Again that fleeting expression of fear. 'You're making some pretty brash statements for a young fellow. How do you know…?'
Kirby stopped him. 'Cut it out, King. I know you've got the paper. I want it. And I mean to have it, one way or the other.'
'You got money to meet the principal and interest?'
'Yeah, I have, but not the way you think.'
'Meaning?'
'I've heard you're quite a gambling man, King. We'll play one hand of poker, ten thousand cash against the note.'
'That's a sucker bet.' A hard grin crossed the florid face. 'What if I win? I'll have your ten thousand and Lazy B, You're trying to run some kind of joker on me. But you ain't that smart. Oh, I'll take you on. But I don't get it… yet.'
'I don't intend to lose,' Kirby told him.
Again King's icy grin. 'Well, you know how poker is. Some days you don't; some you do. Let's see the color of your ten thousand.'
'Get the mortgage out on the table, I'll cover it.'
Kirby followed the broad back to the table where he had been sitting. The three occupants got up, wearing worried expressions, and ranged themselves behind King's chair. The punchers, taking in the scene avidly, hadn't moved. The barkeep shuffled his feet uneasily as Curly stopped him with the soft command, 'Put your hands on the bar and keep 'em there. Understand?'
The barman cast an agonized glance at the poker table, but his beefy hands flattened out on the bar and stayed put.
Kirby took his place opposite King. He caught a glimpse of an underarm holster as King reached into an inside pocket. From a wallet he extracted a paper, unfolded it and spread it out on the table where Kirby could see it. 'Leave it there,' said Kirby, and took a bundle of bills from inside his shirt. 'I'm covering,' he said. 'Want to count it?'
King took in the denomination of the bill on top of the stack. He shook his head. 'You're word's good. We cut for deal?' He pushed the pack of cards with which he had been playing earlier across the table.
Kirby's heart was in his throat as he reached out and halved the pack. He turned up the nine of spades. He replaced the cards, and King cut… the jack of diamonds.
Relief flooded through Kirby's entire body, so violently that he felt almost nauseated. King had won the deal.
Thick but incredibly swift fingers riffled through the pack. King finished his shuffle and passed them across. 'Cut?'
Kirby separated the deck into three piles, then replaced them in different order.
'Takin' no chances,' King sneered.
'As few as possible. Deal!'
Kirby's first card was the seven of spades. King drew a red queen. His next was the eight of hearts, King's the deuce of clubs. On the third round Kirby watched the five of diamonds flutter down on his pile and a red four on King's.
The agile fingers flicked Kirby's fourth card to his hand. He felt a moment's puzzlement. His card was the six of diamonds. He's going to give me a run for my money, he thought, and watched the three of hearts drop to King. Kirby held the five, six, seven and eight, a possible straight, open on each end. Unless he paired on the last card King had nothing, and even a pair would lose if Kirby caught a nine.
Someone in the room drew a deep breath, which sounded loud in the unnatural stillness. And King dealt the last card. Kirby watched with inward satisfaction as he caught the ace of spades, and even greater pleasure when King turned up the black queen. He held the winning pair.
King was grinning an icy grimace. His hands moved to pick up the stakes, and he said softly, 'Too bad, Street. But some days you don't pick up a copper.'
'Hold it, King!' Kirby's voice rang like a bell in the quiet. King's hand stopped in mid-air, then dropped to the table as Kirby picked up his five cards and studied them closely, turning each one over and over. King's face had grown ashen. A muscle at the corner of his mouth twitched. Kirby looked up from the cards, and the big man flinched visibly when he saw his expression.
Kirby's voice was deadly. 'You don't give your customers much of a run for their money, do you?'
King didn't answer, but his hands clenched into fat claws; his pallor changed swiftly to crimson. Kirby's voice cut into him.
'That last queen you drew, the black queen, was the bottom card of the third stack I cut before the deal. You put the other two stacks down on top of it. I'm lucky I saw it. You even deal from the bottom, too fast for a sucker to catch you.' Kirby's gaze was boring into the agate eyes.
'I'm not finished. There was more to tonight's play than trying to cheat me. This pack of cards has been fixed. It's a shaved deck. And that proves you didn't win Bill's money; you stole it. You're crooked all the way, you and your whole murdering, cow-thieving outfit. But you're through now.'
King watched, fascinated, as Kirby's left hand moved slowly to pick up the stakes. He tucked the stack of bills back into his shirt. Then he picked up the mortgage and ripped it to shreds. Without a word, he flung the pieces into the gambler's face.
With an animal-like snarl, King's hand darted under his left arm, but before he could complete the draw, Kirby had kicked back his chair and was on his feet. His fist slapped leather and his gun barked twice; the slugs, not an inch apart, thudded into King's chest just beneath the hideout gun. His heart shattered, the big man was dead before reflex action fired the snub-nosed .44 he had tried to draw.
At the first sign of action, one of King's partners dived beneath a table. The other two went down without firing a shot, although each made a frantic effort to draw. Josh put his man down with a bullet through the head, and Ringo's target lay on the floor, trying to prop himself on one elbow, blood staining the boards beneath him. The bartender stared at Curly's gun with the eyes of a fascinated bird watching a snake. The two punchers stood like statues, hands aloft, waiting for the play to end.
Kirby turned slowly on his heel, facing Josh. 'I guess this about winds it up,' he started to say. His voice ended abruptly, cut off in mid-sentence. As he had spoken, each man had looked briefly in his direction, long enough for the downed gunman to raise his Colt in both shaking hands and fire one shot into Kirby's back. The gunman died even as he fired, so that the slugs which tore into his body afterward riddled a dead man.
Kirby felt a terrific punch somewhere near his belt. There was little or no pain at first, but he knew instantly: This is the reason for the premonition I've been feeling. Is it bad? He saw with brilliant clarity the anxious faces of the Wagon crew as they started toward him. He was even aware that Lon Peters stood there; heard the sheriff's words:
'Danged if you men ever quit…'
The last thing he remembered was wondering as to how the sheriff had heard of his plans. Then there was a vast, whirling blackness, shot through with scarlet sparks, a sudden swell of unbearable pain, and merciful oblivion.
Josh caught him as he went down. 'Get a doctor, quick,' he yelled, and Curly's boots pounded through the door. They were forcing whiskey between Kirby's pale lips when Curly rushed back into the saloon.
'The doctor is out on the range with a dying man. He won't be back before morning. We'll have to get the boss back to Streeter.' He was almost sobbing in his anxiety.
Josh looked pleadingly at the sheriff. 'Will he make it to Streeter, Lon?'
Peters knelt at Kirby's side. 'Curly, you and Ringo find a rig, a covered one if you can. Get blankets from the store. If it ain't open, break down the door. Mebbe I can stop the bleeding.'
He cut away Kirby's shirt, grunting as he exposed the ugly gaping hole in the unconscious man's abdomen. 'The slug went clean through, thank heaven. Barkeep, you got any clean towels? Get me some hot water, too, pronto.' A decade of experience with gunshot wounds guided his hands as he made a compress to stop the bleeding, after cleaning the wound with raw whiskey. He bandaged the bullet holes, front and back, with clean towels, and forced more liquor between Kirby's teeth. Color had returned to Kirby's cheeks, but his lips were still ashen.
