LITMIR.BIZ

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him.

      Matt told himself to keep an eye on that one. If there was going to be trouble, it was likely to come from Stone.

      Chapter 6

      The game went smoothly for a few hands, though. Stone seemed to get over being mad about losing that good-sized pot to Grady. The pots stayed relatively small, under fifty dollars, and Matt won several of them.

      Then a pot started to rise as several of the players seemed to think they had good hands. Either that, or some of them had decided to run a bluff. Matt was confident that Stone wasn’t bluffing. The big man wasn’t quite good enough to hide his emotions completely. Excitement lurked in his piggish eyes.

      With Grady, on the other hand, Matt didn’t have any idea. The man was a professional, and the vaguely pleasant smile never left his face. He was unreadable.

      As for Matt’s own hand, he liked it. On a whim, he had tried to fill a flush on the draw, and two spades had turned up to go with the three he already had. He kept his raises conservative, though, knowing that if he plunged it would just run the other players off before the pot built up.

      Seward Stone didn’t have that much patience. When the bet came to him, he saw it and raised twenty, and when it came back around, he raised fifty. Matt kept his face expressionless and didn’t show his annoyance. Everybody else dropped out except for him, Stone, and Grady.

      He would just have to take more of the fat man’s money, he told himself.

      Or else Grady would. Matt couldn’t rule out the possibility that the brown-haired man had him beat. Either way, all he really had at stake was the twenty dollars he had brought to the table. Soon, though, that was in the pot, too, as he pushed everything he had left into the center of the table and said, “I’m all in, gents.”

      Stone smiled, but his mouth still looked like he was pouting. “In that case, I raise another fifty.”

      “I’ll see that,” Grady said as Matt felt a surge of disappointment. He couldn’t afford to stay in.

      But then Grady went on. “And so will Matt.” He tossed more bills into the pot.

      “Wait a minute,” Matt said, and at the same time, Stone exclaimed, “By God, you can’t do that!”

      “Of course I can,” Grady said calmly. “I can loan money to anyone I want to.”

      Stone pointed a sausagelike finger at Matt. “He was all in. He said so himself.”

      “He was mistaken.” Grady smiled at Matt. “I want to see your cards, amigo, so you’re calling the bet.”

      “You sure about that?” Matt asked.

      “Positive.”

      “It’s not the way things are done,” Stone sputtered.

      “This is a friendly game,” Grady said. “I don’t think we need to stand on ceremony too much.” He looked at the other men. “What do you gents say?”

      “I say this is between the three of y’all,” one man responded. “I dropped out a long time ago.”

      “So did I,” another man put in as he started to scrape his chair back. “But if there’s gonna be trouble, I think I’d just as soon mosey on.”

      “No trouble,” Grady said. “We’ll just lay our cards down, and that’ll be the end of it, one way or another. Right, gentlemen?”

      “Damn it, have it your own way,” Stone said. He slapped his cards faceup on the table. “You’re not going to beat that, anyway! Four jacks!”

      A sigh came from Grady as he laid down his hand. “You’re right,” he said. “That beats my four tens. Matt?”

      “I’ve got a flush,” Matt said.

      Stone chortled and reached out with pudgy hands to pull in the pot.

      “A straight flush,” Matt added.

      One by one, he laid down the three, four, five, six, and seven of spades.

      Linus Grady clapped his hands and laughed in delight. “Well played!”

      Seward Stone’s broad features began to turn a deeper and deeper scarlet as rage caused the blood to flow into his face. “That’s not possible,” he growled.

      “Oh, it’s possible, all right,” Grady said as he pushed the pot toward Matt. “Unlikely, maybe, but entirely possible.”

      “Not without help,” Stone blustered.

      The other three men had relaxed a little, but now they stiffened. Chairs scraped on the floor again as their occupants stood up in a hurry.

      Quietly, Grady said, “Seward, I don’t know you very well, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and advise you that you had better not mean that the way it sounded.”

      Stone pointed a finger at Matt. “And how well do you know this man?” he demanded. “Did he cheat on his own, or are the two of you partners?”

      “Mister,” Matt drawled, “you’d better stand up and haul your freight out of here, because I’m really not in the mood to kill anybody today.”

      Stone looked so mad he was fit to burst, but he controlled himself with a visible effort and said, “I’m no gunman. I won’t draw on you.” He put his hands on the edge of the table and started to heave himself to his feet.

      As he came up, though, he suddenly gave the table a hard shove, ramming it into Matt and upending it. The move took Matt by surprise. He felt his chair going over backward as coins and greenbacks flew into the air. He crashed to the floor as a couple of the chair’s legs snapped off.

      Stone roared in rage and swung the table around. He might be fat, but a lot of his bulk was muscle, too, and he obviously had immense strength. Stone used the table as a battering ram to drive Linus Grady against the wall. He pinned the gambler there and leaned on the table, as if it were a giant thumb and he intended to crush Grady like a bug. Grady let out a groan of pain.

      Matt came up off the floor holding one of the broken chair legs. He brought it crashing down twice on Stone’s back. The blows forced Stone to let go of the table. He swung around and backhanded Matt with a thickly muscled arm. The blow sent Matt rolling across the floor, through the scattered money.

      Stone came after him and landed a painful kick in Matt’s side. As Matt curled up on the floor, gasping in pain and lack of breath, Stone turned and went after Grady again. The gambler had slumped half-senseless to the floor when Stone let go of the table. Now Stone grabbed the lapels of his coat and dragged him up again. He shook Grady like a terrier with a rat, then slammed him twice against the wall.

      Matt forced himself to his feet and drew his right-hand Colt. He leveled the gun at Stone and eared back the hammer. The sound of a gun being cocked would get through to almost any man, no matter how mad he was, but Stone ignored it.

      “Let him go, damn it!” Matt yelled. He would shoot Stone’s legs out from under him if he had to.

      He didn’t have to, though, because at that moment, Grady lifted his hand and pressed the barrel of the derringer he had shaken down from his sleeve against Stone’s forehead. Matt caught just a glimpse of the little pistol before Grady pulled the trigger.

      The derringer didn’t make much sound at all, just a quiet pop. The sides of Stone’s head seemed to bulge out a little, though, and blood welled from his ears. He let go of Grady and toppled over backward, landing with a huge crash like a redwood tree falling in the forest. A finger of crimson oozed from the black-rimmed hole in the center of his forehead. His dead eyes stared sightlessly toward the ceiling.

      Grady leaned against the wall. His right arm hung down at his side with the derringer held loosely in his hand. A little wisp of smoke curled from the muzzle.

      “You killed him,”

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