A. J. Peacock went to the telegraph office first thing in the morning and sent off a telegram he hoped would solve all his problems. He was tired of counting on idiots like his brother-in-law and the man he hired. He knew Updegraff was probably keeping some of the money he’d given him to hire men, which was why he’d been hiring stumblebums instead of men who were good with their gun.
So Peacock finally decided to open his purse and dig down deep to get the job done.
Jim Masterson was up earlier than most. In fact, he’d slept very little that night. He kept turning over in his mind Neal Brown’s words about selling and getting out. It just rankled him that people would think he left Dodge City with his tail between his legs. What he would rather do was get his money for his share of the Lady Gay and then leave town at his own leisure.
But who was he kidding? What he really wanted to do was get his badge back.
Over a cigar Butler realized that Dodge City was a powder keg. There were just too many guns there. Maybe it wasn’t like the old days when the Earps and Bat Masterson and Bill Tilghman and Charlie Bassett were around, and maybe it wasn’t the volatile situation he’d heard existed in Tombstone at the moment, but it was bad enough that he decided to send a telegram. They needed somebody in Dodge with the ability and the balls to put things right.
He thought he knew just who that would be, but he needed to word the telegram very carefully.
He walked to the telegraph office after breakfast, but stopped short when he saw a man coming out. Butler hadn’t really met A. J. Peacock formally yet, but he knew the man on sight; and Jim Masterson’s partner was coming out of the telegraph office, looking both ways as if worried someone would see him.
Butler waited across the street until Peacock satisfied himself that he wasn’t being watched, and slunk away. Only then did he cross the street and enter the office himself.
“Help ya?” the middle-aged clerk asked. He wore a visor and sleeve garters, like he could have been dealing faro as much as sending telegrams.
“Was that A. J. Peacock who just left here?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, “but don’t go askin’ me what he was doin’ here. I ain’t allowed to talk about it.”
“Not even if I ask you real nice?” Butler asked, taking out some money.
“Put your money away, friend,” the man said, waving with both hands. “It’d be real nice to have, but my job is nicer, and I got a family to feed.”
“Okay, then,” Butler said, satisfied that the man wouldn’t talk about his telegram, either, “I’ve just got two lines to send myself.”
CHAPTER 48
With the telegraph message sent, Butler decided to go back to his chair in front of the hotel. This seemed preferable to trying to find something to do while waiting for the saloons to open and the poker games to get underway.
Of course, he could always take Bill Harris up on his offers to arrange a game for him, but he found that he didn’t care for the man and did not want to be indebted to him. He was satisfied with the games he’d been playing, even if they were not particularly challenging to him. So far Ben Thompson had been the only real competition, and, thanks to his run of luck, he had taken the man’s measure. His real competition, he felt, would come when he finally made his way to Portsmouth Square, in San Francisco.
He took out another three-for-a-nickel cigar and lit it, enjoying both the smell and the crackle of the cheap tobacco. He nodded to men who entered the lobby, tipped his hat to the women with them, and tried his best to relax. So far the gambling had been going well—and when you really looked at it, the gunplay had gone well, too. He was alive, he was ahead of the game.
“Got another one of those?”
He looked up at Ben Thompson and said, “Three-for-a-nickel cheroots don’t seem to be your style, Ben.”
“Or yours.”
“I’m going cheap.”
“I’ll go along with you,” Thompson said. “Just let me get myself a chair.”
He went into the lobby, came out with a rather nice-looking armchair that belonged in the lobby, not out on the walk. Of course, no one was going to stop Ben Thompson from taking whatever chair he liked. It could even have been the lobby divan.
He sat next to Butler, accepted the cigar and a light, then drew deeply.
“Jesus, you’re right,” he said, “this is cheap.”
“If it’s any consolation, I paid a kid a quarter to fetch them for me,” Butler explained.
“Ah, three for thirty cents. That does sound better.”
“I notice you had company last night.”
“Saw her leavin’ this morning’, did you?”
“Just by coincidence.”
“She’s a fine woman,” Thompson said. “Very talented.”
Butler didn’t respond.
“No, I mean, she’s talented with a deck of cards.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“It’s what you were thinkin’.”
“Now you read minds?”
“If you can’t read minds sometimes,” Thompson responded, “you shouldn’t be playin’ poker. You read minds very well at the table. That’s how you know when to call and when to fold.”
Butler didn’t think of it as mind reading. He thought of it as having good instincts and being able to read people.
When he didn’t respond to Thompson’s word, the other man changed the subject.
“There’s somethin’ goin’ on in this town,” he said.
“Like what?”
“I thought you’d know that better than I do. All I know is, I can feel the tension.”
“Well,” Butler said, “I can tell you what I know, but there’s a whole hell of a lot I don’t know.”
“I can start with what you know.”
Butler told him…
“I got a question,” Thompson said when Butler finished.
“What?”
“Why would you get involved?”
“I reacted to the moment,” Butler said. “I saw two men obviously casing the Lady Gay from outside. I saw them check their weapons. I figured they were up to something and it wasn’t good. What would you have done?”
“I just got to town like you did?” Thompson asked. “I would have gone to my room and got some rest.”
“And just let whatever was going to happen play out?”
“You betcha.”
“Okay,” Butler said, “say you were inside, at the bar, and you saw these two jaspers going for their guns.”
“Not my business,” Thompson said. “I’ve never understood why some people want to get involved in something that just ain’t their business. You’d be havin’ a lot less trouble right now if you’d kept to yourself, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably.”
“Unless…”
Butler didn’t rise to the bait.
