Clifton Adams - Gambling Man

Jeff climbed up on the bay feeling more a man than he had ever felt in his life. He had felt a good horse between his legs, he had felt the buck of a .45 in his hand, and he had heard a savage music more enticing than a siren's song.

He rode erect arid proud beside the tall figure of his pa.

Nathan was still smiling to himself when they reached the pasture gate. Jeff was put out because this was the one day that Bessie had to be waiting at the gate for him, robbing him of his chance to ride after her on his fine bay mare.

“Seems to me that mare's taken a liking to you, son,” Nathan said. “What do you say I make arrangements to keep her for a while?”

Jeff knew that his eyes were bugging. “You really mean it?”

“Sure I mean it. Look, we'll have a fine time together. Why, you'll be the best rider and the best pistol shot in this part of Texas when your pa gets through with you. And I'll teach you other things, too. Things your Uncle Wirt never even heard about!”

Jeff was stupefied with pleasure. A fine horse to ride all the time! A real Colt's revolver to shoot! Who could tell, maybe his pa would even buy him some thin-soled boots. It seemed that all good things had come at once!

They jogged Bessie almost all the way home. Aunt Beulah was going to raise ned when she found out about it, but Jeff didn't care. Within Jeff's chest there was a kind of pleasant swelling he had never known before. And once his pa reached out and punched him very gently on the shoulder, grinning. It was the only time Nathan had touched him, except for that cool handshake when they had first met in Aunt Beulah's parlor.

Chapter Four

AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER during his span of thirty years Nathan Blaine had tried his hand at many things. He had mauled spikes with a railroad construction gang in Missouri, hired out as a soldier with Mexican revolutionaries, trailed cattle to Wichita and Dodge. He had traveled the whole Southwest trading horses, he had served as special marshal at an end-of-track shantytown in Indian Territory. At times he had been with the law, at times against it, depending on which current he was drifting with.

His profession now was gambling.

He had learned his trade in many schools and from many teachers. He had plied his art in cow camps and on the trail, in the deadfalls of Dodge, around mess fires of the Mexican Army, unconsciously increasing his knowledge of faro, stud, twenty-one and all the other gambling games.

His natural, aptitude for cards was excellent; he had patience, stamina, an alert brain and a long memory. He had never used a holdout harness, and he never wore one of those deadly little derringers tucked away in his vest.

He depended on his skill and knowledge of cards to provide a winning margin in poker, as he depended on his nerve and speed with guns to provide the winning margin in a far more deadly game.

Nathan Blaine could not recall the exact moment when his handling of cards and firearms had acquired the polish of a professional. His school had been a violent one and only the quickest and the toughest had lived—there was a grave in Sonora to mark the success of his first examination, and another in the Indian country, near the end-of-track shantytown, and in New Mexico still another.

There were many places in the Southwest where the name of Nathan Blaine had meaning and was respected and even feared. He had hoped that Plainsville would be different.

This was a town of squatters who never looked beyond their own barbed-wire fences. He had returned to Plainsville just because it was the kind of place it was. To tell the truth, he was tired and needed rest.

Now he sat day after day in Bert Surratt's saloon, stark and bleak as a squatter's barn, turning a dollar now and then with the “grangers,” as the newspapers were beginning to call them. When he fled the town twelve years ago, he hadn't thought he would ever return. When Lilie died he had not imagined that the black despair would ever lift, or that some day he would want to look upon the baby that had killed her.

He had never amounted to much in Plainsville. A livery boy, a part-time rider for the big outfits. Only Lilie had believed in him, had seen anything in him.

And when Lilie died...

He remembered that day all too well; all the grief and helpless rage that had followed him down the years. His wife was dead. The baby—his son—had killed her. In the darkness of his soul he had craved violence, he had longed to lash out and cause hurt, as he had, been hurt. But how could a man hurt a baby; how could a man direct all the hate in his brain against his own new-born son? Yet Nathan could not bear to look at that small, red face; so he had left Plainsville and his son behind, taking his wildness and rage with him.

But now he was back.

He sat at one of Surratt's plank tables riffling a deck of cards over and over in his hands, waiting for someone to come in and start a game. It was a slow way to make a living, being a gambler in a place like Plainsville.

If it wasn't for the boy, he thought, I'd pack up and leave right now!

He'd have to keep clear of the New Mexico country, of course, because he'd heard the marshals were looking for him over there. But there were plenty of other places. If worst came to worst he could always head back for Sonora or Chihuahua—or Indian Territory. The Federal court at Fort Smith wasn't as powerful as it used to be, so the Territory might be a pretty good place.

But Nathan could hardly believe the hold his son had got on him. He had not been prepared to find so much of Lilie in the boy. Even now, after all these years, the sound of her name could squeeze his heart dry, leaving him bloodless and cold, savage with loneliness.

Bert Surratt, the only other person in the place, came over to Nathan's table and took a chair. The saloonkeeper was a beefy man in his late fifties, an early settler.

“Slow today.”

“Every day's slow.”

“Maybe Plainsville will get the railroad,” the saloonkeeper speculated. “There's been talk in that direction.”

“It's just talk,” Nathan said. “Why would a railroad want to lay track out here to the very center of God's nowhere?”

Surratt shrugged. “Well, there's still plenty of cattle around here, if you can get to them through the barbed wire. The town would make a fine shipping center for this part of Texas.”

Nathan gazed without interest at the dirty, flyspecked mirror behind the bar. “Don't you believe it. Plainsville will go on dying until some day they'll have to bury it to keep it from smelling.”

The saloonkeeper looked indignant, although he cursed the town himself for running off the cattle trade. “Now if Plainsville's as bad as all that, why did you come back, Nate?”

Nathan smiled thinly and shrugged. “It's a long story, Bert. Have you got some black coffee over there in that pot?”

The saloonkeeper was annoyed with Nate Blaine. Oh, he'd heard the stories that had been circulating about Nate killing a man in New Mexico—and maybe that wasn't the only one, either. Bert wasn't sure that he liked having a man like that sitting in his saloon day after day taking hard-earned money from the squatter men. Not that he cared for squatters, but they were the only customers he had, just about.

Groaning, Bert lifted himself from his chair and tramped heavily to the end of the bar where he kept the coffee hot over a coal-oil lamp.

And there was another thing he didn't like, Bert thought as he poured the muddy liquid into two thick cups. Plainsville had got over the notion that a man had to have a gun strapped around his middle every time he stepped out of the house. Not many of his customers were heeled these days. He was afraid Nate was going to scare all his trade away.