Chapter 3

At the next town, I unloaded the horse and the surplus gear, all at a remarkably reasonable price. I was told that the next town was 27 miles farther down the road, so I decided to spend the night in Abner, Texas. Abner was so small that it had only two saloons, but it was growing because only a year ago, Abner had only one saloon. Such is progress in the great state of Texas. They certainly knew where their priorities lay.

As usual, there were only three forms of recreation available to a man after dark, and one of them was limited to a single woman. So it was back to poker for me. I got in early to the game this time, so I had a good look at the dealer. He looked honest, so I hung around. As usual, it was win a few, lose a few until a couple of big spenders showed up. They pretty much took over the game and drove the commoners out with their high bets. My curiosity was aroused because I could not see what these two characters had in mind.

If they were going after me, they were in for a rude surprise. Sure, I had over $1,000, but there was no way I was going to put that into a poker pot. I think that they were really after the dealer, but I have no idea why. The odd thing was, they did not seem like locals from the way the other people in the saloon were acting.

By about 10:00 PM, the stakes in the game had risen considerably, and I was beginning to drop out of a hand more and more often. Just to see what would happen, I asked that we play with a new deck. My idea was to see who would object. If the cards were being marked, the marker would complain and want to stay with the current deck. If the deck was not being marked, then nobody would object to changing to a new deck.

As I expected, the two big spenders wanted to stay with the current deck. That's when I started searching for how they were marking the deck. It only took a couple of hands to find the problem, now that I knew that the cards were marked. The corners of the face cards were being roughed up so that they were more frayed than the lower value cards. That was simple to beat—I just started fraying the corners of every card that I received.

After about three more hands, the two sharpies started having trouble winning. Conversely, the dealer and I started to win. Pretty soon, every corner of every card was frayed, and the game returned to normal. That's when it became a contest between me and the dealer as to who could win the greatest number of hands. The two sharpies had lost about $300 between them when they finally called it a night.

They left the saloon, and the dealer reached over to shake my hand. "Thank ya, Sir. I knew that they was cheatin', but I couldn't spot how until after I noticed ya roughin' the corners of the cards. That was when I started doin' the same thin'. Ya saved me quite a bit of money. Let me buy ya a drink ta show my appreciation."

Normally, I would not drink the rotgut that was served in these frontier saloons, but I figured that one drink couldn't hurt me. I agreed and we went up to the bar. "Bartender, ifen ya please, we would each like a drink of yer good stuff. Ya know the one I mean."

The bartender looked a little strange, then smiled, and reached under the bar for a bottle that was very dusty, but had the recognizable label of a Kentucky brand of bourbon. The dealer dropped an Eagle on the bar and accepted $6 in change. I appreciated his largess, and I smiled my appreciation as I sipped my drink. Both of us knew how to appreciate the finer qualities of the distiller's art, so it took about 20 minutes to finish that one drink. I thanked him and started out the door.

There was a pool of light from the saloon and a couple of lamps to each side of the door, but it was blind dark anywhere else in the street. Two shots rang out just as I stepped completely out of the saloon. One bullet missed my head by about an inch, and the other one clipped a flesh wound in my upper left arm.

I could tell where the shots came from because of the muzzle flashes. I didn't hesitate, but dove off the sidewalk to the shadows and behind a full watering trough. One shot had come from an alley, and the other shot had come from a recessed doorway into a business. Those shots had to originate with the two card markers. Nobody else in town had any reason to shoot me. Those guys were apparently out for revenge.

Well, I was going to give them a fight for their money. I had learned a lot as a SEAL about fighting at night. One of the things I did was to ignore my guns and to draw my bowie knife. I may not be at instructor level, but I was damned close. Both of those fools were dead men if I could get close enough.

At this point, my friend, the dealer, stuck his head out the door, and he, too, received a welcome with pistol shots. They were damned fools—neither one had moved away from his original position. Hell, this might be easier than I had expected.

I stayed bent over to provide as little silhouette as possible as I ran to the other side of the street. Few people know that your vision in the dark is much better to the sides than it is straight on, so I was using my peripheral vision to guide me as I ran to the shooter in the alley. I chose him because I didn't want to give myself away by the noise I would make when I ran on the wooden sidewalk. I stopped at the corner of the building forming the alley and squatted as close to the ground as I could get. The idea was to find the shooter's silhouette against the stars.

Yes, there he was. I extended my right arm, the one holding the knife, into something like a spear shaft as I held out the knife in my right hand. I leaped toward the shooter and caught him with the full force of my weight hurled by the superhuman strength of my legs. The point of the knife had all of this momentum behind it and had no problem penetrating all the way to his heart with that one stroke. He died so quickly that he did not have the time to make a sound.

The next man was going to be a bit more of a challenge, since I would not have the sky background to pick him out. I bent over again and ran on the dirt of the street next to the wooden sidewalk until I got as close to him as I could. I was sure that he did not know that I was there because he made no effort to shoot me, and that was his obvious reaction to perceived danger.

Ah, I caught a break. He was standing in front of the glass windows in the main entrance to the store, and I could see the reflection of the lights across the street on that glass. His body was obvious as I looked at the right angle. Now I could choose to shoot him or stab him. I decided that I was not going to get style points from my knife work, so I should just shoot the bastard and get it over with.

I sheathed my knife and drew my pistol from my thigh holster. In this case, it was a little easier to reach. I was trying to be as quiet as possible so I pulled the hammer back to almost half cock. I didn't want it to click. Then I pulled the trigger back so that the hammer would fall forward the moment I released it with my thumb. At last, I pulled the hammer all the way back and aimed at the man standing in front of me. He still didn't know that I was there, so when the gun went off, he was the most surprised man in town. He didn't fall immediately, so I fired a second shot into his body with the normal action one would use with such a pistol. This time, he fell over.

At that point, I walked back to the saloon to check on my friend and to get some light to see what I had accomplished. The dealer was OK, just shaken up by the experience, but everybody was surprised to see me in one piece. At my request, the swamper fetched and lit a lantern for me, but he was not about to step into that street until it was proven that the two shooters were dead. Now he was a smart man—I wondered why he was just a swamper.

Anyway, I took the lamp across the street to examine my two kills. The one on the sidewalk did, indeed, have two bullets in him. It looked like he had been killed by the first shot, but was still upright because his light coat was caught on the door and holding him up. The second shot had broken that loose, allowing him to fall to the sidewalk.

The man in the alley was dead with very little blood to show for his stab wound. His heart had stopped pumping as soon as my knife put a hole in it, so he did not bleed very much. I called for the swamper to help me pull the two bodies into the pool of light, and that caused a virtual stampede of sightseers who wanted to see the bodies, and, especially, the wounds that had killed them.