Chapter 12 #2
“You can try to catch her eye till the cows come home, hon. She’ll never fall for your handsome good looks. You ain’t her type.”
“Nobody’s asking you.”
“Whaddya say, Jordan?” the dealer groused. “You still playing?” The other men around the table were eyeing him and his winnings.
Newly dealt cards lay in front of him. He picked up his down card and glanced at it.
“Not this hand.” He tossed the cards onto the center of the table.
Belle’s attention turned to the piano man who was still jawing with the sheriff.
Henry’s eye traced her perfect profile. She shot another look at the barman and nodded toward the musician.
The Scotsman rapped a knuckle on the pine surface, and the man quickly went to the instrument and struck up a lively tune.
Belle turned and moved smoothly up the stairs with her friend right behind her. Henry drank down his glass of whiskey and placed it on the table. Maybe it was time to call it a night. His luck had definitely changed. And what was stirring inside of him, there was nobody here to satisfy it.
No sooner had the thought of leaving crossed his mind when he heard over the music a drunken, gravelly voice that he recognized on the far side of the saloon.
“Move over, you.”
Henry turned his head in time to see Frank Stubbs shove his way to the bar. A short, bowlegged miner glared and grumbled but made room. Stubbs just couldn’t help making friends wherever he went.
“Brandy,” he barked at the barman, rapping a stout walking stick on the pine. “Double.”
“My man is here,” Mariah murmured. “Last chance, Jordan.”
Henry shook his head in disgust. Some people never smartened up. This was the same woman who’d complained loud and clear about Stubbs’s rough treatment.
The mine owner leaned heavily on the bar and swung his gaunt horse face around, searching the saloon.
Henry had seen his neighbor a few times, notably when Stubbs nearly put a hole in his head up by the pond the day he and Caleb fought Mad Dog McCord’s gang. But he never truly realized how ugly the sonovabitch was until now.
Above the raggedy brown moustache trailing down both sides of his thin lips, his unshaved cheek bulged with tobacco.
Small black eyes—dull as cloth buttons—were bunched up against either side of a crooked nose.
Henry couldn’t help but think that more than a few men must have enjoyed knocking that beak around.
And that scar up in Stubbs’s eyebrow was itching for a match above the other eye.
As always, he was wearing a dark brown coat and a black vest. His brown bowler was tipped forward on his forehead. The only addition to his attire that Henry could see was the Colt Peacemaker he was wearing strapped to his waist.
The dark eyes fixed on Henry for a long moment before flicking toward Mariah.
“He’s coming,” she said. “Now or never.”
Stubbs downed his drink as soon as it arrived and ordered another.
Henry recalled a favorite saying of his father’s. Coals to Newcastle. Wherever that was.
The next hand was being dealt, and he looked at his down card. Not overly promising, but it had possibilities. Good for a street or maybe two. Maybe he’d hang around.
Mariah put her hand on top of his. Henry pushed it away again.
His next card dropped. As he got ready to fold, Stubbs lurched up to the table, reeking of old brandy, chewing tobacco, and sweat.
“Let’s go, you,” he growled to Mariah, his words slurring.
Without waiting for a response, he threw a five-dollar piece on the table in front of her and went out the side door.
“You had your chance, Jordan,” she said lightly, rising to her feet.
Fingers spoke up. “That fella’s a low-down dog, miss.”
The others mumbled their agreement.
She shrugged. “I can handle him.”
Henry shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, Mariah.”
“You’re the fool, Henry,” she scoffed, picking up Stubbs’s money from the table.
With a flourish, she turned her back on him. A moment later, she’d disappeared out the door into the alley.
Henry stared at the table for a moment and then tried to shrug it off.
Mariah was a grown woman in a rough profession, he told himself.
She knew what she was getting into. The first time they’d met here, he’d stood up for her against Stubbs.
But since then, he’d realized she had a destructive streak in the way she acted. Tonight was a good example of it.
“She went out there on her own two feet,” Fingers told him, as if reading his mind. “If she gets herself into trouble with that mangy dog, well, she brung it on herself.”
“Whose deal is it?” Henry barked.
“Yours,” Fingers said.
“Then ante up, you no-account four-flushers.”
Henry concentrated on shuffling the cards and was set to deal when the shriek came from the alley, loud enough to be heard over the piano music.
He was on his feet in the blink of an eye.
Racing out into the passageway, he looked right and left.
A burning lamp hung from a hook on the wall beside the door, casting light on the barrels and crates stacked against the walls of the Belle and the haberdashery next door.
A wagon had been left toward the back of the alley, and he saw a movement by the right wheel, followed by the sound of wood on flesh and a cry of pain.
The stick rose to strike her again, but Henry was there before it could fall. Grabbing the cane, he dragged Stubbs backward and drove a fist into his lower back. The mine owner released the weapon, and it flew off into the darkness, clattering against the barrels.
As Stubbs staggered to right himself, he realized the man still had Mariah’s wrist in his grasp. Henry stepped forward, planting his foot and pivoting his upper body sharply. His big fist arced through the air and caught his neighbor right below the left eye, flush on the cheekbone.
Stubbs released his grip on Mariah’s wrist as his battered face snapped around and his hat flew off into the dark. He staggered backward landing heavily against a broken crate.
The man shook his head and pulled himself upright, spitting out a chaw of tobacco. He was blinking hard to clear his vision, but Henry judged the problem could be as much from drink as it was from the blow.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Stubbs rasped. He had either blood or tobacco juice on his chin.
“I warned you before. You don’t beat that woman.”
“She come out here. Nobody dragged her out.”
“Not for no beating.” Henry felt his temper about to blow. “Nor for no killing, neither.”
“I’ve had it with your do-gooder interfering, Jordan.”
“And I’ve had it with you, Stubbs.”
“You threatening me, shit bird? I paid for that whore. I’ll do what I like.”
“I’ll kill you before you raise that cane again to her or any woman.”
“Will you now?” His hand was on the Peacemaker pouched at his hip.
“If you think this is our time, come on.” Henry unhooked the thong over the hammer of his own six-gun. “Cuz I owe you a bullet, and I’m ready to put you in the ground, once and for all.”
The shotgun blast from the Greener sounded like cannon fire in the confines of the alley, and both Henry and Stubbs looked back at the door.
Zeke and the bouncer stood in front of a small crowd that had pushed out into the passageway.
“What in hellfire do I need to do to keep you two from killing each other?” the sheriff barked, pointing his bristly eyebrows at them.
Stubbs started to respond but stopped dead when the bouncer pointed the Greener directly at his chest.
“Stubbs,” Zeke continued. “I’d say nobody wants to hear nothing you have to say.”
Two women hurried by Henry and gathered up the injured Mariah. She was bleeding from her nose and holding her arm as they helped her back into the saloon.
Belle had arrived at the doorway, watching the spectacle. She came forward and the crowd separated like the Red Sea. Silence fell over the alleyway. Her steps were measured, her eyes flashed. She walked past Henry and stopped directly in front of Stubbs.
“The next time you step foot in my establishment,” she said quietly, “my man will escort you back into the street before you finish crossing the threshold. And the escorting won’t be gentle, I promise you.”
The silence that followed was somehow more threatening than a shout.
Stubbs stared for a moment, then scooped up his hat. Not waiting to look for his cane, he jammed his bowler on his head and limped past the crowd and disappeared into the darkness of the alley.
Henry felt a hand touch his sleeve and looked down into brown eyes so deep a man could lose himself in them. He'd never stood close enough to notice the flecks of gold around the edges.
“Mr. Jordan.”
The sound of his name on her lips nearly stopped his heart.
“You seem determined to keep order in my alley.”
A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth.
“I reckon somebody has to.”
The faintest hint of amusement touched her eyes.
“Then allow me to thank you.”
She glanced toward the saloon door. “There’s a drink waiting for you inside.”
She knew his name. And somehow that felt better than winning any amount of dollars at her poker table.