January looked up at him irritably. “Simmer down.”

  Sammy got the cork out of the bottle and threw it away. He hoisted the bottle and sucked from it, and came across the room to stand looking down at January. “From this angle you don’t look so damn tall, you know that?”

  January ignored him. Fat Annie came into the room with two plates of bacon and eggs. Her entrance seemed to mollify Sammy. He glanced balefully at January and swung away, lifting the bottle to drink. Annie looked surprised to see Sammy, but without making any remarks she came across the room and set one plate before January. Then she straightened and turned. She said to Sammy, “You could probably use this.”

  “I got my breakfast right here,” Sammy said. He gestured with the whisky bottle and a few drops splashed out of it.

  Fat Annie didn’t argue with him. She went over to her chair by the stove, sat down and began to eat.

  January ate the bacon and eggs quickly. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. When he pushed the plate away he felt less dragged out than he had before. Sammy Preston had tramped up to the front door and was holding it open, looking out. “Still snowing,” Sammy said, “but the wind’s died.”

  January glanced at him. He had a vision, just then, of the horse thief in Utah, riding away, bent low over the withers of the horse he had stolen from January. January once again saw the sights of his gun rise before his eyes, saw his finger whiten on the trigger, saw the muzzle jump with recoil. He saw the horse thief throw up his arms and pitch from the saddle, and he felt once again the bile of vomit rise into his throat. He had known, in that moment, that he was no longer a killer. It had been exactly then that he had caught the first touch of the cold finger of fear. It had never left him since.

  It was a strange kind of fear. He was not afraid to die: he was afraid to kill. Conscience would be far too simple a word for it. It was as if the ghosts of all the men he had killed had risen together and stood in a circle around him, forbidding him to lift his gun. It was like a dream he often had, when he was able to sleep at all. He would see himself in a saloon or a street or on the desert. The location changed from night to night, but the ending was always the same: a man would come toward him lifting a gun, and January would draw his own revolver, but something would paralyze his hand and he would find himself unable to pull the trigger while he watched muzzle flames spurt out of the other man’s gun. He would awaken sweating, and try to remember the face of the man who had shot him in the dream. He was never certain but sometimes he had the vague feeling it was the face of his cousin Chris.

  Sammy Preston came over and sat down at the table opposite him, where Fat Annie had sat playing cards with him. Sammy set his quarter-full bottle on the table and said, “I see you got a pack of pasteboards. Never travel without ’em, hey? Listen, I figure you owe me a crack at you after you took my money over at the Drover’s Rest. How about a little poker?”

  January considered him coldly. Finally he said, “It’s your funeral, kid.”

  “No limit. Right?”

  “Set your own stakes. It’s your game.”

  “And your deck of cards,” Sammy said pointedly.

  “If you think I can read the backs of those cards, you don’t have to play.”

  Sammy smiled thinly. “Oh, hell, I trust you.”

  “That’s a new switch.”

  “Simple,” Sammy said. “I aim to watch you close, bucko, and there ain’t a crowd of scared cow-rasslers around to back your play this time. Besides which, I ain’t got a gun. You’d look pretty funny if you shot me down unarmed.” He picked up the cards and began to mix them. “Seeing as there’s only two of us, let’s not bother about draw poker and raises. Showdown all right with you? Five cards face up, no exchanges.”

  “All right,” said January. He looked half asleep, but the expression was deceptive. Under his hooded lids he was watching Sammy handle the cards.

  Fat Annie got up and shoved her chair closer to watch. Sammy gave her a brief glance and fumbled in his pockets. He came out with a few scattered coins. “I’m low on cash after you cleaned me out over there. But I’m good for IOU’s. You can ask Annie, there.”

  January said evenly, “Name the stakes.”

  “A thousand dollars on an open hand.” Sammy blinked and looked at him.

  January’s face remained as it had been—drawn, weary, expressionless. He took out a flat wallet from the inside pocket of his vest and peeled off ten banknotes and laid them on the table. Sammy patted his pockets and cursed mildly. He got up and walked over to the registry, saying, “I need a pen and paper.” It did not escape January’s notice that Sammy took the deck of cards with him.

  Sammy was out of sight behind the counter for a moment. Then he came forward with a quill pen and inkwell and a few pages he had torn out of the hotel ledger. He tore the pages into ragged squares and wrote out an IOU for one thousand dollars on one of them, and dropped it on the table. He raised the cards as if to deal.

  January said quietly, “I’ll cut, if you don’t mind.”

  Sammy flushed deeply. Wordlessly, he set the cards out in the middle of the small table. His face went slack when January unhurriedly lifted the top card off the pack and set it aside. January said, “That goes on the bottom.”

  Sammy began to bluster: “Hell, you can’t make one-card cuts and you know it! God damn it, I—”

  “If you don’t like the cut, you can shuffle the cards and I’ll cut again.”

  Sammy’s face was bright red. “You’re damn right I will. I don’t know what the hell kind of shorthorn trick you’re trying to pull on me, but by God I—”

  “Shuffle the cards,” January said.

  Not meeting January’s eyes, Sammy picked up the pack and pushed the single cut-card into the center of it. He shuffled rapidly, evened up the corners, and presented the pack for cutting. January made a half-and-half break and watched Sammy put the pack together. Sammy dealt the cards with angry stiffness, each card face-up.

  When he was finished, he held a pair of fours in his own hand. January had nothing at all—five mismatched cards. Sammy brightened and suddenly brayed with laughter. “Looks like I win my money back, don’t it?”

  “It looks that way,” January agreed. “Unless you’re playing poker.”

  Sammy had been reaching for the money. He froze. “What?”

  “Standard poker rules,” January said, “allow that if no hand has openers, no one wins the pot. As far as I know, jacks are openers—not fours. You haven’t got an opening hand, kid. Nobody wins this one.”

  “What the hell, I didn’t say anything about openers.”

  “That’s right. You dealt—it was your privilege to state whether you wanted to play openers or not. But since you didn’t say anything about it, then the standard rules apply.”

  Sammy glared at him, working his mouth. He rubbed his hand on the gunless hip of his trousers and reached for the bottle. He drank greedily and slammed the bottle down on the table. “I’ve heard of some cheap tinhorn tricks in my time, January, but this—”

  Fat Annie said, “You know damn well he’s absolutely right, Sammy. Rules are rules.”

  Sammy’s hateful glance swung around to press against her. “And I thought I knew who my friends were.”

  “Play by the rules, Sammy,” Fat Annie said.

  “Why, you fat old—”

  January said sharply, “Quit taking it out on women, kid. Play poker or pick up your IOU and get out of here. It’s all the same to me.”

  Sammy mocked him: “Oh is it, now? Well, then, damn you, we’ll just deal the hand over again—and keep dealing it until one of us turns up with openers. Does that suit your Goddamn majesty?”

  “Call your game,” January murmured.

  “All right. Jacks for openers. Five cards open, no options, no exchanges, no draw, no bets or raises after the first card dealt. Did I leave out anything?”

  January waggled a finger at him. “Shuffle and deal.”

  “Sure,” Sammy said. He smiled grimly. “But first let’s sweeten the pot a little. How much you got in that wallet there?”

  “Enough.”

  Sammy said, “I feel lucky, January. I figure I’m going to bust you flat. Count it all out.”

  January thought about it. Sammy prompted him: “All right, smart feller, you’re the one who started noise about rules. Now let me tell you one of the rules. When a hand passes all around for lack of openers, the opening bettor can raise the pot any amount he likes. I’m the opening bettor, and we agreed on a no-limit game. Now what do you say, rule man?”

  January didn’t let it hurry him. What he was thinking about, specifically, was the pair of fours and the busted hand of cards that Sammy had dealt. It didn’t augur well for the run of January’s luck just now, and if he lost one big hand to Sammy, he would have lost his stake for the big game he still hoped to reach in Washington Camp.

  But finally he shrugged. He had been broke plenty of times in his life. It was part of a gambler’s existence. There was no particular tragedy in it; in fact, it gave a man something of a challenge.

  With something close to a conviction that he was going to lose, January opened his wallet and counted out the sheaf of banknotes. When he was finished he said, “Sixty-four hundred dollars.”

  Fat Annie allowed a gust of breath to escape her chest.

  “Sammy, you know damn well you can’t afford to lose anything like that. You’d have to put a mortgage on your mine to pay it back.”

  “I already got a mortgage on the mine,” Sammy said. “It won’t kill me to increase it a few thousand if I have to. But I got a feeling I ain’t going to lose it.”

  January’s eyes had lifted; he was looking over Sammy’s head, toward the top of the stairs. His attention narrowed like a cone. Amy Preston came part-way down the stairs and looked over the scene. “Sammy, what are you doing down here at this hour?”

  “Minding my own Goddamn business,” Sammy said roughly. “For God’s sake, get it through your head you ain’t got no leash on me.”

  Amy came down the stairs and crossed swiftly to the card table. She saw the heap of money on it and her glance traveled quickly from Sammy to Will January. She said, “How could you let him get into this?”

  “I did nothing to encourage him,” January said.

  Fat Annie said, “That’s true, Miss Amy.”

  January said to Sammy, “You can still pull out and keep your money.”

  Sammy’s lips peeled back from his teeth. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You know what I think, January? I think you’ve gone yellow.”

  January indicated the table. “My money’s there. Do you intend to match it?”

  “You’re damn right I do.”

  Amy’s voice hissed at her brother: “You’re a fool!”

  “Maybe,” he retorted. “But at least I’m doin’ it on my own hook, with no help from you or fat momma there.”

  January smiled slightly. “Let him do what he wants, Amy. It’s his own money.”

  At the use of his sister’s given name, Sammy looked up sharply. Amy’s chin lifted and, slowly, she moved around the table to stand behind January. When she put both hands on January’s shoulders there was no mistaking her meaning. She stared down into Sammy’s face and Sammy’s eyes slowly widened. “So that’s the way it is, hey? You and him, up there in that bedroom while I was asleep—”

  “Shut up, Sammy!” Fat Annie cried.

  Amy said in a level voice, “Sammy, if you want to be left alone, then you’ve got to leave me alone.”

  “But Judas Priest, do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  Sammy regarded her bleakly. Then, abruptly, he settled back. “All right,” he said. “If you want it that way. But between you and me, Amy, I’m not the one who’s making a fool out of himself.”

  “That may be,” she said. “Now why don’t you call off this ridiculous card game?”

  “No,” Sammy said flatly. “We’re playing it through to the finish. I ain’t cheating and January ain’t cheating. We’re leaving it all up to the cards. January knows the rules now and so do I.”

  January felt the soft cool pressure of Amy’s hands on his shoulders. He watched Sammy run the cards together and mix them.

  Chapter Ten

  Vince Perrine had ambled in the general direction of the card table, studying the players while his glance evasively bobbed around. He considered them and discarded them, one by one. Craycroft was too likely to make a fool of himself, as he had that time the Madden gang had held up the bank—all the other citizens had been smart enough to take cover, but Craycroft had burst out into the street firing a revolver at the bandits, and had taken a bullet in the shoulder as a reward. No, Craycroft would not do. Perrine looked at the others.

  Keene and the other two ranchers were all cut from the same cloth. They wore the independent, maverick brand of professional cattlemen—tough, quick to act, shrewd, and hard as nails when they had to be. None of them would do, either.

  That left the stagecoach division manager. Perrine’s covert glance examined him. The division manager was tough enough—any man who had survived and advanced himself in a roughshod frontier business like stagecoaching had to be made of sturdy material. But the division manager, if his way of playing poker was any indication, was a man who was always carefully attentive to the odds. He did not plunge or take chances the way the others did. He would not risk his neck on a long chance, especially when the stakes were vital.

  Maneuvering around quietly, acting as though he were merely pacing off restlessness, Vince Perrine worked himself into a position not far behind the stagecoach division manager’s chair. The back of the man’s head was a thick tuft of iron-gray hair; he had a neck like a Prussian Junker. Perrine did not know his name, but he knew the man well enough; he grinned slightly, remembering that on occasion he had held up the man’s stagecoaches on the Sonoita road.

  Perrine stood behind the division manager and frowned apprehensively at the clock. It was getting late and at any moment Marshal Six might return from his nightly rounds of the town. It was a big town, as Arizona communities went, and to cover all its possible trouble-spots took time; but that time, now, was just about running out. Perrine anxiously wondered if the three outlaws imprisoned in the storage room had seen his note slip under the door. He knew there wasn’t much light in that room, but there should be enough light coming in through the crack under the door for a man to be able to make out the brief note.

  Yet it had been quite awhile, and they had not signaled that they would agree to his plan. What the devil were they doing? Discussing it? How long could it take to decide between freedom and the terrors of the infamous penitentiary at Yuma? Perrine chafed and when Keene looked around at him with half curiosity and half suspicion, Perrine quickly busied himself by fumbling around and bringing out his rice papers and tobacco. He held the paper in the shape of a sluice, poured a line of fine-ground tobacco into it, closed the tobacco sack’s drawstring with his teeth, and shaped the tube of paper around the tobacco. He licked the length of the seam, pressed it firm, and curled both ends. Then he had to hunt for a match.

  Keene was still looking at him, perplexion turning into definite suspicion, when a sudden racket started up back in the storage room. Someone was pounding on the door and Jack Lime’s voice started to bawl curses.

  The noise averted everybody’s attention. And it was in that moment that Vince Perrine acted. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and in one sweeping motion he took two long paces forward and lifted his revolver to shove it hard against the back of the stagecoach division manager’s neck.

  “Everybody freeze,” Perrine said, and cocked his gun loudly for emphasis.

  The division manager had gone stiff as stone. His neck blanched as blood rushed from it. His hands, on the table, clenched into fists and lay there trembling.

  “Don’t move,” Perrine said again. The others looked at him with baffled eyes. Perrine said, “Anybody makes a sudden move, the stagecoach man here gets a slug through him. Sit still and do what I tell you.”

  Keene’s lips peeled back. “By God, Perrine, you can’t—”

  Craycroft cut him off: “He’s got the gun, Larry. He can do whatever he wants to do.” To Perrine, Craycroft said flatly, “I don’t know where you think this is going to get you, feller, but the only place you can go from here is jail.”

  “Maybe,” Perrine said. “Now shut up and listen to me. Craycroft, you got the key to that back room. I want you to stand up and put your gun on the table and walk over there and unlock that door. Swing it open and stand aside. The rest of you put your guns on the table with Craycroft’s. One at a time and slow. Anybody makes a mistake and the stagecoach man gets his. You people understand me all right?”

  No one answered him. But Craycroft very slowly lifted his belt-gun with thumb and forefinger and placed it on the table. He was about to push his chair back when Keene, his hot eyes pushing against Perrine, said: “Hold it, Hal. Just sit still.”

  “Get over there and open that Goddamn door,” Perrine said harshly.

  Keene said, “Don’t move a muscle, anybody. Jeremy Six will be walking in that door any second now, Perrine.”

  Perrine clamped his teeth together and said, “Craycroft, either you get up right now and head for that storage room or I’ll put a bullet through the stagecoach man, here.”

  The division manager swallowed and said bravely, “Go ahead. What do you think will happen to you then, Perrine?”

  “I’ll shoot Keene next, and as many more as I can take with me. Who wants to be the next to go?” Perrine grabbed the back of the division manager’s collar and yanked the man toward him, keeping the gun muzzle pressed painfully against his neck. “Move, Craycroft!”

  Grudgingly, Craycroft got up and went over to the door, getting the key out of his pocket. Keene glared wrathfully at Perrine, but did not move. Craycroft hesitated by the door, looking back at the table.

  Perrine said, “Open it!” He gestured to the others and watched while, one at a time, they laid their guns on the table. Craycroft fumbled with the lock, glancing once at the front door of the saloon. But there was neither sound nor sign of Jeremy Six. Finally, unable to stall any longer, Craycroft pulled the door open and stood aside.