Trixies’s Gamble
Copyright© 2026 by Heel
Chapter 1
The saloon was called The Stable, which was a joke no one laughed at anymore. It smelled exactly like the real thing—sweat, old wood, spilled whiskey, and men who’d been losing money all their lives and didn’t like doing it tonight.
Trixie sat perfectly still at the poker table.
She didn’t fidget. She didn’t tap her fingers or glance at her cards twice. Her hands rested lightly in front of her, fingers relaxed, as if she were waiting for tea instead of for four angry men to decide whether to ruin her evening.
She was pretty—no point pretending otherwise—but not in a loud way. Dark hair pulled back simply, face calm, eyes steady. The kind of beauty that made men underestimate how dangerous it was to stare too long.
Across from her, Hank Miller wiped sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand. His temper was famous in this town, his luck less so.
“You done?” he snapped at the dealer. “Or we waitin’ till morning?”
The dealer swallowed. “River’s out.”
Trixie finally looked down at her cards. Just once. Just long enough.
Then she smiled.
It wasn’t a big smile. It didn’t show teeth. It was the sort of smile that suggested she already knew how this would end.
“I’ll see your twenty,” she said, her voice calm and pleasant, “and raise you fifty.”
The table went quiet.
Fifty dollars wasn’t just money in this town. It was a month’s wages. It was a horse. It was the difference between sleeping indoors and not.
“You’re bluffing,” said Earl Jennings, the blacksmith, his face red with drink and irritation. “Ain’t no way you’d—”
“I might,” Trixie said gently. “Or I might not.”
She met his eyes and held them. That was the trick—not the cards, not the math, not even the bluff itself. It was the patience. The way she let men talk themselves into believing what they wanted to believe.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.