Free Brings the Lightning (The Ames Archives Book 1) by Peter Grant

protest, and laid them in front of Walt. “What now?”
    “Watch.”
    Walt rotated the cylinder to bring the empty chamber beneath the hammer once more as he lowered it: then he reversed the gun in his grasp and hammered one of the dice hard with the bottom of the grip. The ivory cube cracked and split open, and a drop of mercury spilled out onto the green baize cloth laid over the table’s polished wood surface. Everyone stared at the little silver sphere as if mesmerized by it.
    “The mercury alters the balance of the dice,” Walt explained in the deafening silence as he returned the gun to his shoulder holster. “If you use the right wrist action, you can line them up in the cup. I’m sure some of you noticed that he just rattled the cup when he wanted to lose, and threw the dice any old way. He wasn’t trying to get a high score then—in fact, he wanted a low one, to gull those he was trying to fleece. However, every time he won, he’d spin and twirl the cup in a sort of figure-eight motion, then pull it back as he threw so that the dice came out in a line on the baize and didn’t bounce much, if at all.”
    “I’ll be damned if you ain’t right! That’s exactly what he did!” The sergeant looked stunned for a moment, then murderous rage surged across his face. “I’ll–”
    “Hold it!”
the chief steward barked. “Sure, he was cheating, but you can’t kill him for that. You’ll be charged with murder.”
    “He’s got a wallet full of ill-gotten money in his inside pocket,” Walt commented.
    “Has he now?” The chief steward reached towards the gambler’s jacket. When the man tried to object and pull away, two burly soldiers grabbed an arm each and held on tightly while the steward fished out the wallet. He opened it, extracted a fat wad of banknotes, added them to those on the table in front of the gambler, and counted swiftly.
    “There’s more than twenty-three hundred dollars here,” he announced loudly. A growl of anger rose from the soldiers.
    “Yeah—twenty-three hundred dollars of
our
money!” the sergeant exclaimed.
    “I think you’re about to be refunded,” Walt said with a grin.
    The chief steward nodded firmly. “Indeed you are. I’ll use this to repay everyone who lost at this table tonight. Please line up, all of you, and tell me how much you’ve lost. Be honest—others will have seen you play, and if you claim too much, I’ll find out and have to take it back.”
    “Hey!” the gambler objected. “I brought five hundred in here with me! It’s not all their money!”
    “If you didn’t cheat them out of it, you cheated others, so it’s theirs now,” the chief steward assured him cheerfully. “Anything left over will buy a meal and a drink for these men and their friends outside.”
    “Wait a minute!” the sergeant objected. “We’ll get our money back, right enough, but this gennelman here’s the one who showed us how this bast– beggin’ your pardon, Ma’am,” and he half-bowed to Rose, “how this gambler was cheating. He should get something too.”
    Walt shook his head. “I don’t want anything, thank you, sergeant. However, my aunt here lost her husband, and then lost their farm to taxes. She’s trying to make a fresh start teaching school in St. Louis. I’m escorting her there. She helped me tonight, so if you gentlemen agree, I’d like her to receive any reward you would have given me, to help her get back on her feet again.”
    “Now that’s a very Christian gesture, sir,” the chief steward said approvingly. “What say you all?”
    “I say ‘Aye’!” the sergeant roared, looking around challengingly. “This war’s widowed far too many good women. Far as I’m concerned, she should get the gambler’s money. All those in favor?” There was a loud rumble of agreement from his fellow soldiers, many of whom cast sympathetic glances at Rose. “Then so be it. Ma’am, we can’t make up for the loss of your husband, but we hope