Chuck Morgan (From The Great Shell Game)

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Grace Turner. Now there was a beautiful woman, full of style and grace befitting her name. I wonder now though if that was even her real name. I mean Heyes painted a very different picture of the woman than the one I saw. Perhaps that shows just how perfect a con artist she really was.

But I've known Heyes for a good many years, and The Kid perhaps half that long. I didn't want to believe the picture Heyes painted, but I knew when it came to Kid Curry, there wasn't a thing Heyes wouldn't do for his partner. If that meant setting up Grace Turner with a confidence game, then so be it.

I think I mentioned that I've known Heyes a long time. I first met up with him in Silver Springs. I was already a front man for a traveling con game. We'd set up our horse race bookie shop on a seasonal basis, and never outstayed our welcome. We were so good at what we did, that we could close the whole operation down on a moment's notice and be long gone before some suspicious sheriff was able to get the warrants and come knocking on our door.

Silver Springs was where I met Hannibal Heyes. Like me, he was a cocky young fella; too cocky for his own good. He had just spent a few months riding with a fella named Jim Plummer, and to hear Heyes tell it, Plummer ran off with all the gang's money. Anyway, Heyes had left the gang and was traveling around looking to hook up with Kid Curry again, but he didn't know where to find him. I had a few contacts and I checked around for Heyes, but I couldn't find him either. What I did do was manage to talk Heyes into working the circuit for a few months.

Heyes had the perfect face for a con man, still does. I think it's them dimples that does it, but Hannibal Heyes could charm a snake out of a basket without the use of a flute. But it turns out, he also had a bit of an honest streak in him, so working a con game just wasn't something he could make a career out of. Oh, he could pull it off in a pinch, but it wasn't in his blood.

So when I ran into him years later, and he was looking to take Grace Turner for her life's savings, well I had to step in and stop him. It took some convincing on his part, but after he told me what Grace had done to The Kid, I had to step back just out of loyalty to a friend, and let Heyes and that doctor friend of his draw her into the trap.

But then a funny thing happened. Heyes and the Kid left Silver Spring as soon as they got their ten thousand dollar revenge, but Grace stayed on, and being as she and I had finally been properly introduced, I stepped up to the plate, offering her a shoulder to cry on, so to speak. Now I don't mean that literally, cause Grace Turner has likely never shed a real tear in life. She's a real professional con artist in her own right, and Kid Curry is proof of that.

Well, I was still a bit smitten with her, but I had been working The Show long enough to know when a plan wasn't working, you simply change course. So instead of trying to woo her on a romantic level, I tempted her with a lucrative job with our Gentleman's Jockey Club confidence game. She had a bit of an aristocratic air to her and I knew she could draw in the wealthy clientele in any city we set up in. I taught her the ins and outs of a professional sting and it wasn't long before she was playing her part like a true professional.

I've learned a lot about Grace Turner since she joined The Show. That whole story she told Heyes about being a widow was one hundred percent pure fabrication, part of her own little con plan to separate Heyes from his money (at the time she thought he was wealthy). She was so wrapped up in her own plan, that she just didn't recognize that she herself was being duped. She's wiser now and would definitely see that coming.

When The Show left Silver Springs, we headed to Stockton, California. One of our little band of thieves always went into a town a couple of days before the rest of us arrived just to size up the prospects, and learn the names of the wealthy folks in town. When we arrived, we learned of four brothers that were part of a family with that had a big ranch. One of em was a lawyer, two of em managed the ranch, and the fourth one was away at some college. Well Grace paid a visit to the lawyer with a sad story about being abused by her husband and wanting to hire the fella to get her a good divorce settlement. She turned on her charm and it weren't two weeks later that the two of them was talking marriage. We ended up soaking that lawyer for close to fifteen thousand dollars.

Barkley was his name...

Five years have gone by since I first met Grace Turner and the two of us are still together. We left The Show after three years and Grace and me travel our own con circuit. We never married but we live like we are. We never stay in one place for too long and we ain't never been caught. We've never run into Heyes and Curry again either. Moors the pity, cause I would enjoy seeing Heyes' face when he realized Grace and me are partners now.

I wonder just what he would say about that.