The Cassidy Posse by D. N. Bedeker Read Free Book Online

looked at his hand again and said with a long sigh “I’ll see your twenty and raise you twenty.”
    The young cowboy sat bolt upright in the chair with this development. He would be putting over a month’s pay on the table. A month of herding cattle, his skin being burnt by the sun and the persistent west Texas wind. A month of eating cold beans and dry dust washed down with bad coffee. He looked at his hand again and regained his confidence in what he saw there. Frank leaned over to put a word of caution in his ear but the irritable young man pushed him away.
    “I’ll see your twenty,” he said tersely pushing his last precious dollars forward.
    Billy smiled contemptuously as he laid down three Jacks and a joker to make four of a kind. Jim stared blankly at the cards that lay mocking him on the table.
    “That was all the money you got for your saddle,” said Frank.
    Jim laid down his hand: a full house - two fives and two kings plus one joker. He looked at Billy with contempt and it was returned in kind by the unblinking Kid Del Rio.
    “Two wild cards in the game and you both end up with one,” said Frank, amazed by the coincidence.
    English Harry smiled nervously knowing one of the five cards he had laid face down on the table was also a joker.
    “You never had that hat on before you sat down to play cards,” Jim challenged, raising the stakes of the game beyond money. “You weren’t wearin’ it when you was standin’ at the bar.” The table quieted instantly and the quiet spread in a concentric circle from the table until it enveloped the entire cantina.
    “I like to wear it when I play cards,” Billy replied matter-of-factly, his hands inching towards the edge of the table. “I used to wear a worn-out Stetson when I was a busted saddle bum like you. I don’t want to get that way again.”
    A look of fear crossed Jim’s face for an instant; the stakes of this game had gone too high and it was too late to fold. Billy rose from his chair and drew all in the same motion. The moment had come so quickly, Jim did not move until he saw the nickel-plated Colt clear Billy’s holster. He had barely touched the chipped wooden handle of his old revolver when Billy’s first .45 slug knocked him backwards. It was followed by a second and a third as Billy efficiently cocked and fired the short-barreled Peacemaker. Jim sprawled on the floor, his dead eyes staring at the ceiling, his feet still tangled in the chair. A crimson wave of blood spread from the center of his chest where the three slugs had entered in a close pattern.
    “Damn, you didn’t have to kill him!” Frank screamed.
    Billy looked away from the fallen man and towards the source of criticism of his judgment. He cocked his smoking gun and, moving the barrel a few inches to the right, fired again. The back of Frank’s head splattered on English Harry and he looked at the blood and bits of bone and brain soiling his coat sleeve with curious, speechless horror.
    Billy Fayre, alias Kid Del Rio, holstered his gun and moved quickly towards the door. When he reached the sunlight, he turned to see the eerie smoke he had created masking the stunned faces. He mounted someone’s horse and was gone. He dug his spurless heels into the side of the animal until he reached a shack several miles from town.
    “You are in trouble,” Rosita insisted. “That is why you must leave so quickly. You never say a word to me about leaving and now you must go right now.”
    “Si,” said Billy, “muy pronto.” He took a silk shirt with a ruffled front out of the dresser and considered it a moment. “Here, give this to your next hombre. I don’t think I will be needing it where I’m going.”
    “And where are you going in such a big hurry?”
    “English Harry told me about some big shot up in Paris looking for regulators to go to Wyoming. There’s some saddle tramps up North that have took to rustling cattle off the big outfits. They got to be taught right from