Dead Man’s Hand (61 page)

Wild Bill’s second shot aimed true, however, and McCall was killed instantly.

Hickok affected an escape by way of a rear door to the property and the theft of a
horse. It was thought that with no sheriff yet elected in Deadwood the notorious outlaw
had once again escaped justice, but he was apprehended a week later in the city of
Laramie, Wyoming by one Deputy Marshal Balcombe.

On the night of the murder this reporter made a survey of the scene and there discovered
the very cards that had cost an honest man his life. McCall’s losing hand had been
scattered across the table amid the other discarded hands, but in the place where
Hickok had been seated, five cards remained fanned out in a characteristic display
of arrogance. Not being well versed in the complexities of games of chance, this reporter
consulted Mr. Mann on the likelihood of Hickok’s cards winning the game.

“It’s a good hand, and hard to beat,” Mann said. “But I hope I don’t see those cards
come my way any time soon.” With a shudder he added, “That’s a dead man’s hand.”

J
♠
J
♣
10
♠
10
♦

Deadwood Weekly Pioneer

Albert M. Werrick

Deadwood Pines

August 5, 1876

Heroism in the Black Hills

It was civilian justice in the form of local businessman Bill Sutherland, who with
a single bullet put an end to the threat of violence that Deadwood has lived under
since infamous outlaw J.B. “Wild Bill” Hickok arrived in town.

Uncowed by Hickok’s brazen demeanor and deadly reputation, Mr. Sutherland strode into
the Progressive Hall Saloon at 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday past and took vengeance for
the death of his brother, one Jack Sutherland, also known as McCall. Witnesses claim
that Mr. Sutherland drew his gun and said only, “Damn you, take that!” before the
report from the gun echoed through the town. Mr. Sutherland immediately turned his
weapon over to Ed Durham, proprietor, and waited peacefully while a miners’ jury was
assembled, Deadwood as yet still being without an elected sheriff.

Mr. Durham, responsible for restoring the scene to order, has told this reporter that
in the aftermath he gathered the cards from the table, with the intention of presenting
them to Mr. Sutherland upon his inevitable acquittal, in token for his heroism. When
asked what the dead man had been holding, he told this reporter that he would only
reveal the content of the dead man’s hand to Mr. Sutherland, the hero of the Black
Hills.

Hickok’s remains will be returned to his widow in Cheyenne. No services are to be
held in Deadwood. May God have mercy on his soul.

A
♠
A
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8
♥
8
♣

Black Hills Chronicle Weekly

A. William Merwick

Deadwood, Dakota Territory

August 5, 1876

Local Miner Dead in Shoot-out at No. 10 Saloon

On the afternoon of August 2, the fragile peace of Deadwood Gulch was broken by gun
fire, and afterward a man lay dead.

Drawn to the scene by the sound of a gunshot, this reporter was approached by Captain
James “Will” Massey who emerged from the saloon in some distress, cradling his bloody
hand.

“Wild Bill shot me!” he exclaimed. The accusation was happily learned to be unfounded,
though he can be forgiven for his confusion in the face of pain and violence.

Inside the saloon the scene was a gruesome one. Witnesses say that a game of poker
was underway when local miner Jack “Crooked Nose” McCall suddenly rose from his seat.
McCall, under the heavy influence of drink, was heard to say “Damn you, take that!”
as he aimed his pistol at renowned lawman and gunslinger James “Wild Bill” Hickok.
Before McCall could pull the trigger, Hickok—with reflexes honed on the prairie as
a scout for the Union Army—drew his own weapon, and with the marksmanship that is
his claim to fame, put a single shot through McCall’s crossed eye.

McCall’s gun discharged as he fell to the floor. This led Charles Rich, also seated
at the table, to draw in self-defense, and in the confusion fired his own weapon,
resulting in the injury sustained by Captain Massey.

“It was over in no more than the blink of an eye,” said Carl Mann, one of the saloon’s
proprietors.

Hickok, in full view of this reporter, stood and swept up the cards he had held moments
before, along with the unturned hole card, and tucked them inside his vest pocket.

“A souvenir to send to my wife,” he explained, referring to his wife of seven months,
Agnes Lake Hickok, lately of Cheyenne. He paused, and turned over the cards that lay
at McCall’s place at the table: two pair, aces and eights. “That right there is a
hand you don’t want,” he said. “A dead man’s hand.”

* * *

Author’s Note: The “Dead Man’s Hand” as it is known today is comprised of “aces and
eights,” but there have been as many hands by that name as the coward Jack McCall
had alibis and aliases. The earliest reference to aces and eights—rather than a full
house of jacks and tens, or jacks and sevens—appeared in 1900, and the phrase wasn’t
connected to Hickok until the 1920s, nearly fifty years after his death.

My Publisher/Editor: Steve Saffel, for acquiring and editing the book, and to the
rest of the team at Titan Books.

My Agent: Seth Fishman, who I think of as “the Best American Literary Agent,” and
my former agent Joe Monti (now a book editor), who was there when this idea coalesced
and the one who helped me bring it to fruition.

My Mentor: Gordon Van Gelder, for being a mentor and a friend.

My Colleague: Ellen Datlow for revealing the mysteries of anthologizing.

My Family: my amazing wife, Christie; my mom, Marianne, and my sister, Becky, for
all their love and support.

Author/Contract Wranglers: Deborah Beale, Sarah Nagel, Kathleen Bellamy, Kristine
Card, Josette Sanchez-Reynolds, and Vaughne Lee Hansen.

My Fact-checking Brigade: Ben Blattberg, Elias F. Combarro (
¡en Español!
), Kate Galey, Jude Griffin, Andrew Liptak, Stephanie Loree, Robyn Lupo, Kevin McNeil,
Shannon Rampe, Earnie Sotirokos, Patrick Stephens, and Stephanie Sursi.

My Interns: Lisa Andrews, Britt Gettys, Amber Barkley, and Bradley Englert.

My Writers: everyone who wrote stories for this anthology, and any of my other projects.

My Readers (last but not least): everyone who bought this book, or any of my other
anthologies, and who make possible doing books like this.

KELLEY ARMSTRONG

Kelley Armstrong is the author of the
Women of the Otherworld
paranormal suspense series, the Darkest Powers young adult urban fantasy trilogy,
and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still
lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate
cubicle and hopes never to return.

ELIZABETH BEAR

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different
year. When coupled with a tendency to read the dictionary for fun as a child, this
led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, and the writing of speculative fiction.
She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, and Campbell Award-winning author of almost a hundred short
stories and twenty-five novels, the most recent of which is
Shattered Pillars
, from Tor Books. Her dog lives in Massachusetts; her partner, writer Scott Lynch,
lives in Wisconsin. She spends a lot of time on planes.

TOBIAS S. BUCKELL

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada,
the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has written several novels,
including the
New York Times
bestseller
Halo: The Cole Protocol
, the Xenowealth series, and
Arctic Rising
. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as
Lightspeed, Analog, Clarkesworld
, and
Subterranean
, and in anthologies such as
Armored, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories
, and
Under the Moons of Mars
. He currently lives in Ohio with a pair of dogs, a pair of cats, twin daughters,
and his wife.

ORSON SCOTT CARD

Orson Scott Card is the best-selling author of more than forty novels, including
Ender’s Game
, which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The sequel,
Speaker for the Dead
, also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured science fiction’s
two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. Recent books include
The Lost Gates
,
Ruins
,
Earth Aware
, and
Shadows in Flight
. He is also the author of the acclaimed historical fantasy series The Tales of Alvin
Maker.

DAVID FARLAND

David Farland is the author of the best-selling Runelords series, which began with
The Sum of All Men
; the latest volume,
A Tale of Tales
, came out in 2012. Farland, whose real name is Dave Wolverton, has also written several
novels using his real name as his byline, such as
On My Way to Paradise
, and a number of
Star Wars
novels such as
The Courtship of Princess Leia
and
The Rising Force
. His short fiction has appeared in
Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible, Asimov’s
Science Fiction, Intergalactic Medicine Show, War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches
, and in John Joseph Adams’s anthologies
The Way of the Wizard, Oz Reimagined
, and
The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination
. He is a Writers of the Future winner and a finalist for the Nebula Award and Philip
K. Dick Award.

JEFFREY FORD

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels,
The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in
the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World
, and
The Shadow Year
. His story collections are,
The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream
, and
The Drowned Life
.
Crackpot Palace
, a new collection of twenty stories, was recently published by Morrow/HarperCollins.
Ford writes somewhere in Ohio.

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

Alan Dean Foster is the bestselling author of more than a hundred and twenty novels,
and is perhaps most famous for his Commonwealth series, which began in 1971 with the
novel
The Tar-Aiym Krang
. His most recent series is transhumanism trilogy
The Tipping Point
. Foster’s work has been translated into more than fifty languages and has won awards
in Spain and Russia in addition to the U.S. He is also well-known for his film novelizations,
the most recent of which is
Star Trek Into Darkness
. He is currently at work on several new novels and film projects.

LAURA ANNE GILMAN

Best known as the author of the popular “Cosa Nostradamus” novels, and the award-nominated
“Vineart War” trilogy, Laura Anne recently sold three “Devil’s West” novels (set in
the same universe as her story for this anthology) to Saga/Simon & Schuster. The first
title,
Silver on the Road
, is scheduled for 2015. She has also dipped her pen into the mystery field, writing
as L.A. Kornetsky (the “Gin and Tonic” series), while continuing to write and sell
short fiction in a variety of genres. She is a member of the writers publishing cooperative,
Book View Cafe.

HUGH HOWEY

Hugh Howey is the author of the acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel
Wool
, which became a sudden success in 2011. Originally self-published as a series of
novelettes (including the one you’ll find in this anthology), the
Wool
omnibus is frequently the #1 bestselling book on
Amazon.com
and is a
New York Times
and
USA TODAY
bestseller. The book was also optioned for film by Ridley Scott, and is now available
in print from major publishers all over the world. The story of
Wool
’s meteoric success has been reported in major media outlets such as
Entertainment Weekly, Variety
, the
Washington Post
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Deadline Hollywood
, and elsewhere. Howey lives in Jupiter, Florida with his wife Amber and his dog Bella.

RAJAN KHANNA

Rajan Khanna is a writer, musician, and sometime bon vivant. A graduate of the 2008
Clarion West Writers Workshop and a member of the NY-based writing group, Altered
Fluid, his fiction has appeared in or is forthcoming from
Shimmer Magazine
,
Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages
,
Diverse Energies
,
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Escape Pod
, and
The Way of the Wizard
(among others) and has received Honorable Mention in the
Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror
and the
Year’s Best Science Fiction
. He sometimes writes articles for
Tor.com
and occasionally narrates podcasts for sites like
Podcastle, Lightspeed
, and
Pseudopod
. Rajan also writes about wine, beer, and spirits at
FermentedAdventures.com
.

JOE R. LANSDALE

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His
work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as
numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers,
and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections,
and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar
Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement
Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus
Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and
Fantasy, and many others. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University.
He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.