Dead Warrior Read Free Page A

tent cities, and I’ve got too much jack to need to scratch nickels out of love among the wigwams. I’m puttin’ my girls on their own while I go to Denver for a while.”
    Leaving Jennie to her consolation drinks, we returned to city hall. “Let’s get business attended to before we finish the game,” Sam said. When he had lighted the lamp which hung above the table, he went to the desk in one corner of the room and fished out the city clerk’s minutes book.
    “Mayor Jackson,” he went on, “there has been a rumor to the effect that you are resigning.”
    “I confirm it,” Dick said, looking at his watch. “It’s 9:30 post meridiem, and you are mayor, by the authority of constitutional successions, as of this minute.”
    Wheeler noted as much. “My first act in office,” he then announced, “will be to declare a dividend of the city’s treasury.There are five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and seventy-one cents in the municipal kitty. As there’s no other use for it, and as it would be a sinful waste to leave this many rocks behind, I will allocate it to table stakes.”
    We had never played for blood in our Wednesday poker sessions. The treasury of Three Deuces gave us leeway for more sizable bets than we were accustomed to, and the pace of the game picked up.
    Canny though he was about a good many things, Jackson was not a good poker player. In the first place he was too fond of juggling circumstances to have patience with such an inflexible thing as odds. His refusal to make truce with them tripped him now. After two expensive bluffs misfired, he tossed the few chips he had left into the middle of the table.
    “I’m packing up for that gold-paved town I created out of poor Fred Wilkins’s mail.” He rose, looking down at me, as long and thin as a whooping crane. “You won’t be going, Baltimore?”
    If he hadn’t looked so smug about his coup, I might have changed my mind. A few drinks helping, some of the fever of the stampede had infected me, too. But Jackson, under whom I worked as a newspaperman as well as a member of the municipal staff, had always treated me with a condescension which didn’t allow me to forget my tenderfoot ignorance. Irritated over the plot to ruin the town, and the success it had achieved in the face of my skepticism, I came to a decision. If I went to the Powder Keg or anywhere else with these fellows, it would be as the tail of Dick Jackson’s kite, and I had had enough of that.
    “I’ve spent my last winter freezing in Colorado,” I replied. “I’m heading for where it’s warmer.”
    Wheeler was the best hand at poker in our crew, but hisluck was off duty that night. After backing a straight against a flush, and four sixes against four nines, he reached for the minutes book again.
    “It’s eleven forty-eight, and I am resigning. Parliament never got around to covering this case, so we’ll play the shot on office seniority. You’re mayor, Jim.”
    Powers lasted a half hour longer. “I won’t bother to write it down,” he declared, when we had cleaned him out. “You’re the only city officer left, so you get both my jobs.” Removing the marshal’s badge from his shirt, he pinned it on mine. “You ain’t too big, Baltimore; you better start packin’ a gun.”
    Because the reference to my size grated a little I was quick to have an answer for him. “That one you’ve got on is city property,” I reminded him. “Hand it over, or you’ll spend your last night here in jail.”
    “I always liked my Smith and Wesson better anyhow,” he said, as he unbelted the weapon. Next he threw down a key to land on the table beside it. “I’m glad you mentioned the clink. You’ve got a prisoner there.”
    “The devil I have.” I buckled on the gun, but left the key on the table, so I’d be sure not to forget it. “Who’s that, Jim?”
    “Rogue River Pete. You sentenced him to stay in the jug until he was sober. He ought to’ve been out days ago, but