Cry of the Hawk

Jowls grinned, creasing all the lines leading from his red-veined bulbous nose down to the five-day whiskers. His eyes gleamed at the other two. “We’re making money, our time out, boys.”

They both grumbled, as did the locals while Jowls raked his winnings from the center of the table.

“These two with you, are they?” Jonah asked, sensing he had to turn up the heat a bit.

It was time. He’d pried enough out of them to know the trio was from the ten or so camped down by the river. And the more they had talked during the three hours they had been trading cards and coins and scrip back and forth, Jonah had come to realize that the bunch had just spent time farther south, and east some too before that. Enough clues to pick up their talk among themselves about places he knew in southern Missouri, what with their talk of fighting Confederate sympathizers during the rebellion on the borderlands, and even referring at times to a prolonged stay down in the Territories. They were most proud of that—amused with the fact and not short of brag that they had eluded any man or posse or squad of soldiers sent to follow them.

“We was our own law down there,” Jowls had claimed, with another big grin that brought smiles from the other two.

“How was them squaws?” ventured one of the locals, leaning in over the table to ask eagerly.

“We had one whenever we was needing to dip our cock in something warm!” exclaimed a man with a pinched rat face covered by a patchy set of whiskers.

“Your boss—he like poking them squaws like you fellas?” Jonah asked as he dealt a five-card hand around the green-blanket table.

“Me?” Jowls asked. “I liked it a whole bunch.”

“No,” Jonah replied. “I’m asking about your boss, mister. One running your outfit.”

“Naw. He didn’t stoop to poking squaws like us,” Rat-face answered.

“That’s right. Jubi—” and suddenly then the third man shut himself off, noticing the glares of the other two. He cleared his throat. “The colonel keeps hisself a woman what could answer all his needs of the flesh.”

Like no struggle he had ever known, Jonah forced himself to sit there in the chair, slowly looking from face to face to face, measuring each one. Not for playing this hand, but for what he knew lay in store. He drew cards, folded, watching the rest play through the hand. Then he passed the deck on to Jowls. Jonah got lucky, and though his mind wasn’t really there in the game, he ended up winning the hand. And the cards went on to the rat-faced gambler.

Time for Hook to force the play.

“You dealt two off the bottom … friend.” Jonah’s eyes leveled on the dealer, flicked once to Jowls to find the leader measuring Hook coolly. Flicked next to the third man on the far side of the dealer, a flat-faced, nondescript man in whose eyes registered the first licks of fear. Flat-face laid down his cards and slid them toward the dealer.

“What makes you say that?” Jowls asked.

In his eyes, Jonah could see the fleshy one wasn’t too sure how he should play it. Hook had only one hand on the table right then. The other somewhere in his lap.

“I saw it,” Jonah replied, not taking his eyes off the dealer, or the flat-faced man. “Now, since I ain’t lost no money on this hand, I’m not going to kill the dealer.”

Jowls slowly eased back from the table with a loud scrape of his chair. “You better figure on holding a royal flush, mister—’cause you just bit off more than you can chew.”

Bringing his pistol up from his lap into plain view, Jonah laid his cards down, then filled that right hand with a second pistol from his belt. “You can sit this hand out, you wanna, mister. My trouble’s with this one dealing bad cards. But—since I get the idea you can talk these boys into trouble, or out of it—I’ll probably blow your head off first if any of them two make a funny move on me.”

Jonah watched Jowls flick a tip of his tongue out to lick his lips.

“Now, all three of you—here’s the way we’re going to play this hand,” Hook said. “I’m going to give you three a chance to lay your hardware on the table, and slide it over to these fellas here. They look like honest folks—so we’ll trust ’em with your guns.”

“We do, what you fixing to do with our weapons?” Jowls asked.

“Hold ’em—while I beat the shit out of the dealer.”

The rat-faced man flared. “You ain’t got the balls—”

“I could shoot you in the balls right here and now under the table—and that’d end you ever having another squaw again, wouldn’t it, mister?”

The dealer puckered with imagined pain. “You wanna fight me?” he asked with a nervous grin. “All right.” Then he slowly pulled his pistol out and laid it on the table. It made a loud noise in the small, low-roofed room.

“Now the other one,” Jonah prodded, anxious. “The both of you two, get shet of your weapons.” He wagged his own pistols as the three stood and pulled coats aside, showing they now had empty holsters. “Gentlemen, watch these guns and these other two fellas for me while I teach this one bottom-dealing bastard how not to play cards with honest folk.”