Hard Money (6 page)

A dance-hall girl at a table saw Seay and waved, and Seay nodded, knowing it was useless to try and speak above the din. Somewhere in the rear, on the edge of the dance floor, a piano ground out an insane din that nobody listened to.

Jimmy Hamp was watching a poker game, his swart, utterly bald head beaded with drops of perspiration. He had most of a cold cigar chewed up into a ball which he cuddled in his mouth, and its fetid stench settled around him like an aura. He saw Seay and put out his hand and tried to talk, and then shook his head, grimacing.

He beckoned Seay to a door in a wall at the far end of a bar. Halfway there, a row started back on the dance floor and there was a quick scuffling of feet. A bouncer fought his way to it. Jimmy directed a worried gaze in that direction, but his height was against him, and he could see nothing but a tangle of milling shoulders and heads. He shrugged, and Seay followed him to the door, and they both went into the office.

“Honest to God, Phil, what I need is a corral with a roof on it,” Jimmy said wistfully after he shut the door. He shook Seay's hand again and motioned to a chair.

“Business good?” Seay asked.

Jimmy said, “Too good. If it keeps up, I'm goin' to give the drinks away. I can't collect for half 'em now with this mob.” He eyed Seay with friendliness and sat on the desk. “Heard you got took.”

Seay hunkered down in his chair and pulled out his pipe, nodding.

“Well, you landed on your feet you son-of-a-gun,” Jimmy said, smiling. “You never belonged in this business anyway.”

“That's what Bonal thought.”

“A Big Augur now, hunh?” Jimmy murmured. “Well, it don't take you long, Phil. You started at Reese River with a half-dozen teams and you wound up on top of the heap.”

“Broke.”

Jimmy laughed and dropped his cigar into a spittoon. “Who didn't?”

They chatted of Reese River a few moments, and when a pause occurred Seay asked, “Where's the big game tonight, Jimmy?”

Jimmy regarded him shrewdly and slowly drew out a cigar from a pocket of his open vest.

“You mean the giant killer?”

Seay made a wry face and shook his head. “I never sat in a game where the white chips come at a hundred. I wonder how it would feel,” he mused.

“Ask Abe Comber.”

“Maybe I will,” Seay murmured. “No, I'm looking for a high limit where a man can have ambition.”

“That's hard to find in this man's town.”

“That's why I came to you. If there is one, it's floating. Where is it tonight?”

Jimmy took out his cigar and studied its tip with frowning concentration. Then he raised his glance and said, “In the back room here.”

Seay laughed. “I didn't think you'd let a white shirt in the place, Jimmy.”

“It's their idea. Too many buckos loose with the same ambition you've got, but this outfit's clubby. So they change the room every night.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Maybe. Bonal hits it once in a while when Hugh Mathias brings him. Then there's the super for the Pacific Shares, Herkenhoff. Curtin, the fire chief. Ferd Yates, the marshal. Sometimes, Chris Feldhake and—”

“Feldhake,” Seay murmured, suddenly remembering Tober's mention of this man. “Do I know him?”

“He's a big blond moose and salty,” Jimmy said. “You wouldn't forget him.”

Seay shook his head. “Who else?”

“Well, one night Feldhake brought Janeece in. Bonal was there that night.” He shook his head. “It was quite a party.”

“Bonal won,” Seay said.

“How'd you know?”

Seay only smiled and shifted in his chair. “Can I get in tonight?”

Jimmy studied him and then the canvas sack which lay on Seay's knee, and then he raised his glance again to meet Seay's eyes. “It can get pretty bloody, Phil.”

“Sure. Can I get in?”

“Not if they're smart,” Jimmy said dryly, rising. “Come on. They'll take my word for you.”

They stepped out again into the mob in the barroom. Jimmy shouldered his way to the back stairs and climbed them. At the top, they traveled a long corridor to the rear of the building, then turned into another corridor at the right. These were the private rooms, where the girls below entertained their customers. At the end of this corridor Jimmy stopped in front of a door and knocked on it, three sharp knocks, then one slight one. A muffled voice said, “Come in.”

There was a big green-felted table in the center of the large room, and the features of the five men seated around it were sharp and pale under the bright overhead lamp. Plainly, this was a gambling room, formed by tearing out the partition and joining two rooms. A scarred sofa filled the back wall. There was a buffet beside it lined with a dozen bottles of liquor, glasses, a spacious tub of ice and three boxes of cigars. It was private, quiet, businesslike.

Jimmy spoke to the dealer, a small, white-haired man with shriveled cheeks and oversize saber mustaches.

“Ferd, you know Phil Seay.”

“Sure,” Yates said, nodding at Seay.

“Seay's looking for a game and some place to howl,” Jimmy went on. “I told him I'd try for him here.”

“If this is private, I don't want to,” Seay murmured.

Yates looked at his companions. “Fresh money,” he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling just a little to indicate he was smiling. He turned to Jimmy and Seay. “Ain't you the one Bonal broke the other night?” When Seay nodded, Yates said dryly, “Well, maybe this is somethin' I'm just a little better at than Charlie Bonal. Sure, sit in.”

The others murmured assent, and Jimmy introduced Seay around. Yates, Curtin, Feldhake, House and Hugh Mathias were the names. Of them, Seay observed and noted two things, that Mathias wore immaculate clothes, and that Chris Feldhake could mangle a man's hand when he shook it.

Introductions finished, Jimmy said, “Start off, boys, and learn how to play stud from the man who invented it.”

Seay took off his coat and sat down between Yates and Mathias, and while he bought his chips, Mathias courteously explained the limit.

Soon the game was under way, and over this room came a feeling of concentrated reticence which is the universal atmosphere of gambling. When Seay backed out of three pots Jimmy snorted in disgust, grinned and left.

Seay gambled with lazy attention, playing dull poker and studying everyone's hands but his own. It was Feldhake's hands that he studied most minutely, and how he played them. And slowly, he got a knowledge of the man. Feldhake, at first sight, fitted only that part of Jimmy's description that called him a moose. Big he was, with a breadth of shoulder and thickness of neck that were massive, ponderous. His half-clenched fist could hide all his cards. At first sight, his face was pleasantly oafish, almost stupid, with its thick lips, bulbous nose and rough leathery skin. A permanent smile, uneasy almost, seemed stamped on the man's face. He smiled at everything and at everyone until a man watching him had the conviction that he thought the world a hugely pleasant place. That was a deception his eyes did not bear out, for they were deep set, alert, wary, surface lighted and opaque when a man looked squarely at them. A rough and untidy shock of blond hair, the slow speech of the man, the clumsy, bearlike movements of him, seemed to give him an air of stupid simplicity. But it was quickly evident to Seay that Feldhake was gambling with a driving cunning, and a card sense that was nearly intuitive. Mathias was the only expert there. Yates, the quiet merchant, House and the bluff and talkative Curtin were nonentities, playing for stakes that were too high for them.

Presently, Seay leaned back and pulled out his watch and laid it beside him.

“I pull out at three,” he said to the table. “That agreeable with you gentlemen?”

They said it was. Seay won the next pot, and the one after that, which recouped a fifth of what he had lost. Slowly, the game lost its air of feisty good nature, with which most men gamble, and settled down in earnest.

At midnight, Curtin lost his last chip and left, and Jimmy Hamp presently brought up a man named Trueblood to take his place. There was a swollen stack of chips in front of Seay. Jimmy chuckled at sight of them and said, “Boys, it costs a lot of money to learn poker the way he teaches it.”

Feldhake laughed loudly at this. Jimmy went out, and Trueblood bought his chips. At one, Trueblood was losing badly and suggested to Feldhake they change seats. Feldhake agreed. In half an hour Trueblood was cleaned. His and Curtin's and House's chips were about evenly divided between Feldhake and Seay, who both had a sizeable share of Yates's and Mathias' too.

When Trueblood left, Feldhake rose and said, “Deal me out this round. I want a drink.”

He went over to the buffet, poured a straight whisky and then walked to the window. He stood there, his great shoulders shoved through the window, breathing of the hot but comparatively clean air until Yates called wearily, “The deal's yours, Chris.”

Feldhake pulled down the shade and returned to his seat.

At two-thirty House and Mathias had lost half their chips to Seay and Feldhake, and Yates was playing a losing game in desperation. At quarter to three Yates threw down his cards, conceded the pot and rose to mix himself a drink.

“I never liked four-handed poker,” Mathias observed.

“We've only got fifteen minutes of it,” Seay countered, looking at Feldhake.

“Your luck's out, Mathias,” House put in. “So's mine. Want to bank some blackjack?”

“Sorry, gentlemen, but that's not my game,” Seay said. “I'll stay with it fifteen minutes.”

Feldhake shrugged. “Pull out if you want.”

Seay got a nod from Mathias and leaned back, stuffing his watch in his pocket. Yates returned with a drink and opened a cigar box to cash in Seay's chips. The box was packed with bank notes.

“Paper,” Yates said scornfully. “Where's it comin' from? Paper in a gold camp. Is it any good?”

They laughed at him. Paper money was a rarity in Tronah, and many workmen at the mines and mills would not accept it. Yates said to Seay, “You're the winner, Seay. You ought to take it.”

Seay said he would, knowing he would have to get it changed in the morning. Seay rose then and left, just as the game was settling down to blackjack.

Out in the corridor, he felt weary, this night's heat slugging at his temples with every beat of his heart. But in this canvas sack which he held loosely at his side was something over three thousand dollars in banknotes. In a smaller sack in his hip pocket was another thousand in gold pieces. The intolerable strain of knowing that for the last five hours he had been gambling with Charles Bonal's whole tunnel scheme was gone now, and he felt drained of everything but the dregs of that vicious excitement.

Downstairs, the bar was less jammed, but it still held a thick crowd. He got a drink at the bar, then stepped out into the street. It, too, showed less people and less movement, and he turned down toward the feed corral, the heat of the night close and almost gagging.

A lantern hung in its arch. Tilted against the frame was an old man who roused from his doze as he heard Seay approach.

Seay flipped him a coin and said, “Sit tight, Dad,” and tramped through the stable's long centerway to the corral in the rear. There had been a lantern hanging in the rear entrance when he put up his horse, but it was gone now, leaving the stable and its corral in darkness.

Once by the corral, Seay turned and groped toward the hook on which the lantern hung.

He heard a sudden whisper of boots on the floor and wheeled, his hand driving toward his gun, and something crashed into the base of his skull.

Wave after wave of nausea coiled his stomach, and he was fighting to his knees when he suddenly tried to open his eyes and found that he could.

First he saw the grained floor, dusted with wheat husks, and then he peered up into a lantern, held by the stable attendant. Reed Tober stood beside him, cursing in a bitter monotone.

Reed took his hand and hoisted him to his feet and then held his elbow while the room circled once and settled, and he shook his head.

“I got here too late,” Tober said with quiet fury. “I got a shot, but it was a miss.”

Seay raised a hand to the back of his neck and then brought it across his eyes and shook off Tober's hand.

“That was a sucker trick,” he said mildly.

“They get it all?”

Seay reached in his hip pocket where the gold had been. It was empty. He nodded and turned around to look for his hat. It lay over against a stall. Leaning to pick it up, he nearly fell, but he caught himself and then, straightened and looked out into the street; his eyes narrowed. He shot one swift glance at the old man, and opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.

“Come on,” he said to Tober.

Tober fell in beside him. Seay's long stride took him upstreet.

Before they reached Jimmy Hamp's Keno Parlor, Seay paused and studied the second story of the building. Then he turned and cut in between two buildings, whose narrow way was littered with trash.

Once in the alley, Seay turned up it, and by the time Tober had caught up with him, he had stopped again. He was looking up at three lighted curtained windows, those of the gambling room he had just left.

“Give me all your matches,” he said to Tober, and when he had them he walked up close to the building and struck a light. Tober watched him examine the ground in a wide circle, lighting a dozen matches in the process.

Then Seay came back and stood beside Tober and looked up at the windows again. Tober heard his deep breathing.

“All right. Come along,” Seay said quietly then.

They went into Jimmy Hamp's and up the stairs, turned the corridor angle. Before they reached the door of the gambling room, Seay said, “This'll be rough, Reed. Don't let anyone surprise you from the corridor.”