Darry lifted an eyebrow and Longarm added, “Bet the home team if you want folks around town t’ know you’re supporting your own. But bet the visitors if you want t’ pick up some easy cash. I seen the newspaper accounts o’ this road trip, and they don’t lose very many.”
“Thanks.”
“Mind telling me which way you’ll play it?” Longarm asked. “Not that I got any right t’ know, but I’m a mite curious.”
Darry grinned. “Hell, that’s easy. I’ll lay ten dollars on the home team with Barney Pruitt. He’s our town barber and never learned to keep a secret. But I’ll put another twenty on the visitors and lay that one with Johnny Truaxe. Johnny is a saloon keeper and, well, has a few other business interests too that a law officer has reason to keep an eye on. Johnny runs a square game and knows how to stay shut about the things that matter.”
Longarm smiled and stood, reaching for his hat. “Jene, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. I’d enjoy spending more time with you, but I think it’s best if we aren’t seen together after this. I’ll keep an eye on things from the ball field end of it and trust you t’ have things under control back here in town come Saturday morning.”
“Afternoon,” Darry corrected.
“Whatever.”
The two shook hands and Longarm ambled out into the afternoon sunshine. He supposed it would be some time before he would be free to do as he pleased again and likely he should enjoy a cool beer and maybe a steak before he joined up with the Austin Capitals. He headed in the direction of the nearest of the several gentlemen’s establishments in downtown Medicine Lodge.
Chapter 8
Longarm laid his cards down, a full house tens over fives. It should have been enough. It wasn’t. “Beats me,” He said as the young dirt farmer across the table showed four treys and a grin. The farmer was still grinning as he raked in the pot. Longarm figured the fourteen or so dollars of winnings would keep the kid and his family, if any, going for a month or better if he was sensible enough to hang on to it. Thinking about it that way made it a little easier to swallow the loss, most of which happened to be his since the others at the table had dropped out early in the deal.
“Gonna take your winnings back t’ the wife now?” Longarm asked the boy, intending it to be more by way of suggestion than question.
“Quit when I’m hot? You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” the youngster returned.
Longarm shrugged. And pitched a tencent ante into the middle of the table.
“Two pair, jacks and nines,” Longarm said. The kid across the way scowled and slammed his cards down. He’d only drawn two, but for the last half dozen or so hands he’d been becoming increasingly desperate to recoup his losses and Longarm had been pretty sure the boy was bluffing in the hope someone would actually believe he had three of a kind. No one had.
Longarm pulled in the pot—six dollars or a little more, which must have looked pretty big to the kid by now— and anted up for the next deal.
“Draw poker, nothing fancy,” said the man at his right whose turn it was to deal. “Ben, you’re light.”
The farmer didn’t have much more than ten cents remaining in front of him. He picked through the meager pile of very small change until he had ten pennies separated from the herd and pushed them forward.
The man with the cards shuffled quickly and offered the deck to his right for a cut, then swiftly dealt out hands to each of the five players.
Longarm could see plain as a wart on a hog’s nose that the farmer hadn’t gotten shit in the deal. Likely not so much as a pair to build on. Longarm took his time picking up his own cards and looking them over—careful to not sort them when he did so—then fingering a quarter out of his own coin pile.
He hesitated a moment, then dragged the quarter back and pushed forward a nickel instead. “Open,” he said. He probably should have gone for more, and would have, except that would buy the kid out of the game and Longarm didn’t want to do that. Unlikely as it might be that the youngster could win again, if he insisted on being a damn fool then Longarm figured he deserved his shot.
And hell, lightning sometimes does strike twice.
Either the other players had nothing or they too wanted to go light so the kid named Ben could have a chance. Each of them called. As did Ben.
“Cards?” the dealer asked.
“I’m pat,” Longarm said and placed his fan-fold of cards facedown in front of him.
The rest of the gents each drew two except for the kid who tossed down three cards. It was all Longarm could do to keep from groaning out loud. Not even this boy Ben would be stupid enough to try another bluff for three of a kind. Which meant he was drawing two cards either to make a flush—damned unlikely for that to happen—or even worse was trying to draw two to fill a straight.
There are times, Longarm reflected, when that kind of stubbornness stops being a display of cojones and becomes just plain stupid. This seemed like one of those times.
“Opener?” the dealer asked. “Your bet.”
Longarm glanced over at the coins lying in front of the kid. There weren’t so many of them that it was hard to count. “Eighteen cents,” he said, pushing out two dimes and dragging back two of the pennies Ben had put in earlier. Longarm could have bet anything from nineteen cents up and taken the kid’s chance away, but he didn’t want to do that.
“Call,” the next man said.
No one offered a raise, everyone seeming willing to go along and give Ben his last opportunity to recoup at least the price of a plug of tobacco and a beer.
“Everyone in?” the dealer asked unnecessarily. “That’s fine then. Lay ‘em down, gentlemen. Lay ‘em down and
