The Great West Detective Agency by Jackson Lowry Page A

you get nuthin’ but tannic acid from all that leather. That will burn clean through your skin and ruin work gloves in a day. I know. I used to work in a tannery up in Missoula Mills.”
    â€œWhat do you make of that?” Lucas stepped around the prospector and watched a double column of men riding down the street in the direction taken by his skulker. They rode with military precision although none were in uniform. The man at the head of the column stared fixedly ahead as if he had all the bones in his neck frozen into place. The riders following him looked around them like hungry wolves.
    The double column neither slowed nor sped up. As if he counted cards, Lucas ticked off the riders one by one and reached a total of twenty.
    â€œDon’t make nuthin’ of it, mister. They’s ridin’ through, that’s all.”
    â€œThey have the look of men sniffing after gold. You’d better watch your claim, old-timer.”
    The prospector moved on, cast a backward glance at Lucas before assuring himself the crazy man wasn’t following.
    Lucas watched until the dust settled behind the soldiers—he instinctively thought of them that way because of the man at the head of the column and the way they rode. And the way they looked. He had seen one company too many that looked like this as they rode through his hometown of Wolf Creek, Kansas, during the war.
    Denver was getting to be an even more interesting place by the minute. Lucas decided it was time for him to find some new duds, catch a few winks, and get ready for the next evening at the Emerald City. With both Carmela and Amanda beyond his charms, he had to scout out new territory. Fortunately, with new clothes and a few dollars, that wouldn’t be hard.

9

    C laudette laughed joyously as Lucas swung her around to sit in his lap.
    â€œYou’re my good luck charm,” he said, trying to give her cheek a kiss. She avoided his lips by a fraction of an inch.
    â€œYou behave. I’ve got work to do.” She looked toward the bar, where Lefty scowled at her. “Do you want another drink? If I don’t bring something back, Lefty’s not going to let me serve you anymore.”
    â€œDrinks for everyone at the table,” Lucas said. “Bring a bottle.”
    Claudette pulled back and looked at him critically before saying in a soft voice, “You’re not drunk, but you want the others to be?”
    â€œYou’re a pretty girl and smart, too,” he said, letting her climb free of his lap. He tried to swat her behind but she moved too fast for that. As she went to fetch the bottle, Lucas turned back to the cards. “Whose deal?”
    The gambler to his left picked up the cards, fanned them out on the table, then scooped them up and began shuffling. Lucas saw how the man’s dexterous control put the best cards on the bottom of the deck. When he put the deck onto the table for Lucas to cut, he grinned and winked. The gambler proposed an alliance, for this hand at least, which would bring a pile of money Lucas’s way through dealing off the bottom of the deck. The intent was for Lucas to win and then split the take later.
    There were few things Lucas valued more than his skill at cards. He had the skill to stack the deck and make any hand pop up that he wanted—but he refused to cheat in such a fashion. Or lose. He did it through skill of reading his opponents and judging the cards.
    â€œMy cut, eh?”
    He was supposed to split the deck. The other gambler would simply move the cut back to the way it was, but doing so with a great flourish and a little deception returned the deck to the way it had been prior to the cut. Determined not to be a part of such cheating, Lucas split the deck into three sections, moved them around and then built it back before pushing it to the gambler. He had put the high-value cards originally on the bottom somewhere in the middle, out of reach for the card