Devil's Manhunt (Stories from the Golden Age) (7 page)

George Bart had fixed up a back room very tastefully with a large array of bottles on a sideboard, a quantity of edibles and a table on which lay a new deck of cards and around which sat, waiting very patiently, men who would have stayed there day and night for a week if Bart had told them to.

Johnny walked in and found a very smiling and hospitable George. “Well, we was hoping you’d be down, Mr. Johnny. A few boys like yourself drifted in and we was about to have a game. Have something to drink first?”

They drank, then George pulled back a chair. Johnny was expected to get into that chair but it had its back to the door and was flanked too closely. Johnny took another which suited him better and Bart less.

Johnny picked up the cards, broke their seal and shuffled them. He gave a quick look around the table and saw nothing but hard, gaunt faces about as full of expression as a
sidewinder
’s. Johnny grinned at them companionably.

The door of the outer saloon opened and a man came in, a big man even as Texans go. He wore mainly buckskin, about three or four deer’s worth of it, stained with mud and grease. He had a beard, a black beard, thick enough to be bulletproof. If, from where he sat, Sudden Johnny shot this newcomer any glance, none noticed, so intent were they on getting their first cards.

Johnny had delayed. Spanish Mike McCarty was something more than Johnny’s top rider, he was also Johnny’s friend. Johnny’s height had slenderness and his movements had grace, but Mike’s chief attribute was a mountainous strength which sometimes fell on men and cured them of things, including living.

Spanish Mike combed some of the mud out of his beard, ordered a beer mug of whiskey, scooped up one handful of pretzels—one pound—from the free lunch and composed himself at the bar. He too had paused on the edge of town but not to clean his gun. He had halted to separate his arrival from Johnny’s by several unsuspicious hours and had profited by a nice relaxing snooze in the mud. Mike looked over the premises, looked out through the back door, sighed in pure delight and relaxed to watch the game.

Sudden Johnny dealt to a somewhat dumbfounded crowd. He had been clumsy enough when he shuffled the cards but somehow these cards weren’t the cards which had been carefully rewrapped and placed in the center of the table. They were honest cards and there were glowers of wonder at George Bart at this supposed oversight. When the bartender served from the sideboard he caught a terrible pain in his shins—not serious, for his grimace vanished instantly as he moved away from Bart.

“I plumb forgot about money,” said Johnny. “This poke is all I brought and this kind of makes it look like I’m playin’ on credit.” He hitched at the poke in his back pocket.

“Now don’t you fret about money,” said George Bart. “I’m shore you can cover if you lose. Besides, there’s yore trail herd.”

“So there is,” said Johnny and picked up his hand.

They played for a round before Johnny discovered abruptly that he was using a new deck. He found he was using it because it didn’t have creases on the aces where he had put them. He lost promptly, stud being a quick game, but one deal later, being Johnny’s, found them playing with another new deck.

Bart’s abrupt shift from returned confidence to new alarm registered the shift. Johnny did not win very much but the deck stayed in for five deals until the bartender accidentally placed his tray on the momentarily idle cards.

Johnny was playing with Bart’s deck once more.

The lose was going to him then, steadily, and his chips dwindled, somebody lighted a kerosene lantern over the table and the shadows of it made the faces around that board appear longer and gaunter.

The whiskey kept coming and Johnny’s chips kept going down. At last he gave Mike a private wink. Mike instantly drained off the remainder of his whiskey, crammed down the rest of his free lunch and stood a little straighter at the bar, twenty feet away.

“Reckon,” said Johnny, “I’ll have to cash in for tonight, boys, it’s been a long day.”

“Well, I hate to break up a good game,” said Bart.

“Tell you what,” said Johnny, “I’ll cut you double or quits.”

“Well, now, Mr. Johnny, I couldn’t do that. I reckon the best thing is just cash you in.”

Johnny shrugged. He reached back for the poke and then managed to look most terribly astonished and mad. It was gone! The bartender!

“My gold!” said Johnny. “I had it when I sat down here. I guess I’ll—”

“Well, now, Mr. Johnny, don’t let that worry you. Seein’ that them
blue chips
was worth exactly one thousand apiece. I can always take a trail herd.”

“One thousand!” said Johnny.

“Why, you didn’t ask and I thought—”

Johnny smiled. He pulled three packs of cards out of his lap and dropped them on the board. “I reckon, then, you’d maybe like to explain somethin’ else you forgot to mention, George. These here cards you use just plain read too easy—”

“You accusin’ me of card cheatin’?” bellowed George.

“Why, no,” said Sudden Johnny. “I meant to call you a dirty, lyin’ card cheat!”

With a crash the kerosene light went out. The fragments and bits of flame splattered, Spanish Mike fired three more shots and put the main barroom in darkness.

The table came up like a battering ram and slammed George into the wall. Johnny’s gun blazed and Bart’s man Tolliver curled into himself with a groan, three guns racketed at the spot where Johnny had been but Johnny wasn’t there.

“Yeeeow!” he yelled to Spanish Mike.

“Yowheee!” screamed Spanish Mike.

“They’re out the back!” bawled Bart and hurriedly thundered after them.

Sudden Johnny, like all good grandnephews of Beauregard, had his second line to fall back upon when his first one buckled; he might not have made it with the cards and he might have lost his poke, but there was no indecision now. He and Mike went at the warehouse flaps in a dive and Mike’s big fist wrenched off the lock.

They plummeted down the steps and whirled to slam the doors back upon them. An instant later a body hit wood outside and somebody bawled for them to come out. Johnny shot cunningly by feel and there was a
yowp
of anguish immediately after.

By the flash of the shot, Mike found the inner bar and placed it across. The doors strained up and Johnny fired again. Their assailants shot a dozen times into the door and tried to prize it open at a distance, using rails.

Mike grunted with busyness; he was loading up the stairs with assorted crates and barrels, and so great was his strength and so rapidly did he work that the next shots fired from outside went into wood and tin.

This big below-ground warehouse had been built long ago and it had been built well. It had served as defense against Indians and cyclones and its thick sod walls were glued together by grass roots and many rains. Johnny inspected loopholes, found one which commanded the back of the New York Bar and gave them six shots as fast as he could
fan
. That instantly ended the attack.

Johnny inspected loopholes, found one which commanded the back of the New York Bar and gave them six shots as fast as he could fan. That instantly ended the attack.

Mike mopped his brow. “Well, Johnny, here we be. And here it appears we are goin’ to stay for some time to come. If you got no great objections, that keg I seen by yore gun flashes must contain high wine.”

They found it, they broached it. Big Spanish Mike lay down on his back, held up the keg like it was a bottle and had himself a good, long drink—a half gallon.

“Thin stuff,” he belched. “Never much cared for wine.” He put it down and went feeling through the interior over a fortune in liquors and food. A loud pop startled him. “What’s that?”

“That,” said Sudden Johnny, “is champagne.”

Spanish Mike listened to the gurgle with a grin.

B
y midnight, George Bart had snarled and sweated himself into a fine fury. They had pried the door half off before they discovered that the passage was blocked beyond their ability to open it from the outside, and they had lost in wounded three men, all of whom damned George heartily with what breath they could muster.

“Condemned Texicans!” snarled Tolliver, gray with a chip gone off a rib. “I tole you you ought to think twicet afore ringin’ that gent ’round.”

“You never said no such thing,” said Dutch stolidly. “All you said was you wanted a hundred bucks instead of fifty.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” said Bart to his assembled five, “that you won’t charge that door again?”

“You know danged well we won’t!” gritted Tolliver. “Wait for mornin’, I says, then blow ’em sky-wide and handsome with blastin’ powder.”

They looked on this with favor and arranging a watch amongst them, excluding Tolliver, the one wounded man who was still with them, they retired from the field for the night.

I
n the morning the meadowlarks were singing brightly, the prairie was blooming but very, very wet, and a freighter came in from Hunter for supplies.

His storekeeper routed George Bart from a nightmare. “Freighter down there with a big order. I can’t fill half of it from the shelves.”

“Get it from the warehouse!” growled George from his untidy lair. Then he suddenly remembered. He hastily got on his clothes and went down to see the store.

“I can’t wait, Mr. Bart,” said the freighter. “We was held up plenty by the rains and we’re nigh outa grub. I need more than Lem here can give me but if that’s all, why it’s the best I can do. I got to git back. Men’s hungry.”

Bart looked at the stripped shelves and then at the pile of money. The freighter was about to leave. “Wait,” said George. “We’ve had—well, a little accident. But I think maybe I can get something up by two o’clock if you’ll just wait around.”

The freighter was doubtful and George Bart clinched it by striding over to the depot where he found the agent just coming to work. “Henry,” said Bart, “get me a message through to Sioux. I need some things on—”

“Hello, Mr. Bart,” said Henry with a dash of malice. “I hear you got a couple prisoners locked up in yore storehouse.”

Bart glared. “Get me a message through to Sioux, they’ll bring it in on the two o’clock for me.”

“Mr. Bart,” said Henry, “I sure hate to disappoint you but there’s a bridge out between here and there and she ain’t likely to be fixed for weeks.”

“A washout! I didn’t know the rain was that bad.”

“It wasn’t,” said Henry. “It just so happens that that bridge seems to have blown out. Why, I ain’t got the faintest notion; it’ll be back in come first part of next month.”

“Blown out!” cried Bart. “Look here, Henry—wait a minute. When did that happen?”

“Seems like night before last. They was a feller in here yesterday to give to me the word and I sent it on through.”

“A limber gent with brown eyes? A Texican?”

“Yep, reckon so. He seen it on his ride in. Can’t say whar he come from. But there’s no gettin’ across the river without that bridge. Don’t seem hardly important, though. There ain’t no herds here yet and we’ll be able to ship ’em all when they do come. I sent word through to Sioux and that, not this, is the end of the line. Means a sort of vacation—”

Bart had already left. He told the freighter angrily that he couldn’t give any more supplies and watched the man drive away. He went to the back of the New York Bar and stood looking at the sod warehouse.

Dutch was on guard. “Ain’t stirred, Mr. Bart,” he said.

“Go on over there and tell them to come out or we’ll blow ’em out!” said George.

A shot made a neat hole just above Bart’s head and he hurriedly skittered back; it upset him. A splinter had nicked his ear and he looked thoughtfully at the blood, swearing the while but subdued. “I’ll find a way,” he muttered. After breakfast, George felt better in that his breakfast always went down along with a mug of brandy and water. He was almost cheerful when he came into the store. “Let’s have a keg of
Giant
and a lot of fuse,” he said. “It won’t take much to blow in a wall.”

The storekeeper stood fixed.