Free The Pistoleer by James Carlos Blake Page B

under his breath every time he lost a hand, and he was cussing a lot.
    After a while the pile of money in front of Wes was more than twice as big as it’d been at the start. The judge looked to be a little ahead and Davis had lost about half what he started with. But Bradley was taking an awful beating. His stake was down to a few dollars in silver. There was a bottle of Kentucky whiskey we’d all been sharing, but nobody’d been drinking seriously, just now and then sipping from it to warm ourselves against the cold. Now Bradley turned the bottle up and made it bubble with the long pull he took off it. Maybe it was a signal to Davis, maybe not—all I know is things turned ugly on the very next hand.
    Wes raised the pot ten dollars and Davis and the judge folded, but Bradley said, “I’ll see you,” and showed Wes two pair. “Not good enough,” Wes says, and turns over three nines. Bradley cusses and smacks down his cards and takes another big drink.
    Wes pulls in the pot and says, “That’s ten dollars more you owe me.”
    Bradley says what the hell is he talking about, and Wes tells him he didn’t put in the ten-dollar raise he called on. Bradley says bullshit, he sure enough did, and what’s Wes trying to pull here?
    While they’re arguing, the judge scoops up his money and yanks on his boots. He says, “That’s it for me, gentlemen, we really must do it again sometime”—and he goes out the door in a flash.
    For a second Bradley and Wes just glared at each other—then everybody moved at the same time. Bradley whipped out a huge Bowie and took a wild cut at Wes just as Hamp Davis grabbed for the old Walker Colt on my hip. We wrestled for it, his rotten breath full in my face, and he wrenched it out of my hand and gave me elbow in the mouth, knocking me on my ass. I heard Bradley holler, “Shoot him, shoot him!” and saw Wes going out the door on his hands and knees as quick as a kicked cat.
    “You stupid shit!” Bradley yells at Davis. “Why didn’t you shoot him?”
    “Who you calling stupid, you Ozark hillbilly!” Davis yells back. “We got the bastard’s money, so what’s the need of killing him? You want more law on our ass?”
    Then Bradley takes notice of me and I figure he’s for sure going to stick that Arkansas toothpick in me just so he can have the pleasure of sticking somebody. But Davis waves the Walker at me and says, “You! Get the hell out of here! Tell your peckerwood partner we ever see him again we’ll cut his balls off.”
    “Same goes for you, dogshit,” Bradley says to me as I scrabble by them on all fours, headed for the door, expecting to get the Bowie in my ribs as I go by, but all he did was spit on me.
    As soon as I cleared the door I straightened up and started running. The road was lit up nearly bright as day under a full moon and the air was cold enough to make my teeth ache. I ran about fifty yards before I thought to cut over into the trees alongside the road where the shadows were long and deep. Once I got into the dark, I leaned up against a tree to catch my breath and let my heart slow down some.
    “John,” somebody whispers right behind me, and I give such a start I bump my head on a low limb. Wes puts his hand on my arm and says, “Easy.” I could barely make him out, it was so dark in among the trees.
    “Christ sake, Wes,” I say, “let’s get the hell out of here.” I don’t mind saying I was scared.
    “Not yet,” he says. “It’s my fault they got my money, but I ain’t about to go home barefoot and without my gun. Lend me yours.”
    I told him Davis had it. “They take your money too?” he asks me, and that’s the first I realize they didn’t. I reckon they were too taken with him to think of robbing me.
    Then we hear Bradley and Davis coming up the road and we hunched deeper into the shadows. They were laughing and passing the bottle back and forth. They went by within fifteen feet of us, their breath steaming in the bright