Blood Money and Other Stories by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Western stories, Westerns, Short Stories (single author), Fiction, General, Short stories
ISBN: 9780061121630
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 2006-09-06T23:00:00+00:00

ELMORE LEONARD

“You wave anything out that door,” Deke said

quietly, “I’ll kill you.”

✯ ✯ ✯

He’s crazy, Rich thought. He’s honest-to-God

crazy and doesn’t know it. Deke had butted the

table against the wall under the window and now

they sat opposite each other, Deke on one side of

the window, the boy on the other. Deke had divided

the eight thousand dollars between them and said

they were going to play poker to keep their minds

from blowing away. He placed his pistol on the

edge of the table.

They stayed fairly close at first, each winning

about the same number of pots, but after a while

the boy began to win more often. In the quietness

he thought of many things—like not being able to

give himself up—and then he remembered something which had occurred to him earlier.

“Deke,” the boy said, “you know why Sonny

and Eugene got killed?”

“I’ve been telling you why. ’Cause they were destined to.”

“But why?”

“No one knows that.”

“I do.” The boy watched the older man closely.

“Because they had the money.” He paused. “Ford

had most of it, and he was the first. Eugene had all

Blood Money

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but Sonny’s when he got hit. Then Sonny took all

of it and he lasted less than an hour.”

Deke said nothing, but his sunken expression

seemed more drawn.

They played on in silence and slowly Rich Miller

was taking more and more of the money. Deke

seemed uncomfortable and he said quietly that he

guessed it just wasn’t his day. In less than an hour

he was down to two hundred and fifty dollars.

“You might clean me out,” Deke said.

Rich Miller said nothing and dealt the cards. The

first ones down, then a queen to Deke and a jack to

himself. He looked at his hole card. A ten of diamonds. Deke bet fifty dollars on the queen.

“You must have twin girls,” the boy said.

“You know how to find out.”

Rich Miller’s next card was a king. Deke’s an

ace. He bet fifty dollars again. Their fourth cards

were low and no help, but Deke pushed in all the

money he had.

“That’s on a hunch,” he said.

Rich Miller dealt the last cards—a queen to

Deke, making it an ace, a five, and two queens. He

gave himself a second king.

“What you show beats me,” Deke said, grinning.

He pushed away from the table and stood up. “You

got it all, boy. You know what that means.”

“It means I’m giving up.”

100

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