Clifton Adams - Gambling Man

Gambling Man

Clifton Adams

He played high, loose and recklessly with the most dangerous partner—Death.

Chapter One

PLAINSVILLE HAD BEEN A wonderful place to live in. Jefferson Blaine could remember it very well, although he had been a mere child then—eight or nine years ago. Now he was twelve and practically a man.

He had dreams of those old days sometimes, and in his sleep he could hear the harsh, strident laughter of the cowhands as they raced their horses through the dusty streets of the town, shooting off their guns and scaring the citizens half to death.

But they had never scared Jefferson Blaine, for in his adventurous young soul he had always been one of them, even though he was a town boy and had no horse to ride or Colt's to shoot. When they laughed, Jeff laughed. He would run into the street and wave to them, not at all afraid that the excited horses would trample him to death, as his Aunt Beulah often said they would.

There was one time in particular that he would never forget, and that was when a whooping cowboy had swooped him right off the ground and flung Jeff up behind the saddle. He had never felt so big in his life as he had that day, his arms hugging the big cowhand's waist as they made two complete runs of Main Street.

Aunt Beulah had heard about it, of course, and that night Uncle Wirt had dragged him behind the smokehouse and given him the breaching of his life. But he was never sorry about it. He'd have done it again, any time.

But the good old days were gone forever, Jeff thought sourly, trudging the path to Harkey's pasture, where the Seweli cow was kept. Every morning, even in the winter, he had to take Bessie to the pasture, and every evening he had to bring her back for milking; Aunt Beulah was dead set on having a cow for fresh milk and butter.

Far up the path another barefoot “cowboy” plodded toward the pasture to fetch the family cow, and at the foot of the path others were coming. The way it is now, Jeff thought bitterly, living in Plainsville wasn't like living in town and it wasn't like living on a ranch. It was just somewhere in between, the same as living nowhere.

At the pasture's barbed-wire gate Jeff cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “S-o-o-o, Bessie!” He hoped the fool cow would have sense enough to come without his having to look for her. Several cows were right at the gate waiting to be taken home, but not Bessie. The fool critter was probably up to her knees in some bog and he'd have to go pull her out.

He cupped his hands and bellowed again, and after a while he saw Bessie's tan and white spotted hide moving through the stand of willows near the pond. This was his lucky day, he thought. But he did not feel elated.

Todd Wintworth, who was Jeff's age, was hazing his own family cow through the barbed-wire gate. Jeff scrunched down by a fence post to wait for Bessie. Todd came up to him swinging a piece of rope as if it were a lariat.

“You got Bessie trained pretty good,” Todd said. “I had to go in after Blackie. Darn fool ain't got enough sense to know when it's time to eat.”

The two boys sat on the ground, chewing the young grass thoughtfully. Below them lay the town, such as it was. The pasture lay on a gradual slope to the east, and now they had a bird's-eye view of Plainsville's tar-paper roofs and dusty streets. The houses were not much more than frame shacks, and not many of them were painted. Each house had its own little plot of ground for vegetables, and most of them had cowsheds and hen houses as well.

By golly, Jeff thought, it looks more like a ghost town than a place where fifty or sixty families live!

He turned his attention to the sun, now settling behind the western prairie. It was sluggish and red, like some enormous tick that had gorged itself with blood. He studied the pattern of woodsmoke coming from the tin stovepipes sticking through the tar-paper roofs and wondered what Aunt Beulah was fixing for supper.

Todd Wintworth jumped up suddenly and hurled a stone at his cow. “There, Blackie! Get back on the path!” He shrugged with disgust and looked at Jeff. “Guess I better go, else I'll be chasin' that fool clear up to the Territory. By the way, Amy wants to know if you're aimin' to come to her Japanese garden party tomorrow.”

Amy was Todd Wintworth's sister, as pretty as a calendar picture, Aunt Beulah said, and Jeff was inclined to agree. Still, it made him feel kind of foolish having a girl tagging around after him the way Amy Wintworth did. They used to tease him about it at the academy, until he'd lost his temper and bloodied some noses. Lately, he had made a point of ignoring her when he thought somebody might be watching.

But secretly he was pleased that Amy was stuck on him. There were plenty of boys at the academy who wouldn't mind some teasing, if Amy Wintworth would just look in their direction.

He shrugged now, as though Amy Wintworth's party was a lot of fool kid stuff. But he said, “I'll think about it, maybe.”

Todd heaved two more stones at the straying Blackie, then started the trek down the long slope. He was about twenty paces away when he stopped and called: “Say, I almost forgot. Who've the Sewell's got visitin' with them?”

Jeff blinked. “Visiting?”

“Sure. I saw a black horse tied at your cowshed when I came past. There was a man takin' in a saddle roll.”

“I don't know about any visitors,” Jeff said. “I haven't been home since the academy let out.”

Todd called something that Jeff didn't understand, and then started running through the weeds to head Blackie back to the path. Whoever the visitor was, Jeff hoped Aunt Beulah had fixed company rations for supper, because all this traipsing back and forth to the pasture had made him hungry.

By this time Bessie had arrived at the gate. Jeff pushed a rope loop off the gate post and a section of the barbed wire fence fell to the ground. He put the fence up again after the cow was out and followed Bessie's switching tail down the path to Plainsville.

Jeff soon forgot about the visitor that Todd Wintworth had mentioned. He turned his mind to remembering the rowdy, violent nights that had been Plainsville's before the cattlemen started avoiding the town.

Time was when the piano in Bert Surratt's saloon had been pounded half the night and could be heard from one end of town to the other. There had been hardly a night that you didn't hear gunfire. More than once old Abe Roebuck, the carpenter and town handyman, had been called out of bed in the middle of the night to go to work on a new pine burying box.

Oh, there had been excitement, all right, and Jeff didn't think he would ever forgive the squatters for ending it.

No more would the bawling, leather-lunged cowhands come storming into Plainsville, blowing in their pay and putting some life into the place. The big outfits like the Cross 4, the Big Hat, and the Snake, all said they'd be damned if they'd trade in a town where squatters were catered to. And from that time on they had taken their business to Yellow Fork, which was not as handy as Plainsville but at least was a place that understood cattlemen.

That was how Plainsville got to be a squatter town. It was rare to see a man wearing a revolver on Main Street any more, unless he was a traveler, and Jeff could remember when every man in town had a heavy Colt's slapping against his thigh. There were no more flashy cowhands with colorful neckerchiefs and bench-made boots and fancy rigs.

All you saw now were bib overalls and thick-soled boots or brogans, and if a man carried a gun at all, likely it would be a shotgun—which was just about as low as a man could sink.