

  “The cameras all relayed their data to a small device inside the shuffling box,” I said.

  With that the dealer looked shocked and actually moved back from the box like it might bite him.

  “The shuffler then sent the image of all our cards as a phone signal to the woman in long hair sitting back there.”

  Everyone looked around at her and she just sneered.

  I went on. “She would then relay the information about the cards to our two friends here also by phone signal, which is not blocked in a casino or monitored.”

  I turned to Webster. “You’ll find tiny ear bugs in their ears set to receive the phone signal from the woman’s tablet.”

  “You can’t prove that,” the idiot in the baseball cap said.

  Webster only snorted and motioned for the guards to take them away. Then he had the dealer split the cheater’s chips among those of us at the table and broke the game.

  “You had better be informing the other rooms around town and up in Reno,” I said to Webster.

  “I’m going to, as soon as I take that box apart and figure out how we missed the phone device in there. But I know you are right. This is a big ring and these three are going to suddenly vanish into some deep parts of this casino for a short time so that we don’t alert everyone else.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Thanks, Doc. Fleet. Annie.”

  “Check’s in the mail?” Fleet asked.

  Webster snorted. “Not so much a check, but a lot of free dinners from here and I’m betting other casinos in town.”

  “Sounds even better,” Fleet said, laughing.

  “Come to think of it,” I said. “I am hungry. That popcorn smell has been driving me crazy.”

  “It does that,” Webster said.

  “Steak?” Annie asked.

  “I love steak,” Fleet said, smiling at Webster.

  “Maybe I should write you a check. Might be cheaper.”

  Then in his gravelly voice he laughed. “Head on over to the steak house and I’ll tell them you’re coming.”

  He turned and walked away.

  The three of us laughed as I tossed the small pin camera on the table and racked up my chips. Then we turned and headed for a late meal.

  It felt great to help protect the game I loved. Poker is a game of skill, but there will always be those who look for shortcuts in anything that takes skill.

  I just hoped Webster kept these three “lost” for a very long time before turning them over to the police.

  And that thought just made me laugh, so I told my friends what I hoped Webster would do and they laughed as well as we headed for dinner.

  Even Annie, the former Las Vegas detective.

  “In Vegas,” she said, “casino justice can be much worse than police justice. Always has been, always will be.”

  “Especially for cheaters,” I added and they both laughed again.

  What Came Before…

  Nineteen-year-old Boston native Jimmy Gray had been traveling with his parents and older brother, Luke, headed west to find a new home and new riches. Before even reaching Independence, they were attacked and robbed by Jake Benson and his gang. Jimmy’s parents were killed, his brother wounded.

  In one of the wildest towns in all of American history, Jimmy Gray,
a sheltered, educated son of a banker from Boston suddenly finds himself very, very much alone. But then through some luck, he finds other young men about his age and down on their luck who might be able to help him.

  Together, the five of them head west after Benson. They end up hunting buffalo as he always dreamed of doing, but then they are hit with a massive flash flood and Jimmy is left alone, his friends more than likely dead. Luckily, they all meet up again and are all safe. So they continue west, knowing that Benson is just ahead of them.

  Suddenly they come upon Benson and his men killing a farm family. They manage to get one of the men separated from the others, but in a fall he accidently dies. So they scatter to meet up later at a camp. They managed that but found a survivor of the killings. So one of them had to go back with the kid while the others followed Benson.

  They caught him once again terrorizing a small wagon train and managed to scare him and his men off. But then they had to cross the forty-mile desert. And right from the start, things started off deadly. Then, in the middle of the worst part of the desert, they find a wagon train, horses stolen, water gone, only women and children left to die.

  But what can they do? If they try to take them along, everyone will die.

  THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BUFFALO JIMMY

  PART TWENTY-EIGHT

  TOUGH DECISION

  “CAN WE JUST rest here in the shade of the wagons until the sun goes down and make a run for it?” Truitt asked as all six of them gathered together.

  Jimmy had been wondering the same thing.

  Long, C.J. and Josh all shook their heads.

  “The heat on this desert would drain all of our water, even if we were resting,” Josh said.

  “Look what three hours did to the women and children,” C.J. said. “And that was what one of them told me was their plan.”

  “We would never make it to the river without water,” Josh said, “even at night.”

  Long agreed. In his steady voice he said simply, “We can’t stop. We must press on and soon.”

  “How many are there?” Zach asked.

  “Eight women still alive and all claim they are able to walk,” Truitt said. “A dozen children, six of them too young to walk in this deep sand.”

  Jimmy turned to Long. “How much water do we have?”

  “After what we have given to the women and children, we will be out of water before we get to the river, even if we went without them.”

  That made all of them stand in silence in the hot desert sun, just thinking about the huge risk they would take if they continued to help this wagon company.

  Jimmy nodded, then looked around at his friends. “Is everyone agreed that we try to save these woman and children? I vote that we do.”

  All five of his friends nodded as one.

  Jimmy laughed. “You know, we’re all crazy.”

  “That seems clear simply by where we are standing,” Truitt said.

  Everyone laughed, but it was worried laughs. Jimmy was scared at the idea of what they were about to do. He knew the rest of the Wild Boys were as well.

  “Everyone take a small drink,” Jimmy said, “then give a small drink to the horses as well. After that, get the six kids who can’t walk tied onto the horses so if they pass out, they won’t fall off. We need to get moving.”

  Jimmy glanced in the direction of the hot sun as everyone spread out. It couldn’t be much past nine in the morning. They had the hottest part of the day still hours ahead of them, and fifteen to twenty miles of sand to wade through.

  And nowhere near enough water to get six of them, eight women, seven horses, and a dozen children to the Truckee River.

  But they were going to try.

  And with luck not die in the attempt.

  PART TWENTY-NINE

  AN ATTEMPT

  THE NEXT TWO hours went slowly as the sun climbed higher and higher in the sky, sucking every bit of moisture from anything alive.

  Long led the group, leading the only pack horse. The strongest woman among the survivors was leading Long’s horse right behind him. A young boy was tied to the saddle, his head and back covered by a light shirt.

  Jimmy, with a young girl on his horse, followed. A girl about Jimmy’ age named Caroline walked with him, or behind him, as they tried to stay in the wagon wheel tracks to make the walking easier. It was Caroline’s younger sister who was on Jimmy’ horse.

  Caroline was a blonde with flashing blue eyes. Her light skin was blistered by the sun, even though she wore a wide-brimmed hat. Her once blue dress was tattered, faded, and dirty. Jimmy liked her at once, but he wasn’t sure why.

  She seemed strong and was able to keep up. They didn’t speak hardly at all, since that would have taken too much energy. But Jimmy found himself enjoying her company as much as it was possible in these circumstances. And thinking about her and wondering what she was like certainly kept his mind off of the heat and the deep sand.

  After two hours, Long gave a little water to each horse, then had each of them take a very shallow drink. Jimmy had put him in charge of the water and told everyone to not drink unless Long told them to.

  Jimmy was trusting Long to know when they had to drink to keep them going. Josh was also making a few suggestions to Long from things that he had read, and Long was sometimes following his suggestions.

  Again, it was taking all of them and all their skills to survive this.

  They didn’t stop for longer than a few minutes at any point. There was just no point in resting. Every minute stopped was one minute longer it would take them to reach the river.

  Before the next quick stop, Zach shouted from the end of the procession and Jimmy looked around.

  A woman had fallen face first into the sand and two other women were not able to move her. It was the woman that Jimmy had given a drink to under the wagon.

  Jimmy had Caroline hold his horse and he went back to see what could be done. But by the time he waded through the sand to where she was, C.J. was standing up shaking his head. “She’s dead.”

  Two other women were still kneeling in the sand beside the dead woman.

  Jimmy looked at the dead woman for a moment, the thoughts of his own mother filling his mind. Benson would pay for this. For everything he had done.

  Jimmy turned his back on the dead woman. “Let’s get moving.”

  He knew his voice sounded cold and mean, but he didn’t dare allow himself to look back at her body just laying there beside the trail with all the other bones of travelers and horses and oxen.

  They weren’t crossing just a desert. They were crossing a graveyard.

  An hour later, they were slugging up a low ridge. The sand was so deep, that even staying in the wagon wheel tracks from companies that had gone before, the horses sank up to their knees in the sand.

  Every step for Jimmy seemed like torture.

  Long stopped them halfway up the impossible slope and had them all drink tiny sips of the water they had left. Now they were completely out of water, and the sun was still high in the sky, baking them.

  Jimmy just hoped there wasn’t far to go. He could tell his energy was draining quickly, and beside him, Caroline was stumbling far more often than she had when they started out. He wasn’t sure how many more miles any of them could go.

  Over an hour later, they crested over the top of hill. The wagon trail went downward with a much harder base sand between some thin sagebrush. The going was easier, a relief since they were going downhill and not wading in such deep sand.

  In the distance, in the bottom of the valley below them, there was a tall stand of cottonwood trees that seemed to curve off into the distance toward the mountains beyond. Jimmy had learned that distances out west were very hard to judge. He had no idea if those trees were just a mile away, or ten miles away.

  But what those tall trees meant was water. The river was there, under those trees.

  They just had to get to them.

  PART THIRTY

  TH
E RIVER

  AS C.J. CAME over the ridge behind Jimmy and saw the trees, he shouted, “Three miles left! Just three miles!”

  Caroline looked back at C.J., then ahead at the trees. “Can he be right?”

  Jimmy smiled. “When it comes to this trail and where we are, C.J. and Josh are always right. They’ve read everything about this trip that has ever been written. I have a hunch that Josh will eventually write his own book about all this as well.”

  “Three miles,” Caroline said, her voice cracking in what sounded like a sigh. “I can make three miles.”

  She was right. Jimmy knew he could as well.

  They walked on side-by-side in silence through the baking heat.

  Long kept their pace steady and didn’t speed up at all, even though it was downhill and they could see in the distance their goal. Jimmy knew that they could still lose people and horses in these three miles.

  Three miles was a very long distance in this kind of heat.

  But Long also didn’t call a rest break half way down the gentle slope. At this point, there was no point in resting. They had no water left. They either made the last few miles, or they died very close to their goal.

  Another woman behind Jimmy fell, but this time she hadn’t died. Just passed out.

  “I know what that’s like,” Truitt said, shaking his head.

  Long and Zach simply lifted the woman up and draped her over Zach’s horse in front of a small child. If she ended up dying, they would find out at the river and not before.

  The last half-mile had to be the longest half-mile Jimmy had ever walked.

  The cottonwood trees bordering the river were looming high in front of them now, and the blue of water reflected the sun like a mirror. But they were still a half-mile away under baking sun.

  Every footstep felt like sheer agony, and Jimmy seemed to use every ounce of his energy with every step, yet the sight ahead kept him moving, taking another step forward and then another step.