We've almost made it to July 15th, the release date for What Shows the Heart! This excerpt is from Chapter 10.
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He’d sunk low before, though never as low as right before he left home. This might be the lowest since then.
Not tending bar — he could call that downright humanitarian, helping his fellow man ease life’s pains and sorrows with what the supposedly good Lord provided for the purpose. And tending bar in a casino was all right. No chance he’d be tempted to play any game he didn’t know inside and out — he’d right enough taken the lifetime cure for that.
When he was told to run the faro and Mexican monte tables, he’d even thought — more fool he — that he could keep things honest, make sure none of the miners who wandered in with their pay or a sack of gold dust in their pockets would be cheated blind. That was before the owner, devils gnaw his soul, drew him aside and said with a wink that whenever a short fat man with a limp and a red waistcoat came to play, or a tall handsome one with a bright red beard and broken-down boots, Jake was to keep his observations to himself and “let the cards fall as they may.”
He’d already paid half the coin he rode in with for a bed and a stall at the livery stable. He wouldn’t get more until the week was out. And when he asked around, folks said it’d be three days’ ride to the next town where he might find paying work. If that wasn’t stuck, it was damned close. It didn’t help that the look of the place made him more restless — fancy velvet wallpaper faded and scuffed, it made him think of Mamie’s parlor, if the parlor’d been darker and more crowded and no one had bothered to take care of it for years.
He’d made it most of the way to payday without either of the men coming in. And he’d shortened his suspenders so his trousers wouldn’t sag, eating light to hoard what coin he had left. He was setting up a faro table and daydreaming about a nice thick steak when he sensed someone looming over him. He straightened up to see a red beard, glanced down to check the man’s boots, and clenched his teeth so tight his jaw hurt.
By the time the table was full up, it had mostly grizzled old miners, maybe knowing enough not to be taken in. But then in came a bright-eyed young fellow, barely old enough to go down a mine and find his way up again, with a bounce in his step and jingling pockets. All he lacked was someone writing “fleece me!” on his forehead.
The swindler would probably let his target win once or twice. Jake would wait for his moment and try to give the kid a warning.
Sure enough, the first hand went the kid’s way. And the second. Which meant that by the time Jake brought the kid a drink “on the house” and whispered in his ear while setting it down, he was in no mood to listen. And when Jake straightened up, the red-bearded man gave him a narrow look, surely meant to menace him.
Too bad Jake didn’t menace easy.
He grabbed the kid’s arm, yanked him out of his chair, and shoved him toward the door. In a burst of inspiration, he hollered, “I saw what you tried to pull! Out you get before someone puts a hole in you!”
That confused the real cheat for maybe a second and gave Jake time to redirect his attention. When the red-beard came up out of his chair, Jake knocked him backward, the chair clattering down behind him and the man sprawling over it. That gave Jake enough of a head start that the first bullet whined its way past him. He didn’t linger to see where the second one went.
He ducked this way and that through the streets, hiding in shadows and behind outhouses, until things got quiet and he could creep up to his room, pack what little he’d unpacked, grab Wrangler, and ride out of town. He’d ride through the night. Good thing he hadn’t had a drink — he might stay on Wrangler’s back until dawn. Then he’d look for a handy haystack or shade tree to shelter him for a nap.
Time to head for the river. Maybe it’d take him somewhere he’d never been, somewhere he actually wanted to be. Not that he could picture what a place like that would be offering.
And if he took a riverboat job, he’d have to sell Wrangler. He’d make damned sure he found a buyer who’d treat him right. Jake was too old to betray any living creature — any more living creatures — and hope to live with it. Hadn’t Milton said something about the mind making a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven? No point looking for a better place to end up if his mind would just turn it into another earthly version of fire and brimstone.
How his grandpa and pa would laugh if they knew.
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