Asher Nelson shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe you will and maybe you won’t.”
After dinner, they retired into a room with a billiard table, a poker table, and a small bar. It was almost as if the Nelsons had created their own saloon in their own house. Another servant was behind the bar, and another one stood ready to bring them drinks. Longarm only had about three hundred dollars on him, and he didn’t intend on risking more than two hundred dollars of that, especially not playing men as rich as this. They finally settled on a game of dollar-ante, pot limit, with no bet being over twenty dollars.
The Nelsons were hard, ruthless poker players, and Longarm was hard pressed to keep up with them. He knew that the stakes probably meant nothing to them in terms of money, but they played as hard for each pot as if it were a pile of nuggets. In the end, Longarm managed to win some eighty or a hundred dollars. It was closing in on midnight, and he felt very sleepy. Much more sleepy than usual. He normally didn’t get tired or drowsy during a poker game, but as the clock far off somewhere in the house gonged off twelve strokes, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He apologized to his hosts for quitting on them so early.
He said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. It must be this high-priced brandy, but I’m about to go to sleep sitting here. I hate to break the game up, but it’s either that or fall out of this chair.”
They assured him they all understood. Claude said, “You had a hard ride in the hot sun today and that will get to anybody. Likely, you didn’t get much sleep the night before.”
That hadn’t been exactly true, and Longarm had spent plenty of time in the hot desert on much longer rides than the one he had made that day. But he was unaccountably drowsy. Asher Nelson accompanied him to the stairs and halfway down the long hall on the second floor to his room, where he bade him good night. Longarm went in, pushing the door closed behind himself. He sat down on the bed, took off his boots, and yawned. He thought about getting out his roll, counting his money, and seeing how he had done in the game, but it just didn’t seem worth the effort. It was all he could do to get his shirt off, shuck his pants, pull the covers back, and slip into bed. He did manage to slip his six-gun in under his pillow, but he didn’t bother with a good-night drink or a cheroot like he normally did. It was his custom to sit on the side of the bed, think over the day’s happenings, and analyze what he wanted to do the next day. This night, all he wanted to do was go to sleep.
Chapter 6
He awoke with someone shaking him by the shoulder. His eyes flew open, startled. It was broad daylight in the room, sunlight streaming through the big windows. For a second, his vision was blurred, but then it cleared and he could see the three brothers arranged at the end of his bed. He blinked for a moment and said, “What the hell?”
Asher was in the middle, flanked by Claude and Frank. Asher said, “It’s time to get up, United States Deputy Marshal Custis Long, better known as Longarm.”
Longarm started to sit up. He winced as a pain ran through his head. “What the hell are ya’ll doing in here in my bedroom?”
Asher smiled. “We’ve come to take you to breakfast, Marshal Long. Don’t you think you’ve slept a little late? It’s going on ten o’clock.”
Longarm blinked again. The room wanted to spin and swim, and he had to shake his head to clear his vision. He suddenly noticed that Asher was holding a short 12-gauge shotgun and that his brothers were both holding revolvers down by their sides. He stared in amazement. He said, “What the hell is going on here?”
Asher smiled again. “All that will become clear enough, Deputy Long. Why don’t you get up and put your britches on and come along with us?”
Longarm shook his head, again and again, trying to clear it. It was suddenly beginning to dawn on him that something was wrong—very, very wrong. So far as he remembered, he had never slept until ten in the morning in his life, not without a very good reason. He stared at the gun in Asher’s hands and felt the fuzziness in his head. He said, “Are you holding a gun on me, Mr. Nelson?”
Asher Nelson shrugged. “I have a shotgun in my hand, if that’s what you mean, Deputy Long, but why argue the issue now? Why not get your clothes on and come on down and have some breakfast and some coffee? You’ll feel so much better.”
The cobwebs were beginning to clear. Longarm was remembering how suddenly sleepy he’d felt the night before. He said, “You sonofabitches put something in my drink, didn’t you?”
Claude, who seemed the less sinister of the three, grinned boyishly. “Yeah, we figured you needed a good night’s sleep after all the work and trouble that you’ve gone through, so we gave you a little sleeping powder in that last drink. It took a mighty long while to work. I’ve got to hand it to you, Deputy Long. Normally, it should have knocked you out and we would have had to carry you to bed. As it was, I think you won two hands when you should have been asleep.”
Asher Nelson chuckled. “You’re a fair poker hand, Deputy Long. I wouldn’t say that I’d care to play you for real stakes.”
“So you are the sonofabitches that put out the posters, aren’t you?” Longarm said.
Asher said impatiently, “Marshal, don’t be difficult. Get out of bed and get dressed. Go downstairs and we’ll be delighted to answer any of your questions. But first, let’s get out of here. You need to get some coffee and some food down you and let that drug wear off. We’ve got some serious talking to do and we know that you have a head full of mush right now.”
Longarm couldn’t disagree with them about that. Even though there were a dozen questions in his mind and a half-dozen emotions racing through his breast, he thought it best to put the whole lot on the shelf until some of the fog went away. It wasn’t just the fog. He had a headache that felt like it was splitting his head in two. He swung around on the bed and put his legs over. With a stray eye, he glanced to see where his holster was and peeked toward his pillow, thinking maybe to see the butt end of his revolver.
Asher Nelson said, “Don’t be looking for any weapons, Deputy Long. You won’t find any. We have your revolver and your derringer and your spare revolver and your rifle out of your saddle boot. All of those have been carefully put away. The sleeping powder we gave you left us ample time to be ready for you when you came awake. You know the old saying about it being best to let sleeping tigers lie, so the best thing you can do is to put on your clothes and go downstairs and get some coffee and some food. You’ll feel a lot better, and then we can talk.”
Longarm sat there on the side of the bed, naked. He paid no attention to Asher. Instead, he reached over and grabbed his bottle of Maryland whiskey by the neck, pulled the plug, and then took a long drink. He let it settle, and then he had another.
