Simon Hawke - The Six Gun Solution

Masterson pulled out a crudely made wooden chair and sat down at the table. “Well, it’s more respectable, for one thing,” he said, as he took out a pack of cards and absently started to shuffle them. “Lots safer, too.”

“Like yesterday, you mean?” asked Scott, with a smile.

Masterson shrugged. “What happened yesterday doesn’t really happen very often. And, in a way, it was my own fault. Slim was cheating. And he wasn’t very good at it. I decided to cheat back a bit, to teach him a lesson. He wasn’t good enough to catch me at it, hut he tumbled to it somehow. I read him wrong. I didn’t figure that he’d pull a gun. That was foolish of me. Yes, there are risks to being a gambler, but the advantage is that you only have to deal with trouble that comes to you. You don’t have to go out looking for it.” He glanced at Scott and smiled. “You play?”

He put the deck down in the center of the table for him to cut. Scott looked at him a moment, then picked it up and cut it twice, one-handed. He shuffled it, quickly shot the deck from one hand to the other, split it, fanned the two equal parts in either hand, put it back together and then started dealing from the top, face down.

“Deuce of hearts.” he said, as he put the first card down. “Deuce of spades. Deuce of clubs. King of clubs. King of diamonds.”

Masterson stared at him, then slowly turned each card over to reveal the full house. He whistled softly.

“Son. I don’t know how you did that, but if you could teach me. I’d be much obliged. That’s my own deck and I know it’s clean.”

“All it takes is practice. Mr. Masterson.” said Scott. He reached out and pulled a silver dollar from Masterson’s ear, then walked it across his fingers, back and forth, snapped them, and the coin was gone. “Lots and lots of practice.”

Masterson shook his head with awe. “There sure is a lot more to you than meets the eye.”

Neilson smiled. “You could say that.”

“You see about all you want to see here?”

“Yeah. I guess I have.” said Scott

They were so small, they could easily have been missed, but he had known what he was looking for. Three tiny holes in the adobe wall. Burned into it by lasers.

The dining room in the Grand Hotel boasted an elegant menu for a town like Tombstone, but Neilson avoided the dubious French cuisine and ordered a thick steak, instead. He had it with a buttered baked potato and some beans and washed it down with a passable claret. He was about halfway through his meal when a soft, feminine yoke behind him said. “You’re the Montana Kid, aren’t you?”

He turned slightly and saw a lovely young girl of about eighteen or nineteen, with long, silky, ash-blonde hair and large, powder-blue eyes. She was wearing a long, light blue calico dress with lace around the collar and high-buttoned shoes. Her creamy complexion was absolutely flawless, she had a small, tuned-up nose, a slightly pointed chin and naturally pouting lips. He thought she was one of the most beautiful girls he’d ever seen.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your meal,” she said, coming around in front of him, “but I saw what you did yesterday and I thought it was about the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You were there? “ Scott said, with some surprise. He could hardly believe he had missed seeing her.

“I work there.” she said, lowering her eyes slightly. “I… I wasn’t dressed like this. I’m one of the saloon girls. My name is Jennifer. Jennifer Reilly.”

Neilson wiped his mouth and stood up “Pleased to meet you, Miss Reilly. And no. you’re not interrupting me. I’d appreciate the company. Please, sit down.”

He pulled out a chair for her.

“Call me Jenny. What do your friends call you-Montana?”

He grinned. “No, not really. My friends call me Scott. Scott Neilson.”

“It’s nice to meet you. Scott” She watched him as he sat back down. “I see you’re not wearing your gun.”

“No, Virgil Earp took it from me. Said there was an ordinance against carrying guns in Tombstone.”

“That doesn’t seem to stop a lot of people.” she said.

“No, it doesn’t, does it?”

“Aren’t you afraid? To be without your gun, I mean. Those cowboys that you shot have some pretty nasty friends.”

“Like Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo?”

“And Ike Clanton and the McLaury brothers: she said.” I see you’ve already heard of them”

“Yes. Bat Masterson warned me about them”

“And you’re not worried?”

“Well, yes. I confess I am, a little. But the law’s the law, isn’t it? And I’ve only just arrived in town. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of a man like Virgil Earp. His brother, Wyatt, already seems to have taken a dislike to me.”

“Oh, that sounds like Wyatt, all right.” she said. “Wyatt’s very protective of his brothers. And to him, any man who wears a gun and uses it the way you do means trouble. And wait till you meet Morgan.”

“Oh? What’s he like? He a lawman. too?”

“He’s a shotgun guard on the Wells Fargo stage. You’ll know him when you see him. Those three Earp brothers look as alike as peas in a pod, but they’re all really very different. Virgil is the steady one. He’s calm-tempered and looks to avoid trouble if he can. Wyatt’s steady, too. I guess, only in a different way. If there’s trouble, he doesn’t waste too many words. He’ll buffalo you with his six-shooter just as soon as look at you “

To “buffalo” someone, Neilson remembered, meant to get the better of him in some way, usually by force. What Jenny was referring to was Wyatt Earp’s penchant for braining miscreants with the barrel of his gun and knocking them unconscious. In a Wild frontier town like Tombstone, it was nothing more than sensible law enforcement. Why give a man a chance to draw his gun if you can crack his skull first and avoid all the unpleasantness?

“And as for Morgan,” Jenny continued, “he’s real hot tempered and can be quite a handful when he’s been drinking. He hangs around with that Doc Holliday a lot. Wyatt and Doc are close friends too, which seems a little strange. I guess, seeing as they’re so different Wyatt doesn’t drink at all and Doc drinks quite excessively. When him and Morgan have had a few too many, watch out!”

“I’ll try to remember that.” said Scott. “May I offer you some wine?”

“Oh. thank you. no.” She hesitated. “Well, maybe just a smidgen? It goes to my head so.”

Scott smiled and signaled the waiter for another glass.

“Anyway,” Jenny went on. “Morgan? He only gets riled when he’s had a few too many, but that Doc Holliday, he’s got a real short fuse. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, him so frail and sickly and coughing all the time-he’s got consumption, you know-but he’s a real killer. They say he’s one of the deadliest men with a six-shooter in the whole Southwest.”

“Really? You seem to know a lot about the people in this town.”

She blushed and looked down. “You must think I’m an awful gossip.”

“No. I don’t. Just that I’m new in town and it’s useful to hear such things. Might help me stay out of trouble.”

“Seems to me like you’ve already found some. With Slim and Jack, I mean. Not that anybody’s going to miss them overmuch. They were rustlers, you know. Real troublemakers.”

“I gather there’s a lot of rustling going on around here,” Neilson said.

“

Oh, yes. And there’s a lot who don’t mind it. They can get their cattle and their horses cheaper when they’re rustled up from Mexico. Or from one of the bigger spreads around here. People don’t ask a lot of questions when they’re getting a bargain. Course, the big ranchers, they don’t like it one bit, but they don’t have all that much to say about it. The rustlers don’t bother the smaller ranches and they usually get a real welcome there. And they never cause much trouble in town, either. At least they didn’t until lately.”