Consider it a donation to the fine art of tin-panning,” he said, with a glance over toward the old miner next to him.
Orville had to laugh. “I’ll be damned before I get shoved out of this game.” Reluctantly, he reached for one of the papers in his pocket. He brought it out, unfolded it and then dropped it onto the table. “That’s the deed to a hell of a good claim. You’ve got my word on it.”
“Tell you what. If it doesn’t pan out to cover your bet in a month, I’ll be back to have a word with you. Anything after that goes to me no matter what.”
The miner thought about it and nodded. “Fair enough, I guess.”
“That’s the spirit!” Doc said while lifting his glass. “I must say, you truly surprise me. Your drinks are on me tonight, especially since I shouldn’t have any trouble paying for them after this hand.”
Virgil was still shaking his head while watching Doc in action. He seemed more than a little uneasy however, when he saw the way Mike’s hand was inching closer to his gun. “I’ve seen you make some bold plays, Doc. Is this another one of those, or do you really have what it takes?”
“One way to find out.”
After pausing long enough to riffle through his chips, Virgil shrugged and pushed most of them forward. “No problem here. Most of this money used to be Mike’s anyway.”
“Care for a little side bet between us?” Doc asked.
Virgil shrugged. “What do you have in mind?”
“First one to make Mike cry wins a dollar.”
A smile broke across Virgil’s face as he shook his head at the same time. Glancing over to Mike, he said, “Doc’s just being Doc. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“Fuck that,” Mike spat. “And fuck you, Holliday.”
Mike looked back and forth between the other men so quickly that he got dizzy. The miner wasn’t giving him anything to work with besides his stubbornness to fold. Doc was taunting him openly, and Virgil merely looked back at him while trying not to laugh. Those last two fed the fire in Mike’s belly so much that he couldn’t even begin to hide it. Looking over at the grinning cowboy just made things worse. “What the hell is so funny?” Mike asked, while all but lunging toward the youngest man at the table.
The cowboy recoiled slightly but couldn’t stop smirking. “Just watching,” he said while holding his hands up. “Don’t mind me.”
“Yeah? Well let’s see how you all like this.” Mike shoved his chips into the middle. “I got you covered, plus another fifty.”
Doc’s expression didn’t shift. His steely gray eyes locked onto Mike as if he was the only other living soul in town. In the moments that he held that stare, every other sound in the saloon seemed to fade away. Finally, knowing when the other man was just about to snap, Doc pulled out a wad of folded bills from his jacket pocket and said, “I raise. Five hundred.”
The miner let out a low whistle.
“Well, old-timer,” Doc said. “You have anything else to bet? Or do you really have that much confidence in two pair?”
The miner shook his head and sighed. “I know better than to gamble with what I don’t have. Besides,” he added, glancing at the gun in Doc’s holster, “I wouldn’t want to make those claims sound like they’re worth enough to cover this. Take ’em.” With that, he dropped his cards faceup onto the table. He had two pair: aces and threes.
After a few coughs into the back of his hand, Doc asked, “What about you, Virgil?”
Virgil’s face could have been made from stone. Although he wasn’t outright mad, he obviously wasn’t laughing anymore. The smile on his face wasn’t fooling anyone, and when he dropped his cards onto the table, it seemed like he was cutting off five of his own fingers. “You got something, Doc. I don’t know what it is, but my guess is it beats my two ladies.”
Doc’s nod was almost imperceptible. His eyes remained firmly trained upon Virgil in a way that was strangely
R.L. Stine - (ebook by Undead)