Cry of the Hawk

“I have a prize. I mean a really rich prize I can offer you.” Wiser stared down at the money on Hook’s side of the table, glanced at the old soldier who had folded and sat watching them both, and then back to the Confederate. “You say I’m not a gambler? Well, let’s see if you are the gambler you claim to be. I’ll wager what special treasure I have against everything you have—all that money sitting in front of you.”

Hook dragged a hand through his long hair, then scratched a cheek as he gazed down on the pile of money. “This is a lot of money. But you got my interest up, I will admit. Just what you got that could be worth all this money? And what’s this talk of me not having had a woman got to do with it?”

Wiser felt himself leap joyous inside. His tactic would work, he was sure of it.

“Palmer,” he called out, wagging a finger to one of his men. Wiser whispered his orders in Sam Palmer’s ear and watched the man go.

Seeing Hook’s eyes follow Palmer’s exit, Wiser said, “I’m having my wager brought here now to show you, Jonah. I think a man of your needs … you’ll approve.”

Minutes later there was a hush that came over the group, a scraping of boot soles as men moved back and a grin that crept across Wiser’s lips.

“Here is my wager—against everything you’ve got. Winner takes all.”

He watched Jonah turn and look at the girl.

She stood weaving between Palmer and Colby, one of Hastings’s men, groggy and stupefied on laudanum. It was the safest thing to do, Usher had decided years ago. Keep the girl and her mother drugged so there was never any danger of them escaping. He had always wondered what the stuff would one day do to the girl’s brain. But it did not matter now. Jubilee Usher wanted that deserter Riley Fordham so bad that the colonel had promised the girl as a reward to the man who brought back Fordham’s head in a burlap sack.

The girl no longer mattered.

At last, Wiser looked at Hook, finding on the Southerner’s face a strange, pinched look.

“You don’t want the girl?”

Hook swallowed hard, trying to grin, not being able to. “This one—is she … is she still … a—”

“A virgin, Mr. Hook?” Wiser replied, then laughed easily. “Of course. That’s the very reason she’s worth all that money you’ve got in front of you.”

Eloy Hastings edged from the spectators to bend at Wiser’s ear. “Major, just how you gonna square this with Colonel Usher?” he asked. “I mean—he’s got her promised to the man who brings in Fordham—”

“That’s my concern, Captain,” Wiser snapped.

He’d let the southerner win, if that’s the way the cards ran against him this last hand. Wiser ran his hands over his five cards, lying face down on the table. Then tapped his fingers on them. And after Hook had gone off with the girl—he’d have the men kill the Confederate, just as he was about to sully his young, virginal prize. Wiser would have the girl back before Usher was any the wiser.

“Jonah?”

Hook gazed at Wiser, his eyes narrow, dark slits in his bony face.

“What’s it to be?”

“Let’s play this hand through, Wiser.”

There was something to the tone in Hook’s voice that struck Wiser as different from what he had heard up to this moment. Perhaps it was because Hook knew he might be beat—bested here at the last by a better man. A true gambler. Not just a man who played with money, especially other men’s money. No, Wiser told himself, I’m a true gambler—making a wager on life itself.

“What do you have, Jonah?”

“A full house …”

Wiser felt his throat constrict, swearing he would not let any of the men see him sweat.

“Three tens …”

Seeing those cards, Wiser sighed in relief. That was the best Hook had. And Boothog looked down at his own three kings.

“And two aces.”

Wiser’s throat seized, a hot lump choking him. Very conscious of moving slowly now, to keep from lunging across the table, he leaned forward casually and studied the Confederate’s cards. Then he sank back in his chair, standing finally, turning over his own cards.

“You have me beat,” Boothog said. Then, with a wave of his hand he whispered, “You win the girl.”

Jonah had brought Hattie here as quickly as he could, only briefly joining in the shrill laughter of the others as he dragged her out of that dingy, murky saloon into the clear, cool night air. Heading for the livery at the end of the dry, dusty street, where he told the others he would be bedding down his new-won prize.

That news had inspired more lewd cheering as the others gathered at the yellow-splashed doorway in those dark early-morning moments, bidding him luck, others saying he needed no luck now—all he needed was stamina. Then more crude jokes as the voices slowly faded behind him.

Hook glanced quickly over his shoulder. No one out on the street now. They had all gone back inside. He could hear them yelling and laughing back there, but only faintly.

He could make it out onto the prairie. Sure of it. Get two horses saddled. Get his daughter tied onto one so that she wouldn’t fall when and if they had to make a race of it.