Doc - Mary Doria Russell [102]
“Maybe his winnings’re still sitting in Bob Wright’s safe,” Morgan suggested, and that reminded Doc of something.
“Wyatt, nobody seems to know where Johnnie got his bank, but I think Isabelle Wright may have backed him. If her father found out she was sneakin’ money to Johnnie Sanders, there’d have been hell to pay, and I doubt that Miss Isabelle would be the one to pay it.”
Morgan straightened. “You know … There were some books in Johnnie’s room with Belle Wright’s name in them. If he was seeing her on the sly—”
“No,” Wyatt said.
Morg and Doc looked at him.
“Well, could be they was seeing each other,” he admitted, “but Belle Wright didn’t stake him.”
Morgan frowned, but Doc worked it out sooner.
“Never play poker, Wyatt,” he said quietly. “You are an open book.”
Morgan’s mouth dropped open. “Wyatt? But—where’d you get the money?”
Wyatt swallowed. “Borrowed it from James and Bessie.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Oh. Oh, Wyatt,” Doc said, figuring the rest out. “You poor soul …”
For the past few nights, he had taken note of Wyatt’s technique over at the Alhambra, where the deputy now sat in when the regular dealer needed a break. Wyatt’s hands were big and that could be an advantage, but at his best he would never be as deft as Johnnie had been, for he was not as flexible in the wrist or as smooth on the pull. Still, the mechanics were the same, and now there was no question.
“You taught that boy to play,” Doc said.
“It was just something to take his mind off his parents,” Wyatt told them. “I didn’t know what else to do! Nobody else wanted him, and he kept crying … Faro’s easy to learn and he just took to it! When he showed up in Dodge, he made a little extra money—sitting in, you know? Then, last winter … I banked him.”
Morg looked stunned, and Doc’s eyes were full of bleak compassion.
Wyatt’s face was stiff. “I just wish—”
He couldn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. Usually it was his brother Morgan who could complete any thought. This time it was John Henry Holliday.
“Yes,” Doc said. “Yes, indeed. But it’s too late now.”
Side Bets
James was moving from table to table in the house saloon, collecting glasses on a tray, wiping up beer slops in the midmorning lull. He hadn’t done the count yet, but the night’s take promised to be good. The town was hopping, what with the Fourth of July festivities and midseason cattlemen splashing cash around.
“He’s a Southerner!” Bessie was saying, as though that clarified everything. She could see the look of exasperation on Kate’s face. “James, you explain it.”
Deftly delivering the clinking tray, one-handed, to the bar, he came over to stand next to Bessie’s chair. “Southerners out here? They’re like wandering Jews, Katie. They’re lonesome for a place they can’t be anymore. Even if they was to go back, everything’s different now. Wouldn’t be home—not how they remember it, anyways.”
Bessie reached up to slide her arms around her husband’s thickening waist and laid her head against his belly. “You’re gettin’ fat and bald but, honey, you ain’t so bad for a Yankee.” She sighed and looked into the middle distance. “Sometimes I think I’ll flat die for want of peonies and roses and sweet gum trees … Course, they’re all gone, back in Nashville. Dug up to clear ground for vegetables during the siege. Or cut down for firewood.”
“Doc ain’t no Jew,” Kate said thoughtfully. She lifted her feet onto the chair opposite her. “He could’ve cleaned up at a game last night, but he just wasn’t interested. Sometimes I think he don’t cares about money at all … He’s stupid about it, almost.”
“That’s Southern, too,” Bessie told her wryly. “Are his people planters, Kate? Mercy! Planters was the worst. Proud as Lucifer! Always in debt, always on the edge, but they still wanted the best of everything—”
That was when Kate figured it out.
“Aristocrats!” she said with a tone of bemused disdain that brought her father’s voice back as though he were standing behind her in the room. “Aristocrats!” he’d cry, throwing up his hands in defeat, unable to make sense of a phenomenon that