folks. Go on about your business.” People began to drift away and H.D. kept his mouth closed until he and Fargo were alone.
“Seems like you’ve already made friends here,” he quipped. “Want to tell me what happened?”
Fargo shrugged and related the story, not embellishing the details. “They must have figured to take me somewhere outside of town and kill me,” he said. “Lots of swamps around here to hide a body in.”
“You got that right,” H.D. said. “Every so often, the tide shifts a bit and the swamp spits up a couple—usually just a few bones that the gators haven’t chewed up.” He nudged the body on the floor. “This here is Darby Trent. A local thug, does muscle work for anyone who’ll pay him when he’s not down in Anderson’s Cafe drinking his wages.”
He stepped back into the hall and looked at the other man. “I don’t know this one,” he said.
“They’re all the same,” Fargo replied. “Men who will kill for a few dollars and the chance to be famous.”
“Not much of a way to make a living, if you ask me,” H.D. said, stepping back into the room.
“Nope,” Fargo replied. “Then again, moonlighting as a poker dealer isn’t, either.” He moved closer to his old friend. “You want to tell me what’s really going on, H.D.?”
“Ah, hell, Fargo,” H.D. said. “All three of them asked me to do it—Parker, Beares, and Anderson. Said they could trust that I would be fair about it and I could stand to make a little extra money, what with feeding a wife and a whore these days.”
“Funny,” Fargo said. “The man I knew in Kansas wouldn’t have spent time with any of these snakes for two bits and a cold beer.”
“The man you knew in Kansas was a lot more naive than I am,” H.D. said. “There’s no law against it and I’m trying to get enough of a nest egg to retire, Fargo. I’m getting too old for this life.” He pointed a finger and added, “I notice
“I wouldn’t be,” Fargo said, “if I’d known what I was really getting into. But I accepted the job from Parker and I don’t back out of a job once I’ve taken it on.”
“Even when you find out the truth—that your employer is no better than a rattler himself?” he asked.
“I gave my word,” he replied. “I’ll see it through, but I play fair and always have. What about you, H.D.? You still playing fair?”
His friend leaned against the dresser. “Fair as I can, Fargo,” he said, sighing. “I’ve got to live here, too. You’ll move on after this, just like you always do.”
Fargo nodded, then said, “So long as you understand the rules, H.D., you’ll do all right.”
“What rules?” he asked. “I’m just dealing the cards.”
“And if I catch you doing more than that,” Fargo replied, his voice soft and menacing, “then you might live to wish I hadn’t.”
H.D. stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “I’ve always been a straight shooter, Fargo. I’ll deal the cards that way, too.”
“Good enough,” Fargo said. He looked at the bodies on the ground and added, “Do you want help moving these down to the undertaker?”
H.D. shook his head. “No, we’ve got street urchins for that. They’ll move ’em for two bits each and be glad for the work. The parish will pick up the cost of getting ’em buried if no one comes to claim them.”
“How’s Mary making out over at your place?” Fargo asked. “She doing okay?”
“Oh, she’s fine as frog’s hair,” H.D. said. “My wife has a new friend.” He sighed heavily. “You were right, Fargo. No sane man would have two grown women in his house. They start plotting against you the minute they think you’re out of earshot.”
Fargo laughed and a sense of relief washed over him. He didn’t think H.D. was on the wrong side of things here, which would mean one less man to worry about. “What makes you think,” he asked with a grin, “that they wait even that long?”
Once he was back on the street, Fargo got the feeling that he was being watched again. He tried and almost succeeded in convincing himself that this was stupid. The problem wasn’t people behind windows noting his every move—the problem was that this was a city where virtually nobody was trustworthy. Usually when he went into a town he found the good folks right away. Not here. New Orleans was a place where there was no such thing as “the common good.” Every group you could name had a “common good,” meaning that there wasn’t much civic cooperation. It was a wonder that New Orleans had bloomed the way it had. Despite his misgivings about the place, Fargo had to admit that it was a magnificent spectacle of a city and that things only promised to get even bigger and bolder here.
Not that he’d stick around to watch.
In the afternoon before the game was scheduled to start, Fargo grabbed a quick bite at the diner next door and watched the street from the window. The blackened catfish filets he was eating were delicious and the slaw and the cornbread were homemade, but his mind wasn’t on his food but on the slow-moving groups of men circling the streets around the Blue Emporium and eyeing each other like soldiers getting ready to go to war.
It took almost a half hour, but eventually Fargo spotted the two men situated on the roof of the brothel and noted that other men had taken up positions in the alleys nearby. If things went badly tonight, a lot of people were going to die. There were too many guns and too many enemies gathered in one place.
He finished his meal and paid the bill, then stepped into the street. Beneath the brim of his hat, he saw that several sets of eyes followed his movements, but no one bothered him as he strolled around several blocks in either direction, counting the number of men that Parker, Beares, and Anderson had sent to keep watch on the brothel.
By the time he’d completed his circuit, Fargo knew that trouble was brewing and it was only a matter of time until it exploded. He remembered how, out on the plains of Nebraska, a summer storm would roll across the prairie in a black and purple line, the clouds churning and bolts of lightning zapping back and forth as it built up strength. When it hit, it did so with a ferociousness unrivaled in nature, and wise men hid in their root cellars until it was over and they could come out and inspect the damage.
No one in this area had that option.
He went back to his room to change into the new clothing he’d purchased earlier in the afternoon. The loose makings of a plan were now firmly set in his mind and some of it meant looking a particular part. Though Fargo didn’t consider himself an actor by any means, he knew that in some situations how a man looked was almost as important as what he might do.
In his room, now cleaned but still smelling faintly of gunpowder, he dressed in black denim jeans and a matching black shirt with bone buttons. He slipped on a new pair of boots, also black, that weren’t fit for riding a horse for any distance, but had high enough sides that they could easily hide his boot knives. A paisley-patterned vest in a blue so dark it might as well have been black, completed the clothing portion of his outfit, and he topped it off with a new hat he had no intention of keeping when he left the city.
There were towns on the frontier where this kind of hat would get a man called all kinds of names and lead to fights, but here, it would likely fit right in. It was solid black, too, and made of rich felt. It had a gambler’s crown and a wide brim that would serve to hide his eyes. The hatband was woven leather braids interspersed with what the merchant claimed were genuine alligator teeth. They certainly looked real enough, anyway.
Finally, Fargo strapped on a new gun belt—another item he planned on getting rid of as soon as he could. This one was a double-holster rig with midthigh tie-downs, and he placed his well-worn Colt in the righthand side and a new one in the left—the same model, but in much better shape than his trusted companion. His own gun had seen many years of hard use, but he wouldn’t trade it for much of anything.
It had saved his life too many times and Fargo saw no reason to switch, despite the constant advertisements of better weapons he saw whenever he passed through a town of any size.
He took a long look in the mirror and saw that he had achieved the effect he was going for. Parker had hired him to keep a poker game fair and Beares had hired him to protect Hattie during the game, but what both men were going to see when they looked at him tonight was a gentleman gambler and gunfighter, more than ready for trouble.
The person in the mirror bore no small resemblance to a man he’d met only once, in a small gambling saloon in Georgia. The man’s name had been John Holliday, a dentist by trade, but when he sat at the card table, even someone of Fargo’s background realized that they were sitting with a very, very dangerous man.
Fargo didn’t know where John Holliday was now, probably still practicing dentistry somewhere, but he did
