Clifton Adams - Gambling Man

The stranger stood for a moment, very still. Then in four giant strides he crossed the room and stood in front of Jeff. “My name,” he said, “is Nathan Blaine. Some call me Nate. A little more than twelve years ago I married the prettiest girl in southwest Texas. She was your Aunt Beulah's baby sister—Lilie Burton her name was before we were married. Lilie was your mother, Jeff. And I'm your pa. Do you want to shake hands?”

Jeff couldn't take his gaze from the stranger's face. He said, “You ain't funnin' me, are you, mister?”

“Ask your uncle, Jeff. Ask your aunt.”

“I never saw you before! How could you be my pa?”

Jeff turned his gaze to his aunt and saw that it was true. He felt strange and kind of choked, and he didn't know exactly what to do. The stranger was holding out his big, lean hand, and Jeff stared at it for maybe two or three long ticks of the mantle clock.

Then they shook hands.

Chapter Two

SUPPER WAS AN UNEASY affair. For the first time since Jeff could remember, Uncle Wirt didn't talk about the tin shop, and Aunt Beulah didn't mention once that she was afraid the skunks were going to get at her chickens. They pitched into the chicken and gravy as if it were a matter of life and death. Nathan Blaine asked Jeff about his studies at the academy, but pretty soon the talk died away, strangled in the tense atmosphere.

Afterward, Nathan prowled the tiny parlor, and finally he said, “Think I'll go over to town for a while, and see how the old place has changed.” He looked at Jeff. “How'd you like to come along, Jeff?”

“Too late for a boy to be traipsing about,” Aunt Beulah put in firmly.

“Oh,” Nathan said quickly, drawing himself a little taller. “Yes, I guess it is. Well, maybe tomorrow, boy.”

Then he bolted, as though the house were choking him. He grabbed his revolver from the rack and buckled it as another man would put on a hat. “Don't wait up for me,” he said. “I'll spread my roll in the kitchen.”

After he had left, Jeff said, “Aunt Beulah, why didn't you tell me about—”

“He's your pa,” his aunt snapped. “You might as well call him that. I didn't tell you about him because I didn't know anything to tell. He ran off from you when you were just a baby. It's the Lord's working that you didn't dry up and die, like your mother, and I guess you would have if it hadn't been for me and your Uncle Wirt.”

She turned and went to the kitchen. In a minute she was back with a pan full of green beans to be snapped. “Ain't you gone to bed yet?”

“I was going,” Jeff said wearily.

He went out to the back porch and washed his dusty feet in a bucket of water that had been set out for that purpose. He had to lather them good and scrub hard because Aunt Beulah would inspect them before she let him get between her clean sheets. He heard his Uncle Wirt come in from the front gallery and say:

“Well, he's headed straight for Bert Surratt's.” Aunt Beulah snorted. “Where did you expect he'd head for?”

Jeff could almost see his uncle's shrug of uneasiness. “I was hoping he'd changed, but I guess he hasn't. The way he wears that gun—I don't like it. That's something new since we saw him last.”

“Twelve years,” Aunt Beulah said, “and gone downhill all the way, if you ask me.”

“Now, Beulah, don't be too tough on him. He took it harder'n most when Lilie passed on. We got no way of knowing what things goes on in a man's mind at a time like that.”

Jeff could hear the beans thudding against the side of the tin pan as his aunt snapped them expertly and quickly, the way she did all things.

“Twelve years,” she said again. “Seems to me that's enough time to get over what was bothering him. Lilie was my baby sister, remember, but I got over it.”

“I'm not standing up for him, but—” Then Jeff came into the room and Uncle Wirt was suddenly quiet.

“Let me see your feet,” Aunt Beulah said.

Jeff had a thousand questions to ask, but he knew they would get no answers. He trudged to his room when his aunt had finished her inspection.

He lay in bed straining his ears to hear what his aunt and uncle were saying, but they were being careful and keeping their voices low. He thought, I wish I could have gone to town with him.

He'd never seen the inside of Bert Surratt's saloon, and that would have been something to brag to Todd Wintworth about. He'd heard tell of gambling and drinking and all kinds of carrying on, but you couldn't be sure unless you'd actually seen it.

Aunt Beulah was dead set against Bert Surratt, and so was Uncle Wirt. They were both good church-going people, and they hated drinking about as much as they hated anything. Jeff closed his eyes and tried to imagine what his father could be doing in a place like Surratt's.

He imagined a scene of painted dancing girls and piano music and lots of laughing and maybe a cowhand shooting at the ceiling with his Colt's revolver.

But he knew that it wasn't really that way. He had passed in front of Surratt's place many a time and hardly ever heard a sound, except maybe some casual talk and the click of a roulette ball.

He listened to the night and let vagrant thoughts drift through his mind.

There was that business at the Wintworth's. Lemonade and gingercakes and paper lanterns hanging on clothesline poles in the Wintworth back yard—that was what they called a Japanese garden party in Plainsville. And there were always a lot of girls, too, wanting to play some fool game or other. Certainly he had outgrown kid stuff like that long ago.

He'd be expected to take a present, because it was Amy Wintworth's eleventh birthday. Whatever the present cost, sure as shootin' Uncle Wirt would take it out of the dime he got every two weeks for working at the tin shop and bringing in the cow.

After a while he got to thinking about Amy, and the party didn't seem so bad. He remembered seeing some Indian gewgaws in Baxter's store; bright colored beads and horn knitting needles and all kinds of stuff that Sam Baxter had got off an Indian trader up in the Territory. Indian stuff was pretty scarce in Texas now, and women seemed to take a shine to anything that was scarce. Maybe he'd ask Mr. Baxter how much the gewgaws cost.

Now Jeff became aware of the talk in the other room. Aunt Beulah and Uncle Wirt were still at it and had unconsciously raised their voices.

“It's that pistol that bothers me,” Uncle Wirt was saying. “To look at him you'd think he was afraid of appearin' indecent without he had that gun strapped around his middle. Beulah, do you reckon he's in trouble?”

“Nathan Blaine has always been a trouble and a worry,” Aunt Beulah answered shortly. “The older he gets, the bigger his troubles grow. That's the way it is with his kind.”

Jeff could hear the parlor rocker squeaking, and he could almost see his aunt pushing rapidly back and forth, as she always did when she was upset.

“Maybe we oughtn't jump at conclusions,” Uncle Wirt said thoughtfully. “Maybe he's been down south where a strapped gun is still the normal thing.”

Jeff's aunt snorted. “I can tell by looking at him how much downhill he's gone. If he's robbed or killed somebody, I guess it wouldn't surprise me much.”

“Beulah!”

“I mean it, every word!”

The rocker stopped for a moment, then started again harder than ever.

“But I guess it's too late to do anything for Nathan Blaine,” she added grimly. “It's the boy I'm worrying about. It scares me to think what evil influence he could work on Jeff if he ever got a hold on the boy.”

“I don't think we have to worry about that,” Uncle Wirt said. Jeff could imagine them looking knowingly at each other, thinking each other's thoughts.