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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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Now the place looked as gaudy as a Mississippi riverboat.
I walked in and felt the stares that shot my way as the old door hinges creaked. I jingled my spurs up to a new varnished bar that must have been hauled from Missouri on a freight wagon. I nudged aside a brass spittoon with my boot. The bartender glanced briefly at me without any hint of a greeting. He was a big bearded man with a grimy shirt under an apron that was passably clean. He was taking cigars from a box and placing them in a glass case on the bar, his thick fingers groping the stogies as clumsily as a big boar grizzly gathering bones.
“Got any coffee?” I asked.
“No,” he said, without looking at me.
“Well, if you could make some, I'd be grateful.”
“Do I look like a woman to you?” he growled.
“I'll pay for it, of course. I just wanted a little coffee.”
“Go to hell.”
“Whatever happened to Doña Tules? A fellow could get a cup of coffee in here when she owned the place.”
“Well, she's dead.”
“Then whom do I ask to get some coffee?”
The big man crushed a handful of cigars and charged me like a bear, his snarl revealing yellowed teeth in the middle of his beard. Only the bar between us kept him from running right over me. I took a step back to stay out of his reach.
“I told you we ain't got no goddamn coffee!” he roared.
I could feel every eye in the place on me. I glanced to my right and saw a gambler who just had to be Luther Sheffield, the new owner of the place, staring at me along with everybody else. About that time, the front door flew open, and in burst Blue Wiggins, almost an hour early, and rather drunk. With him was my old friend and mentor in the Indian trade
with the Comanches, John Hatcher. If Blue was rather drunk, John Hatcher was a step ahead of him.
“By God, look, Blue!” Hatcher said in his drawl. “It's Kid Greenwood!”
Blue grimaced. “I forgot to tell you, John—”
Hatcher stormed up to me to shake my hand. “Good to see you two together again,” he said. “You fellers used to be thick as fleas. Remember how you stood off them Comanches on the Cimarron? Tell it to me again, boys. But let's get some whiskey first.”
“No whiskey for me,” I said.
“You want some coffee?” Blue asked, rather sheepishly.
“They don't have any coffee,” I said.
“Three whiskeys!” Hatcher blurted.
Blue leaned toward me to speak low. “Our plan ain't goin' so good, is it?”
I shook my head. “No, Blue, it isn't.”
T
he name Kid Greenwood had carried a curious reputation with it ever since my duel with Snakehead Jackson. True, I had killed Snakehead, but only because Snakehead's old Colt revolver had chain-fired and exploded in his hand, throwing off his aim. Even so, I was known as a fighter of sorts because of that damned gunfight. So, after Blue Wiggins, who was supposed to be acting as if he didn't know me, showed up with John Hatcher, who blurted out my name, revealing the obvious truth about my friendship with Blue—well, after that, everyone in Luther Sheffield's gambling hall looked at me as if I were on the verge of killing somebody just any minute. Except for the big ox behind the bar, who said, “Kid Greenwood's ass. He ain't no bigger than a cub.”
Anyway, we sat down at a slender-legged parlor table that looked as out of place in the old adobe cantina as a marble sculpture on a mud fence. We talked to John Hatcher about the
sheep-herding business and other adventures, until John finally got up to go relieve himself out back.
“Hell, I'm
sorry,
” Blue said, reading the disgusted look on my face. “I didn't know I'd run into John. He wouldn't have it any other way. He just had to come in here. What was I supposed to do?”
“It doesn't really matter anyway, since I couldn't get a cup of coffee without killing the bartender.”
“Well, the deal's off now, so let's just have us a time.”
“The deal is not off,” I insisted. “This is just a setback. I'll figure something out.”
When John Hatcher came back to the table, he was arm in arm with a little damsel of soiled virtue who called herself Rosa. We all knew her from the days when Doña Tules had run the gambling house. She was about half Mexican, a quarter Pueblo Indian, and a quarter something else that even she wasn't sure of. She was pretty as a doll, stood five feet one, and weighed 102 pounds, all of which was rolling hell. Rosa was also crazy as a liquored Comanche. She would do about anything for a dollar, and sometimes just for the whimsical fun of it.
When Rosa recognized me, she squealed, ran to me, and plopped right down on my lap, which didn't hurt my feelings very much at all.
“Easy, there, I'm a married man,” I said.
“Your wife ain't here, is she?”
“I ain't married,” Blue said.
Rosa sprang from me to Blue and looked back at me with a mischievous grin that gave me an idea.
“Rosa, what would it take to get a cup of coffee in this place?” I asked.
“Come to my room. I will give you plenty of coffee and other hot things.”
I smiled. “How do you like the new owner? Sheffield?”
She glanced at him across the room and made a pretty sneer in his direction. Her eyes rolled beautifully in her head. “He's all right.” She shrugged.
“Well, tomorrow night, I'm going to sit at his table and play some cards, but I'll need coffee.”
“You don't want to play cards with him. That's what this fool did.” She wiggled on top of Blue, then abandoned him to come sit with me again. “Spend your money on me, not on cards. Both of you, I don't care. All three of you!”
“Leave me out of it,” Hatcher said. “I can find my own.”
“Rosa, you've got to bring me some coffee to the card table tomorrow night.”
“Why do you talk only of coffee,
loco
?”
I reached into my vest pocket, fetched a five-dollar gold piece, and pressed it into Rosa's hand. “Just say you'll do it.”
She opened her hand just long enough to see the coin. “This gets you coffee
and
sugar.”
“Just coffee will do. The blacker, the better. Now, there's one other thing we've got to do. Go squirm around on Blue a little, will you?”
Blue grinned in appreciation as Rosa obliged, but he was getting suspicious. “What are you thinkin', Orn'ry?”
“You and I have got to get into a fight over Rosa.”
“What for?” Blue said.
“No need to fight,” she said. “You can share me.”
“So it'll look like we're not friends anymore. For tomorrow night.”
Blue let the logic sink in. “All right, as long as I get to win the fight.”
“No, I've got to win.”
“How come
you
get to win?”
John Hatcher threw back his whiskey and got up from the table. “I don't know what you boys are up to, but leave me out of it.” He walked toward the bar.
I looked back at Blue. “She's got to be
my
girl tomorrow night. She's got to bring
me
the coffee.”
Blue sighed. “I don't win the fight
or
get the girl?”
“All you get is your money back.”
“Huh?” Rosa said, having lost track of the entire conversation.
Blue frowned. “All right, but I ain't gonna lose no fight easy, Orn'ry. I got a reputation to think about.”
“Good. It's got to look real.”
Blue wrapped his arms tighter around Rosa. “All right, well … Ready?”
“I'm ready,” I said.
“Un momento, pendejos! Por qué quiere luchar?”
Rosa rattled.
“Here goes,” Blue said, and he all but mauled Rosa. He grabbed her by one of her dainty breasts, and one of her skinny thighs, and went to kiss her mouth—all so suddenly that Rosa squealed in surprise, which was my cue.
I sprang from my chair so fast that it slapped against the old dirt floor. “You're no gentleman!” I hollered as I pulled Rosa from Blue's grasp and drew my fist back to strike.
From his chair, Blue kicked me in the stomach, and sent me staggering. I charged back at him as he got up, but he spun me aside and tripped me, sending me crashing into the parlor table, which splintered into kindling. Before I could rise, Blue had me by the collar. He pulled me to my feet.
“If you're gonna win this fight, you'd better git after it,” he growled in my ear.
I took Blue's advice, and elbowed him hard in the ribs. Then I spun and punched him in the mouth. Blue saw it coming, and though I only punched him hard enough to bust a lip, he threw his head upward and staggered backward as if I had knocked every tooth in his head down his throat.
Suddenly, Rosa streaked by me and sprang on top of Blue, knocking him to floor, where she proceeded to pummel him with her tiny fists. I started laughing at the sight, until the big bullwhacker-turned-bartender made his way around the end of the bar with a hickory axe handle. He roared like a bear and took a couple of swings at me with the axe handle, which I avoided with some desperate maneuvers.
I was thinking about reaching for my Colt when old John Hatcher sprang onto the bartender's back, and started gouging at his eyes and screaming like a Cheyenne warrior riding into battle. This gave me a chance to pull Rosa off Blue, who quickly kicked my feet out from under me, and resumed our fight where most fights end up, on the ground, in kicking, groveling chaos. Rosa, of course, jumped right back on top of the two of us.
I was trying to tell Blue that we'd better get out if we didn't want our skulls split with that axe handle, when I heard the pistol
shot. Blue and I looked up from the floor. I pushed Rosa aside to see Luther Sheffield standing over us, a white swirl of smoke coming from the muzzle of the pocket pistol in his hand. Hatcher slid down from the shoulders of the big bartender, who dropped his axe handle, and started rubbing his injured eyes.
“Gentlemen,” Sheffield said. “If I may make such a mockery of the term. Perhaps you've not been made aware of the fact that we allow no fighting in this establishment.”
“No fightin'!” John Hatcher shouted. “What kind of a
cantina
don't allow fightin'?”
“This is no
cantina,
” Sheffield said. “Though it may be located in the pit of this uncivilized outpost of hell itself, this is a fine gambling parlor.”
As I rose from the floor, I took a good look at Luther Sheffield. In addition to the small revolver in his hand, I saw a dagger sheathed on his belt. He was no bigger than the average man, but his hazel eyes revealed his complete disregard for any amount of danger three frontier ruffians might represent. Our little disturbance had not ruffled him in the least.
“Parlor!” John Hatcher shouted. “Well, mister, I'm of a mind to clean house in your goddamn parlor. Any place with a dirt floor that calls itself a parlor ought to go on back to Ohio!”
“Now, John,” I said. “Me and Blue can take our fight somewhere else. Come on, you just go with us.”
I walked wide around the bartender, who was regaining his vision, and grabbed Hatcher by the elbow. “Come on, John, a man can't even get a cup of coffee here, anyway. Some parlor.”
“Someone needs to pay the damages,” Sheffield said.
“Damages!” Hatcher blurted.
I reached carefully into my pocket and showed Sheffield one of the gold coins I had gotten from Maxwell's ranch. I tossed it to the gambler, who showed a hint of surprise when he caught it.
“Will that cover it?” I asked. “It was just one little old
parlor
table.”
“That should suffice,” Sheffield said. He let the hammer down on his pistol, and slipped it into the pocket of his coat.
“You gentlemen might think about minding your manners, and coming on back sometime. No reason we can't all enjoy one another's company.” I knew this comment was intended mainly for me, for Sheffield wanted some of that gold I had just flashed at him.
“I'll come back with my own damn axe handle,” John Hatcher said as I pulled him toward the door, taking just enough time to wink at Rosa. Blue was holding the door open for us, and we somehow got out of there without one of Sheffield's little bullets in us. We went on down the street to a place that didn't mind calling itself a
cantina
and had one grand time.
T
he next night, I went back to Sheffield's gambling parlor alone. The first thing I did was to throw the bartender a five-dollar gold piece as an apology. He didn't speak, but he did put the coin in his pocket. Then I waited for Rosa to show herself, and told her to put on a pot of coffee for me. When finally I had my cup of coffee in hand, I wandered over to Sheffield's table and watched a while. He had a knack for fleecing his victims gradually, almost politely, letting them win just enough to keep them at the table. At length, a soldier lost what was left of his pay, and had to vacate his seat. It was a good seat, in that it was across the table from Sheffield, where he would be least likely to see my moves.
“Would you like to join us for a friendly hand or two?” he offered.
I shook my head. “I don't like the odds. Mathematically, I mean.”
“Mathematically?”
“Blackjack favors the dealer. I prefer draw poker, provided every man at the table gets a chance to deal.”
Sheffield's mouth curled as he chuckled, but his eyes did not share the mirth. “You mean, provided
you
get a chance to deal.”
“No,” I said.
“Then you mean provided
I
don't deal every hand.”
I shrugged as I pretended to sip my coffee. “That's not at all what I said, Mr. Sheffield. I said every man at the table ought to have the chance to deal.”
A couple of other soldiers who still had some pay left agreed with me.
“Let's say the winner deals,” Sheffield offered. “That way, the odds will give every man an equal chance.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Deal everybody one card,” a soldier said. “The high card deals first.”
Sheffield shrugged as I took a seat. He dealt the two soldiers low cards. He dealt me a queen. A Missouri teamster sitting to my left got a ten. Sheffield dealt himself a king.
“A lucky beginning,” he said.
It was early in the evening and the stakes stayed low. Sheffield won two hands in a row. If he cheated, I could not tell how. Then he let one of the soldiers win. The soldier slowed the game down with his clumsy dealing, but no one seemed to care. I won a hand and a small pot by pure luck of the draw and some rudimentary statistical observations. As I dealt the next hand, I used the cup of coffee to practice my trick of getting a peek at each card. The light was poor in the parlor, and the cards difficult to see, but I managed. I didn't use what I saw to cheat, and I lost the hand and the deal to the Missouri teamster beside me.
Sheffield won the deal back and began to shuffle. “Mr. Greenwood,” he said. “It is Mr. Greenwood?”
“Yes. Honoré Greenwood.”
“Your reputation precedes you.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Most people are disappointed when I show up after my reputation.”
Sheffield began dealing. “Perhaps the story has been exaggerated, then.”
“Which story?”
“The one about the duel with Snakehead Jackson.”
“I don't know what all has been told,” I admitted, “but I'll tell you what happened. Snakehead would have killed me if
his Colt hadn't chain-fired. It exploded in his hand and made him miss. I didn't miss. I'm a pretty good shot.” I looked at my poker hand, called the bet on the table, and threw two cards back.
“Still, it was a noble thing just to have the courage to meet a man for a duel of honor.”
“It wasn't like that,” I said. “There was no honor in it. We were on the run from a bunch of Mescalero Apaches. Snakehead's horse gave out. He wanted mine. There was no time to arrange for rules or seconds. No surgeon on hand. We just pulled our guns and shot.”
Sheffield flipped a couple of cards my way. “I hear you haven't been seen in Santa Fe for some time. Speculation held that you'd been scalped.”
I looked at the cards Sheffield gave me, frowned, and folded my hand. “Not as badly as I'm getting scalped here. I've been trading with the Indians, that's all. Working through William Bent's post up at Big Timbers.”
Sheffield finished the deal and collected the pot. “How's business?”
I took another small sip of coffee. It tasted terrible. I had never liked the stuff. It was like drinking hot, dirty water to me. “Profitable,” I said.
Sheffield was shuffling. “I've never understood. What does an Indian possibly have worth trading?”
“Most tribes trade fine furs and buffalo robes,” I explained. “The Comanches, however, are rich in horses, and there's always a demand for good riding stock. Then, there's the
rescate.
”
“The what?” I saw a true glint of curiosity in Sheffield's eye as he flipped a card my way.
“Spanish for ‘ransom.'”
“Ransom?”
“Captives from the settlements. Mexican and white. Mostly children. Sometimes women. I ransom them back from the Indians.”
“Doesn't that just encourage them to take more captives?”
“They don't need encouragement. It's been their way since Christopher Columbus was a deckhand. They capture the children of their enemies. That's just what they do.”
“Why?” Sheffield let a faint look of abomination show in his eyes.
“Perhaps to replace a dead child of their own. Perhaps as revenge for a child captured from them. Some get enslaved and beaten, some get loved and adopted.”
Sheffield dealt each man his last card. “Luck of the draw,” he said.
I nodded. “High stakes.”
We played a few more hands, and I managed to win one. On the following hand, as I dealt, I kept close account of the cards I glimpsed in the surface of the coffee. My memory has always been perfect, and I can read from it in my mind as if reading from the page of a book, so I had no trouble remembering every man's hand. I could also guess pretty accurately which card or cards each man would want to exchange in order to improve his hand. I also saw that the bottom card on the deck was a four.
When Sheffield asked for a card, I dealt him the four from the bottom of the deck, because I knew it would be of no use for him. Getting rid of the four exposed the next card on the bottom—a nine. As I tossed cards around the table, I always dealt the bottom one as long as that card would not help the man I dealt it to—for I intended to win this hand, and retain the deal.
I had two jacks in my hand already, and as I dealt off the bottom, I exposed another jack, which I saved for myself. I won the hand with three jacks, as I expected. Sheffield's eyes showed no suspicion.
One of the soldiers picked up his remaining currency, and left as I shuffled the cards. Rosa brought me a new, fresh, hot cup of coffee in a porcelain cup that Sheffield must have carted from Ohio. She hung over my shoulders and kissed my face a while as I continued to shuffle, then passed the cards to the Missouri teamster to cut.
“Go on, now,” I ordered, pushing Rosa away as I got ready to deal. “I'm busy.”
Rosa pouted and left.
“It's plain to see who won that fistfight last night,” Sheffield said.
I took the deck back after the cut and started to deal. “Well, Blue and I used to be pretty good friends, but I don't think a man should treat a woman that way. Even if she
is
a harlot.”
“A what?” the teamster asked.
“A whore,” the soldier explained.
“Oh.”
“You're a mighty civilized man for this territory,” Sheffield said to me.
“I'll take that as a compliment, coming from a son of Ohio. You are from Ohio, aren't you?”
“Born and raised. I used to ply the Ohio and the Mississippi on the riverboats. That's where I learned to play cards. A fellow who learns the rules and the odds, and exercises his memory can make a tolerable profit playing cards fair and square. I'd drift down to the Old South and fleece those rich plantation owners. I enjoyed that. No man has any business getting that rich off the sweat and blood of a slave. It isn't right.”
“I'm from Mississippi,” the soldier said, a slight warning in his voice.
“I'll bet you never owned a slave in your life, though, did you?”
“Nope.”
Sheffield called and raised the bet of the teamster to his right. “Then I have no quarrel with you, my good fellow. You've earned your own way in this world.”
The soldier called the bet. “I hope to earn a chunk more right here and now,” he said, as he tossed in his raise.
“Don't misunderstand me,” Sheffield said. “I wouldn't want any darkies at my card table. And you won't see any Mexicans in here, either, except for the courtesans.”
“The what?” said the Missouri teamster.
“Whores!” the soldier said.
“Oh.”
“Every man ought to know his place, but no man ought to be made a slave.”
I called the bet on the table and tried to sort out Luther Sheffield's values. I started dealing each player his new cards. The teamster didn't have much to begin with, and I didn't help
him. I knew Sheffield already had a pair of aces, so I dealt him two cards from the bottom that would not help him. This uncovered a queen that I knew would give the soldier three of a kind, so I fixed his hand to win. I did not intend to win the hand myself, because I didn't want to draw too much of Sheffield's suspicion too soon.
The betting through, each man showed his cards. I knew the soldier should win. I knew it in the core of my heart. But sometimes what you think you know just doesn't turn out to be so. Sheffield showed three aces, including the ace of diamonds that I knew damned good and well I had not dealt to him, for I had seen every card I dealt in the surface of the coffee cup. Somehow, he had stashed that ace somewhere during a previous hand, and had produced it now to complete his three-of-a-kind. I felt my own face gawking stupidly as I saw the gambler's hand, then quickly realized that I should not have been looking at his hand with such wonder had I not had any preconceived notion of what it would yield. I wondered if Sheffield was watching me. I raised my eyes to meet his, and found them piercing my stare.
Now I knew four things. One, Sheffield was cheating. Two, he knew I was cheating. Three, he knew that we both were on to each other. Four, neither one of us knew how the other was getting away with it.
I wondered what to do. Should I take a sip of coffee to bolster the illusion that it was actually there for me to drink? No, I decided. That would only draw attention to my secret, like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. Instead, I glanced at the soldier, so that Sheffield might think I was in partnership with the man from Mississippi. In a way, I was. Though the soldier didn't know it, I had tried to fix his hand for him.
“Damn,” the soldier said, seeing the three aces.
“Double damn,” said the teamster.
I glanced back at Sheffield and found him still looking at me.
“I'll call your two damns and raise you a son of a bitch,” I said.
Sheffield burst into laughter, and shook his head as if nothing had been learned.
The gambler won two more hands, then let the soldier win. I
guess he wanted to see if the soldier was helping me cheat. Luckily a distraction walked into the parlor about that time in the form of Blue Wiggins.
“Mind if I sit in this chair,” he said to the whole table.
The teamster shrugged and the soldier actually pulled the chair out for Blue. I said nothing. I looked briefly at Blue's face, and judged him to be perfectly sober, which was an improvement over the night before.
“As long as there's not going to be any trouble,” Sheffield said.
“I'm here to play cards, not cause trouble.”
Sheffield looked at me.
“I never start trouble,” I said.
“Five-card draw,” the gambler said. “Jacks or better.”
Blue sat down, and Sheffield began to deal. That gambler was smooth. He won three hands in a row, then let Blue win one. Blue didn't know how to do any cheating, so it was a fair hand that the teamster won. I almost won the teamster's deal, but Sheffield showed a pair of aces. He won another four hands in a row, then dealt me a winning hand. I knew he had done it intentionally, somehow. He probably wanted to watch me and figure out my secret. I managed to deal myself a winning hand off the bottom of the deck, and won the pot. Blue threw his discarded hand down in pretend disgust.
I gathered the deadwood in, and found the ace of hearts where Blue had left it for me. This, I stashed on the bottom of the deck. By using Blue's discards, and my cup of coffee, I won four hands in a row, and began to rake in a pretty good pile of winnings. But it was too early to go for the big pot, and Blue was running low on money, so I gave him a signal we had agreed on before: I cupped my hands around the mug of coffee as if warming my fingers. This was his sign to bet high, for I was going to deal him a winning hand. I made sure I didn't deal Sheffield anything high, because I had no way of knowing what card or cards he might have slipped up his sleeve, or wherever it was that he kept them, but I knew that if he had stashed a card, it was probably going to be a big one. Blue whistled at his hand and began to bet high. He discarded two cards, and by logic I knew what they were. I dealt him three
fives with an ace to boot. We both drove the betting up, and he won, which allowed him to stay in the game.

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