After a hearty, if leisurely, meal at the Bon Ton Eating House, Tule Bragg looked at Mark with a broad grin.
‘Now what do we do, boy? This here big city’s got to have some mighty evil temptations for us country boys to avoid.’
‘Let’s go take a look for them then,’ Mark replied, shoving back his chair. ‘Like Pappy allus says, a man doesn’t know which kind of temptations to avoid unless he tries them.’
After paying for their meal, Mark led the way out of the building. Night had come and lights glowed invitingly from various places of entertainment. Already the sounds of revelry reached their ears. Pianos, growing tinnier and more discordant the farther east they originated along Hood Street, rattled out a variety of tunes. As the quality of saloon improved, so did the music offered grow in volume and number of available instruments. After studying the bill for the theater, Mark and Bragg decided that it offered nothing they wished to see. So they continued strolling in the direction of the Bigfoot Saloon, the largest, most expensive place in the area if not the whole town.
‘Hey, look up there!’ Bragg said, catching Mark’s arm and pointing into the sky to where a streak of light flickered through the blackness.
‘It’s nothing but a shooting-star,’ Mark replied.
‘It’s nothing but a sign, boy,’ corrected the foreman. ‘Why every time I see one my luck’s running high and can’t be beat.’ Which meant, as Mark knew full well, that their night’s entertainment and study of temptations would not go far beyond some gambling game. In addition to being a top hand with cattle, Bragg was also an inveterate gambler. Let him once see what he felt to be a sign of any kind and he headed for the nearest game of chance on the run.
Leading the way into the Bigfoot Saloon, Bragg paused and looked around him. Not that he had eyes for the fancy fittings, the display of choice types of drinks behind the long mahogany bar, nor the attractive gaily-dressed girls all hot and eager to join any customer who wished for company. Instead Bragg glanced around the various ways in which the management allowed their clientele to wager money. Ignoring the blackjack and chuk-a-luck layouts, for he knew no man could hope to beat the house’s percentage at either, Bragg searched for a poker game and did not find one of the kind he wanted; playing straight, with no wild cards, fancy hands or limit. Failing a chance to match his wits in a top-class poker game, his eyes went to where a sign with a painting of a tiger hung over a big table.
‘Let’s go buck the tiger for a spell,’ he suggested. ‘The signs tell me I’m set to howl tonight.’
‘The last time they did that you lost a month’s pay,’ Mark reminded him.
‘That was ’cause I mixed the signs up,’ replied Bragg. ‘I’m older and some slicker now.’
Nobody knew who first used the sign of a tiger to advertise that faro was the game played, but the two had become synonymous. Being conservative by nature in their hatred of change, gamblers also demanded that the table’s layout remained the same. So, whether thirteen real cards were used, the symbols chalked on rough planks, scratched in dirt or tastefully stained upon green baize cloth, players insisted that spades be used. Laid out in two rows of six cards, from ace to king, with the seven on its own at the left center of the rows, the layout varied only in the nature of its making.
Already eight players sat at the table, but the game had not yet begun. Facing them across the table, the dealer riffled a deck of cards with practiced skill. Before him stood the dealing box, open at the top so that only one card at a time would be available. However, the cards could not be removed from the top during play, but had to be slid through a narrow slit on the side facing the players. A small spring in the bottom of the box held the remaining cards firmly against the top of the frame.
While the dealer sold stacks of chips from the rack placed at his right hand, to his left the case-keeper prepared to play his important part in the game. Looking something like an abacus, the case-board carried pictures of the thirteen spade cards instead of numbers and four wooden balls rested on each symbol’s wire. As the case-keeper pushed all the balls to the left side of the frame, the lookout mounted his high stool, from which he watched the entire action, ensured that bets were paid off correctly and prevented any chance of cheating.
‘I’ll take a stack of them fancy yeller chips, friend,’ Bragg announced.
Mark had already studied the chips and seen the small marker stamped with the numerals 200. That meant the twenty chips in the stack cost two hundred dollars, or ten dollars each.
‘Same for you, mister?’ asked the dealer, looking at Mark.
‘Nope. I’ll just watch a spell,’ the blond giant replied and guessed it would be some time before Bragg pulled out of the game.
After a thorough riffling of the cards the dealer offered them to be cut. Everything seemed to be fair enough to Mark, and he doubted if a place like the Bigfoot would resort to cheating. The dealer’s box had an open top, a sign of honesty. ‘Sand Tell’ cards, specially treated for cheating at faro, could be used only from a special box with a closed top and small hole left to thrust out the cards. The big stake table in a saloon of the Bigfoot’s quality attracted professional gamblers capable of detecting any cheating device and men of sufficient social standing to make things very awkward for a saloonkeeper who crossed them. So Mark figured nothing but luck would separate Tule Bragg from his savings during the game.
Luck alone won at faro, especially during the early stages, which was one of the reasons Mark did not play it. When he gambled he wanted to use some skill and to be able to play the cards himself.
‘Lay on your bets, gents,’ said the dealer after the cut had been made and the cards placed into the box.
‘I’m betting the seven to win,’ Bragg told Mark, placing a chip in the center of the appropriate card on the layout. Then he moved between the two and three, but placed a hexagonal black marker on it. ‘And coppering the deuce and trey seeing’s they both owe me some loser’s money.’
All the other players set down their bets, following the various methods of indicating whether they wagered on one card or a combination of two, three or four. Carefully the lookout watched every bet, memorizing them so as to act as mediator in case of disputes. For that reason lookout men needed to be intelligent, cool and tough enough to back their decisions against objecting players. One player set down a red chip on the table level with the represented deuce and in front of the dealer to indicate that he bet the winning card each time would be an even number.
‘All bets down?’ the dealer inquired and received a chorus of agreement. ‘Here we go then, gents.’
With that he slipped the first card out of the box. Known as the ‘soda’, it was dead and could not be used in the play. Placing the soda alongside the rack of chips, he drew out the next exposed card and put it down at the right of the box.
‘Deuce loses,’ he told the players and indicated the seven of hearts at the top of the box. ‘Seven’s a winner.’
Which meant that Bragg collected on two of his bets during that ‘turn’ of two cards from the box. Sliding out the winning seven, the dealer placed it on the ‘soda’. Already the case-keeper had run along one of the jack’s buttons to touch the opposite side of the frame and show that one of the four had been taken out of play as the ‘soda’. Next he moved the first deuce marker clear across the frame to signify it lost. The winning seven was shown by its button on its wire being halted half an inch from the edge. In a well-conducted game the ‘case’ offered a visible and accurate record of every card played and what its result might be.
Once again the dealer drew out the exposed card and placed it on the loser pile at the right of the box, showing the winner card underneath. While faro interested its players, Mark found being a spectator boring. He knew that Bragg would object to being disturbed, so turned and walked across to the bar. A group of well-dressed men stood there, and Mark recognized one as Shanghai Pierce, a prosperous rancher and friend. Letting out a cowhand whoop, Pierce extended a powerful hand to Mark and introduced the blond giant to the rest of the party. Next Pierce demanded to be told how the treaty council went, something in which every man at the bar had an interest. So Mark told them what had happened, making lurid oaths as he mentioned the attempts by both white and Indian elements to prevent the affair being brought to a successful conclusion.
‘Look who’s just come in,’ Pierce growled, nodding towards the main entrance. ‘Know ’em, Mark?’
Turning, Mark looked the new arrivals over. In front strode a big, heavily built man. A battered high hat sat on a mop of shaggy graying hair, the face under it lined and seamed until it disappeared into the mat of beard. He wore a wolf-skin jacket, tartan shirt, levis pants tucked into calf-high Indian moccasins. Around his waist hung a gunbelt with a Dragoon Colt butt forward at his right side and tomahawk in slings on his left. All in all, he looked a mean, hard customer who would make a bad enemy.
Behind him came three younger men, all showing a certain family resemblance. They wore range clothes, yet Mark did not take them for cowhands. At the bearded man’s right side stood a tall, handsome jasper. Dandy-dressed, he sported a gunbelt with its holster fitted to it by a rivet-swivel, the tip of the Colt’s long barrel poked through the bottom and not by accident. At the dandy’s left and behind the big man was a gangling beanpole in his early thirties, untidy in appearance but wearing a brace of Cooper Navy revolvers in low hanging holsters. The last of the quartet had a medium-height stocky built frame, red hair and belted two Freeman Army revolvers butt forward in low cavalry twist-hand holsters.
While the quartet gave the impression of salty toughness, they did not particularly worry Mark. Nor could he see them causing the burly rancher at his side any great concern. In addition to owning a big Texas ranch, Shanghai Pierce bore a well-deserved name for handling salty toughs no matter how they came.
‘Can’t say I do,’ Mark admitted. ‘Who are they?’
‘Big jasper’s Churn Wycliffe, runs a trading post and hoss ranch up the top end of Lake Buchanan,’ explained Pierce. ‘The flashy-dresser’s his nephew, Billy Wycliffe, and claims to be fast with that fancy half-breed holster. T’other two’re kin. The beanpole’s Loney Sandel, and the last one’s Evan Shever.’
After looking around the room Churn Wycliffe spoke to his companions. Billy grinned and made some reply, indicating the bar, only to have the big man snarl back at him. Then Wycliffe stamped across the room to where a tall, thin, bearded man in a top hat, frock coat, dirty collarless shirt and patched pants sat nursing a glass of beer at a table. Nodding a greeting, Wycliffe sat with the man and signaled to a waiter. His companions stood undecided for a moment and then trooped across to the high-stake faro table. Billy took the last chair and the other two jostled a space for themselves, Evan Shever sitting on the edge of the table and grinning at the dealer in a challenging manner. However, the trio knew better than make too much of a nuisance, for the Bigfoot Saloon’s bouncers could be mighty persuasive in such cases.
‘Trade must be good,’ Mark remarked, turning back to the bar.
‘Likely,’ Pierce replied. ‘Only I wouldn’t want to guess at where they get the stuff they sell—or how.’
‘It’s not off Jake Jacobs there, that’s for sure,’ another rancher in the group stated. ‘He’s a peddler but he don’t often have anything of value to sell.’
‘Are they wanted?’ asked the youngest man present, a touch eagerly.
‘Nope,’ admitted Pierce. ‘More ’cause nothing’s been proved on them than for any other reason.’ Clearly, thinking of the Wycliffe clan’s possible criminal tendencies brought something more to the rancher’s mind for he went on, ‘Say, the Bad Bunch’ve pulled another one.’
‘What’s it this time?’ asked a prominent businessman.
‘The Wells Fargo office in Fort Worth while the Governor was handing out prizes at the County Fair there. Knifed the agent and nobody saw a thing.’
‘I wonder who they are?’ breathed the youngest man; he worked for the local newspaper and longed to be in on a big story that would bring him national acclaim, or at least the chance of being hired by one of the Eastern daily papers.
‘Dick Dublin and the Kimble County boys,’ guessed one of the crowd.
‘Not them!’ snorted the second rancher. ‘It’s the Marlows.’
‘When Alf Marlow or any of his kin get brains, you’ll maybe convince me they’re the Bad Bunch,’ snorted a man from the Fort Ewall country, full of civic pride and extending it to cover the leading light of his area’s criminal element. ‘It’s Jim Moon and his bunch.’
A comment which aroused considerable derision among the other members of the crowd, all of whom appeared to favor some different outlaw as leader of the mysterious gang called, for want of more information, the Bad Bunch. In fact, the discussion began to grow heated, and Mark felt that he ought to put a damper on it in the interests of peace and quiet.
‘I reckon it’s time we had another drink and talked about women,’ he declared, as an otherwise peaceable pillar of East Texas society demanded instant recognition of Cullen Baker as brains, leader and organizer of the Bad Bunch. ‘Which same it’d be one helluva note if some of you gents were thrown in the pokey for brawling over which owlhoot’s the best.’
A point that the others readily accepted, especially a well-known lawyer from South Texas who had been vehemently insisting that Bill Brooken—later sentenced to one hundred and twenty-seven years in prison—alone possessed sufficient savvy to run the elusive gang.
At that time Mark had no interest in the identity of the Bad Bunch. Soon circumstances would bring him into contact with them, and they proved to be more than the cream of the floating outfit could handle. v
Wishing to change the subject, he told of his last meeting with Calamity Jane and gave details of her defeat at the hands of Madam Bulldog, while omitting to mention the surprising fact which emerged concerning the woman who out-cursed, -drank, -fought and -shot Calamity.
‘Last I heard she was up Utah way, driving a stage,’ Pierce remarked. ‘Calamity, I mean. Helped U.S. Marshal Cole to bring in a gang of owlhoots.’
‘Cole?’ repeated the lawyer from South Texas. ‘I knew a Cole used to ride in Captain Jack Cureton’s Rangers in the War. Is that the same jasper?’
‘Sure is. He’s my cousin,’ Mark agreed and wondered how Solly Cole had got on with the volatile Miss Martha Jane Canary. vi
The subject changed to less provoking subjects than the identity of the Bad Bunch. After some of the Calamity Jane stories had been passed around, the men turned once more to Texas’ major industry and talking point, cattle. After a short time Mark remembered Tule Bragg and decided to take the foreman a drink. So he ordered four fingers of Old Scalp Lifter and carried the glass across the room.
‘Five’s the loser,’ announced the dealer. ‘Pay the coppered bet on it.’
‘That’s mine,’ Billy Wycliffe stated.
‘The red chip may be,’ Bragg put in quietly. ‘But that yellow with the copper on it’s mine.’
Silence dropped on the table and the other players began to draw away from the speakers. Under cover of the movement, Sandel eased around to halt on the opposite side of Bragg to his cousins. Mark found no difficulty in reaching the table due to a sudden and hurried withdrawal of standing players and kibitzers. In Texas a question of ownership around a card table could result in some fast, deadly and convincing arguments being used.
Slowly Billy began to swing on his chair seat in Bragg’s direction. At the same time his hand moved towards the Colt’s butt. Using a swivel-mounted holster, he did not need to draw the gun but could turn it still in the leather and fire through the bottom. Mark did not know whether Bragg had noticed how young Wycliffe wore the Colt and felt disinclined to wait and see. Not wishing to spill the drink in his left hand, the blond giant held it out to the side. Bending, he gripped the right rear leg of Wycliffe’s chair in his free hand and jerked it from under the dandy.
Letting out a yell of surprise, which turned into a yelp of pain, Billy lit down rump-first on the floor. In their own area, the Wycliffe clan packed considerable weight and authority. Few men around San Saba would cross them, and so they expected the same to apply wherever they found themselves. Unfortunately for their peace of mind, Mark Counter cared little for reputations and showed respect only to those who warranted it.
From the corner of his eye, Mark saw Shever drop from the table and reach for his gun. Bringing up the chair in a backhand swing, Mark crashed it straight into the stocky redhead’s face. Bright lights seemed to burst before Shever’s eyes and he reeled backwards, tripped then sat down hard. After which he flopped on to his back, losing all interest in the proceedings.
Like Shever, Sandel did not expect such a prompt, devastating disrespect to be shown for the clan Wycliffe. However, he considered it necessary to assert the family superiority, in the interests of maintaining their reputation of having never been curried below the knees. So he snaked a hand towards the offside Cooper’s butt. The move was fast, although not exceptionally so, and might have been capably performed had he been permitted to finish it.
When settling down to play, Bragg had removed his hat and hung its storm-strap on the back of the chair. He invariably kept his hair cropped short, which turned his head into a mighty effective weapon as Sandel discovered. Leaving his seat with surprising speed, Bragg butted the gangling Sandel in the belly. There was not even a growth of hair to cushion the impact, so Sandel felt like he had been struck in the stomach by either a cannon-ball or a charging bighorn ram. Pitching backwards, his hands folded on the injured area and he doubled over to collapse in a retching, twitching pile in the sawdust.
Across the room Churn Wycliffe threw over his chair, rose and started to reach for his Colt. Figuring that the man ought to be taking a hand at about that time, Mark had already swung to face him. The chair dropped as Mark’s right hand flashed down. Fingers curled around the smooth ivory handle of the right side Colt and slid it from leather. As it came out, Mark’s thumb eased back the hammer; but his forefinger remained straight along the trigger guard until the eight-inch barrel slanted away from him. In slightly over three-quarters of a second a cocked, lined Colt pointed in Churn Wycliffe’s direction with a finger around its trigger all set to turn lead loose.
That was the kind of smooth, practiced speed and ability which set the top gun apart from a man who was merely fast. Churn Wycliffe could read the signs and recognize Mark’s true potential as easily as a schoolteacher going through a child’s first addition papers. Such speed only rarely came without an equal skill at placing the bullets in any desired area. Nothing about Mark led Wycliffe to believe he faced an inaccurate exception. So the burly man spread his hands away from his sides in clear proof of his pacific intentions.
‘Take it easy, friend,’ he said in a voice deep as the growl of a Texas grizzly chewing cow meat. ‘And you-all, Billy, you stop that right now.’
Spluttering curses, Billy swung around still seated on the floor and reached towards his Colt. At his uncle’s bawled-out command, he removed his hand. Or it could be that he heard the cocking click of Bragg’s Dance Brothers Army revolver as the foreman threw down on him.
The boy shows some sense, mister,’ Bragg drawled as Wycliffe walked up. ‘Only not at a card table.’
‘Mind telling me what’s up?’ Wycliffe inquired with surprising mildness, or so it would seem to anybody who knew him.
‘I coppered a bet on the five, he didn’t and the card came out a loser,’ Bragg explained. ‘So he tried to claim my bet.’
‘That true, boy?’ demanded Wycliffe as Billy climbed sullenly erect.
‘It’s my—’ Billy began.
‘Don’t lie to me!’ bawled Wycliffe. ‘You didn’t have enough to buy yellow chips at this table. How about it, lookout?’
‘That was the gent there’s bet, the coppered yellow,’ the man in the lookout chair replied, indicating Bragg.