Ghosts & Gunpowder: A Collection, page 1
Ghosts & Gunpowder
A Collection
John G. Hartness
Contents
1. Redemption Song
2. Rebirth
3. High Fashion Hell
4. Walk the Dinosaur
5. Family Reunion
Falstaff Books
About the Author
Also by John G. Hartness
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1
Redemption Song
A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Short Story
Time stopped when the man first showed up in the Golden Grin Saloon. It was one of those between the raindrops moments, when everything fell silent for an instant, and everyone’s attention landed on the same spot. Big Bob, the piano player who took an Ohlone arrow to the knee that ended his trapping days, finished one Stephen Foster tune and began leafing through a tattered Dan Rice songbook for another song to play. The man stood in the doorway, hat pulled down low over his eyes and a long leather duster hanging well past his knees. He looked like a man who had been rode hard and put away wet—thin almost to the point of gauntness, and so pale one could see the veins in the back of his hands if they let their eyes linger long enough, something not many were inclined to do.
He stood motionless, nothing about him even twitching except his eyes. Those chips of flint flickered back and forth across the room, taking in Leila and her dancing girls on the tiny stage in one corner near Bob, JR sitting at his faro table flipping cards and stacking chips, and Smilin’ Bill behind the bar polishing a glass in his eternal battle against the grime of the street. The man held the gaze of every soul in the Grin for a long heartbeat, then he stepped forward, and with the jingle of his spur the spell was broken. Big Bob launched into an old minstrel tune that had the girls high-kicking, JR flipped over a Queen to top the bettor’s nine and take his last chip, and Smilin’ Bill set the glass down on the bar and poured a slug of whiskey into it.
The stranger put one foot onto the bar rail and leaned on the polished oak. Smiling’ Bill gave him one of his trademarked grins, gold tooth sparkling on his lower jaw, and slid the whiskey into his hand. “First one’s on the house, friend. You look thirsty,” Bill said. “I’m Bill Evans, owner and proprietor of the Golden Grin Saloon, the finest drinking establishment for at least a hundred feet in any direction!” Bill laughed at his own joke, and a couple of the regulars at the bar joined him out of either manners or a hope for a free drink of their own.
“Thanks,” the man said. He slammed back his whiskey and dropped a golden eagle to spin on the bar. “Another.” His voice was more a rasp than speech, like the sound of two sheets of paper scraping across each other in the wind.
Bill poured another and slid two quarters across the wood. The man made a gesture to him, and Bill nodded his thanks as he slipped the four bits into his apron pocket. “Where you from, stranger?”
“East.”
“Well, son, we’re in San Francisco, ‘bout everything’s east of here!” Bill laughed, but not quite as loud as the first time. There was something a little off about this stranger. Something about the way he talked, or didn’t talk, or maybe it was just those eyes, the way they never stopped moving. Either way, this fellow wasn’t quite right somehow, and Bill hoped he wasn’t planning on staying long.
Audrey Reese hadn’t taken her eyes off the stranger since he appeared in the doorway. And that was the right word for it - appeared. No one heard his boot clomp up the steps. Not a hint of a spur jingling announced his coming. There was no creak of a swinging saloon door to herald his arrival. One minute the doorway was empty, the next he was standing there, alabaster skin looking like it was carved from marble, not flesh. His perfectly black pants and coat seemed to absorb all the light from around him, as if a young gunfighter like him could just step sideways into his own shadow and disappear.
Audrey shuddered on the lap of Rich Spence, her current beau and the man sitting behind the biggest pile of bills, coins and chips at the poker table in the far corner of the Double G, as the locals called it. Goose walked over my grave, Audrey thought as she tried to adjust her bustle so her movements wouldn’t distract Rich.
“You okay, darling?” Rich asked. His voice rumbled deep in his chest, like distant thunder. She liked to lay against him when he talked, feeling that thunder peal across her face as he talked aimlessly in his deep voice. But now that voice had an edge to it, and Audrey looked down at her man. He caught her gaze and jerked his chin at the stranger by the bar. “You know him?”
“No, baby. He just . . . looked like somebody I used to know for a minute. But I don’t know him at all.” Do I? He looks . . . But that can’t be . . .
“Maybe you need to go on over there and see what he looks like instead of squirming around on my lap like some little brat. I’m trying to work here.” Now Rich’s voice was hard, his words grating on one another like granite, and Audrey felt the fear blossom in her chest.
“No, Rich, baby. He’s nobody. I’ll just sit here and watch you take all these nice people’s money.” She flashed a smile at the two miners and one trapper that shared the table with Spence. The trapper had already lost most of his winter stake, and the miners were down to one small bag of gold dust between them. The bigger one, that Audrey had heard called Jeremiah, was fingering a stack of papers in his jacket pocket and she hoped against hope he wasn’t about to wager his claim against Spence. Rich Spence was a good enough poker player to take most everything these men ever owned or ever would own without any help, but when he put Audrey to work distracting his opponents, he could cheat like an honest to God magician.
There was a flash of black in her vision, and when she looked up, the stranger was just there. She woulda sworn he hadn’t walked across the saloon to stand in front of the table, one minute he was at the bar, leaning over a whiskey like a respectable human being, the next he was right in front of her, standing there with a handful of five-dollar gold coins.
“You got room for one more?” He asked, and that sandpaper voice crawled down Audrey’s spine like a spider, sending another shiver through her.
Crack! Spence’s palm slapped her on the butt, hard. “Woman, I told you to sit still or get gone. Now what’s it going to be?”
Audrey shrank in on herself, becoming very small and still on Rich’s lap. “I just want to sit here with you, Rich, baby. That’s all. I’ll be good, I promise.”
Rich smiled, an oily grin that never reached his empty blue eyes. “You do that, honey, you be good and we won’t have any problems. But you keep that tight little ass still or I’ll have to teach you how to be still. Now you don’t want any lessons tonight, do you, sweetheart?”
“No, Rich. I don’t want any lessons, please. I’ll sit still.”
“Good.” Rich turned his attention to the stranger, who stood motionless over the table, his hat obscuring his eyes and the upper part of his face form the table. “Now, stranger, you want to play some poker? I believe we might be able to accommodate you, what do you think, boys?” Rich unleashed a wide grin on the table that made him seem like the affable gambling buddy instead of the man who’d been cheating them out of their very livelihood for the past six hours.
The miners both nodded and scooted their chairs over, while the trapper stood up and said “You can have my seat, friend, but watch his hands when he deals.” The trapper pushed past the stranger and headed for the door, his last few dollars clenched tight in his fist. The newcomer pulled Matthias’ abandoned chair out from the table and sat, every motion smooth as glass, almost like he didn’t have any bones in his body whatsoever.
“Matthias?” Spence called from his seat.
The trapper stopped. He slowly turned to face the gambler. “What, Spence?”
“Tip your hat to a lady when you leave the table, you mannerless cur.” Spencer’s voice was cold and low, but it cut through the bustle and music of the bar like the crack of a whip.
The man called Matthias stiffened at the insult, but he nodded to Audrey and tipped his coonskin cap. She gave him a polite nod, and Matthias turned to go.
“Matthias?” Spence called again.
Matthias turned to find Spence standing beside his chair, Audrey staggering back from being dumped off the man’s lap. Spencer’s coat was brushed back over his hip to show off the mother-of-pearl grips on his Peacemaker. Matthias looked down at the gun, and at Spence’s hand dangling beside it.
“W-what you want now, Spence?” The trapper asked.
“It seems to me that you might have felt that I wasn’t dealing fairly as we played cards. That hurts my feelings, Matthias, to think that you would accuse me of being a cheat. And to do so right here in the Grin, where I do most of my work. Why, that might be considered in some circles as downright insulting. And I don’t appreciate being insulted.”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Spence. I’s just mad on account of I lost and now I got to go back up in the hills and git more pelts instead of spending some time with Miss Audrey’s girls like I had planned to do this winter.”
“But is that my fault, Matthias? Is it my fault you gambled with money you couldn’t afford to lose? Is it my fault you aren’t the poker player you thought you were? Is it my fault you are too stupid to quit while you are no flat damn broke?” The gambler had taken a step forward with every sentence until he was right on top of Matthias.
The trapper looked up at the tall man, his eyes darting about for an exit. “No, Sp ence, that ain’t your fault!” His words tumbled out quickly, like a stream babbling over stones and skipping over syllables.
“Then why in the world would you call me a cheat?” Spence’s hand rested on the butt of his forty-five.
Matthias looked around the bar as if for help, but all the other patrons were very studiously not looking at him or Spence. Just as he drew a breath and steeled himself to clear leather on the gambler, a voice came from the table.
“You gonna play cards or you gonna kill that man? Whatever it is, I wish you’d get on with it. I’m bored.” The grating sound of the stranger’s voice cut the silence like a bullet through flesh.
Spence cocked his head to one side and turned, very slowly, to face the stranger. His hand never left the butt of his gun. He looked at the stranger like a dog examining a bumblebee, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. “Did you . . . say something, stranger?”
“I told you to get on with whatever you were about. I came here to play cards, not to watch a floor show. And if I’m going to watch a couple of jackasses dance around a saloon, I hope at least one of them has better tits than y’all.”
Spence stared at the man, now seated at the table with a stack of gold coins in front of him. He stood there unmoving as a statue, eyes locked on the stranger’s own grey orbs. Neither man blinked for a long time, then Spence threw back his head and laughed. It was a big laugh, that broke the room free of its stillness. “God-dammit that is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a coon’s age! Bill, you grinnin’ idiot, bring us another bottle! We got a gambler in the house tonight!” He stomped back over to his seat at the table, swept his coat over the back of the chair with a flourish that both drew attention to his fine clothes and let him keep his gun swinging free, and sat down.
“Matthias!” Spence called, patting his knee for Audrey to sit.
The trapper turned. He was almost at the door and hadn’t looked back since the stranger spoke. “Y-yeah, Spence?”
“You watch your goddamn mouth next time. You ever call me a cheat again and I’ll shoot you right here at my poker table.”
The trapper nodded, turned, and half stumbled, half ran out the swinging doors. Spence turned his attention to the new arrival.
“Well, howdy, stranger.” Spence stuck out a hand. The pale man just stared at it and after a long moment Spence dropped his arm. “My name’s Spence. Richard Spence. You got a name?”
“Yup.”
“You care to share it with the table?”
“Let’s play cards.”
“Well, I like that!” Spence said, slapping his leg. “Come on over here, Audrey. Don’t you like a man who gets right down to business?”
“I do, Rich. I like that.” Audrey sat down on his leg, but her eyes never left the newcomer. She couldn’t see his eyes under the wide brim of his black hat, but she thought that she could feel his gaze on her, measuring, judging somehow and finding her wanting. She didn’t enjoy that feeling, that sense of not being quite good enough for this smooth-walking stranger with the gravelly voice, but she wasn’t quite sure why it bothered her so.
“Let’s play cards, he says.” Rich grinned as he reached for the deck. “Let’s play cards indeed.”
The pale man’s hand flashed out, quick as a blink, and he snatched the deck out from under Rich’s grasp. “She deals,” he said, never looking up.
“You don’t trust my dealing, stranger?” Rich glared at him.
“I don’t trust anybody,” the man replied. “She deals, and she sits there.” He pointed to a chair exactly between himself and Spence, a chair currently occupied by the smaller of the two miners, a man called Morris who fidgeted like his chair had bugs, or he did.
“Morris is sitting there,” Spence said.
“Morris has lost enough for one night,” the man said. “Right, Morris?”
Morris looked from Spence to the new man and back again. Audrey could almost see the moment when he decided his money had a better use somewhere else. He gathered up his last few gold nuggets and a couple of loose coins and shuffled off over to the bar, where he ordered a whiskey in a shaky voice and very quickly commenced to forgetting all about the pale man in the back corner.
Spence turned his attention to Jeremiah, the last remaining gambler from his original game. “What about you, Jer? You decided I’ve taken enough of your money for one night, or you gonna throw down the deed to that claim you been fiddling with for the last half hour?”
Jeremiah opened his mouth, but a ten-dollar golden eagle flew across the table and spun down in front of him. “Jeremiah is going to join his friend at the bar and drink until he’s blind while we get down to business. Isn’t he, Jeremiah?”
Jeremiah glared at the stranger and opened his mouth to speak, but then he caught sight of the man’s eyes. The big miner blanched pale and grabbed the coin, along with three nuggets and a depleted sack of gold dust. He stood up, shoved his gold in his pockets, and tipped his hat to Audrey. “I think it’s about time for a drink. You two have fun.” He turned and headed over to the bar. Smilin’ Bill set a shot glass down in front of him and filled it to the rim with amber liquid. After the fourth shot Jeremiah stopped seeing the pale man’s eyes.
“Now we got that all settled, we can play cards.” The pale man said.
“You ran all the easy money off the table, mister. How do you plan on making a profit now?” Spence grinned around a cigarette.
“Since you done took everything they got, I figure now I’ll just take everything you got.” A slow smile crept across the man’s face as he slid the deck across the felt to Audrey.
“Stud poker, nothing wild. How’s that grab you?” Spence asked, tossing a dollar coin into the center of the table. “Ante’s a dollar.”
The pale man didn’t speak, just nodded to Audrey and tossed a dollar to clink against Spence’s. Audrey dealt a card to each man facedown. Spence peeled up the corner to see his card, the ten of clubs. He looked across the table at the stranger, but there was nothing to see. The man gave nothing away, no hint of whether he had an ace or a three. Audrey dealt the first face-up card, a Jack of spades to Spence and an eight of diamonds to the stranger.
“Jack bets,” Audrey said, with the calm manner of a woman who has sat at many card tables.
Spence threw out a dollar. “Just a dollar,” he said. A little feeler bet, to see if the old boy liked his cards or was going to be pushed around. The stranger barely took time to breathe before he tossed a dollar back out, calling the bet.
Audrey dealt out the next card, a nine of spades to Spence and a five of hearts to the stranger. “Jack is still high,” she said, motioning for Spence to bet or check. He tapped the table, indicating he checked. The stranger checked behind, giving nothing away. Spence cheer the inside of his lip a little—this one wasn’t going to make it easy on him. The fourth card came down, a ten of spades for Spence to show a possible straight and possible flush but really giving him a pair of tens.
“Jack bets,” Audrey said, motioning to Spence, who already had money in his outstretched hand.
“Five dollars,” he said, dropping the coins onto the table one at a time with a clink.
“Call,” said the other man, tossing a single coin into the pile. Spence studied his opponent but still saw nothing. He nodded to Audrey, who dealt the last card face up. Spence showed the Queen of spades, filling the flush if he had a buried spade, filling the straight if he had a King or an eight underneath, but leaving him with just a pair of tens. The stranger caught a five to pair his board, and the action went to the high hand.
“Pair of fives bets,” Audrey said, motioning to the newcomer.
The pale man tossed out another five-dollar coin, and Spence looked hard at him.
Spence stared at his unmoving opponent. What was he holding? There were a lot of hands that beat him here. A five in the hole made trips, but would he have stayed on every street fishing for trips? Did he catch two pair on the river to sink him? What did he have under there, and was it worth a call to find out? Spence’s head went back to something his Granddaddy told him when he was a little boy learning the game at his knee. “The worst thing you can ever do, tadpole, is call a bet. You want to play poker, you bet or you raise. But men don’t ever call.”
