CENTRAL CITY WAS SOME thirty miles west of Denver. Earl stepped off the stagecoach late the following afternoon. He swatted dust from his suit jacket and walked toward the center of town. As was his customary practice, he’d brought along no baggage.
Among local boosters Central City was called “the richest square mile on earth.” It was no idle boast, for upward of a hundred thousand dollars a week was gouged from the mountainous terrain. Placer miners, who worked the streambeds, still accounted for much of the gold. But hard-rock mining, with shafts bored into the mountainsides, was now the major producer. Such wealth was a lodestone for hundreds of newcomers who arrived daily.
The town itself was scattered along a gulch almost two miles long. Surrounded by mountains, the frame buildings and log cabins were wedged side by side throughout the camp. Main Street was designed to provide places of business with a look of permanence. The illusion of a second story was created with false fronts, framework structures attached to roofs, often topped by cornices and complete with sham windows. The business district looked substantial and built to last.
Earl traded greetings with several merchants along the street. He was a familiar figure in Central City, generally staying over a week on each trip. Unlike Denver, where the town fathers had pretensions of respectability, there was no stigma attached to a gambling man in the mining camps. Cardsharps and bunco men operated at their own peril, exposure often resulting in sudden death. But an honest gambler was looked upon as just another businessman. His stock-in-trade was luck and chance, the odds of the game.
Nowhere was this tolerant attitude more evident than with the sporting crowd. Saloons and dance halls and gaming dens were liberally scattered among more legitimate businesses. Even whores were viewed with grudging acceptance, one of the mainstays of any mining camp. Girls employed by a saloon or a hurdy-gurdy also worked the backroom cribs where love for sale was priced by the minute. The respectable people of Central City viewed all this with broad-minded amusement. Miners, by nature, were a randy breed. And women for hire were simply a part of everyday life.
Crossing an intersection, Earl mounted the boardwalk on the other side of the street. He went through the batwing doors of the Metropole, one of the few two-story buildings in Central City. A combination saloon, dance hall, and gaming dive, it was his regular haunt while in town. With something to suit every taste, the Metropole drew large crowds. Liquor was four bits a shot, the girls were a dollar a dance, and the gaming tables offered a variety of ways to go broke in a hurry. Whatever a man’s preference, he got his money’s worth at the Metropole.
The interior was brightly lighted by coal-oil lamps. Opposite the bar were crude tables and chairs, with a cleared area for dancing. The customers’ casual indifference to spittoons was marked by a floor stained dark with tobacco juice. Toward the rear, gaming layouts were ranked closely along one wall. On the other wall were several tables set aside for poker, and a twenty-one layout was positioned in the center of the gaming area. The woman behind the twenty-one spread was the Metropole’s star attraction.
Her name was Monte Verde. She was compellingly attractive, with raven hair, bold dark eyes, and a sumptuous figure. She wore a green velvet gown, her shoulders bared and an emerald pendant suspended over the vee of her breasts. Her expression was at once sensuous and humorous, and her eyes danced with a certain bawdy wisdom. She gave Earl a dazzling smile.
“Hello there, stranger.”
The evening rush hour had not yet begun. There were no players at the table, and Earl stopped directly in front of her. He smiled, looking her over with undisguised relish.
“Hello yourself,” he said pleasantly. “How’s tricks?”
“Another day, another dollar.”
“Sounds downright boring.”
She laughed. “Not the way I deal.”
The statement was more truth than jest. The game of twenty-one originated in France, and vingt-et-un was reputed to have been Napoleon’s favorite. Imported to New Orleans, the game became popular on riverboats and eventually made its way to the mining camps. It was fast, decided on the turn of a few cards, the closest hand to a count of twenty-one being the winner. Whether there was one bettor or more, every player was on his own and went directly against the house. Monte Verde was the only woman dealer in the camps, and men waited in line to try their luck. Her looks, and her joking manner, made losing almost a pleasure.
Earl was perhaps the only man in Colorado who knew Monte Verde’s real name. Like him, she was a native Missourian, and as two wayfarers in a remote mining camp, they’d been drawn together. For the past three years he had shared her room upstairs, and her bed. He kept a spare change of clothes in her closet, and everyone in town considered her his woman. He was her confidant as well, and late one night she’d told him her darkest secret. Monte Verde was a woman with a past.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Missouri was divided in its sympathies between the North and South. But the state legislature, in the spring of 1861, voted to side with the Union. Shortly afterward the federal army established its headquarters at St. Louis. The city teemed with Confederate sympathizers, one of whom was the young kinswoman of a prominent Missouri politician. Her name was Belle Siddons.
Her social position was above reproach, and she soon developed many admirers among the officers assigned to Union headquarters. Her escorts squired her to military balls and various loyalist functions, and their wartime secrets were never secret for very long. In 1862, after arousing suspicion, she was arrested as a spy. Following interrogation, she confessed her guilt, proudly boasting that she had kept Confederate forces informed of Union troop movements. She was tried and convicted before an army tribunal.
Only the intervention of President Lincoln spared her the gallows. Sentenced to prison, she was released after four months, and much political dickering, on condition that she exile herself somewhere beyond the Missouri River. Traveling westward, she sought a new life in Colorado Territory and the gold fields. She changed her name, and with time and experience she became a skilled twenty-one dealer.
Among her clientele were outlaws, gunmen, prospectors, and the legion of adventurers who populated the mountain settlements. Yet, in those first few months, she kept her admirers at a distance, aware that personal entanglements and the business of gambling were a dangerous mix. No one questioned her past, for westerners considered any breach of privacy as the cardinal sin. She remained, instead, the lady with the strange name. And one of the great mysteries of the Colorado gold camps.
Earl Brannock was the exception. She sensed in him a kindred spirit, another exile, and allowed their lives to become entwined. Yet their union was one without bonds, or promises. She was his woman while he was in Central City; neither questioned the other about the times they were apart. Still, their arrangement had lasted three years, and there was an unspoken understanding between them. She was always waiting when he returned to Central City.
“Good to be back,” he said now with a suggestive smile. “After a few days, Denver gets to be a lonesome place.”
She touched his hand, laughed a low gloating laugh. “I missed you, too, lover.”
“Guess I’ll get cleaned up. Haven’t seen any high rollers around, have you?”
“Why, are you looking to make a killing in one night?”
“I take ’em where I find ’em—for all they’re worth.”
Her lips curved in a teasing smile. “You are a scoundrel, Mr. Brannock.”
“Would you have me any other way?”
“Any way at all suits me . . . tonight.”
“By God, I have been away too long!” Earl laughed and walked toward the staircase at the end of the bar.
She followed him with her eyes, tingling inwardly with anticipation. When he glanced back on the stairs, she gave him a slow, naughty wink.
The overhead lamp bathed the players in an amber glow. Seated around the table were three miners and another man Earl took to be a drummer. The game was five-card stud, with a ten-dollar limit. By mutual agreement, it was a cutthroat game, check and raise allowed.
Earl was ahead almost five hundred dollars. He’d been the steady winner, drawing unbeatable cards for the past four hours. The drummer was dealing now, and Earl considered the board as the fifth card was dealt. He calculated that the best hand on the table was two pair, jacks and hidden treys. He had two queens showing, and a third in the hole. He checked the bet.
Across the table, the miner holding jacks grunted sharply. He was a barrel-gutted man with muddy eyes and a face pebbled with deep pockmarks. All night he’d held second-best hands, losing consistently to Earl. When the other two miners also checked, he bet the limit. The drummer, seated beside him, folded his cards. Earl tossed a twenty-dollar gold piece into the pot.
“Raise you ten.”
The next two men dropped out. The miner opposite him sullenly matched the raise. “You’re called.”
Earl turned his hole card. “Three little ladies.”
“Sonovabitch!” the miner snarled. “You done it to me again.”
“Guess it’s my lucky night.”
“In a pig’s ass!” the miner said, jerking a thumb at the drummer. “You and this slicker are in it together. He’s been dealin’ you winners all night.”
“Who, me?” the drummer bleated.
“Harsh words,” Earl said with a clenched smile. “I suggest you apologize to our friend.”
The miner gave him a querulous squint. “Your friend, not mine! You think I can’t spot a couple of sharpies when I see ’em?”
A stark silence settled over the gaming room. Earl saw Monte turn from the twenty-one layout, her eyes round with fear. He stared at the miner with a straight hard look. When he spoke, there was a soft, menacing lilt to his voice.
“I’ll only ask you once. Tell everybody you were mistaken and we’ll let it drop here.”
“Or else?”
“Or else,” Earl said quietly, “back your play.”
The miner glowered across the table a moment. Then, his features twisted in a murderous expression, he kicked the chair aside and clawed at the pistol stuck in his waistband. Earl’s hand dipped inside his jacket and reappeared with the derringer. He cocked and fired in a single blurred motion.
A burlesque leer of disbelief spread over the miner’s face. He stared down at the puffy hole on his shirtfront and saw a growing crimson stain. The pistol dropped from his hand and he slowly corkscrewed to his knees. He toppled over backward on the floor.
Earl regarded the other players with great calmness. When none of them moved, he put the derringer away and slowly pocketed his winnings. Standing, he walked from the gaming room, nodding to Monte as he went up the stairs.
Monte Verde took her hand from a small pistol secreted beneath the twenty-one table. As a couple of housemen carted the body out, she deftly shuffled the cards.
She smiled engagingly at the huddle of miners gathered before the layout.
“Place your bets, gents. Twenty-one wins every time!”