Dead Man's Hand

Dead Man’s Hand by Edmond Morrison
As I rode into the run down, windswept one street town of Garberry it looked as depressed as I felt.
After two tough months herding cattle for Old Man Cummings down to Texas, two bad things had happened. Bad for the twenty-two trail hands who had driven the Old Man’s herd into Abilene, all the way up the Chisholm Trail from Texas. I reckoned that the outfit I had been droving for owed me $98 nice shiny silver dollars and we all sat around blowing it for a week on good whisky and some coyote ugly whores – and all on credit. After seven days I owed the owner, one Big Bill Dawson $30 of the dollars which were on their way down from old Man’s Cummings spread in Houston.
Then the two bad things came through, courtesy of a stage driver who had heard it on one his stops north. The Cumming’s outfit guy had been bushwhacked and all the pay stolen  and to top that Old Man Cumming’s had dropped dead of a heart attack and his son and heir had wired ahead to the Chicago stockyards and pocketed the price of the longhorns. The herd had gone and so had our money. Even worse, Big Bill Dawson didn’t take lightly to debtors, so I lit out of there along with most of the other drovers and with what few dollars I had, and two weeks later here I was in God forsaken Garberry.

To say it was a ‘one hos’ town’ would be an insult to our four-legged friends. Jesu but this place was the bad. However it held one great attraction. I read on leaning rooftop those glorious words every cowboy with fourteen days of dust down his gullet just loves to see – ‘Saloon’.
Saloon meant whisky. Saloon meant other folk. Saloon meant just maybe a game of poker.
I tied up my horse (did I tell you he was called ‘Chance Gets Lucky’?), outside the saloon and with my duster trailing dirt, I walked through the swing doors.
Yep, there were folk in there ok and yep there was whisky and four guys tucked away at the back way deep into a hand of Five Card Draw.
A couple of fellas glanced around and the barkeep looked up expectantly. The fellas dismissed me but the barkeep hauled down a glass and without me even asking filled it up with that much needed big shot of amber heaven.
I downed the whisky in two gulps spent a full dollar of the few I had left. (It was Cascade Tennessee Whisky, one of the best you could get around the West) and walked over to the card table my insides glowing warmly.

Without my even asking, one of the four players kicked a chair aside to give me room and nodded me into the game. Nobody seemed to object so I sat down and anted up. I think I had around six dollars left so it was an ‘all-in’ hand or nothing. I watched a couple of rounds and lost two dollars. Then I drew two kings and went all-in. I drew another king after discard and cleared up the pot, a handsome sixteen dollars. Fortunately and unfortunately this winning streak just refused to let go.
My new found pardners lost and their new found pardner one. Three of them took this with with ok shrugs but one guy. Yep, there is always ONE GUY started to get real ornery.
He was muttering on about strangers; and ‘lucky streaks my butt’; and ‘where’s that come from anyways’ as I laid down three aces.
I’ll tell you this guy was getting right on my ass. I looked at him long and hard. To say he was ugly wouldn’t do the word justice. He was as ugly as the black sin colour of his fading waste-coat; his battered black hat and his thin scrawny face with its straggling moustache. His eyes would have made a rattler looked surprised.
In the end of course it happened. Mutterings turned to curses as my good luck held. Chance was sure getting lucky in this saloon and I was Chance that dusty hot afternoon. Words from Scrawny Face became ever more heated and the attempts of the other players to cool him down had the opposite effect.
Then it came out, the word no fella should say in a straight game – or any game really – “Cheat!”.
I stood up and we both reached for our Colts. I would say I wasn’t fast but I was so that would be a lie and I plugged him fair and square.
Scrawny Face was dead before he hit the sawdust and he dropped his cards as he fell.
They landed face up on the table. Four black cards and one face down. Two black aces and two black eights.
The ‘Dead Man’s Hand’ proclaimed the fella to my right quietly as he looked down at the fresh corpse.
Now this being the West, and this being Barberry which wasn’t what you called civilised, the bartender, whose name turned out to be Wes proclaimed fair fight and dragged the body of Scrawny Face some place and we sat back down to get on with the game.
That’s how it was then I tell you.
The proclaiming guy dealt another hand and I picked up mine – aces over eights and black, still blood spotted. ‘The Dead Man’s Hand’, I looked up in surprise and that’s when I saw the cocked gun pointing at me.
It fired. Just one shot. That was enough.