THE PAIR of queens,” Simon Agry said, “bets ten dollars.” He slid the stack of ten chips into the sizable pot in the center of the poker table and leaned back into his chair with a wheezing sound. Gross was the word for the self-appointed mayor, judge and treasurer of Agrytown. Not big, gross. Simon stood six feet and six inches, without boots, and he needed every bit of it to move his three hundred pounds from one comfortable spot to another. His face was a great round thing, with dark, deep-sunken eyes, a fierce black beard and a head that was completely bald and gleaming now in the flickering gaslight of the chandelier. He was a lot of man, was Simon Agry, and everyone who knew him even passing well hated his ample guts. Including, and especially, his younger brother Lew, who sat across the table from him and was studying the pair of queens showing in Simon’s stud hand and wondering what he had in the hole.
That was the damned trouble with Si, you never knew what he had in the hole. One hand he’d play conservative, the next wide open. He kept you off balance all the time. You never knew where you stood.
“I’ll stay,” Cousin Amos announced and Lew shifted his attention to that hand. All red cards, a possible flush. Then the horse buyer from Chicago, Horace Willow, pushed his ten chips into the pile. Willow had been losing as heavily and steadily as Lew himself, and the pair of tens he showed didn’t look like much to the sheriff.
“Ten,” Lew Agry said, “and ten more.” He had a king on the board and a king in the hole. What encouraged him to raise was that there wasn’t another king in sight.
“Too steep for me,” announced the man on his left. This was Abe Carbo, the gunman and gambler, and twenty dollars wasn’t too steep for him at all. Carbo was Simon Agry’s man, his Jack-of-all-trades, and in addition to keeping Simon unmolested by various disgruntled citizens he also kept an eye on Brother Lew, a sort of living, breathing reminder not to get too big for his britches.
Now Horace Willow dealt the cards all around, face up once more, and both Agrys got what they wanted — another queen for Simon, another king for Lew. Hapless Cousin Amos pulled a black trey and threw in his hand. The man from Chicago dealt himself the jack of hearts.
“The three queens,” Simon Agry said, “bet ten dollars.”
Willow shook his head, turned his cards over.
“Your ten,” Lew Agry said, “and my ten.”
Simon looked at his brother’s kings almost angrily. “Raise it again,” he said, shoving thirty dollars’ worth of chips forward, sitting back and wheezing.
The sheriff met the raise and Willow dealt the last card, face down. Simon’s enormous hand covered his card and slid it back over the one in the hole. He very deliberately read them. Lew let his new card lie and gave all his attention to his brother.
“Got the three kings, Lew?” Simon asked harshly.
“That’s for you to find out, Si. What do you bet?”
“I check to you.”
A rare smile touched Lew Agry’s face. He glanced down at his remaining chips and pushed the pile of them into the pot.
“Ten times ten, Si. I bet a hundred dollars.”
Simon Agry clamped down tight on the cigar in the corner of his mouth. “I call,” he said, and when Lew’s hand snaked toward his hole card, added: “And bump it another hundred.”
The sheriff of Agry County was stunned. Immobilized. Simon had checked to him. That could only mean that his brother had the three queens and nothing else. But it hadn’t. The greedy, grinning bastard had trapped him into betting his roll.
“I call,” Lew Agry said.
“With what, Lew?” Simon asked juicily.
“So I’m light a hundred. Don’t you trust me for it?”
“Sure I trust you, Lew. But what do you say you call my raise with that new stud out to your spread?”
“What new stud?” the sheriff said, shifting his eyes quickly to Abe Carbo, then back again to his brother. “What are you talking about?”
“The stallion you picked up across the border last week,” Simon told him. “A fine piece of horseflesh, I’m told.”
“And worth a lot more than one hundred dollars,” Lew said, the veins in his temples throbbing spasmodically.
“Then you don’t call my raise? I take the pot?”
The sheriff turned to Willow. “You’re buying horses. I’ve got a thoroughbred Spanish stallion. How much?”
Simon Agry lifted his hand. “I don’t think Mr. Willow wants to bid against me,” he said. “That horse is worth one hundred dollars. Fish, Lew, or cut bait.”
“I bet the horse,” Lew said in a tight, cold voice.
Simon smiled. “Four queens,” he said, overturning the hole-card lady. “What have you got, Lew?”
“My bellyful,” was the sullen answer.
“Abe’ll come by for the stud tomorrow — ” The gunfire broke across his voice and he instantly gripped the table in fear. Instinctively his brother and Abe Carbo came to their feet, hands sweeping back to loose-holstered guns. Lew Agry was a mockery of the star on his chest, but there was no fear in him. With Carbo it was different. He was paid to take his chances.
“Now what?” Lew said, going to the curtained window of the hotel’s card room and peering out into the night.
“It’s someone after that hardcase,” Cousin Amos said excitedly. “He went and showed that purse full of gold pieces!”
Lew saw his deputy approaching the saloon. He saw the Mexican kid run out and get himself manhandled. Lew grinned. That Waldo knew how to handle ’em. A form dropped down into view as if from the sky. A big man, running, and there was no mistaking his intent. Then the sheriff moved, moved out of the room and out of the hotel. And as he crossed the street the rage just boiled over in him. It wasn’t only that justice was being interfered with, it was also his anger at his brother, at losing the money and the blood horse.
He hooked his arm around Buchanan’s windpipe, put the point of his knee into Buchanan’s spine, pulled back with the one while he shoved forward with the other. This was the way he had learned to fight from the Apache. This he had learned the hard way, campaigning with Zach Taylor’s army against that devil Sant’ Anna three years ago.
Buchanan knew it, too, and he knew that the harder he fought to break out of the grip the better his chances were to have his spinal column snapped in two. The thing to do was give with the pressure, but God, how do you give when the very air is being cut off from your windpipe? Add to that the slowly rising figure of Waldo Peek, a hard, ugly man with murder in his little pig-eyes. Waldo’s fist smashed into the bridge of a nose already broken a week ago by El Libertad’s gun butt. Waldo’s other fist wiped out what repairs time had made to Buchanan’s splintered rib. Waldo kept at it until his arms were too weary and his knuckles bled. Then Lew Agry let go and Buchanan toppled head first into the dirt before the saloon.