Mason tried to read Dan’s face as if he were the one faced with Greeley’s decision. As with a scholar studying any subject, it was always a good idea to partake in hypothetical problems when he wasn’t hip deep in the real thing. Thus far, Dan had presented himself as a typical cautious player: quiet, conservative, predictable. Mason hadn’t allowed himself to be lulled to sleep by that, but he hadn’t seen much of anything to refute it either. Now Dan was taking a bold step.
If he was bluffing, he was doing a fine job of it.
If he had a hand, he was committing himself to it wholeheartedly like a captain running several paces in front of his men with saber drawn during a charge.
Either of them was an impressive sight to behold.
Greeley took a deep breath and began sorting his chips. First he cut off enough to cover the raise. He looked at that for a few seconds, looked up at Dan, and then looked back down again. Next, he started slicing off smaller pieces of his pie. As each little pile of chips joined the call, Greeley scowled as if he were letting go of a beloved pet.
Everyone at that table knew it was an act. Mason was certain of that much. If any of them truly thought the owner of the Delta Jack could be that concerned about money, they would have been plucked clean and hung out to dry long before now.
“I’m raising,” Greeley said.
“Obviously,” Dan snapped.
The quickness of Dan’s reply, combined with the inflection in his voice, gave Greeley a sliver of information.
After counting up the chips he’d sectioned off, Greeley took another stack and pushed them in to the middle of the table. “Two thousand more,” he said.
Without hesitation, and wearing a flicker of a grin that lasted for less than a heartbeat, Dan pushed everything he had in front of him. “And another twenty-two hundred seventy on top of it.”
Greeley didn’t know what to make of that.
Mason wasn’t so sure either. In fact, he hadn’t felt more grateful for anything in a while than he did for not having to be the one to make the decision that had just been put to the Delta Jack’s owner.
After staring at the chips Dan put in the middle of the table, Greeley said, “That’s not enough to cover a raise that size.”
“I have a line of credit here,” Dan said. “This may be putting me to my limit, but it should cover it well enough.”
“Credit?”
Dan blinked. “Yes. Credit issued by your cashier. You do still honor your own credit, right?”
“Of course I do,” Greeley said with an angry edge to his voice. At least, Mason thought it was anger. So far, he’d never heard the Jack’s owner when he was angry. He’d heard stories about such instances, which were enough to make him certain he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it. Watching from a distance, on the other hand, was worth pulling the strings necessary to be invited to this game.
Keeping his eyes on Dan, Greeley raised one hand and snapped his fingers. One of the men guarding the table strode over to him like any well-trained attack dog. “Yes, Mr. Greeley?” he said.
“Have a word with Tilly,” Greeley told him. “Ask her how much credit has been extended to Mr. Andrews here.”
“Yes, sir.”
The guard turned and walked away. As he passed the other guards, he handed over his shotgun and kept moving toward a cage at the back of the room where the boat’s cashier and accountants performed their duties. Holding two shotguns instead of one seemed perfectly natural to the guard who remained behind.
Mason had to shift his focus back to Greeley. He would have assumed that Greeley knew the accounts connected to any of the players in front of him, but now he wasn’t so sure. Greeley seemed genuinely flustered as he tapped a finger against his chin while staring daggers at the man to his left.
As for Dan Andrews . . . it seemed he was close to dozing off for a spell.
For the next several moments, the only sounds to be heard were those that drifted in from the rest of the room. Other games were in full swing. Girls laughed at men trying to woo them. Drunks told jokes or groused about something or other. In one of the other rooms on the deck above, music was being played.
Glancing toward the closest window, Mason said, “Hell of a nice night out there.” His tone was friendly, but his voice came so suddenly that it hit the table like a brick tossed through a pane of glass. It might have been somewhat childish to purposely give the other players a start like that, but Mason simply couldn’t help himself.
Clint suppressed a chuckle, but just barely. “It sure is,” he said.
Maggie rolled her eyes.
Dan chuckled under his breath while idly drumming his fingers against the table.
Greeley leaned back and crossed his legs. Although he wasn’t being so obvious about staring at Dan, he was still studying him.
It was easy enough for Mason to track the guard through the rest of the room. The man had a bulky build, but that wasn’t what caused everyone he encountered to step politely back to clear the way for him. Even from a distance, Mason could feel the relief pouring out of those folks once it was clear that the man in the infamous gray suit wasn’t coming for them. Mason had suspected that all the guards at that game were overmen and now he felt comfortable in changing that suspicion to a certainty.
When he arrived at the table, the guard collected his shotgun and walked straight over to Greeley’s chair. “Seventeen hundred and seventy, Mr. Greeley,” he said. “That’s how much credit is left on his account.”
Greeley didn’t insult the other players by trying to make it look as though that was any sort of revelation to him. He merely nodded.
“Tilly wanted to know,” the overman continued, “if the credit should be suspended.”
“No need for that,” Greeley replied.
“She also wanted to know if you wanted it extended.”
With the lilt of an eyebrow, Greeley passed that proposition over to Dan.
“One hand at a time,” was all Dan had to say to that.
Suddenly Greeley’s mood seemed to improve. That was undoubtedly a surface affectation, but it was a good one all the same. “A smart way to live, sir,” he declared. To the overman standing nearby, he said, “I’ll let you know if Tilly needs to be informed of anything else. Run along, now.”
Dismissing the overman as if he were shooing away a lapdog was even more impressive than any other display thus far. Mason, along with anyone else at that table, didn’t need to be reminded of the guns at Greeley’s disposal, but it was quite another matter to be shown firsthand.
Mason shifted his weight, careful not to make any noise.
“Your play,” Clint said. Perhaps he’d wanted to show he wasn’t frightened by the muscle being flexed by the overmen nearby, but it was still out of turn and Clint knew it.
Greeley would have been well within his rights to put Clint in his place, but he didn’t. All he needed to do was snap his eyes across the table for a second and Clint backed down with an apologetic shrug.
Times like these were why Mason preferred to play from the position of a man who simply knew what he was doing and had a decent amount of funding to back it up. Being someone with Greeley’s stature brought with it a whole other set of concerns. If he looked weak, there were any number of sharks in the water poised to take a bite out of him. If he looked heavy-handed, some of the more delectable fish in the water might get frightened away and leave him hungry.
If Greeley folded, he could look weak. Even worse, if he folded and Dan showed a bluff, Greeley would look like a fool.
If Greeley called and Dan was bluffing, he would look brilliant while Dan would be reduced to ashes. If Greeley called and Dan wasn’t bluffing . . . well, that wasn’t very favorable for a man in Greeley’s line of work.
It was a tricky quandary, which was why Mason intended to retire someplace quiet once he pulled together enough money to call it a fortune instead of buying his own casino.
“You want me to call?” Greeley asked.
Dan continued drumming his fingers. Expecting him to jump at the chance to answer that question was hopeful on Greeley’s part. Despite the cynical nature of gamblers, they were still strangely hopeful in a desperate situation.
Finally Greeley made his decision. “What the hell?” he declared. “It’s only money. I call.”
At that point, Dan wasn’t about to string Greeley along. He tipped his hand to Mason before showing his hold card, however, when he glanced over to the row of overmen stationed a scant number of paces away from the table. Not that Mason could blame him. If he was about to take that much money away from someone like Cam Greeley, he’d be nervous too.
Dan flipped over his card. It was the six of clubs, which gave him a full house.
“I’ll be damned!” Clint said.
One corner of Maggie’s mouth turned upward as if she was not only seeing Dan in a new light, but enjoying the sight.
Mason was impressed as well but preferred to keep that fact under his hat for the moment.
“Nicely done, sir,” Greeley said.
Graciously Dan replied, “Thank you.”
“I had suspicions that you were holding something good, but I just had to see for myself.”
“I understand. Done the same a few times myself,” Dan said while raking in his pot.
“Would you like the balance credited to your account or would you prefer cash?”
“Credit will be fine, Mr. Greeley. I know you’re good for it.”
Greeley barely had to shift in his chair to summon an overman. When the scary fellow stepped up to the table, Greeley reached into his jacket pocket for a small notebook bound in leather. “Take this to Tilly,” he said while scribbling on the pad with a little pencil. “Have this amount added to Mr. Andrews’s account.”
The overman took the piece of paper and folded it in half without looking at what had been written on it. He then turned and made his way through the crowd once more to the cage at the back of the room.
Even as he stacked all those chips while surely thinking about all the credit being written beside his name in Tilly’s ledger, Dan barely cracked a smile. He seemed satisfied, but not overly so. Pleased with himself, but not to the point of arrogance. As Mason watched him, he knew he’d misread that man in a big way. He was just happy that it had been Greeley and not himself at the end of the move that had just been made.
“Let’s deal the next game,” Greeley said while clapping his hands together anxiously. “Next round of drinks is on me. Sorry to keep you all waiting during that last hand.”
“No hard feelings,” Clint said. “That was a hell of a show.”
Mason had to concur with that sentiment. In fact, he was certain things would only get better from there.