She looked up at him and said, “Yes.”
He smiled and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll pass.”
Sam left the kitchen and went into the living room with Dude Miller.
Evan McCall looked down at his cards. It was the best hand he’d had all night, and he wanted to be careful not to tip it.
They were playing seven-card stud, and he had all but one card. He already had a flush, with two of the flush cards in the hole and three on the table. He still had a shot at a straight flush to the queen, if his seventh card was a jack of spades.
He looked up at Jubal, who was standing at the bar with a beer in his hand. Jubal raised his mug a half inch, just to tell his brother everything looked all right.
At that moment the batwing doors opened and four men entered. They were all Burkett’s men and, in fact, one of them was John Burkett, Lincoln Burkett’s son.
Evan and Jubal didn’t know that, because they had never seen him before.
The Burkett men walked to the bar, and it was plain that they had already been doing some drinking elsewhere. “What’ll it be John?” Jubal heard the bartender ask.
“A bottle for me and my friends,” John Burkett said. He resembled his father slightly, but since Jubal had still not seen Lincoln Burkett, he didn’t notice that. All he saw was a man about his own age, slighter than he was, pale, with a poor growth of beard. It was clear to Jubal that the others were with him, and he was in charge.
He leaned over to the bartender and asked, “Who is that fella?”
“Why, that’s Lincoln Burkett’s son, John,” the barkeep said.
“Thanks,” Jubal said, and proceeded to listen very carefully…
“When is this geologist supposed to be getting in, John?” one of the other men asked.
“He was supposed to have been here already,” John Burkett said.
“We just gonna wait for him?”
“For as long as it takes,” John Burkett said.
“I can’t think of a better place to wait,” one of the others said.
“You can’t?” Burkett asked. “I can.”
“Where?”
“Louise’s.”
“Johnny, you know you been gettin’ kicked out of there.”
“Yeah, but now I know why.”
“Why?”
“My old man,” John Burkett said, “he bought the place.”
“And he wants to keep you out?”
“Yeah,” John Burkett said, “he’s trying to save me from myself.”
“So what’re we gonna do?”
“Tonight, we’re going in there and we’re gonna get us Louise’s best girls—for free.”
“All right,” one of the other men said, and they all laughed.
“Except for you, Truck.”
“Why?” the man called Truck asked.
“You gotta stay outside and wait for the geologist.”
“That ain’t fair!”
“I never said it was. Come on, drink up’the girls are waiting.”
The men drank up and followed John Burkett out of the saloon.
At the poker table Evan raked in his chips. He had filled in for the straight flush, which was fortunate because one of the other men had had a higher flush than his.
“You got to be the luckiest man alive,” the disgruntled loser said.
“It isn’t luck,” Evan said.
“What do you call it, then?”
“You wait for the right hand,” Evan said, “and you play it right. That’s all for me, gentlemen.”
“Whataya mean?” the loser asked. “You ain’t gonna give me a chance to win my money back?”
“I’ll be here tomorrow night.”
“Well, I won’t,” the man said. “I’m leavin’ in the mornin’, and you ain’t leavin’ this table with my money.”
The table went quiet and everyone around it sensedthe tension. Jubal straightened up at the bar and picked up his rifle. It was one of the ones he’d gotten from the gunsmith shop the day of the ambush on Sam. Ed Collins had insisted that they keep the rifles.
“I say I am, friend,” Evan said. “If you can’t make it back in this game, you can make it back somewhere down the road.”
“I wanna make it back tonight, friend,” the man said. “The only way you’re leavin’ this table is dead.”
Evan eyed the man coldly and said, “Then the next play is all yours.”
One of the other players leaned over and said, “Don’t you know who that is?”
The loser’s eyes flickered and he said, “I don’t care who he is. He ain’t leavin’ the table with my money.”
“His name is McCall,” the other man said urgently. “He’s Sam McCall’s brother.”
“Sam McCall?” the loser said.
The helpful player said out of the side of his mouth, “And Sam McCall is in town.”
The loser’s eyes flickered again and his shoulders slumped as he relaxed.
“Come on,” Evan said. “Am I leaving or not?”
“Sure, friend,” the loser said, “sure. You won, you can leave if you want to. I don’t want no trouble.”
Evan picked up his money and walked over to the bar, to stand next to Jubal.
“Everything all right?” Jubal asked.
“Sure,” Evan said. “I’m Sam McCall’s brother, ain’t I?
Why wouldn’t everything be all right?”
“You need a drink.”
“Yeah.”
“Beer?”
“Whiskey.”
Jubal called the bartender over and asked for a whiskey.
“Guess who I just saw,” Jubal asked when Evan had his drink.
“Who?”
“Burkett.”
“Lincoln Burkett was here?” Evan asked, looking at his brother.
“No, not Lincoln,” Jubal said, “John, his son.”
“Oh, so?”
“He and some of his friend went over to the whorehouse. It seems Lincoln Burkett owns it and has been keeping his kid out.”
“I wonder what else Lincoln Burkett owns that nobody knows about.”
“Maybe we should find out.”
“How?”
“Well,” Jubal said, “we could ask his son.”
“Bracing Burkett’s son is looking for trouble.”
“Ain’t that why we’re here?”
Evan finished his drink and put his glass on the bar. He was still seething over what had happened at the table. He wasn’t angry that he’d been braced so much as by how it had been resolved. He’d always solved his own problems and had never before depended on being Sam McCall’s brother.
“Evan?”
“Are you interested in a whore tonight, Jube?”
“What?”
