Authors: Jonas Ward
"Maybe so, Little Joe. I'll take another assay of that
fella someday when he ain't offendin' my nostrils." He
raised the mug to his lips, soaking his mustache with the
beer, and signified an end to the conversation.
Chapter
F
our
Somewhere between Little
J
oe's and the Happy
Times, Buchanan acquired a walking companion. She had appeared on his arm out of the night, a bosomy, pleasantly
scented young woman with frolicsome eyes and no pre
tenses. She told him frankly that she was going to be good
company for someone tonight and Buchanan agreed that
there was no reason why that someone shouldn't be he. He took her through the ladies' entrance of the Happy
Times, sat her down in a booth, and made his way toward
the partition that separated this room from the men's
saloon up front.
The Happy Times was four times the size of Little Joe's,
and in addition to the long mahogany bar, there was a
small stage where an unplayed piano stood all alone, a
good-sized dice table, a roulette wheel, and three round tables specially rigged for poker and faro. But there were
no dealers, no croupiers, and no players. The equipment
gathered dust, unused and forlorn-looking.
Hard times instead of Happy Times, Buchanan thought,
searching the half-filled bar for Mike Sandoe. There was
no Sandoe, but there was a bartender motioning to him.
"You Buchanan?"
"Yeah."
"Your friend said I couldn't miss you
.”
"Where is he?"
"He might be heading for trouble. He left here saying
he was looking
for action—and the only action in this town
is
a
t
T
ro
y
’
s. I tried to tell him he wouldn't be welcome,
and that
Moose Miller was no man to monkey with in his
condition
."
"
What
condition?"
“He
went at the bottle a little too quick
.”
the bartender
explained.
"It hit him fast."
Bucha
nan started for the front door, stopped, and came
back.
He handed the bartender a five-dollar bill.
"
I’v
e a lady friend in a booth out back. If she'd like a
drink,
serve her. If she wants to wait till I get back, that's
all right,
too. Either way, the five is hers." The bartender
nod
ded and Buchanan left, crossing the deadline without
giving
it a thought, entering Troy's without the slightest
hesitation
.
H
e saw at a glance, was more like it. Well-dressed
men
stood shoulder to shoulder at the brightly polished
the dice and poker tables were filled to capacity,
play
ers crowded for a chance to bet at roulette. And there
was
music, music from a grand piano and violins. This was
mor
e like it, but where was his trigger-happy friend?
Dressed as
he was, looking as hard as he did, Sandoe
shoul
d be no problem to spot
.
Then he saw him, standing with the biggest crowd of all
a
t
th
e busiest faro table. Someone vacated his seat and
Mi
ke Sandoe moved to fill it. There was a brief commo
tion
an opening in the thi
ck group, and though he wanted to k
eep his eye on Sandoe, Buchanan found all his atten
tion c
aptured by the redheaded girl who sat in the dealer's
slot
. Her hair was not hanging in waves to her shoulders,
but
piled high above her ears, so it could be another one.
He wished that she would just get up and walk the length
of
the room. By her walk he would know her for an
absolute
certainty. But the nerve of her, the colossal gall, look
ing
down her nose because he'd made an innocent mis
take,
and her dolling up to deal faro all night with fifty
men
looking down the front of her dress. What front there
was, he added, moving to have a better view of things
himself.
"Let's go, let's go! Wheel and deal, baby doll!" Tha
t
was Mike Sandoe, raucous-sounding through his liquor.
She gave him a sidelong glance, her face neutral, and dealt around the table as if there had been no disturbance
in the routine.
"Place your bets, gentlemen
,”
she said quietly.
"Yeah, get it up, boys!" Sandoe shouted too loudly.
"Get it up or get out!"
Buchanan was moving through the four-deep group. He
arrived beside Sandoe's chair.
"Take it easy, kid," he said easily. "Enjoy the game."
Sandoe's head jerked up sharply. He was red-eyed. "I told you not to call me kid," he snarled.
"And I'm telling you to cut out the nonsense."
*
"Nobody tells me nothing!" There was the scrape of the
chair, the movement of that flashing hand—then a halt to
all action. Buchanan's thumb and forefinger were at the
base of Sandoe's neck, pressuring, disciplining the hothead
without punishing him. He had the gunfighter at the pre
cise point where he could not move.
"Get up easy, kid," he said close to Sandoe's ear, trying
to spare him humiliation. "Get a smile on your mug."
Sandoe protested, just once, and the result brought no
smile. He stood up, obediently, and Buchanan was turning him around when someone made a mistake. It was some
one who had bulled his way through the crowd, a behe
moth of a man, taller than Buchanan by inches, heavier
by a hundred pounds, a hundred and fifty. A giant.
He shoved the crowd aside and never stopped coming
forward. He was grinning and his pig eyes saw nothing
before him but the dirty, disheveled form of Mike Sandoe.
Buchanan saw his intention, couldn't believe it would
happen, and then died a little inside himself as the man's
massive fist was driven sadistically into the pit of Sandoe's
unprotected stomach. The tremendous force drove Sandoe
i
nto Buchanan; the immediate aftereffect jack-
knife
d Sand
o
e's body at
the waist. The same hand descen
ded on Sandoe's neck, the fist a blade now. The blow
felled
him as a hundredweight of sand would have done.
"You son of a bitch! You miserable son of a bitch!"
A weird silence followed in the wake of Buchanan's
bitt
er voice, accentuating the emotion, making it seem to
echo.
The giant had been following Sandoe's collapse, his
grin
a satisfied smirk, and now he looked up. He was
incredulous.
"You heard him
?
Moose
,”
someone yelled from the bar.
"G
i
ve it to him. Slip him the grip!"
"A son of a bitch?" Moose Miller said broadly, playing
to th
e crowd. "You called me a son of a bitch?"
"W
h
at'd you hit him for?" Buchanan asked raggedly. "I
h
ad him on the way out of here."
"'He just learned about the deadline. Now you're going
to.”
His arm suddenly lunge
d for Buchanan's shirt front. Bu
chanan backed off to avoid those fingers, but two un
f
ri
endly hands planted themselves firmly against his back
an
d shoved him forward. Moose Miller looked as if he had
a
nticipated the assist. He walked into the unbalanced Bu
chanan, enclosed him in a grotesque embrace that made
the onlookers murmur expectantly, had them waiting tensely for that next instant when the man in the grip
would groan his agony and go loose as a rag doll. After that
the Moose's latest victim would suffer any number of pun
ishing indignities, depending on the giant's mood and the crowd's stomach.
They waited for the inevitable, and then they waited
s
o
me more. The cracking point for Buchanan came and
went half a dozen times in half a dozen seconds, but still
the Moose kept straining at his work, kept getting more
p
u
rple-red in the face with the effort. At last Miller had to
take in fresh breath, and the tempo of the brawl changed
abruptly. Buchanan's heel came down against Miller's instep, Buchanan's forehead butted vigorously against Mill
er's Adam's apple. Miller's forearms slackened their hold against Buchanan's spine and his great moon of a face was
a study in surprise as Buchanan stepped away briefly and
drove first one hand, then the other deep into his tre
mendous belly.
Buchanan raised the attack then, got leverage on the
balls of his feet, slammed his left fist against Miller's solar
plexus, and hit him below the heart with a right. The man
never lived who would be completely right after that pile-
driving assault. It was as if an idol had fallen when the
astonished patrons of Troy's saw what complete destruction had been done to their champion in such a few sec
onds. The temptation then was to keep this gasping,
helpless hulk aloft, to take him apart from top to bottom.
But Buchanan was still too angry with Moose Miller to think it out that coldly. He spun him roughly away from
the unconscious form of Mike Sandoe on the floor, meas
ured him briefly, and then dropped him with two shoul
der-driven punches on each side of the jaw.
That was not the end of it. Buchanan bent down to
raise Sandoe and a freely swung bung
starter caught him at
the base of his skull. He'd been hit by an expert, a man
who'd spent some years around seaports, and he toppled
forward unconscious. A second man who worked in Troy's
got busy then, and a third, and their clubs beat a vicious
and unnecessary tattoo about his head and shoulders.
It might have gone on all night if the redheaded faro dealer hadn't kicked and clawed and made such an un
ladylike fuss about it that they finally stopped
.
Earlier that same night, when Frank Power was visit
ing Room 46 of Bella House and Buchanan was handing
in
his resignation to Bill Durfee, the man named Bernie
Troy was fingering the dark new growth of beard along his
c
hin-line and frowning. The working partner of Troy's
l
iked to appear in public smooth-shaven, liked to have
th
e white silk shirt feel fresh on his back, the black suit
crisply tailored. Nor was he happy about his virtual con
finement to this private room where the big game had
been in progress since the night before.
The visiting fireman was a crusty bourbon drinker from
Chicago, a meat buyer Frank Power had brought in last
night. It had begun as a friendly little game, ten dollars per
chip, two raises per hand, but along about dawn Mr. Wil
son demanded table stakes in an effort to recoup his losses.
''Let's smoke the damn drummers out," he'd said insult
ingly, and from then on the poker had been in grim ear
nest. Power checked out soon after, pleading the pressure
of business, then Troy had cashed in his modest winnings.
The others hung on, lured by the knowledge that the house had given this Wilson unlimited credit, but it
seemed to Bernie Troy that hardly had he put his head to
the pillow than he was bein
g
awakened by a houseman with the information that Boyd Weston was in the game.