Fiddlefoot Ride — a classic western adventure
Fiddlefoot Ride
Rip reached Colfax County after ten days of hard riding.
After leaving Lassiter lying in the streets of Bend, he rode east and south as if heading for Nevada.
Then, he turned north of Baker toward the Grande Ronde and Idaho.
Here again, he changed direction and crossed into Washington near Walla Walla.
Not daring to cross on the ferry at Alpowa, he swam his horse across the treacherous Snake River near the mouth of the Palouse. When a gun was in his hand, Rip was in the hand of Fate.
They called him evil, from Dodge City to Death Valley, but it was a brand that doubtless should have been blotted.
In the badlands near Palouse Falls, he could go no further.
Rip hadn’t eaten in four days and had barely slept in ten.
The bullet Town Marshal Lassiter had put through his side just above the belt had left a foul passage that had corrupted until his whole left side was bathed in fire at every jolt of the rawboned bronco he had stolen in the Grande Ronde.
The horse, battered by the long fast miles and the terrible struggle of the Snake crossing, was nearly gone.
Rip was reaching the end of the road, driven by the fate that had goaded him without let-up for all his forty-odd years.
The cards were shuffled and dealt, all he could do was, as he’d always done, play out the hand.
All he’d ever been, from the beginning when he’d been lost from a wagon-train, was the tool of fate.
What a gun was in his hand, he was in the hand of destiny.
They called him evil, from Dodge City to Death Valley. But evil was not a word that applied to him.
The fate that pushed him was a brutal thing, cruel and heartless. Rip simply did what he had to do.
He rode on, his battered horse plodding head down, into a gray and shimmering world of sagebrush and stunted jackpines.
Far off in the distance, he could see the blue of a pot-hole lake in a coulee.
Water wouldn’t fill the emptiness in his belly, but it might get some of the grime off him.
He let the horse drink first, and thirsty as it was, it snorted at the brackish alkaline water.
Where the tiny waves of the lake beat against the shore, there was a foam like soapsuds.
The water would eat the bottom from a tin cup in a year, but it was sweet enough for cattle to drink.
It was when he rose from dipping his face in the lake that he saw the house.
It was set back in the wall of a grassy chute leading into the coulee from the prairie above.
Its front was of pine logs daubed with clay, and its back was the wall of the chute.
It was half a dugout, half a house.
The logs were still shiny, reflecting newness.
A homesteader’s wagon: a big Studebaker with a tent built on it, was pulled to one side.
The pain of an empty belly twisted Rip.
The homesteader might shoot him on sight, but he could go no further without food, even if he had to get it at gunpoint.
There was a child playing near the wagon, he saw now, and an obscure impulse made him turn back to the lake and scrub his face in the stinging alkali water.
He got a broken mirror and razor from his blanket roll and set about the painful job of scraping his face free of the twelve-day beard.
There wasn’t much he could do about a face that would scare the devil himself.
Slowly he remounted and rode around the end of the lake.
The child, a boy about nine, stopped shooting at Indians with a stick gun when Rip rode up and stood painfully still, his bright eyes taking in the rifle in the saddle boot and the Colt hung dragon style on Rip’s left hip.
Rip sat his horse, as was proper in this country until invited to get down.
“Your pa home, boy?” The boy’s eyes flickered toward the horizon, and in that glance, Rip saw that the man of the family was gone. The boy set his jaw and said nothing.
“What is it, Jesse?” a woman called.
Rip turned in the saddle and saw her standing in the leather-hinged doorway, a pretty woman, not yet thirty, with blue eyes and blonde hair, both already starting to fade from sun and wind and loneliness.
Beside her, within easy reach, he could see the blued barrels of a shotgun.
“What is it?” she repeated sharply. “Are you one of Barker’s riders?” Rip touched the greasy brim of his hat.
“No ma’am, I’m a stranger in these parts, and nearly starved. I’d take it as a most kindly act if you’d sell me some vittles.”
Her eyes went over him, and Rip could again see the image he had seen in the broken mirror across the lake.
A dirty, scar-faced man with blood spots from fresh shaving on his mottled gray skin.
Protruding unblinking eyes and a spade-shaped head like a diamond-back rattler.
“I mean you no hurt, ma’am,” he said. “I’m desperately hungry.” She nodded at last.
“Step down. I’ve something left from Jesse’s dinner.”
Rip dismounted slowly and carefully, so as not to alarm her.
The boy, Jesse, was still regarding him with the distrust of people who live lonely lives.
But he was taken by the gun belt on Rip, and it wouldn’t be long before he made some friendly overture.
Rip had no feeling for children; he couldn’t remember having been one himself.
When he had been this boy’s age, he had been driving with a freighting outfit.
Out of long habit, his eyes searched the surrounding screen of coulee walls before he hunkered down to wait for the food. He was a long way from Missouri River bottom land where he had started, and still, everything was the same.
He was hungry, dirty, and still wary of the kick that would come if he wasn’t fast on the dodge.
Over the years, he had acquired a name — his last from a freighter who had picked him off the streets of St. Louis — the first, Rip, had been acquired in Abilene when he had dropped a tough Texas rancher with a hideout .41 derringer.
The thing that went with the name Rip Campbell, a reputation for fast and deadly and cold-blooded murder, had been acquired in a dozen tough places.
Even the woman there might have heard of Slick Rip. If she knew who he was, he would have been covered with the shotgun from the time he rode onto the place.
The woman came to the door again. “Come in and sit down; it ain’t much, but it’ll keep body and soul together.”
“I can eat out here, ma’am,” Rip said.
“Sit down at the table,” she insisted.
Rip went in and sat down at a table made of split logs. Soft wood; cottonwood, he saw.
It would soon fall apart.
He had seen these homesteaders move in on the rim of cattle ranches before.
They came stubbornly seeking out their hundred-sixty acres of land, worked like demons night and day, and in two or three years went on to another bright promise, leaving decaying buildings and homemade furniture like this behind them.
It irritated him always.
The people with their hopes and dreams pitting themselves against insurmountable odds.
There was no use pitying them.
They would not listen to reason.
The woman put a steaming plate of beans and some cold cornbread in front of him.
The faint odor of molasses tinted the smell of the beans, turning Rip weak and ravenous.
He seized his knife and began to scoop up the beans, shoveling them into his mouth in a steady stream.
He did not slow down until all the beans were gone, then he sopped up the remaining juice on his plate with the cornbread.
The boy was staring at him wide-eyed.
“Maw,” he said in an urgent voice. “He eats with his knife!”
“Hush, Jesse,” the woman said, embarrassed. “I bet he’s one of Barker’s riders. They’re all hogs.”
“Jesse! I’m sorry, mister. It’s pretty hard to strap manners into a wild boy.”
Rip smiled, a remote bleak flicker of expression.
“Nobody learned me better than to eat with a knife until I was too old to change.” He was acutely embarrassed for some reason and wanted to change the subject.
“Who is this Barker?”
“This land used to be Indian Reserve,” the woman explained. “Barker used to pay the Indians a dollar an acre to herd his cattle here. Now the government has thrown it open for filing, and Barker wants to keep it. He’s brought in all the hard cases they have run out of Lewiston and Walla Walla.”
“They’ve got a sheriff in the county, haven’t they?” Rip asked.
“Sheriff!” she said scornfully. “Barker’s own man. The county commissioners are all cattlemen. When the old sheriff died, the commissioners appointed this new man.”
“I see,” Rip said.
A sheriff was the last man he wanted to see.
He rose and tilted his hat forward over his eyes again.
He was feeling the old irritation at helpless people who did not believe they were helpless.
There was no hope for these people. Lately, in Wyoming, he had hired out his gun to the cattlemen fighting back a wave of settlers. The fight had been bloody, and the homesteaders beaten.
Here, with a handpicked sheriff, the homesteaders had no chance at all. They could not fight the run of the cards.
He reached into his pocket for a half eagle.
He shook his head at the woman’s quick protest.
“For feeding a stranger, even if you were afraid.”
The boy walked to his horse with him. Jesse’s eyes were on the bone handle of the pistol. “You like guns, boy?”
“I got a dollar,” the boy said. “You want to sell that gun, mister?”
“Afraid I couldn’t get along without it,” Rip said. “What do you need a gun for?”
“Maybe the Indians will come snooping around. I could shoot Barker and his whole gang of mangy riders, too.”
Rip chuckled. “You save that fight, boy, you may need it.” He looked down at the house when his horse had climbed to the top of the grassy chute.
Again, he felt irritated at their helpless stubbornness. Barker and his handpicked riders would force them to move, and they would go on and on, pushed by the same bitter fate that pushed him.
By nightfall, he had ridden several miles to the north without seeing another human being. The desert had given way to the deep soil of the Palouse hills, and the wild grass, rolling in the wind, brushed at his hips as he rode through. At sundown, a sage hen ran through the grass before him, dragging a wing in imitation injury. Rip took a quick glance at one of the balls of fluff which were her chicks, decided they were old enough to fend for themselves, and blew off her head with his forty-four.
Before dark, he descended to the Palouse River, gathered a few limbs, and roasted the sage hen on a stick. The meat was tough and stringy and tasted strongly of sage. Supper over, he untied his horse’s picket rope from a sage and retied it to his wrist. Then he lay with his head on the saddle, covering himself with the stinking saddle blanket, and with his pistol in his hand, fell into a profound sleep.
He was awakened some time later, about midnight, he judged by the slow wheel of stars, to the sound of a half-dozen horses trotting somewhere up on the coulee rim. He lay tensed, head lifted, with his pistol cocked, until the sound of the horses died out in the distance. He awoke again in the first silver light of dawn with the sharp feeling that something had gone wrong. He did not move, other than to put his thumb over the pistol hammer.
“You can quit playing possum, Slick. Right now you’re cold turkey,” a faintly amused voice said.
Rip sat up slowly, tilting the gun barrel toward the sound of the voice as he did so. “Don’t try it.”
Rip pulled his hand from under the blanket. “Shorty Morcross,” he said. “Ain’t seen you since Wyoming.”
The short man sitting in the saddle, with the carbine centered on Rip’s chest, grinned with mirth. “The name is Dyke, Ted Dyke, Slick. Shorty Morcross never got out of Wyoming.” He pointed to his chest. “Ted Dyke is the sheriff of Colfax County.”
Rip shook his head as if to clear it. “I must be asleep, Shorty. I thought you said sheriff.” His mind was busy with the play. If there was a big enough reward posted for him in Oregon, Shorty wouldn’t waste much time before shooting.
“Slick,” Shorty said. “You’re in a mighty bad spot.”
Rip said nothing, tensing his muscles for a try at his gun. It would be useless. Shorty was no amateur, and he could put three bullets through him before he got his hand under the blanket.
“Colfax County used to be tough,” Shorty said. “Right now they’re looking over every strange rider that comes in. Generally, they issue a request to keep on riding.”
Rip sat straighter, trying to postpone the moment when Shorty would pull the trigger. “Don’t reach for that gun, Slick! I could start even and still beat you. I’m giving you a good chance. We might just forget we ever saw each other before. Your name is maybe Jake Brown. I can use a good deputy for a month or so.”
“New way of livin’ for me,” Rip said. Relief poured through him like pure, sweet water. “You got a dodger on me, Mr. Dyke?”
“No. Probably get it a couple of days after you ride out. I’m surprised at you, Slick. In the old days, a man couldn’t get within a mile of where you were sleeping.”
“We all get old,” Rip said. “For a minute there, I thought I wasn’t going to get any older. The people of this county know what kind of lawdog they got?”
Shorty smiled his mirthless grimace. “Only one person in this county whose opinion is worth a damn. His name is Barker, a big rancher. We’ll ride by his ranch on the way to town. I never knowed the time you needed help, Shorty.”
“A man can’t have eyes everywhere. These homesteaders will fight for this rich land. Some of them are pretty tough. You might say you’re insurance for me, just like I’m insurance for Mr. Barker. Let’s ride, Deputy.”
Barker’s ranch was on a hill overlooking the river. Rip, when the horses splashed across the shallow ford, saw a blacksmith hard at work in the shop, a rifle leaning against the forge.
Three men were working at the corral, repairing cinch straps, but behind them were three more rifles, new, from their appearance. The house itself was set back against the hill and was made of fieldstone heavily mortared together. The full-length porch commanded a view of the entire valley. Behind the house, up on the rim, more riders were hazing some horses. The Barker ranch was set for trouble. It would take a small army to get at Barker. One of the men at the corral had stopped hammering rivets into a strap and was carefully inspecting his rifle as Shorty and Rip rode up. Shorty jerked a thumb at Rip. “New deputy, name of Jake Brown,” he said. “Parker Nichols, foreman of the Bar B, Jake. Barker at home?” “Up at the cookshack, getting breakfast. If the cook is in a good mood, maybe you can get some grub, too.”
Barker, a heavy, red-faced man of forty, was seated alone in the cookshack. “Morning, Sheriff,” he said. “Who’s your boy?”
“This side of the line, his name is Jake Brown.” Barker speared a slice of ham. “He ain’t very pretty. Is he useful?”
“He’ll get the job done.” Barker’s cold gaze rested on Rip. “You boys represent the law. I want the homesteaders off the Indian Strip. I don’t want a federal marshal down here nosing around afterward. If you’re wanted in other states, get the job done and get out of here.” He turned back to his ham and eggs. “How about some breakfast, Mr. Barker?” Shorty asked. “Don’t anybody ever eat before they come out here? Plates are on the side table.”
Rip was famished again.
The meal he had gotten at the homesteader’s and the sage hen he had eaten the night before had barely taken a wrinkle out of his hunger.
He loaded a plate with the ham and eggs and filled a mug with coffee from the back of the big range.
The ham was beginning to dry out, and the eggs were greasy cold, but he grabbed a knife and began to take the slack from his empty stomach.
Barker pushed his chair back and stood up. Rip, stopping to refill his coffee cup, noted he wore chokebore riding pants and hand-tooled boots and that he carried a short-barreled gun in a specially tailored hip pocket.
Barker grimaced at Shorty. “Your friend may be a curly wolf, but he eats like a hog. Next time, feed him outside; he turns my stomach.” Shorty laid a lightning-fast hand on Rip’s arm. “Take it easy, Slick,” he said.
Barker stared at Rip with contempt, but Rip could see the nervous flicker of his eyes. Outside they mounted and turned their horses up the valley toward Palouse City. Shorty seemed worried by Rip’s silence. “Hell, I wouldn’t let what Barker said bother me,” he said. “He’s been top dog in this country a long time; he just didn’t know who he was talking to.”
Rip turned his bleak gaze on him.
“Don’t worry about Barker,” he said. “I never kill anybody unless I’m paid for it.”
Early Evening filled the valley around Palouse City with plum-colored light when Rip awakened from an afternoon’s sleep. After riding into town, he had checked in at Shorty’s office, and then had bedded down in one of the bunks in the back of the livery barn. Now he went to the barber shop and bought a hot bath in which he soaked the grime from his body and some of the poison from the bullet gouge in his side. The wound looked purple and poisonous; he should have had a doctor look at it. His dirt-encrusted clothing felt strange after the bath, so he sent a boy to the store for new overalls and a shirt. He put them on and had a close shave and haircut. Then he sauntered on to supper smelling strongly of new clothing and bay rum. His steak and apple pie eaten, he went back to the courthouse to report to Shorty. There were two other deputies: Walters, a blowhard who would crack in a tight spot; and a heavy-shouldered man named Spear, who had been the town marshal. A good man for shouldering drunks out of the way, but too slow-witted to be a gunfighter. Rip pegged him as the man to rough the homesteaders when they were in town. “Here’s the deal,” Shorty said. “You, Spear, and Walters patrol the town. Some of Barker’s riders will be in. They’ll be tough with homesteaders. Most of the farmers won’t fight.” He grinned. “They’re married men, with wives and families; they can’t afford to fight. But there are always one or two young bucks who think they’re tough or have to impress their lady friends. Those are the men we’ll leave to Jake Brown. That clear?”
The night shadows were as thick and black as boiled coffee wherever the yellow lamplight did not reach. Rip stolidly walked the length of the street to where the two branches of the Palouse flowed together. The creeks rustled faintly over the stones, and he was surprised to hear a booming rush as of a waterfall. It took him minutes of listening before he realized the sound was of the wind rushing over acres and acres of head-high grass up on the rim. This Palouse soil, he realized, if it grew grass that tall, would grow wheat beyond any farmer’s wildest dream. He did not know how long Barker could hold back the farmers from the country. It would not be long. It was only the first homesteaders who would suffer; those who came after would find courts, churches, and impartial sheriffs. It was inevitable, as inevitable as the fate which would lead the bolder of them to die in the streets of Palouse under his guns. The westward settlements were the same always, repeated and repeated and repeated.
Rip wheeled and paced up the crooked street to its final turning to the road to Lewiston. It was quiet tonight, but tomorrow was Saturday. The homesteaders and Barker’s hands would be in town. Barker and Shorty were set for violence, and he was the gun in their hands. It would take a cool hand and steady nerves. A professional gunfighter he did not fear; there it was a question of nerve and hairline guessing about another man’s reactions. It was the amateurs he had to worry about. Some farmer who never before had a gun in his hands might be lucky.
He went back to the livery stable and rolled into his bunk. He awoke to a cloudless Saturday morning with an ache in all his joints and the coppery taste of fever in his mouth. The ease and well-being he felt the afternoon before had left him. His motions were sluggish, and his head ached steadily. He inquired of a boy about the whereabouts of a doctor, and the boy pointed to a house four doors away.
The doctor, an untidy man with the stains of his morning coffee on his shirtfront, was seated on the porch absorbing the sunshine. The doctor took a quick glance at the wounded side, then looked at Rip’s eyes and checked his pulse. “My friend, you’re in bad shape,” he said. “You do any more riding with that wound, and you’ll fall off your horse for good. You better stay here in town and get yourself a homestead out on the Indian Strip. You lie around for a month doing nothing, then you can prove your homestead. You’ve got a lot of poison in your system.”
“Is it that easy to get a homestead?” Rip asked. “Why not? This country’s got a great future — a great future. You got time to see the garden I’ve planted in back?”
“Some other time, Doc.” Rip paid the doctor his fifty cents. He was remembering the homesteader’s place by the pothole lake. A nice place to stop and let the rest of his years run out. A place like that — or that place, after he and Shorty had moved the homesteader’s family on. As long as Barker and Shorty were in power in the country, he would be safe, and he could help keep them in power. His headache was worse; he wished that he had dared ask the doctor for some painkiller, but a dose of laudanum would make him too slow and draggy for the business at hand. He took a seat on the bench in front of the main store, not far from the hitchrack, which was already lined with horses wearing Barker’s Cross B brand.
Out at the end of the street, there were three farm wagons, the horses unhitched and munching hay from the wagon boxes. After a time, Barker rode into town with his foreman, Nichols. He tied his high-stepping Kentucky horse to the hitch-rack, took a quick hard look at Rip, then went across the street to the Pastime. In three minutes, Shorty, the sheriff’s star gleaming on his chest, strolled down the street and disappeared into the saloon after Barker. Further down, Rip could see Spear and Walters patrolling. The cards were shuffled and dealt. The hand was ready to be played out. The farmers would push into the stacked deck. They would blame Barker and Shorty and Rip, not knowing that they, too, were merely players uselessly playing the hands they got.
Near ten o’clock, two wagons came into town from downriver. The first one held the woman and the boy, Jesse, who had fed him by the pothole lake. The man holding the reins was tall and dark-haired, with bulky shoulders and a tough, square set to his jaw. He drove directly to the hitch-rack. He stepped down, untied Barker’s fiddlefooted Kentucky horse, and moved it up the rack to make room for his team. The damned fool, Rip thought, he’s pushing himself harder than he has to. If he ran maybe he could get out of it alive. He’s got the wife and the boy to think about. But then he thought wearily: What difference will it make? The pride would ride with the farmer wherever he went, and the woman had probably been attracted to him because of it. What had made her a wife might make her a widow. If not here, then somewhere else. Rip felt a moment’s admiration for the farmer, then again, pity. No matter how brave a show he made of it, he was beat.
The two young farmers, brothers by their look, in the wagon behind had driven directly to the hardware store. One of them held the team while the other went inside. Rip saw Spear and Walters bearing down on the wagon, and the play was clear in his mind. He had seen it a hundred times before, in a hundred different ways. Different, but always the same. Barker must have decided that these two and the broad-shouldered married farmer were the kingpins who must be driven out or killed. Spear and Walters wheeled in concert and sat down on the bench in front of the hardware store. The farmer, a red-headed, fair-skinned Swede, glanced at them, then returned to his moody contemplation of the dashboard. From where he sat, Rip could not hear what Spear and Walters were saying, but it was apparent they were enjoying it. The farmer’s face, already sun-reddened, turned a bright scarlet. The sound of Spear’s unmelodious bray drifted up the street. Just as the other brother appeared in the doorway with a gunny-sack of supplies, the farmer in the wagon dived between his feet and came up with a rifle.
He was fast; the carbine was halfway to his shoulder before Spear and Walters could get untracked. Walters made an ineffective grab for his gun as Spear bumped the man in the door. Rip hurled himself to his feet and drew his pistol in the same motion. It was an impossibly long shot for a pistol, but he sighted and fired. The shot was high. The heavy slug caught the farmer in the shoulder and knocked him from the wagon seat. He fell between the wagon-box and wheel, which saved his life. Walters had finally got his gun clear of its holster. Spear had pinioned the arms of the brother. “Hold it!” Rip shouted. He plodded down the street to them, feeling the steady throb of his fevered blood behind his eyes. Walters was looking down at his gun, a foolish smile on his face. Spear looked stunned, as if what had been a rude game had suddenly exploded beyond belief. The farmer Spear had grabbed, slammed himself free with his elbows and went to assist his brother. There was a quick rustle of skirts as the homesteader’s wife ran to the wounded man.
“Axel! Are you all right?” Axel grimaced from pain. “Smashed a shoulder.” “Doctor up the street,” Rip said. “Get your shoulder fixed and either get out of Colfax County or go on trial for assaulting a peace officer.” The woman turned on him. “So you are one of Barker’s pet curs ! I’m sorry I wasted food on you the other day! I should have fed it to the hogs. There’s no reason for a man like you living.” Rip looked at her blankly. Shorty strutted over importantly from the Pastime. “A little trouble, Jake?” “Our friend went for Spear and Walters with a rifle. I had to cool him off.” Shorty looked, not at the brothers, but at the farmer’s wife. “We are giving you the same orders we give all troublemakers in Colfax County. Get your wagon rolling and don’t stop this side of the line.” “So that’s it,” she said. “We move out, and tomorrow you or some other dog of Barker’s files on our land. Why bother pretending it’s legal? Why not kill us outright?” “Lady, you’ve heard what I have to say,” Shorty said.
The woman turned away, tears streaking the faint layer of dust on her face.
Rip, watching her, saw the boy Jesse standing a few feet away, his eyes wide and frightened.
Well, it was a tougli world and the boy might as well learn it now as later.
Jesse reached out and took his mother’s hand as they trailed back to the wagon.
Rip, his head floating from fever, watched the husband running to them.
The woman went to his arms, while the boy Jesse stood close, not understanding the violence which outstripped his wildest dreams of Indian battles.
The farmer finally pushed his wife away and wheeled toward the Pastime. It was then Rip saw the pistol stuck in the waistband of his overalls.
Barker and Nichols were watching from the saloon door.
The hand been played, the last part of the design put in. It was exactly as Rip had known it would go.
There was no escape.
“Use that rifle, Rip,” Shorty called.
Rip lifted the rifle, and in that moment rebellion overtook him. It was his chance to spit in the eye of destiny.
“Shorty, you always thought you was faster than me. Now’s the time to find out.”
Shorty looked, not understanding.
“I’m changing sides, Shorty.”
Shorty had his gun clear of the holster and half-raised when Rip bullet hit him in the throat.
Rip whirled on Walters and Spear. “Stay out of this or you’re dead,” he said. He leveled the carbine.
His first shot lifted a spout of dust in front of the farmer.
His second shot jerked the batwing door to the right of Barker.
The rancher and Nichols turned and dived into the saloon.
Rip emptied the magazine of the rifle through the doors after them. If he had judged Barker right, the rancher would stay belly-down in the sawdust for some time to come.
He was weary; it was an effort to force his feet to move to the hitch rack where Barker’s Kentucky horse was dancing.
The farmer still held his pistol, puzzled.
Rip turned to the woman.
“Get word to the U. S. Marshal at Spokane Falls,” Rip said. “Tell him Barker had Shorty Morcross and Rip Campbell in here as lawdogs.”
“But — why?” the woman asked, and he knew she was talking about the change.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know exactly. . . Mighty pretty place you got there, though, by the lake.” He mounted the Kentucky horse and pointed it toward the rim where the tall grass grew.
On the horizon were the hills of Idaho, where he could find a spring and rest awhile.
The horse could find its way back.
The fever was high in his blood and he started to grin.
No matter if the cards were marked, a man could upset the deal. . .
