Joshua Teel remained. Devol left, but Riordan came. And when the Yankee Saloon
closed, John Brennan came down to Maloon’s place.
Card Graham was sweating. He could make nothing work for him tonight, but half
an hour ago he had stolen an ace, and now he had another. Three times he had set
Fallon up for a trimming, and each time he had failed. He had managed to give
him a full house, only to have Fallon discard and ask for three cards. He caught
himself just as he was about to look up, like any greenhorn.
Fallon had a memory for cards. It was a priceless asset to a gambler, and Fallon
suddenly realized that it had been some time since he had seen the ace of
diamonds. He picked up the deck … thin … it was a thin deck. One or two
cards were gone. A gambler learns to judge such things, but even though he might
be wrong, he was not prepared to risk it.
He put the cards down. “This deck is bad luck,” he declared. “Neither of us has
done any good with it. Let’s have a new deck.”
Graham felt a sudden surge of viciousness, and a wild impulse to leap up and
slap Fallon across the mouth. Two aces out and a switch in decks!
On the back bar there was a pack of cards that had not been there when Maloon
brought the tray to the table. They had appeared on the back bar right
afterward. Undoubtedly this was the stacked deck they had tried to slip into the
game.
As Maloon started to reach under the back bar for a deck of cards, Fallon
indicated the deck on the back bar. “We’ll use that one,” he said.
Maloon hesitated the briefest instant, then brought the deck to the table.
Graham started to interrupt, then stopped. It could be a trap. It could be a
means of exposing him, for after all, this was his place. He was the gambler in
this saloon.
As he took the deck Fallon managed a glance at the bottom card … a trey … an
unlikely card for part of a bottom stock. The chances were that the arranged
cards were at the top. As Graham had planned to cheat him, the first card was
intended to go to the sucker, the second to the winner, and so forth.
Talking easily, Fallon took the deck, undercut about three-fourths of the deck,
jogged the first card, and shuffled off to the break, then threw the remainder
on top. He worked with the practiced skill of years, a skill that had worked on
the riverboats and in the crowded gambling salons of New York, Saratoga, New
Orleans, St. Louis and Cleveland.
He pushed the deck toward Graham for the cut, talking as he did so. Graham cut
the deck and Fallon picked it up, commented on the gun a spectator was wearing,
and at the same time did a one-hand shift of the cut, shielding the move with
his right hand as they came together.
Shifting the cut was a standard practice of the skilled card sharp, for a
stacked deck is relatively useless without returning the cut cards to their
original position. Fallon knew half a dozen methods, but preferred the one-hand
shift.
The packet of cards that he wanted on top had to go on the bottom when picked
up, so as he brought the two packets together in his left hand he held a slight
break open between them with his second finger. It required much practice to
tilt the bottom half of the deck and slide the upper packet beneath it, but it
could be done instantaneously, returning the cards to their original arrangement
before the cut was made.
Light was just breaking in the street outside when Fallon dealt the hand. Card
Graham stared at his cards, then threw them aside in disgust, recognizing them
as the hand he had set up in the cold deck for Fallon. Fallon simply grinned,
raking in the few chips.
Half an hour later he saw his chance. Graham had won two small pots by straight
poker, and was beginning to feel his luck had changed. He also won a third hand,
with a full house, aces and queens.
As Fallon swept the cards together, he noted the position of the aces, including
one from his own hand, and the queens. He did a fast card shuffle, picking up
the other two queens in the process, and after the cut did another one-hand
shift of the cut. When he dealt the cards, he gave Graham three queens.
As for himself, he held his cards, staring at them, glancing at the pot, at
Graham, finally seeing Graham’s bet and raising. On the draw he gave Graham the
fourth queen and another card, taking two cards himself. On the showdown, with
two thousand dollars in the pot, he showed four aces to Graham’s four queens.
Graham stared at the cards, his face slowly turning pale and ugly. When he
looked up at Fallon his eyes were vicious. “Why, you—!”
Macon Fallon had never felt more calm, more ready. “You killed two men, Graham,
after cheating them of their money. You tried to cheat me, but you’re small
time, Graham. You aren’t really good with cards, and you never will be. On the
River they would laugh at you.
“Now I am going to give you a chance. I am going to give you ten minutes to get
out of town!”
Card Graham was trembling inside, trembling with hatred and bitterness, and yet
with eagerness. He was going to kill Fallon. He was going to shoot him in the
guts and let him die slow.
He reached for his hat with his left hand and picked it up. He brought it across
in front of him and reached for the edge with his right hand, as though to put
his hat on with both hands. His right hand disappeared behind the hat, and Macon
Fallon shot him.
Fallon’s gun blasted, tearing a hole in the crown of Graham’s hat and driving
the middle button on his belt back into his belly.
The hat fell, revealing Graham’s smashed hand and bloody fingers and the
half-drawn derringer fastened by a metal clip to his left wrist, under the coat
sleeve. Graham backed up, fell to the edge of a chair and it turned over,
spilling him to the floor. He bumped the table as he fell, and a black ace fell
with him.
Macon Fallon watched the group of men carefully. His eyes went from one to
another, but no one spoke until Riordan said, “He had his gun in his hand when
you shot him.”
Fallon stood up and gathered the money from the table. He then put all he had
won on the table and split it into three equal piles. One of these he pocketed.
“Josh,” he said, “each one of those widows gets one of these, and if they will
stay in Red Horse we will find homes for them.”
“They didn’t lose anywhere near that much,” Teel said.
“They lost their husbands in my town,” Fallon replied shortly. “Take it to
them.”
Fallon walked out into the street and squinted his eyes against the morning sun.
He was suddenly tired, very tired. But he had his stake. With the price of the
claim he had sold, with the money won in the game with Graham, he had at least
twelve thousand dollars.
He could go now. He was through here.
Chapter VI
Macon Fallon stood at the window of his rooms above the Yankee Saloon and looked
down the street of the town he had created from the ashes of fraud. His eyes
were cynical, his mouth twisted wryly. Tomorrow he would ride out. It would be
hours before they realized he was not coming back.
Red Horse had served him well, but he needed it no longer, and the bright lights
of San Francisco and the Palace Hotel were calling. Disturbingly, he found his
eyes hesitating over the fields, now green with crops.
The water supply was not to be depended on, so what they must do was drill a
well or two down on the flat. There was a good chance of hitting water there,
close under the mountain’s edge. The town needed a shoemaker, too. Maybe the
harnessmaker could take it on. It also needed a tailor, and an effort should be
made to get one out here.
He swore suddenly, angry with himself for his foolish thoughts. Once Pollock
found out there was no gold on his claim, the lid would blow off and the people
would be gone, even faster than they had left before. His only chance would be
to get out first, before they discovered the town was based on a lie.
He glanced down at his gear. He would need another canteen, a little more food.