Chapter 2 The Saloon

Drinkin' Springs lived up to the apostrophe in its name standing in for the missing 'g.' Not much, even for a hole in the wall. Miners, mostly. Saddle tramps. Five or six saloons in the vicinity. A bank—a bit on the run-down side for a place where depositors could feel confident enough to entrust their hard-wrought cash. A jail, with two barred windows, one for each cell, up high in the brick wall. Maverick shuddered at sight of the place. He stopped into one of the saloons, choosing from two of the better looking ones with a coin flip. He strolled up to the bar in his usual laid-back way and order some sarsaparilla. Not much of a drinker, he knew that with a name like Drinkin' Springs, this town had to have good bottled soda pop! He was promptly refused.

"Nobody takes much to sodey water in Drinkin' Springs, young fellow," said the gray-headed barkeep. "Sell whiskey, two bits a shot. Right good stuff, won't tear out your insides like some would."

"No, thanks. I saw a trough and a pump outside. I'll just go help myself."

A man spoke up from down the bar. "Trough's only good for your horse, mister. Now, why not have a drink? It ain't the rot-gut it's made out to be. Look at all it's done for me."

A shabby individual, rough-cut hair, beard straggling down his front, eyes red and huge with drink and smoke, clothes muddy and never mended, either.

"I see." Maverick leaned one elbow on the bar and turned halfway around. His foot took up a position on the floor rail.

"You tryin' to make somethin' of my looks!" shouted his new acquaintance.

"No, I think you're a fine specimen of the Old West."

"And you better never forget it, too!"

"I won't."

Pushing himself off the counter, he strolled in his nonchalant way out of the swinging doors. Several pairs of eyes stared after him, and more than a few comments floated around the tables.

"Guess 'e thinks he's somethin'. Fancy clothes, too."

"Like a gambler."

"Or a gunslinger."

"Then leave 'im alone," said the barkeep. "Boys, you're my reg'lar patrons. How can I afford to lose any of you?"

Guffaws around the room met the statement.

Once outside, Maverick pumped some water at the trough and after running some of it over the back of his neck, put out his hand and drank a couple of handfuls. He should have done that in the first place, he thought, rather than ask for anything other than whiskey in a Drinkin' Springs saloon. He had stabled his horse. Looking around at the huge, open doors of the livery stable, he got to thinking. Might be fitting to get up a game or two in Drinkin' Springs, since he had only around fifteen dollars to his name right then.

Not that he could hope to win much off these characters, but maybe just enough to start with some good ready cash in a Denver game. Else, he'd have to go look for a stake. Not that he couldn't find one easily enough, for he was fairly well-known around that town for an able card player. He'd played before then in nearly all of the Denver saloons. He had tasted jail food just once or twice on mere rumor and supposition of cheating, and had even found some of the prominent men in business there to stake him in times past. But, still—

He wandered back into the same saloon where he had just been refused his 'sodey water.' Taking a seat at an unoccupied table, he pulled out of his right coat pocket a pack of cards. Opening it and taking the cards out, he shuffled them expertly for a few minutes, gathering a few stares, then looked up as several men began to make their way over to his table.

"Thought you might be a gunslinger," said one, with a big gap in his front teeth.

"You see I'm not." Maverick smiled and lowered his gaze back to his lively shuffling. Lightning hands. What speed, dexterity, but what a come-on for action-hungry men.

"Like a game?" he asked, softly, like a cat purring.

One man, chomping on some tobacco, turned a chair around and sat astride the back of it. "Quarter ante?"

"Can I get in, too?" asked another.

"Sure, come on, Lem," said the first. "Lemuel always loses," the first man confidently told Maverick. "You watch him lose this time."

Maverick laughed, saying nothing, but thinking, "I'll watch all of you lose before an hour's out." His gaze seemed to say that, too. A few of the men looked uncomfortably around at each other.

After about an hour, there were a few glum faces around the table. In three hours, men were stretching, scratching their bellies, counting their last bit of change for their drinks, thinking of the dark on the way home. And thinking of their empty pockets. And of their explanations. Lemuel the loser had dropped out some twenty minutes before, while the braggart sitting wrong-ways on the chair had pluckily stayed in. Maverick played him a bit, like a fisherman with a large fish on his line, in and out, letting him frequently take a few hands, the bait, then astutely and craftily drawing him in. The boaster was losing more all of the time, beating the other players only to lose to Maverick. Several came, played a hand or two and then faded away, but Hiram something or other stayed in. Maverick smiled over that. He hated braggarts almost as much as he did card cheats and thieves.

"Don't hunderstand how you do it." Hiram took a big swig of whiskey. "I coulda sworn you had a busted hand that time"—they were playing blackjack—"but you sure showed me. I mean, blackjack's all luck, ain't it? But you act like you know which cards is comin'. How come?"

"I watch what's been laid down already. Also, I can guess what's the hold card. High or low, by how each man stays or plays on. Figuring up some percentages, and carefully weighing the odds—"

"I think you cheat, mister." Lemuel's detractor, suddenly rising from the table, flung the chair aside and laid a hand on the holster of his six-gun.

Maverick continued what he had been doing since the last hand. Shuffling. He glanced over at Hiram but then back at the cards, his coolness seemingly amazing.

"You pack a gun, card sharp?"

"It's in my saddlebag. I'd go get it, but that would deprive all of these men of another game."

"Go get it." Hiram's breath inside Maverick's ear felt hot and moist. "We can meet out in the street." Hiram straightened.

"How much have you won there?" interposed a voice. Maverick, taken somewhat aback, looked around over his shoulder.

"Why, Sheriff Hardee. It's you! What are you doing here in Drinkin' Springs?"

"Looks like I'm savin' you from some trouble with this man."

"Ah, no trouble, sheriff. I'll give him back some of the money he's won over the course of the evening. He plays really well."

"But not as good as you, is that what you're sayin'?" the dirt farmer asked.

Maverick looked up at him, serious now. "You have only to watch the cards a bit more carefully."

"Mean it?"

"I believe I do."

"Then, that's alright. I don't need to kill you. If you think I'd win if I only watched the cards a bit more carefully."

"I do."

"Hiram, let's get on the road. You know what you've got waitin' for you?"

"Oh, yes." Hiram rubbed the seat of his trousers. "She's probably up still."

"Reckon so, Hiram," said Lemuel, who had stayed to watch the last four or five hands. "Come on."

"Here, Hiram." Maverick deposited a few silver dollars in his hand. "Take these, give one of them to Lemuel, and no hard feelings?"

Hiram smiled. "Guess not. Though don't come walkin' by my place tonight, till I've sorted out the things you said."

"Promise." Maverick turned back to his shuffling, watching as Hardee sat down. "You'd like to try a hand or two?"

"No, you big show-off. That older boy, Tom, well, he's gone. Rode off on one of the mares at the farm. I've been trackin' him ever since Jasper and me discovered he wasn't looking at the horses. I stayed up for a while with him and Gerdie to talk some. Jasper's an old friend."

"And you expect I know where he is?"

"I've seen how you two are."

"Well, he's not here. I figure he'd be sitting in that corner watching me if he was."

"Maverick, doesn't anything ever shake you?"

"Jails do."

"Then there's one right 'were in Drinkin' Springs'll do nicely. Marshal's out of town just now takin' a prisoner to the territorial prison"—here, Maverick winced, though Leland missed it. "He shouldn't mind if I put you in one of his cells to keep it company before he returns."

Maverick, with plain intensity, rolled his head to one side and said, "What will locking me up do, sheriff?"

"If that boy's in town, which by now he ought to be, as he left ahead o' me, he's likely hidin' out somewhere until you finish playing. He'll watch the saloons until he figures different. Know where you'll be?"

"In jail. What if he doesn't find me? Or want to? What if he goes on to Denver by himself? Could be days before we know. You're not planning to stick around that long, are you, sheriff?"

"No, I'm still looking for the bandits who robbed a store last week."

"You'll let me rot in jail, why you traipse about the countryside. Who's in charge of the jail while you're gone? What if you get shot or something?"

"I'll use one of the men who were in this room, Hiram, for instance."

"Oh, no, not Hiram."

"You shouldn't have taken all that money from him, Maverick."

Maverick nodded, slid back his chair and then went peaceably to jail behind Hardee, looking rather glum then himself. If the boy was in the area, it wouldn't take him long to show himself. Maverick might have thought it reasonable enough to expect a visit at one of his windows that very night, but for the fact that Sheriff Hardee slept in the outer room. Hardee planned to get up the next day bright and early. He'd eat a quick meal of eggs in the café, leave for Hiram's place, wake him up, send him in to look after the prisoner, and then after all of those doin's be on his way.

"If that boy shows up, HIram," said Hardee to the gruff farmer on his porch, "put him in that other cell. Maybe Maverick can teach him a few card tricks through the bars until I get back. If I bring back the thieves, I'll leave them there until Matt Lawson gets back."

Matt Lawson was the regular town marshal.

"What about Maverick and the boy after that?"

"Let him, Maverick, go on his way to Denver or wherever, all the way to h-, if he's a mind to go. The boy, I'll take back with me to Jasper's farm."

"Do you think the card sharp'll play any more behind bars?"

"You plannin' to try 'im?"

"I aim to watch the cards a bit more carefully next time like he says, yeah."

Harden just looked at Hiram as the two of them rode off the farmer's stead onto the dusty road leading to town.

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The jail was as seedy on the inside as it was on the outside. Straw ticking from the torn mattress lay scattered on the floor. Rust was eating away the bars. Mortar peeled out from the walls and from around the barred cell window. There was a rank, mildew smell chilling to the nostrils emanating from the touch-cold bricks. Fat, dried rat leavings graced one of the corners. The cell itself was only four feet wide by seven feet long, window to bars. If Maverick sat on the edge of the bed and leaned back, lifting one leg, he could almost touch the opposite wall where there was a stool to hold a man's supper tray. There were no washing facilities of any kind, except a bucket that might hold water or anything else.

He'd been in worse places. Once, through a window with a single bar missing, a hail storm outside ricocheted billiard-sized balls inside. Once, standing water from a recent sleeting froze, the floor becoming an ice skating pond. Once, a drunk in a vicious frenzy kept throwing himself—all night—at the bars between their two cells. Once, it was so hot inside the cell, in the middle of July, and lacking food and water after a long, sweltering poker session the night before, Maverick had passed out. Coming to, he found the deputy going through his pockets. Reacting with some force, but no particular strength at that moment, he found himself being trampled on the floor by the same deputy. He lost a pocket watch and several gold coins. Complaining to the sheriff only earned him a sneer. He had left that town with only his horse and two shirts in his saddlebags.

"Don't be too long, sheriff, catching those thieves." Maverick paused, thinking aloud, really, and saying, "Can you trust Hiram to fulfill all of the functions of a deputy?"

"Like keepin' you from escapin'?"

"No." Sighing a bit, Maverick took a seat on the stained and bare mattress. "I meant, like bringing me my supper tray. I noticed the stool."

"He'll 'bide by you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Never heard that one before?"

Sheriff Hardee exited the jail shaking his head and laughing. Hiram was nowhere in sight. The only occupant of the entire building was at that time its inmate. The bars had closed on him with a clang, like an operatic finale, and the lone and unfortunate man leaned back on his worn bed and contemplated starving. He sighed again, then pulling out his deck of cards, reached over and yanked up the stool. He dealt himself a few hands of Maverick solitaire, a game that his pappy had invented and taught him when Bret was only learning his three R's.

His pappy had taught him a lot of things, some pithy sayings, some card games—some of which he wished just then he hadn't learned. Maybe he'd be out of trouble. Here he was, waiting like shad bait on a catfish hook for a youngster to come yelping up at the barred window, calling for him. What would his pappy have to say about that?

"Son, there are two things a man must never do in life."

"And those are?"

"Have anything to do with children and drink hard liquor just before dancing. Both can give the mightiest headache!"

Maverick had a little time left to himself, perhaps. Tom would have to make some inquiries around town as to his whereabouts, or hang about the saloons where he thought he might be and listen to the gossip in the wind. Resourceful as that boy was, though, he'd find him.

Learning that Bret hadn't ridden on out of Drinkin' Springs, and overhearing that the gambler had been locked up, Tom thought it just seemed fitting. He came calling around midnight. Pitching small stones, too. Maverick woke up on the threadbare mattress, got up and spoke sparingly but sharply into the night.

"Stop that! You'll wake Hiram out there."

Hiram was asleep on the marshal's cot in a small, warm nook with a pot-bellied cook stove. He snored very loudly still.

"Came to rescue you."

Maverick raised his eyes to the high barred window, but kept his voice low. "You don't have to, you know. I'm quite content in here."

"Why's that, mister? It's a jail," the boy threw back.

Maverick decided to ignore the observation and merely said, "Look, do you know your way back to the Jaspers' farm? I don't want Hiram to catch you. He's got orders to lock you up until one of the two lawmen gets back."

"I'm going on to Denver, with you."

"How're you going to do that, what with me still locked up?"

"I'll sneak by what's-his-name and let you out. I'll get the key."

"A simple plan, but for one thing. Hiram might have it on him. Now look, boy." Maverick was growing exasperated, talking as he was above his head. He stopped and put the supper tray (Hiram had forgotten to fetch it) on the bed and climbed up on the stool, looking out. "Tom, I have a few dollars—some silver coins—on me, in my boot, and some bread I saved from supper just in case you came here looking for me. Wait there and I'll throw them out to you."

Maverick stepped down softly off the stool, glancing warily through the bars and the open door leading to the marshal's office as he did so. Sitting on the bed, he pulled off a boot, took out a coin or two, then along with the bread, wrapped up his treasures in his handkerchief, trying the ends securely. He climbed back up on the stool.

"Get your horse and go back to the Jaspers, now," he said. "I'll show them your tracks in the morning, say you were here but had a change of heart and decided to go back home, where you belong. Then they'll have to let me out. You'll be alright if you just go back the way you came. If anybody overtakes you, like Hiram, just ask him to accompany you back to the Jaspers. If he can forget his farm long enough, he'll probably take you there rather than bring you back here."

Maverick pitched the tied-up handkerchief and Tom caught it. But the twelve-year-old still wasn't satisfied. He looked down at the bundle as he spoke. "I want to go to Denver with you."

"What did I just say, Tommy? Of all things, a boy like you in Denver. There must be children in Denver, but I haven't seen any. Now, go along. Do as I say, just do what anybody says for once."

Maverick's head suddenly whirled around. His fears had come true.

"Get down from there, card sharp!" A gravelly voice from behind him made Maverick leap down off the stool and hurriedly turn to face the sound.

"Oh, Hiram!"

Hiram thrust the key in the cell door, flung it wide and strode two steps over. He grabbed Maverick's arm and thrust him aside by it, then boldly climbed up on the stool to take a look out. A pebble pitched by a young arm hit him square in the left eyelid. Hiram danced backward, the stool toppling under him. He landed hard on his side against the wooden rope bed. Maverick took one look at him, grabbed up his hat and coat from the lower end of the bed and then fled out the cell door, slamming it shut. The key was still in the lock, so Maverick turned it, jerked it out and threw it aside. He whirled around again and didn't look back.

Hiram, bearishly, rolled to a sitting position on the floor, rubbing his eye. He growled something as Maverick hastened out the front door, then leaped up and threw himself at the bars. He stopped only after the third try. He saw the keys lying on the floor near the door of the office and felt helpless.

Who would look after Hiram now that he was in jail?

Maverick never stopped to wonder who, but he met Tom, who had come around the front of the jail to join him, and ran with him to the stable.

"Where's your horse?"

"In the bushes outside town," the boy eked out. "Why are we goin' so fast?"

"Hiram. The man you pitched a stone at. Hear him yellin' now?" Hiram had begun to wail. "I'm not sittin' around in that cell for days, waitin' on Hardee while you whine about Denver," he said, though the boy had some trouble piecing out the words. He heard mention of Denver though and brightened.

"You'll be takin' me there?"

"No! I'm going only as far as Top Hat Rock, then I'm giving you a push in the Jaspers' direction."

Maverick entered the stable and made for his saddle, casting back over his shoulder, "They're good people, Tom, stay with them a while." He thrust the saddle blanket on and the saddle over the gelding's back.

"But it's too dark tonight to go by myself."

"I'm not retracing my steps all the way back there. It's August. How dark can it be in August?"

Hiram kept yelling out of the barred window for someone to fetch him the keys to the cells. Wouldn't be long before he had them, either. Maverick swooped the boy up and thrust him on the horse, swinging up behind him and throwing an arm around his middle. He rode out of the stable in all due haste and passed questioning stares along the way as he sprinted past. Two men tried to grab his reins, but he kicked them off, still holding onto the boy.

What an adventure this was turning out to be, Maverick thought. He'd have a whole posse on his trail in no time. He could lead those men away, and Tom, he considered, could go on alone and easily make it back the five or six miles to the Jaspers. Their farm lay on the main road, after all, and Tom had just come from there. He wouldn't freeze on a balmy night like this, even in the mountains. But he might not go back. They found Tommy's old mare nuzzling in the bushes.

At Top Hat Rock, Maverick got off his horse, yanked Tommy off his and spoke some sharp words at him.

"You've got four miles—tops. Now if you follow me again, I'm going to wallop your backside, hear? As it is, I'll have to ride off the trail to dodge past the posse."

"What posse? I didn't hear nothin'!"

"There's always a posse, Tom. When you grow up, you'll realize that."

"I just want to find ma, not go back."

"Didn't I say I'd ask around about her? In Denver? Then I'll write, whatever I find out. You won't have to wait long. If she's there, I'll find her. If she's not, I'll let you know that, too." Maverick became imploring. "Boy, it's been a long day for me, on account of you. Do us both a favor, go back now—all the way—to the Jaspers."

Then a wolf howled. It sounded like a wolf, but it could have been the wind. Maverick didn't think it was the wind. He thought it was a wolf. So did Tommy.

"Gee, was that a wolf out there?" he asked.

Maverick listened again. "Might have been the wind," he offered, hopefully.

Tommy wasn't rising to the bait. "It was a wolf, and I'll be eaten."

"You weren't eaten coming, were you?"

Tom made an exasperated noise. Some grown-ups couldn't furnish the inside of a first-grade schoolbook, with what they knew. He thought he had just met one.

"It would save a lot of my trouble if you had been eaten. I guess I'll have to ride all the way back with you, then turn around and face that posse."

"You could just let me ride along with you, to Denver."

"You'd like Denver. You'd fit the place to a tee. A lot of sharps."

There was that wolf howl again. Suddenly another sound entered the scene. A sound like a pistol hammer clicking back. Maverick turned in the direction of the black rocks off to his left. Peering closely into the murky crevices between them, he thought he saw the figure of a man, maybe two. Presently, he learned he had been right. There were two. One man followed the other out of the rocks, and each man carried his own weapon drawn and cocked back, ready to fire. Maverick squinted into the dark, not recognizing these latest players.

"Who're you?" he asked rapidly, moving slightly towards his saddlebags, still on the horse. His right hand found Tommy and pushed him back out of the way.

"That's far enough, mister. Take one more step and I'll plug you."

"Me, too." The other man stepped around to stand beside the first.

"Are you the outlaws Sheriff Hardee's looking for?"

"If he's lookin' for two men who robbed a store in Ellicott City, then I guess we are. Any business of yours?"

"No," Maverick hastened to say. "What do you want?"

"Precisely whatever you got."

"Which isn't much," he answered, grimly. "Just some stale bread wrapped up in a handkerchief. You can have it."

"Horses and saddles, too. Saddlebags."

"You need a horse?"

"No, got two. One for each of us, tethered down yonder a-ways. But two more's always nice for tradin' off and restin' the others."

Maverick grimaced. Stuck out here on the road to nowhere, a posse at one end of the road, bandits at the other.

"Take them," he said.

"Money, too."

Not letting them know about his right boot, with the coins in it, he pulled out of his trousers' pocket a few coins, identical to the same silver dollars he'd been giving out earlier.

"Anything else?" asked the first bandit, stepping up close and taking them from Maverick's hand.

Maverick shook his head, saying glumly as he shoved his pocket back inside his pants, "No, you've got what money I had. Look, can I get my gun out of one of the saddlebags before you two go off?" Both pistols rose in the air again. "Not that I have to have it," he threw up a hand and grinned suddenly, "but in these rocks, it might be good to have something against snakes."

"What'd he call us?" asked the first man of the other, turning halfway toward his companion.

"Snakes, I think," said the second man, beginning to smirk.

"I never said—"

The bandit near him leaned over and clubbed Maverick sideways against the temple. He slipped down beside a boulder, groaning, nearly knocked out. Mouth open and eyes wide, Tommy only stared at him where he lay curled up on the ground, and didn't move.

When the two men were gone, leading Maverick's gelding and the farmer's mare away down an unseen trail in the rocks, Tommy knelt next to him, fingering the bloody mark on his forehead.

"Wake up, mister," he said, pushing at Maverick's shoulder.

Maverick groaned again and flopped over on his back, raising a hand to his head to touch the spot himself. He drew his hand away, looked at it in the dark and not seeing it, rubbed the wet stuff between his fingers. "Oh," he said, "my head."

"They hit you."

"So I gathered, Tommy. It's not that hard to figure."

With Tommy's help, he sat up and leaned back on the rock. Tommy untied the handkerchief ends and after removing the bread and the two coins Maverick had given him, bunched it up and dabbed at the gambler's scratch.

"How long was I out?"

"You weren't out. Just dazed a mite."

There came a pounding on the road. Maverick could feel it under him. Horses, probably the posse this time. More bandits he thought he couldn't take tonight.

Hiram rode in the lead. He spun off his horse and dropped down on one knee beside Maverick.

"Had a fall?" he asked, in some sympathy. "Where's your horse?"

"No," Maverick said, to the first question. "And my horse. He's been stolen."

"Who done it?"

"Probably the two thieves who robbed that store in Ellicott City."

"But Sheriff Hardee's been lookin' for them."

"Well, I found them."

"That wasn't too wise. One of 'em hit you?" Hiram now noticed the mark on Maverick's head. He too tried to finger it. Maverick jerked his head away, out of reach.

"Don't do that." Maverick pushed Hiram's hand away. "It hurts."

Hiram didn't take issue with that, realizing the confused—or ornery—state of mind the gambler had to be in. So without further talk, Hiram and another man bent down and lifted Maverick up. They dragged him over to a horse, where with a little help he was able to mount.

"Come on, boy," Hiram extended a hand after he himself had got up on his own horse.

Since Tommy hesitated, Maverick tiredly called over to him, "It's alright. We'll be going back to jail. Right, Hiram?"

"Right! I'll let Hardee catch those thieves. I still got my farm to tend to. Wouldn't want to end my plowin' days too soon!"