The Drop Edge of Yonder (4 page)

They played seven-card stud, nothing wild. The betting remained more or less even, with no one falling very far behind except for the vaquero, who bet every hand as if it was his last. When the vaquero finally lost his stake, he bowed his respects to the woman and left the room.

"I am privileged to fill the empty space," the black-cloaked man said, looking at them as if he had no idea where he was or what space he was meant to fill.

Most likely a Rusky, Zebulon figured, having heard the accent before. Either that or a Turk or Polack.

From the moment that Ivan, as Delilah referred to him, sat down, Zebulon suspected that she was dealing off the bottom: It was the way her fingers manipulated and spread out the cards with practiced ease, cutting the deck with one hand while knuckle-rolling a stack of coins with the other.

Her precise movements cast a spell, a dreamy ritual, and no matter how much he tried to resist, he found himself unable to break or even interrupt it. As the night wore on and the hands flowed back and forth with no clear winner, he surrendered to a strange sense of relief. It was as if he had been through this before, in the same dimly lit cantina with most of the oil lamps burned out, listening to the same restless chords from a bangedup piano with cracked and missing keys, the same row of moose heads with their eyes shot out, the same low murmur of betting and raising, the same slap of shuffling cards whose numbers and faces had become so bent and rubbed that they were barely visible. He was dimly aware that he might be in trouble because winning and losing no longer seemed to matter, as if the results had already been decided.

The game was watched over by the bandy-legged man and a few drifters and ranch hands, all of them making side bets. Hatchet Jack, who had come downstairs with the two whores, was watching from the end of the bar.

When Delilah turned over three kings, beating his three jacks, Zebulon's loss emptied most of his pouch, sending him back to the billiard table, where he won three games from one of the ranch hands and then two more from the bandy-legged man, more than doubling his money.

When he returned to the table, Hatchet Jack walked over and sat down opposite Delilah.

The new arrivals caused Ivan to slam his hand on the table with such force that a glass jumped and shattered on the floor. "All the way to the end, gentlemen," he said. "No exceptions or discounts allowed. So says one who comes and has already gone and is yet ready to come again."

"You're crackin' wide open, Count," the stagecoach driver said. "I know the signs."

"Not cracking, my friend," Ivan replied. "More a glimpse from the pit of darkness into the terror of endless space. That happens at the end of a long night when one is bored and foolish enough to abandon the reins of control."

"I say you're bluffin'." Hatchet Jack pushed his money into the center of the table.

"Bluffing, you say? Well, well, well." Ivan stacked twenty gold eagles next to Hatchet Jack's raise. "What is life if not a bluff? I see your call and raise you one-hundred silver dollars."

When Delilah and Zebulon matched Ivan's raise, Hatchet Jack threw down his cards and walked over to the bar.

As Delilah dealt the last of the cards face down, Zebulon noticed a shiver run down her sleeve into the tips of her fingers.

Ivan turned over three aces.

The stagecoach driver turned over a ten of spades, adding to the two that were on the table.

Delilah produced a queen of hearts, filling out a straight flush to Zebulon's full house.

As she gathered in the biggest pot of the night, the bandylegged man staggered towards Zebulon, waving his pistol. "I remember you all right. You're that same mountain scum that stole my bay horse in Galisteo. You and that breed."

"I never been to Galisteo," Zebulon said, reaching for his pistol.

Before either of them could fire, three shots from the other side of the room blew out two gas lamps and one of the windows.

The last thing Zebulon remembered was staggering out of the cantina and trying to make it down the street before he collapsed.

EBULON DIDN'T SEE THE STARS SHOOTING ACROSS THE SKY like silver bursts of rifle fire, or the goat feeding on garbage next to him, or the Mexican kid sitting on the lip of the arroyo waiting to steal his boots.

' Quien es?"

He turned over on his back, his head pounding as if it was locked inside a giant church bell.

"Quien es?" the kid asked again.

Who was he anyway? And where was he? And where was he going? He sat up, wiping the dried blood from his eyes. A man lay next to him, surrounded by smashed bottles and scraps of rotting meat. There was a hole in the man's forehead and his matted yellow hair fell in bloody strands over his face. Zebulon looked closer. There was something familiar about the man's fringed buckskins and torn moccasins and the fact that he was clutching the queen of hearts in one hand. Zebulon watched a fly crawl across the man's cheek. It was a long journey, the way the fly was crawling, then stopping, then crawling on. From life to death, he thought, and back again. And how was he doing on this journey? Was he dead or alive, or was he trapped between the worlds like a blind man? When he shut his eyes and opened them again, the man was no longer there.

He remembered a full house and a queen of hearts, a shot followed by more shots, then staggering out of the cantina and falling headfirst into the arroyo. He took a deep breath. He wasn't dead. Not that it would be so bad to be dead, the way things had been going.

The goat's chewing made him think of his Pa. Or maybe it was the smell of stale urine. If the old bastard was still alive, he and Ma would be getting their winter pelts ready to sell. He ought to ride up and help them. Anything to be shut of this town of aging outlaws and second-rate card cheats - one of whom had tried to kill him. Or was that another time in another town?

' Quien es?" the kid was asking.

On the road to nowhere. On the drift ever since he had left his family in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains five years ago. The goat stepped closer, staring down at him with dull insolence, as if to remind him that his string had run out. "Not hardly," he muttered. Not yet. Just to make sure, he raised the Colt and fired a bullet through the goat's eye. One way or the other, he was back. The stinking garbage and the dead goat and the way the Colt felt in his hand convinced him of that, enough anyway, to stumble past the Mexican kid who was sliding back on his haunches as if he had seen a ghost.

e staggered down the deserted street towards the cantina. Above the moaning wind, he heard the faint chords of a piano.

The stagecoach was gone. His horse wasn't where he had hitched it and he mounted the first one he came to. Before he could ride down the street, the bandy-legged man staggered out of the swinging doors to take a leak, an act that was causing him trouble with one arm wrapped in a sling.

Shaken, he looked up at Zebulon. "I swear you're dead, only you're on my horse. Listen. It was a long night, and I didn't see what went down. But it weren't me that smoked you. I tried. Sure. But I got nicked before I called you out. It might have been that whore, the one that dealt the straight flush. She and that ferriner that owns her. Take my word, they're some devilish act, them two. Slicker'n three-headed snakes. When she won that last hand, all hell broke loose. What I recall anyways. Like I said, I wasn't in the best of shape."

The man's confused, cloudy eyes reminded Zebulon of the goat.

"I'll take your horse," Zebulon said, "for settlement. And maybe I'll blow off your trigger finger for tryin' to take me out."

The bandy-legged man looked back at the saloon where the two whores were laughing at him through a broken window There was no help from either of them.

His hand shook as he raised his pistol. "No one takes a horse from me, or even thinks about it. And I never jacked it. It was that ferriner or one of them vaqueros or ranch hands at the billiard table. Or that breed. Hatchet Jack. Ask him. He's in there now. I can take a loss. Hell, that's my middle name. Lost and never found. If you don't believe me, we might as well slap to it here and now"

"It's your call," Zebulon said. "But if you dry-shoot me, do it with your whizzle in your pants."

He dismounted and pushed past him into the cantina, not giving a damn one way or the other.

"No sense to it," the bandy-legged man said to the two whores. "The man come back from the dead. What do you want me to do, send him straight to hell again?"

Inside the cantina, the only signs of a shoot-out were dark stains on the floor, a few smashed chairs, and a blown-out window.

Hatchet Jack was sitting at the bar, a bandage wrapped around his head.

Zebulon shoved Hatchet Jack's money towards the bartender, motioning for a bottle of Taos White Lightning.

"No hat size to this town," Hatchet Jack said. "Only thing left is to get shut of it."

"Who shot me?" Zebulon asked.

"You don't recall?" Hatchet Jack rolled a shot glass between his palms. "When I went over to the bar I heard someone, I don't recall who, sayin' the woman was dealin' off the bottom - snakin' a queen of hearts straight flush to your full house. Or maybe it was the other way around. A bunch come in the door and I was too pissed and likkered to notice. Next thing, I'm cold-cocked. When I come to, you was gone and I went upstairs and slept it off. I don't recall the rest. Who gives a damn. We're still on the dance floor, ain't we? More than some."

"You see anything?" Zebulon asked the bartender, a squat man with a bushy mustache and wide red suspenders.

"Not a thing," he replied. "I was out back haulin' likker stock. When I come in, it was all over and everyone had cleared out. I don't remember. Hell, that was two nights ago."

"Anything can happen in two nights," Hatchet Jack said. "Or one, for that matter. Or none."

"You been here two nights?" Zebulon asked.

Hatchet Jack poured himself another shot. "Like I said, I was upstairs. Now everyone's zippered up or rode off. You might have noticed I ain't in the best of shape myself. If someone don't try to plug you, he might settle for me. And that ain't why I rode down here. How about it? You want to ride up to see your Ma and Pa? It ain't like you got anything better to do."

"Tell me one last thing," Zebulon asked. "Did you throw your loop over that bay horse in Galisteo?"

"Hell no," Hatchet Jack replied. "I snagged a zebra dun. The bay wasn't worth a bag of rocks."

When they pushed through the swinging doors, the bandy legged man was sitting on a bench. He didn't look up when Hatchet Jack rode down the street, followed by Zebulon riding the bandy-legged man's horse.

ATCHET JACK AND ZEBULON RODE NORTH ACROSS THE high desert towards the Spanish Peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Two days later they reached the cabin, a hard little stand at the end of a steep valley, quilted halfway to the roof with drifting snow