A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (11 page)

She opened her eyes. She looked confused.

“I said, ‘Do you kin?’ Do you understand me?”

He pressed the blade a little harder and she nodded and she slowly began to reach into her pockets. She produced a few crumpled bills, but her hands were shaking and one of them slipped. She looked down at it, horrified, as a man’s voice came from around the corner.

“Emily? Emily? Where’ve you gone off to?”

Her eyes registered recognition. Panic. She took in a breath to scream and Cain drew back his fist and punched her, as hard as he could. She was out like a light and slid to the ground.

“Dammit,” he muttered, and began gathering the money from her hands. The man’s voice was getting louder; he was bound to come looking down the alley any second. “Damn it all,” Cain muttered again and rounded the corner behind the saloon and out around the back of town. He would have to take the long way back now and would barely make it to the coach house in time.

He didn’t like robberies. They left too much evidence and there were so many ways they could go wrong. On top of it all, yet again he was left without any real profit and he had to haggle with the driver for a spot on the coach.

But, as it seemed to always be, Fortune was on his side and before eight o’clock, Christopher Cain was fast asleep on the westward coach out of Tucson and when they woke him up to tell him his trip was up, he was watching the sun rise over Fulton Hollow and his mind was racing with possibilities.

It was the perfect frontier town. It had one main street that started with a church and ended in a saloon and along the road was a general store, a Chinese Laundry and a hotel. The town hall and jail were combined into one building, conveniently located right across from the saloon. There were apartments above all the businesses and a cluster of little homes down the road. People were milling about, some on horses, some on their feet, and every last one of them looked like they were born yesterday. Naïveté, thy name is Fulton Hollow.

Cain grinned, thanked the driver and walked into town.

He was still wearing his black outfit from Santa Fe and he got a few odd looks but, for the most part, the people ignored him. Most of their eyes were downcast and they seemed quiet and to the point. No imagination, no curiosity: perfect. Cain made his way along the boardwalk to the end of town, and walked into the saloon.

The watering hole was fairly crowded for a Wednesday morning. There were two men at the counter, dressed like ranchers but talking like sailors and the owner tending bar was eying them the way a butcher looks at a cow with the staph. There was a stage to the left, where Chris supposed the locals put on cabaret shows or maybe even the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, but right now it was empty, except for a mop and bucket. In the corner by the slatted window, three old men sat, smoking and they eyed him with suspicion and stopped their chatter when he walked in. There was a barmaid on duty, but she wasn't serving anyone; she stood off at the edge of the bar, talking to two other women who had certainly seem better days. The saloon was grim and grey and underneath it all was a yearning for some excitement. It was the perfect environment for the experienced confidence man and Cain knew exactly what con to run the moment he laid eyes on the back table.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to see a poker table in a frontier town saloon. On the contrary, they seemed to be almost mandatory. Yet never before had Chris felt such artistic inspiration upon seeing men testing the fickle attitude of Lady Luck. There were four of them, and together they were the perfect marks.

The mark facing the door and Cain, was absurdly well-dressed for this little town: He had a full suit with matching cravat, a noticeable chain for a pocket watch and his shoes weren’t boots but some kind of black leather, polished to a high sheen and reflecting the light from under the table. He couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old. To his right was a gentleman who could only have been described as an accomplice; his eyes were dull and doggish, but he dressed better than the other two players and held his cards so that the well-dressed man could have peeked over and seen them, if he really cared to.

The man on the left was spidery thin and bookish and there was a hungry, gaunt quality in his face that reminded Cain of a coyote. He watched the cards and coins on the table with something primal, and it was clear that he was a gambler and would be sitting at this very table were he in any saloon in any town in the world.

The last man was facing away from Chris, but the grifter could tell as he was walking up that this fellow, too was a prime target. Thick cigar smoke wafted up from above him, and he wore a green banker’s visor. He was a large man and his fingers resembled thick sausages as they clung to the cards through greasy cuticles.

Cain rounded the table, pulled up an empty chair, and sat down on the banker’s right. All eyes rounded on him immediately. He put on his best, big-wide-city-folk-shit-eating-grin and outstretched his hands like Christ to the little children. “Mind if I join you fellas?”

He had two of them from that first performance: the banker and the rich boy.

“Sure thing, coz,” murmured the big man. His green banker’s visor glinted as he looked Cain’s suit up and down. The well dressed man pursed his lips and started shuffling the deck; they had just finished a game.

“Buy-in’s two cents,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. With his approval, the accomplice seemed to ease comfortably into the idea of a newcomer joining their game, and now it was only the archetypal gambler who gazed at Cain with suspicion, spider-fingers resting greedily on his two pennies.

Chris felt the inside of his pockets. He had three cents left, so he had to be sure to win a few hands before he eased into an average set of winning and losing. Poker was not, as most people believed, a game of chance. It was a game of statistics, of mathematics and odds and, more so, it was a study in the human condition. Every human being alive had a tell. Some had more than one; the key was to study your opponent and know his mannerisms so well you could manipulate them yourself. Then you held the entire game in the palm of your hand.

Cain had no doubt that the gambler was watching him, even now, so he had to be sure and establish a tell for himself. It was easy enough, really. He would make sure that, for the rest of the game, at least half of the time that he was bluffing, Chris would scratch his jaw. In this way he could lull the gambler into a false sense of security, establish himself as nothing more than some city-slicker who thought he was a poker player and set these down-home-boys up for the biggest fall of their lives.

And that’s exactly how it went.

After another hour of playing, everything seemed even between them, and even the gambler was at ease with Cain’s presence. By then it was afternoon and the saloon was gaining a steady stream of customers, in and out. The environment was perfect, the marks were set and the confidence man was ready to make his play and get away. The stakes on the table were high enough that he could play these boys, spend the night in the hotel, and spend the next week scouting the town for fresh meat.

“Your turn to deal, stranger,” said the banker, sliding over the deck. Names had yet to be mentioned and no one had asked Chris his own. They were all sweating now, everyone looking equally nervous. It was Cain’s presence that had transformed this routine, friendly game into something dangerous, but they didn’t suspect him; it had happened so slowly that he was not the cause but just another victim, like the rest of them.

He strained to hide his smirk as his hands enclosed around the deck and he began to shuffle. He was deliberate in his actions, but his fingers were slipping and sliding and the cards flowed like quicksilver between his hands. What looked like ordinary shuffling was something elaborate and intricate, a dance with no audience that was totally untraceable and, somewhere in the midst of that miniature meandering of his digits, Cain managed to slip a card up his sleeve. It was completely unnoticeable and not even a master of the sleight of hand could have seen it happen. That was all it took, and the con was set for the fall of the marks. Chris gaze a few more lazy shuffles, and began to deal.

The gambler watched him intently as they played their hands. Everyone called. The rich boy seemed pleased with himself as revealed,

“Full House.”

The banker swore and turned over his cards. Two pair. Absolute shit and not even worth a comment on his part.

The gambler had nothing, not even a pair. His eyes were fixed on Cain, who was playing up his hand.

“Well, shoot, boys,” he sighed and folded over his cards. “I’m afraid I’ve got you beat. Four of a kind.” There was a clear smirk on his face but, as far as anyone could’ve seen, it was an honest smirk. The kind of grin a man gets when he has lucked out considerably.

Now it was the well-dressed man’s turn to mumble obscenities like a sailor and the banker just whistled and shook his head. Cain reached his hands out and started to pool all of the money together but, suddenly, there were four long, pale fingers wrapping around his wrist. Cain looked up into the jittery eyes of the gambler and for a brief moment, there was no hiding it: somehow, the con had been caught.

“Cheat,” whispered the thin little man. “Cheater.”

The banker’s head eased around like clockwork toward Cain. The rich boy’s brow furrowed and he pushed back from the table. Chris cleared his throat and started to shift backward. The situation was dangerously tense, but there was no proof. He simply had to maintain the story and go on his way.

Then the gambler drew a knife.

“CHEEEEEEEAAAAAAT!” he roared and lunged at Chris across the table and the whole bar erupted into chaos. Several things happened at once.

The banker fell backward in surprise and toppled over his chair to fall onto the ground. The bar tender and the waitress began running towards them. The two ranchers at the bar, who were by now, considerably shit-faced, began to roar and holler for a fight. One of the old-timers ran outside, yelling for the sheriff. And the well dressed man stepped back and started reaching for a revolver.

The way he saw it, Chris had two options: fight, or sit there. There was no flight option. And sit there, well, that didn’t seem too attractive. So when the gambler lunged at him, Cain stepped into action.

His elbow slammed into the man’s face, shattering his nose. He wrapped his arm around the gambler’s elbow and wrenched upward, snapping bone. He scraped the knife from his attacker’s hand, shoved him back and whirled on the rich boy. The rich boy’s gun was out and his thumb was just pressing down on the hammer as Cain shifted his weight down and forward and slammed into the other man like a human cannon ball. They tumbled to the ground but separated and, like a flash, both were up in an instant. The well dressed man brought the gun to bear, but wasn’t quick enough, and Cain’s hand was on his wrist like a vice. But the rich boy was strong and he tried to peel away and punched Chris in the stomach.

Cain shifted sideways, let go of the man, and sunk his knife into his throat.

The entire atmosphere of the saloon shifted. The gambler was still laying down on the ground and moaning, and the banker hadn’t moved an inch from his place on the floor but there was a sudden and powerfully oppressive silence that overcame the room. The knife had rammed in deep and torn and the rich boy was clutching at his throat and gurgling, bubbles of blood running rivulets through his crimson fingers. He shambled towards Chris, faltered and fell to the ground, life flooding out of him. Chris heard a click next to his ear and looked up.

The bartender had a shotgun barrel aimed at his forehead.

“Not a muscle,” he commanded.

Cain didn’t so much as blink as the bartender used the shotgun to guide him back to a chair and sit him down. There was a huge commotion outside of the saloon as people searched out the sheriff. When Chris was safely in the chair, the bartender stepped back slightly; there was a single moment where his eyes turned away and, in this moment, the grifter shifted one hand into his back waistband, removed the razor from Santa Fe and slid it up into his sleeve like a playing card, affixing it there as best as he could.

Then he waited for them to take him away and have him tried for murder.

But of course, there was no trial. Not in a small town like this.

Cain was thrown into the jailhouse without word and left completely alone. There were no other prisoners, hadn’t been for awhile, as far as he could see. The sheriff had cursorily searched him for a gun, and gone through his pockets, but he had found nothing, certainly not the razor, which now rested snugly attached to his undershirt.

He could hear yelling outside, at first a mob, for about an hour, and then it slowly transitioned to what sounded like construction work, and he realized that they were building a gallows. They meant to hang him, tonight, with no trial. He grimaced at the thought, but made no move to escape. He did not bang on the walls, he did not shake the iron bars of the jail and he did not pray or request to see a lawyer or a priest. There was a bucket filled with fresh water in one corner of the cell but he did not drink, nor did he wash his hands. He let the blood dry to a thick, rusty crimson as he waited, stoic.

And then, sometime around 4 in the morning, when it was still dark, the sheriff walked in. He carried a glass lantern, but it was weak, and it cast little light in the tiny room. His expression was unreadable. Chris stared at him for a full minute, and then finally the lawman put the lantern on the desk outside of the cell and walked over to look Cain in the eye.