The Accomplice (6 page)

“Sixty?” Virgil asked.

Mike slapped the table to let out some of the frustration that had been building inside of him like steam in a piston. “You know it is! Get on with it!”

Without reacting in the least to Mike’s outburst, Virgil fixed his eyes upon the man currently acting as dealer and held them there. He watched as Mike started to shift and twitch as if a campfire had been built under his chair. “Tell you what,” Virgil finally said. “Make it a hundred.”

Even though the cowboy was no longer in the hand, he slapped his hands together and snapped around to see what Mike would do. By the look on his face, the cowboy thought that whatever money he may have lost was more than enough to pay for the show he was getting.

Mike nodded slowly and let out the breath he’d been holding. “You think I’m stupid? I’ve played with you before, and I know you’re full of shit.”

“One way to find out,” the gambler said.

“Yeah. There is. I raise it to one fifty. You want to bluff me? You’d best be willing to do it with more than what you got.” He threw in his money as though the pot was already his and then leaned back to throw a sideways glance toward Doc. “You still in this, Holliday? Or do you need to go lay down for a while?”

Doc didn’t touch his cards. Leaving them where they lay on the table, he took a slow pull from his whiskey and let it trickle down his throat. Thankfully, the breath he let out was nowhere near an open flame. “Tell you the truth, I’m amazed the rest of you are still in this. Especially since I’d bet my practice that Orville here has at least two pair, which should be more’n enough to beat the pair each of us wound up with.”

“You think you know so much, Holliday?” Mike asked in a steady tone. “Then make yer move.”

Although Doc kept his eyes on Mike, there was no threat in his gaze. Instead, there was a bit of amusement as he shrugged and went for his chips. “I bet another two fifty. Consider it a donation to the fine art of tin-panning,” he said, with a glance over toward the old miner next to him.

Orville had to laugh. “I’ll be damned before I get shoved out of this game.” Reluctantly, he reached for one of the papers in his pocket. He brought it out, unfolded it and then dropped it onto the table. “That’s the deed to a hell of a good claim. You’ve got my word on it.”

“Tell you what. If it doesn’t pan out to cover your bet in a month, I’ll be back to have a word with you. Anything after that goes to me no matter what.”

The miner thought about it and nodded. “Fair enough, I guess.”

“That’s the spirit!” Doc said while lifting his glass. “I must say, you truly surprise me. Your drinks are on me tonight, especially since I shouldn’t have any trouble paying for them after this hand.”

Virgil was still shaking his head while watching Doc in action. He seemed more than a little uneasy however, when he saw the way Mike’s hand was inching closer to his gun. “I’ve seen you make some bold plays, Doc. Is this another one of those, or do you really have what it takes?”

“One way to find out.”

After pausing long enough to riffle through his chips, Virgil shrugged and pushed most of them forward. “No problem here. Most of this money used to be Mike’s anyway.”

“Care for a little side bet between us?” Doc asked.

Virgil shrugged. “What do you have in mind?”

“First one to make Mike cry wins a dollar.”

A smile broke across Virgil’s face as he shook his head at the same time. Glancing over to Mike, he said, “Doc’s just being Doc. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“Fuck that,” Mike spat. “And fuck you, Holliday.”

Mike looked back and forth between the other men so quickly that he got dizzy. The miner wasn’t giving him anything to work with besides his stubbornness to fold. Doc was taunting him openly, and Virgil merely looked back at him while trying not to laugh. Those last two fed the fire in Mike’s belly so much that he couldn’t even begin to hide it. Looking over at the grinning cowboy just made things worse. “What the hell is so funny?” Mike asked, while all but lunging toward the youngest man at the table.

The cowboy recoiled slightly but couldn’t stop smirking. “Just watching,” he said while holding his hands up. “Don’t mind me.”

“Yeah? Well let’s see how you all like this.” Mike shoved his chips into the middle. “I got you covered, plus another fifty.”

Doc’s expression didn’t shift. His steely gray eyes locked onto Mike as if he was the only other living soul in town. In the moments that he held that stare, every other sound in the saloon seemed to fade away. Finally, knowing when the other man was just about to snap, Doc pulled out a wad of folded bills from his jacket pocket and said, “I raise. Five hundred.”

The miner let out a low whistle.

“Well, old-timer,” Doc said. “You have anything else to bet? Or do you really have that much confidence in two pair?”

The miner shook his head and sighed. “I know better than to gamble with what I don’t have. Besides,” he added, glancing at the gun in Doc’s holster, “I wouldn’t want to make those claims sound like they’re worth enough to cover this. Take ’em.” With that, he dropped his cards faceup onto the table. He had two pair: aces and threes.

After a few coughs into the back of his hand, Doc asked, “What about you, Virgil?”

Virgil’s face could have been made from stone. Although he wasn’t outright mad, he obviously wasn’t laughing anymore. The smile on his face wasn’t fooling anyone, and when he dropped his cards onto the table, it seemed like he was cutting off five of his own fingers. “You got something, Doc. I don’t know what it is, but my guess is it beats my two ladies.”

Doc’s nod was almost imperceptible. His eyes remained firmly trained upon Virgil in a way that was strangely comforting to the gambler.

“What’d you say you had?” Mike grunted. “Queens?” Although the subtle shrug he got from Virgil widened the grin on his face, that celebration didn’t last long once he looked over to Doc. Bit by bit, Mike’s grin dried up and finally blew away. The mention of queens didn’t rattle the dentist in the slightest. Glancing down at his own cards, Mike felt as if his innards were being squeezed in a clamp.

“I heard you was lucky,” Mike said to Doc. “I also heard you was a cheat. What I know for damn sure you want me to call so bad you can taste it.” Without another word, he pitched his cards onto the table so roughly that they flipped over to reveal a pair of kings. “I’ll get you next time.”

Doc turned his cards over and set them down. There was plenty of paint to be found, but none of it matched.

“Ace high?” Mike snarled.

The cowboy gaped at the cards as if they’d come alive and started to dance.

Virgil let out a disgusted sigh but tipped his hat to the dentist. “You got me, Doc. You’d have a hell of a career in theater.”

“Possibly,” Doc replied. The southern drawl in his voice lent it even more of an amused tone. “But I’d rather be up close to my audience. More fun that way.” He reached out and pulled in a portion of the chips while looking over to Mike.

The miner laughed under his breath at first, but then out loud. It was a sad, regretful laugh that was directed more at himself than the situation. “Good game, Doc. Next time, I’ll know to listen to my gut.”

“And next time, I’ll try to draw better cards.”

Mike was seething. His fingers curled around the edge of the table with such power that his knuckles turned white. “You . . . bluffed me . . . with an . . .
ace high
?”

“The night’s young, Mike,” Doc drawled. “And you’ve got to admit it was a hell of a ride.”

Letting out a breath that was like steam coming from a bull’s nostrils, Mike stood up and lifted his side of the table with him. Chips scattered and cards fluttered through the air as the heavy table knocked into both Virgil and the miner. By the time the edge of the table slammed against the floor, Mike was reaching for his gun.

“Aww hell,” Caleb grunted as he jumped behind the bar. “Here we go.”

Caleb jumped onto the bar, slid a few inches over the polished surface, and then dropped down on the other side. He could already hear hell breaking loose behind him, and the money needed to fix the damages rang up like there was a cash register in his head. Glasses were breaking, and chairs were surely to follow, making the stitches in his face the least of Caleb’s pains.

“What’s happening?” Hank asked as he crouched down to try to help Caleb to his feet.

But Caleb was already upright and searching the saloon around him. When he saw the first glint of bared iron, he grabbed hold of the barkeep’s shirt and pulled him down behind the bar. A gunshot barked through the air as the table that had played host to Mike’s game rolled lazily on the floor.

“Just what I thought would happen, that’s what,” Caleb snarled.

“You knew there was gonna be a fight?”

“I had a real good suspicion.”

“Should I call the law?”

“No,” Caleb said as he began searching behind the bar. Finding what he was after, he grabbed hold of the sawed-off shotgun and made sure it was loaded. “I’ll take care of this myself.”

 

 

The first gunshot had come from another table not too far from where Doc was sitting. Even though there wasn’t actually a table in front of him any longer, he remained in his seat and looked around as though he was merely sampling a passing breeze. Apparently, someone had tried to take advantage of the sudden turmoil by grabbing the money from another table.

It didn’t seem as though they were going to get away with it.

“You’re dead, Holliday,” Mike said as he kicked his chair onto the floor behind him.

“It was a fair hand,” Doc said while calmly getting to his feet. “Grousing about it won’t help.”

Virgil dusted himself off as he got back onto his feet. While he’d managed to avoid getting hit by too much of the overturned table, the miner sitting next to him had caught the brunt of it. Orville was holding his side but still managing to scoop up as many of his claims as he could hold with his free hand before making a run for it.

“Doc’s right,” Virgil said. “You lost fair and square. We both did.”

Mike’s lips curled back into an animal’s snarl. “Fair, my ass. He either agrees to hand my money back, or I put him out of his goddamn misery.”

Doc’s eyes were even colder than when he’d bet everything he had on an ace high. The hand he was betting on at the moment, however, was the one hovering within a few inches of the pistol holstered beneath his left arm. “You already made a mess,” Doc said in his smooth, southern manner. “Don’t make it any worse.”

As the players at the nearby table still struggled among themselves for the money in their own game, the flaring tempers seemed to spread like wildfire throughout the rest of the saloon. People who’d turned away from their games to see what was happening found their stacks of money depleted or another player peeking at cards that weren’t their own.

Standing in the eye of the hurricane, Mike, Doc, and Virgil stared each other down as if nothing else existed.

Suddenly, thunder filled the Busted Flush as the air exploded with the sound of a shotgun being fired into the ceiling.

“Enough of this!” Caleb shouted from where he stood in the middle of the main room. “Everyone step back, put your guns on the floor, and take a breath! If we can settle up and get on with our night, there won’t be any need to get the law.”

Doc’s voice drifted toward Mike like a stiletto wrapped in silk. “I know how we can settle this. Let’s flip a coin for it. Maybe you’ll have an easier time at that than trying to figure out how to play poker.”

A string of unintelligible curses spewed from Mike’s mouth as his hand snapped toward his gun.

With a flicker of motion and a subtle lean forward, Doc had drawn his own pistol and stuck the barrel underneath Mike’s chin.

Mike froze in his place; his hand still wrapped around a pistol that was almost clear of its holster. After a bit of pressure from the gun against his chin and a devilish tilt of Doc’s head, Mike loosened his grip and allowed the pistol to drop back into its holster.

“That’s better,” Doc said, ignoring the chaos swirling around him.

“Goddammit, Doc,” came a grumbling, familiar voice. “Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?”

Doc’s eyes flickered in the direction of that question and found Virgil standing up and shoving aside a drunk who’d decided to try his hand at brawling. As he looked back toward Mike, Doc made a couple of sideways steps so he could watch both men without having to look away from either one.

“That miner had more deeds in his pocket. Deeds that were actually worth something,” Virgil said. “He was about to wager every last one of them before you stepped in and spoiled the whole thing.”

“Well then,” Doc said. “I suppose you had every intention of splitting your share with me?”

Virgil glanced over to the miner, who was busy scrambling toward the front door while doing his best to avoid the incoming punches, kicks, or bottles flying through the air. While the brawl wasn’t the biggest the Busted Flush had ever seen, it was doing a fair amount of damage.

“Damn. He’s headed out the door,” Virgil said.

“He’s a gambler,” Doc pointed out. “Not to mention the fact that he came out ahead today. He’ll be back, and he won’t mind playing with us. It’s this one he’s gonna be wary of.” With that last part, Doc pushed his gun underneath Mike’s chin just enough to point the other man’s head upward a few more degrees.

But Virgil didn’t even seem to take notice of Mike squirming and cursing at the end of Doc’s arm. Instead, he shook his head and slowly lowered his arm until it was within drawing distance of his pistol. “He’s not the one that worries me, Doc. At least he knows his place.”

For a moment, Doc looked surprised. That moment passed quickly, only to be replaced by a subtle shaking of his head. “That truly is a shame, then. We could have made some real money together.”