Ain't No Winners In This Game - pt 4

Suzy lay in her bed, thinking about the game. If they could win one and two and there were at least ten players, her and Jack’s share would be about $150. They could leave right away for the West, but ten dollars is a lot of money, especially for a tournament of Bluff that was going to be chock full of professional gamblers, rounders, scoundrels and other ne’er do wells. Suzy and Jack, especially Jack, weren’t really in the same league as some of the folks they’d brushed up against recently. They were just cheating at cards and scamming the more well-off of society to get by and get them a stake, so they could go somewhere out West and settle. What if they lost? They’d be stuck in Independence, Nowhere with less opportunity to get Somewhere.

Suzy tossed and turned all night. By morning, she still didn’t know what she wanted to do. As she got up and wandered into the shared room, Jack was just coming in the door, looking much the worse for wear.

“You look terrible,” Suzy remarked. “Where have you been all night?”

Jack, looking a bit sheepish, shrugged. “Shannon and I went back out after we dropped you off. The plan was to discuss strategy for taking the game, but
after the second bottle of wine, we ended up at Janie’s, sharing another bottle of wine with Velvet and Darla Mae.”

Suzy rolled her eyes. She knew Jack occasionally visited the local whorehouse, but he was usually more discreet. Suzy suspected this new lack of discretion could be blamed on the influence of one Mr. Shannon O’Dell. Suzy was even more uncertain she liked Shannon all that much and felt her qualms about trusting him flare in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, we need to have a talk about this tournament. I really don’t have a good feeling about it nor him, Jack. If we lose, we’ll be right back where we were six months ago and we’ll have less opportunity to recoup our loss in a town the size of Independence. It’s not near big enough to let us play our games, nor are there as many rich pigeons to pluck. Have you thought about what we’ll do if we lose? I mean, really thought about it?”

“Shannon and I talked about it last night, for a long time. I just don’t see how we can lose. Between Shannon and me and you knowing whose bluffing and who’s not, how can we lose? Come on, Suzy! Last fair deal in the city. . . for us.” Jack grinned wickedly.

“You do realize 10 gold dollars is a fair chunk of our savings, Jack. I don’t like the idea of putting it all on one chance for a win. You not only have to get to the final game, you have to win it. And frankly, I’m not sure I trust Shannon O’Dell to not set you up for the fall while he skates away with all the money.”

Jack opened his mouth to protest, but Suzy cut him off. “But, if you want to try for it, I’ll do all I can to help. Heaven knows, you’ve gone along with all my plans since we left Tennessee. We’re going to have to work really hard this week on our signals and such and make sure they’re as subtle as we can make them.”

And so they did.

Afternoons were spent in the common space of Jack and Suzy’s rooms. After a light supper, they rested and prepared themselves for the evening. Shannon still needed to win his stake for the game and Suzy wanted to try and build up their cash reserves, just in case. Before they left for Independence, they agreed to play separately the first three nights and then have two practice nights with the three of them working together, just as they would at the tournament. Suzy wanted to be able to concentrate and was nervous about being able to do so considering how the last time they had all played together had gone.

As it turned out, everything went well for all. Jack and Suzy ended up netting ten dollars. Shannon managed nearly eleven but had a tense moment when another player accused him of “dealing off”. But as it happened, it was early in the game, when Shannon was dealing straight and letting the cards fall as they would. Fortunately, the fellow didn’t try and back up his complaint with his pistol or a knife and another player diffused the situation, so the game went on.

The practice nights were fairly tolerable. They didn’t lose, but between Shannon and Jack together, they ended the night up by only fifty cents. The important thing had been to be clear on what was happening in the game. They had worked out a fairly elaborate set of signals with Suzy as the go-between, posing as Shannon’s buckskin-clad, pistol-packing, magnolia blossom girlfriend. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she’d agreed to go along with any plans they made. They made sure they went to some saloons they had never played before, as they didn’t want to run into anyone who would recognize Suzy, in particular, and wonder why she wasn’t playing. As the game played, Suzy would watch for tells and using her fingers on Shannon she would signal in code what the other players were telling her about the hands they held. It was similar to the finger code she and Jack had developed when they both played. They played the first few hands straight so Suzy would get a feel for who showed what as they played. Jack and Shannon would then start to deal crooked as their turn came around.

It was a little touch and go at the start, but by the second night, they were starting to work as a team. They pretty much evenly split the money from their three pigeons, which amounted to more than eighteen dollars. Since they knew they were heading out the next morning, they had decided ahead of time to clean out whomever they played that night.

They left early the next morning without a word to Miz Boatwright, the owner of the rooming house. Suzy felt bad about that ‘cause Adeline Boatwright had been real good to them and didn’t ask a lot of questions. Suzy left her the ten for next month’s rent and hoped it’d be OK. Shannon scoffed at her concern. “You ain’t never gonna be rich, spending your money to pay for your guilt. No need to feel guilty gulling pigeons.” He laughed at the joke he made.

“Miz Boatwright’s a good woman who works a whole lot harder than any of us,” Suzy retorted hotly. “She’s NOT a pigeon. She’s just trying to get by like all of us and at least, she’s trying to do it honestly. Not by cheating people. So you can just keep right on not feeling guilty about what you do, Mr. O’Dell, but I will always try to help the folks what’s gotten a rough road in this life any way I can, whenever I can.”

They arrived in Independence ten days later and found a farmer outside of town who was willing to let them sleep in his barn for a small fee. The game was to start the next afternoon, so they spent part of the day wandering around the town, such as it was, wondering how the game came to be here of all places. Wherever they went and ask about the game or the town, they kept hearing about Colonel Preston Ransdall, who came out here after the war and opened a supply station to outfit people heading for the Western territories. Business had slowed because of sandbars that kept building up at the steamboat landing. Then the cholera epidemic that hit last year wiped out a large portion of the permanent residents. After that, most folks wanting to head West decided that Westport was a better jumping-off place as it saved eighteen days of travel off the trail and eliminated a river crossing. Colonel Ransdall needed to attract more folks to the area to keep the town viable and he fancied himself a better Bluff player than most that played on the riverboats that used to stop there. He was hoping that folks might decide to stick around after he’d win all their money and they couldn’t afford to leave. He’d laugh big and boisterous after he’d say that. This made some people in the town a little nervous, for some reason when he’d do that, but they weren’t really sure why.