"I'll see your fifty and raise you a hundred."
That was the first thing I'd said in almost an hour. It had been a brutal night and the cards were falling every way but mine. Joe Brady raised an eyebrow skeptically, the most emotion he'd shown in the three nights I'd been playing against him. Actually he was only one of several in the group at the poker table, but he had already proven to be the most challenging opponent in the whole town.
"Uh-oh. That sounds like trouble," Joe replied succinctly, and threw one hundred dollars into the pot. "Call."
"Call," Pete Kramer echoed as he put his money on the table.
"Cards?" Neal Russell, the man dealing the hand asked.
"One," I told him, and pushed my discard, the three of spades, face down across the table.
"Two," was Joe's request, and he laid down his two cards and received two new ones in return.
"Two for me," Pete stated. He slid his two cards across the table and picked up what Neal dealt him. I could tell from the minute change in Pete's expression that he hadn't gotten anything worth staying in the game for, and finally looked at the card I'd gotten. The seven of clubs. Well, that was actually a change of direction. All night I'd gotten the right card at the wrong time or the wrong card at the right time; it was a nice change to get just what would do me the most good at the best time. Three sevens and two beautiful ladies, and I had high hopes for my full house.
"Another hundred." I plopped the money on the table and watched Joe closely. He did nothing to betray his cards, but raised my wager by a hundred dollars more. I almost let out a sigh but knew better than that. I was sure that if I did, Joe Brady would assume he had me beat. There was too much riding on this hand and things needed to get better, not worse.
Pete shook his head as he picked up his cards. "Too much for me," he pronounced. He laid his hand, face down, on the table.
I swallowed hard and threw in three hundred dollars. "Your hundred and two more," I announced, and Joe actually grinned.
"Call," my opponent declared, and I laid down my cards.
"Full house. Sevens over Queens." The expression on Joe's face never changed, and I knew I was in trouble.
"Hope this doesn't ruin your night, Maverick," came the remark that was destined to do just that. It doesn't happen often, but my stomach turned over as I stared at Brady's four deuces. Damn! Of all
the . . . well, I wouldn't call it luck, because luck is only a small part of poker, but the lovely lady sure wasn't smiling on me right now.
I looked down at the pitifully small pile of money I was left with as Joe raked in his winnings. Ten, maybe twenty dollars at the most lay in front of me as I swallowed. Hard. I hadn't counted on this.
I do my best to win when I play poker. Everyone does, I'm sure. But since I make my living with the game I love and have spent my whole life playing, it's always upsetting when this happens. And yes, it's happened way more than once.
Unless a miracle occurred in the next few minutes, Bart Maverick was going to have to get a . . . job.
I've done a lot of things in my life when luck or the cards have gone south. A lot of things I'd rather not do – but when you're looking at a poke of ten dollars there isn't much question that you'll do just about anything. I do try to limit my business ventures to those things that are legal – or mostly legal. I've been inside too many jail cells and have no burning desire to end up inside one again.
There's a whole slew of Mavericks out there in the world, but our branch of the family tree isn't all that big. I'm the younger of two brothers, with only a year and a few months between us. Bart is my name, as you probably guessed, and my brother's name is Bret. We spend our lives wandering around the country, doing our best to make money while avoiding anything that even vaguely resembles work.
Brother Bret and me tend to spend a lot of time together, but at this exact moment he was somewhere around Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I was in Lubbock, Texas. We hadn't seen each other for two or three months and I was really starting to miss him. That usually happened to both of us right around the same time, and we'd change our travel plans and meet somewhere in or near the middle. I'd sent him a telegram just yesterday and already gotten an answer – but if we were to meet in Amarillo I needed more than ten or twenty dollars – and I needed it now.
