Jackson turned over his cards: a full house, kings over sevens.
“A grand layout,” said McDermott, leaning back. “Sure and should be a winner every time.”
“Stop chinning, mister,” Jackson said. “Turn up your cards.”
McDermott did so, with maddening slowness. Two of his down cards were tens, making four in all. The room was hushed. McDermott reached for the pot.
“The deal’s crooked!” Johnny yelled. “He’s using a holdout!”
There was a startled instant in which everything seemed suspended. The man behind us snarled, “Shut up!”
I jumped involuntarily as an explosion came from the table. Each of Jackson’s hands held a pistol. Smoke curled from the barrel of the one pointed upward. The other was trained on a spot behind Johnny and me.
“The nigger’s got something to say.” Tension gave Jackson’s thin voice a higher pitch. “If you”—he moved the gun pointed our way slightly—“don’t allow him a chance, you’ll be the first dead.”
Apparently it convinced whoever was behind us.
“That’s good,” said Jackson. Without shifting his eyes he said, “You set, Buck?”
Colbourn muttered something I didn’t catch. He brought up his hands from below the table. They held revolvers.
I waited tensely, ready to spring in any direction. So many guns, so little time.
“Talk,” Jackson told Johnny.
“It’s a Keplinger holdout,” Johnny said, his words running together. “Named for the fella invented it. Used to work in the circus. Did magic tricks. Saw him once and—”
“Whoa,” said Jackson. “Just tell how it works, and we’ll check this gent to see if you’re right.”
Le Caron sat like a coiled spring. Across from him, McDermott’s face was ashen.
“It’s a contraption with pulleys and cords and telescoping tubes. You spread your knees and a sneak—that’s a little claw inside a double sleeve—moves down your arm to your hand. Close your knees, it goes back up. Makes cards appear or disappear. A Keplinger’s safer than the type that just shoots a spring up your arm and pulls it back with a rubber band, see, ’cause you gotta bend your elbow to make it work, and suspicious folks look for that, but never the knees, of course—”
“And you’re saying this gent is in cahoots with the dealer?”
“He fed his partner those tens,” Johnny said, “and you’ll find a fifth one—or maybe the fourth king you never had a chance of getting—in that holdout right now.”
“It don’t much matter what’s in it,” Jackson said, turning to face Le Caron, “but whether he’s got one.” He stood up and jerked the table back from Le Caron. “Okay, put your arms out in front of you and spread your knees, like the nigger said.”
Le Caron raised his arms slowly, bringing them up even with his head rather than stretching them in front of him. Just as I wondered about that, a suspicion danced in my brain.
“Look out!” I yelled as he widened his knees and a card materialized in his left hand. “Watch his other—”
It was too late. As eyes fixed on the card fluttering from Le Caron’s left hand, a knife blade flashed in his right. Positioned to throw, his arm blurred downward in a deadly sweep.
Gunfire exploded in the room. I spun low and dove at the man behind. Johnny had the same idea, wheeling a split second later but moving so fast that our bodies brushed as we hurtled forward. I felt a hot whisper on my scalp as a gun erupted. We slammed into him, toppling him backward beneath us. The gun went off again. I reached frantically for it, guts knotted and body writhing in anticipation of a bullet ripping into me. His knees came up, bucking Johnny violently. I slammed my right forearm into his face, still trying to grasp his gun hand with my left. Johnny got there first—just as the gun fired again. He yelped in pain and rolled away. Then I had the man’s wrist pinned to the floor. I battered his head with short, brutal blows until his grip loosened on the pistol. Pulling Johnny in close, I propped the groaning, half-conscious man up as a shield.
I peered over him in time to see Le Caron crash through the room’s only window. Jackson and Colbourn moved there quickly, their boots crunching shards of glass. They fired a volley through the window, reloaded, and stalked cautiously outside. McDermott lay against the wall, half covered by the overturned table, coins and cards spilled over him. He was groaning and his face was white. A dark flower of blood spread slowly on his coat below his right shoulder. Another man at the table lay still, facedown, on the floor.
Le Caron’s knife, we learned, had passed between Jackson’s left arm and his side, inches from his heart, grooving his flesh and thudding into the wall behind him. Both Jackson and Colbourn had sent bullets into Le Caron before he upended the table as a momentary shield. McDermott, on the floor, made the mistake of reaching into his jacket. Jackson shot him before he could free his weapon. Le Caron produced a gun from somewhere and fired wildly to cover his dash for the window. Jackson was positive he’d nailed him again on the way. With three bullets in him, they figured they wouldn’t have much trouble tracking Le Caron down. They were wrong. He vanished in the darkness. In the morning we found a trail of blood leading out into the desert; and that too disappeared. I hoped he’d died under a bush somewhere.
Johnny had grabbed the barrel as the gun fired. The bullet tunneled through his palm. The wound was ringed by ugly powder burns. The doc, a cynical, shaky-handed old drunk resigned to treating gunshot and stab wounds virtually every night, did a reasonably neat job of cleaning and bandaging it. He said the hand would never close as tightly as before and gave him
