Valpariso Road

Prologue

When I first rode into Las Cruces, New Mexico, I wasn't quite sure what kind of a town I was riding into. The city itself had been Spanish and then Mexican before it was claimed by the Republic of Texas. When The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848, the United States officially took over the territory, and Las Cruces was laid out as a settlement in 1849 by the U.S. Army. Not that the Army did much to establish a town; the hamlet of Mesilla had more people than the dry, dusty little village known as 'the crosses.' But ride in I did, and I had no idea the effect the area and its people would have on me.

The last couple of years had been particularly hard on the Maverick family. Pappy caught pneumonia for the second time in eighteen months, although the succeeding bout wasn't as bad as the first one; Uncle Ben had broken his leg when his horse fell and rolled over on him; Cousin Beau was still grieving the loss of his wife, Georgia, to the fever; Brother Bret, well Brother Bret had lost the girl he loved to one of his oldest friends and then been arrested and incarcerated in a case of mistaken identity. And me? Well, believe it or not, I had escaped relatively unharmed. I figured I was probably overdue for some bad luck, so I got outta town as fast as I could and told Bret I'd catch up with him later.

I was thinking of riding on to El Paso when I stopped to water my horse in Las Cruces. Noble wasn't the only one that was thirsty, and by the time I'd had coffee and supper there was no sense in riding on into the dusk, so I found a reasonable looking hotel and got a room. According to the Señorita at the cantina, the best poker game in town took place at the very hotel I was spending the night in. So I, of course, had to go see just what kind of poker players lived and played in Las Cruces.

Some fascinating ones, I found out. And some very well-heeled ones. It sure wasn't what I anticipated; I thought all the money in the area was in El Paso. As I sat down to play what was to turn into one of the more interesting poker games of my life, I wasn't really expecting too much. Just goes to show you . . . never underestimate the value of a deck of cards.

Introductions were made all around – on my left was 'Wild' Billy Sunday, as I later discovered, the wealthiest man in the entire town. Billy was fiftyish, with curly gray hair (and plenty of it) and a magnificent mustache. Everybody called him Wild Billy from the days when he was younger and wore his hair a lot longer – and it always looked like he'd just been scared to death. Even with age and a shorter hairdo, there was plenty about Billy that was still wild.

Next to Billy was Aiden Carmichael, a much more reserved and quiet man of about the same age. Aiden had made a fortune in Louisiana land speculation and was forced to find a drier climate when he developed a rasping cough that tried to kill him whenever it could. Tall and thin, dark-haired, elegant and sophisticated as Billy was wild, Aiden was Billy Sunday's best friend.

Miguel Campos was the de facto Mayor of the town. The Campos family had lived in or around the Las Cruces area for generations, and Miguel didn't care whether the land belonged to Mexico, Texas, or the United States, as long as his land was his land. Miguel spoke English as well as he spoke Spanish, and he'd never met a man he didn't like. Big and ruddy skinned, Miguel was a learned man in a farmer's body.

To Miguel's left was LeClaire Frazier, Lee as his friends and everyone else in town called him. Lee wasn't small in stature, but he was refined, classically educated by one of the last remaining wealthy Créole clans in western New Orleans. He'd come to Las Cruces as a younger man to marry a Spanish noblewoman's daughter. He and Imelda had raised a family of seven, and when his beloved wife died, he remained in her hometown rather than return to his own. As Lee put it, "Too humid in Nawlens."

Last but not least, to my immediate right sat Sheriff Hamilton Rose, reputed to be one of the finest poker players in the entire territory. Hamilton (no one dared called him Ham) was a good-sized man and strong as an ox. He kept the town on the straight and narrow with his steely-eyed gaze and a voice that reverberated authority. He was also the cleanest, neatest looking sheriff I'd ever met.

All-in-all, it seemed like a good group. No mean-spirited, bad-tempered poker players. No drunken cowboys, nobody that would insist I must cheat because I played too well not to. No one that would threaten to kill you when they caught a bad draw of cards. For once I was playing the game I loved with a group of men that knew how to win and yes, how to lose. This might turn into a pleasant little evening, a nice change from some of the nights I've taken my life in my hands just by sitting down at the table. I had no idea what was to come from one night of poker, but the stage was set.