The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [134]
Deke said nothing, but his sunken expression seemed more drawn.
They played on in silence and slowly Rich Miller was taking more and more of the money. Deke seemed uncomfortable and he said qui-
etly that he guessed it just wasn’t his day. In less than an hour he was down to two hundred and fifty dollars.
“You might clean me out,” Deke said.
Rich Miller said nothing and dealt the cards. The first ones down, then a queen to Deke and a jack to himself. He looked at his hole card. A ten of diamonds. Deke bet fifty dollars on the queen.
“You must have twin girls,” the boy said.
“You know how to find out.”
Rich Miller’s next card was a king. Deke’s an ace. He bet fifty dollars again. Their fourth cards were low and no help, but Deke pushed in all the money he had.
“That’s on a hunch,” he said.
Rich Miller dealt the last cards—a queen to Deke, making it an ace, a five, and two queens. He gave himself a second king.
“What you show beats me,” Deke said, grinning. He pushed away from the table and stood up. “You got it all, boy. You know what that means.”
“It means I’m giving up.”
“It’s too late. You explained it yourself a while ago—the man who gets the money gets killed!” Deke was grinning deeply. “Now I don’t have anything.”
“You’re dead sure you’ll be last.”
“As sure as a man can be. It’s the handwriting.”
“What good’ll it do you?”
“Who knows?”
“You’re so dead sure, go stand in that doorway.”
Deke was silent.
“What about your handwritin’? The pattern says you’ll be the last, and even then, who knows? That all the bunk?”
Deke hesitated momentarily, then walked slowly toward the doorway. He stopped next to it, stiffly. Then he moved out.
Rich Miller’s eyes stayed on Deke as his hand moved across the table. He lifted Deke’s pistol from the table edge and swung it out the window and fired in the direction of the scaffolding.
A high-pitched, whining report answered the shot and hung longer
in the air. Deke staggered, turning back into the room, and had time to look at the boy in wide-eyed amazement. Then he was dead.
The boy returned to the window after getting his carbine and, with his bandanna tied to the end of the barrel, waved it in a slow arc back and forth. Once they started up the slope he sat back in the chair and idly turned over his hole card, the ten.
The possemen were drawing closer, up to Ford Harlan’s body now. He flipped Deke’s hole card. It landed on top of the two queens. Three ladies.
He rose and moved to the doorway as he saw the men nearing the shelf, then glanced down at Deke and shook his head. I sure am crazy, he thought. I never heard before of a man cheating to lose.
He walked through the doorway with his hands above his head.
17
Trouble at Rindo’s Station
Original Title: Rindo’s Station
Argosy, October 1953
Chapter One
THERE WAS A TIME when Bonito might have fired at the rider far below on the road, and for no other reason than to test his carbine, since the rider was a white man. He had done this many times before—sometimes for a shirt, or a fresh horse, usually for ammunition, though a reason was not necessary. But now there was something on the Mescalero’s mind. He held his fire and urged his pony down the piñon slope.
From high up he had recognized Ross Corsen—the lank figure slouched in the McClellan saddle, head down against the glare, hat low over his eyes. And now, as the Mescalero closed in, Corsen looked up, though he had seen him long before, when Bonito was still high up the slope.
“Sik-isn,” Bonito said. The word was a hiss between his lips. Strands of hair hung from the shadow of a high-crowned hat, thick, glistening hair accentuating the yellowish cast of his skin and the pock scars that roughened heavy-boned features. A frayed, sweat-stained shirt covered his chest, but his legs were naked, for he wore only a breechclout, and the curled toes of his moccasins hung beneath the pony’s belly, ridiculously close to the ground. A carbine