Midnight round up, p.15
Midnight Round-Up,
p.15
Pat Stevens and Sam Sloan came in together. Dasher saw the sheriff and beckoned to him with a broad smile. “We need another poker player to take a hand, Pat. Sit in and maybe you’ll change my luck.”
“Is yore luck bad?” Pat moved forward where he could survey the table.
“Terrible. This is my second stack of chips.”
Pat frowned at the neat piles of chips in front of Windy Rivers. “If the blues ain’t worth mor’n fifty cents, I’ll sit in,” he offered.
Dasher laughed weakly. “Blues are a hundred.”
“Dollars?”
“Sure. No limit. That’s why there’s just two of us. You can’t afford a game like this, sheriff.”
“Why no. I reckon not.” Pat’s voice was deceptively mild. He watched Windy’s soft fingers dealing the cards, caressing each one as he slid it off.
“Reminds me of a game I sat in once down in Tombstone, Arizona,” Pat went on.
Windy glanced up at him sharply, but said nothing.
“That was a hell of a long time ago. I was just a brash kid, sort of big for my pants,” Pat chuckled. “But I shore learned plenty about stud poker quick.”
Windy was high in sight with a king. He bet a red chip. Dasher covered the bet. He looked up at Pat and said, “Go ahead.”
“There was a gamblin’ man sitting in that game an’ he kept winnin’ too steady to suit me,” Pat grinned. “I figgered I was some punkins of a poker player an’ I didn’t see how he done it. Damned if it didn’t look like he had some sort of second sight an’ always knew what my hole card was. When I had him beat he’d fold up, an’ when I bluffed he’d always know it an’ call me.”
Windy stiffened but he dealt two more cards, making Dasher high with an ace.
“I know just how you must have felt,” Dasher chuckled. “Same thing’s been happening here. Take a little while ago. I had a four-card straight flush showing—”
“Your bet,” Windy interrupted him.
Dasher was too interested in his grievance to pay any heed.
—“and Windy was high in sight with a pair of queens. Well, he checked the bet to me of course, and I—how would you have played it, Pat?”
“If I had a bum hole card?”
Windy said, “The ace makes you high.”
“That’s the way it was,” Dasher told Pat eagerly. “I had a damned trey of diamonds in the hole. Didn’t match up my straight or flush. But I’d played it right through just like I was building up a real betting hand.”
Pat nodded judicially, “Only thing to do in a case like that—”
“Is this a poker game,” Windy demanded witheringly, “or a talk-fest?”
Dasher looked at him in surprise. “I’d like to get Pat’s opinion on that hand. He’s the best poker player in Powder Valley—”
“But he’s not playing in this game,” Judge Prink put in jovially. “An opinion expressed by an onlooker on the relative merits—”
Sam Sloan had moved up close behind the judge. He muttered, “Happens yo’re a onlooker too, jedge. S’posin’ you keep yore mouth shut.”
“I was merely—”
“Buttin’ in,” Sam Sloan finished for him. “Go ahead, Pat, an’ tell Tom Dasher how he should ort to play a hand of poker.”
“Only thing to do with a busted hand is bet it so high the other fellow can’t afford to call,” Pat told Dasher.
“That’s what I did,” Dasher said angrily.
“Prob’ly didn’t bet high enough,” Pat tried to comfort him.
“Not high enough, hell!” Dasher exploded. “I pushed my pile out in front of him. Lacking a little bit of three thousand.”
“An’ he up an’ called you?” Pat asked sardonically.
“That hand is over,” Windy said. “We got another one now—”
“He sure did,” Thomas Dasher said with a sigh. “And me without even a pair.”
Pat said evenly, “That more’n more reminds me of that game in Tombstone I was tellin’ you about. Makes a man feel, by golly, like maybe yo’re playing with a marked deck.”
Windy pushed his chair back a few inches. He placed his slender hands carefully on the table in front of him and looked up at Pat with narrowed, glinting eyes. “Are them remarks meant for this here game?”
“I’m talkin’ mostly about that game in Tombstone,” Pat told him gently.
Men began to move backward from behind Pat. Nobody said anything.
“What I was aimin’ to tell you,” Pat went on to Dasher, “was how that gamblin’ man worked it.”
“There’s nothing like that going on here,” the hotel proprietor said with some asperity. “That was a new deck. Right out of my stock. It couldn’t have been marked.”
“This fellow in Tombstone kep’ his thumbnails sharpened down to a point,” Pat said pleasantly. “Just before a game he’d sandpaper ’em down thin—just like yores, Windy.”
There was concerted movement now as men jostled each other to get out of the line of fire.
Pat stood straight and unconcerned beside the table, looking down at the gambler’s hands. “Ever been in Tombstone?”
Windy Rivers said, “Men have been killed for that kind of talk.”
Pat chuckled. “I saw that kind of killin’ the time I’m tellin’ about. Man sat at the table just like you’re sittin’ now. Hands out in front of him like that. One of the players that’d gone broke came up like I am with his gun in a holster—”
One of Windy’s hands moved so rapidly that the human eye could not follow the movement. A tiny derringer appeared in his fingers.
It spurted flame at the same moment that Sam Sloan jerked Windy’s chair over backward. The bullet went into the ceiling.
Sam leaped in the air and came down with both booted feet in the gambler’s face.
Pat Stevens turned sideways and rammed the muzzle of a .45 deep into Judge Prink’s bulbous belly. “Tell Deever not to start nothin’,” he warned, but he was too late.
Deever had caught up a chair and swung it at Sam’s head.
Pat shot the religious faker through the stomach and the chair clattered to the floor harmlessly.
Pat kept his other gun in the judge’s belly. “The jig’s up,” he told Prink grimly. “Ezra’s got Crane outside the hotel dancin’ on his toes with a rope around his neck, an’ he’s tol’ us plenty. Get to heatin’ a barrel of tar,” he directed the men around him. “An’ I hope you had chicken for supper here in the hotel, Tom.”
“We did.” Dasher jumped up excitedly. “My God, Pat. Windy had a derringer up each sleeve.”
“Just like he used to carry ’em in Tombstone,” Pat grunted. He gave Prink a shove backward into the eager hands waiting for him. “Hunt up three rails when you get the tar plenty hot. And you dig out all the chicken feathers you’ve got in the kitchen, Tom. It’ll take a heap to feather up the judge good.”
“What’s this all about, Stevens?” Rudd Felming pushed forward excitedly. “Is that man on the floor dead? Miss Dawson’s uncle?”
Pat nodded pityingly. “Only he ain’t really her uncle. Not ’cording to Crane. The judge planned it all an’ brought ’em here plannin’ to sort of clean the Valley out of ready cash.”
“But Miss Dawson? What about her?”
Pat said, “She got dragged into it without quite meanin’ to, I reckon. It was her that put us onto them this afternoon. Talkin’ to Kitty Sloan. That right, Sam?”
Sam had both of Windy’s derringers and he was breathing hard. “That’s right,” he said jerkily. “But I guess somebody oughtta tell Rudd she ain’t really no schoolteacher. She ain’t,” he added angrily, “no better nor no worse than my wife.”
Pat said to Rudd, “If you can stand that—”
Rudd Fleming laughed shakily. “Thank God she isn’t a schoolteacher. When she refused to marry me this afternoon I thought it was because she’d rather keep her job. If she hasn’t got any job—”
Pat laughed and pounded him on the shoulder. “Go on and find her an’ keep her away from here. This ain’t goin’ to be any fit sight for a lady when we get that tar to boilin’ an’ start stripping the judge’s clothes off.”
About the Author
Brett Halliday (1904–1977) was the primary pseudonym of American author Davis Dresser. Halliday is best known for creating the Mike Shayne Mysteries. The novels, which follow the exploits of fictional PI Mike Shayne, have inspired several feature films, a radio series, and a television series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1944 by Jefferson House, Inc.
Copyright renewed © 1971 by David Dresser
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2493-8
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Brett Halliday, Midnight Round-Up
