CHAPTER FIVE
“You stacked the cards, you sunavabitch!”
“Say that again,” William Greene sneered back.
“I’ll say it three times. I’ll whistle it. Are you deaf? You stacked the cards!”
Greene sat motionless staring at his accuser. His closely cropped white hair crowned a weathered brown face full of wrinkles with deep-set bright blue eyes. His face was clean-shaven except for a long gray handle bar mustache, which he kept waxed to sharp points. It helped cover his wrinkled face, which had hardened from exposure to long hours of hot sun and blowing dust. His shirt was open at the neck showing a grizzled chest. The hum of voices and the loud laughter had ceased. The two men locked eyes waiting for one or the other to withdraw. The other men sitting at the gaming table froze, their hands in front of them, preparing to run or duck.
“I quit.” The man said after a few sizzling moments. Dead white and shaking, he got up from the Monte table his anger evident.
“Pay up, you bet the top and lost,” Greene smiled but his eyes were cold. The man threw down his bet and walked off. The other punters knew Greene and his intense hostility it made him the master of the situation. Playing Spanish Monte in Patty O’Shaughnessy’s cantina for most of the day, his temper was short; his pile of coins and American currency was down to his last thousand. He slid the derringer back up the sleeve of his coat and the game resumed.
Lean muscles on a taut body frame and a desperate look in his eyes was present on the miner who asked if he could take the open seat. Greene nodded. Action and suspense of the tense moment dug at the stranger’s spirit, he was like a leashed hound, ready to leap forward, but he felt chained. He had witnessed the exchange of threats, saw the derringer, watched Greene bank and lose over and over. The miner took his seat with the knowledge that the game he played had nothing to do with winning. It was only a matter of waiting his fate had already been sealed.
O’Shaughnessy’s was a cut above the other typical drinking establishments. The large room had adobe walls roofed with rough-hewn logs and brush. It was full of crude benches, tables and seats. In one corner, kegs lay side by side in a rack. A Mexican boy was lighting lamps which hung on posts that sustained the log rafters of the roof. Heads, bent in grim restlessness lurked in the shadows cast by the flickering lights. Faces that held unrestrained looks of lust for gain, spirits, ruthless and reckless, something at once suggesting lawlessness, theft, murder, and hell.
The hum of voices resumed and soon the ceaseless clink of Mexican silver could be heard over the loud talk and boisterous laughter that came from the drinking men. Betting was heavy and large sums were changing hands. The Mexicans especially, some with piles of silver pesos as tall as a hat, showed a sterner obsession to the gambling and they held an intense passion.
A pile of coins tumbled quickly in a silvery crash from one of the punters. The anxious man jumped then regained his composure. Bending his head intently; he stared at the two card layout, then looked up quiet and unassuming said, “five hundred on the top.”
Greene turned the deck face up exposing the gate card, it matched the top. He lifted his head coolly eyeing the man in front of him. His pupils contracted and shrank. A minute went by before he pushed five-hundred in gold over to the new punter. He reshuffled the deck and began a new round.
“Thousand on the bottom,” the man looked up, a variety of indecipherable expressions passed over his face.
Greene turned the deck over. No match. “You owe me a thousand.”
“I ain’t got another five hundred on me you take this here claim deed?” The man said in a hoarse, whispered voice, his anxious eyes pleading.
“A claim deed,” Greene asked suspiciously, “to what?”
“It’s a mother lode of a silver mine in the Santa Rita’s,” the man whispered, his voice wavering as his eyes darted nervously around. He licked his lips and looked behind him.
“How do I know it’s worth anything?” Greene sneered.
The man’s teeth clicked together tightly, his lips set in a thin line. “It‘ll make ya rich.” He laid down a large lustrous metallic crystal, “more where that came from.”
Outwardly Greene was calm but inwardly he was shaking as his sullen, greedy eyes lit up at the sight of the silver. He inspected it briefly and then indicated acceptance. Clinking of coins continually sounded around the room incessantly like steady musical rings.
A scrape of the bench on the floor, and the man pushed his lanky frame out of the chair. Without a word he turned on his heel and walked out. Silence engaged the occupants, deep and filled with emotion. Greene watched wordlessly trying to shake off the feeling the unusual action had brought to him. Curious now, he picked up the violet brown crystal darkened by exposure to light and examined it more closely. The crystal was filled with tiny wires that seemed to curve and intertwine together. Greene knew about minerals. He felt the adrenaline course in him, his pulse raced as the realization hit him.
Some call it horn silver, soft and translucent, like an animal horn. Greene knew it was rare and found only in certain areas enriched by percolating water containing chloride. He wondered why the miner would give up such a find and then just as quickly realized he didn’t care. He had a thousand in silver and gold coins and a claim to a silver mine that could prove incredible and help him reach his dream. He tucked the crystal carefully into his pocket, pushed back from the table and walked out of O’Shaughnessy’s.
***
Dust drifted in a thin line above the mud colored adobe walls from the coming and going of countless wagons and people crammed everywhere in the streets of Tucson, a baked town, dingy and dilapidated. Busted corrals littered with bake-ovens, carcasses of dead animals, shattered pottery, the place held immoral cruel people, all doing as they wished, their lives jumbled, overflowing with the same disorder and clutter that crammed the street.
He pulled the tin type out of his pocket. Waldo reluctantly sent a picture of Lacey with a harshly written note, meant to make him feel accountable. Pompous old fool. Waldo would never change. But he had to agree with him on one thing, Lacey had grown into a beautiful young woman. He looked at her picture again. She reminded him of her mother, Joséline, Katherine’s sister, a French beauty with emerald eyes, black hair and golden brown skin.
His meeting with his estranged daughter must be right. But first he wanted to pay a visit to what O’Shaughnessy called “the nastiest doggery in town,” in hopes of hiring a few border ruffians, revolutionaries working for easy money who routinely showed up once a month for the cheap whiskey. As soon as his eyes adjusted in the murky darkness of the room, Greene found the men he was seeking. He walked across the dirt packed floor up to the crude bark covered plank that served as a bar.
The Mexican eyed him suspiciously. “What you want Gringo?”
“Whiskey,” Greene said as he tossed down a silver dollar, lifted the glass and gulped down the whiskey.
“I thought that trade pretty well dried up.” Greene said turning to the man standing next to him dressed in rough buckskins. All size and lengths of scalps hung from his belt.
“Who the hell are you?” the man growled back at him.
“Someone who’ll pay the same as who you’re selling to, plus an extra bonus for each ‘pache scalp you bring me. Interested? Meet me at O’Shaughnessy’s in ten minutes.” He put his empty glass down on the bar, turned on his heel and walked out making his way back down through the great mass of bodies in the street. The stage was due to arrive within the hour. He had to hurry.