noted. “I’ll let that remark pass, friend,” the silver-haired Texan said. “I can see you’ve got troubles of your own.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Well, from what I’ve seen so far of your poker playin’, my hundred-and-four-year-old grandma could likely whip you at cards.”
Churchill slapped his pasteboards facedown on the table and started to stand up. “Why, you grinning son of a—”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” The booming, Teutonic tones of August Strittmayer filled the air as the saloon’s proprietor loomed over the table. “All the games in the Birdcage are friendly, nicht wahr?”
“Don’t talk that damned Dutchy talk at me,” Churchill snapped. He settled back down in his chair, though. Strittmayer was an imposing figure, two yards tall and a yard wide in brown tweed, with a bald head and big, knobby fists.
“Trouble here, Johnny?” Strittmayer asked.
“Not really,” Johnny answered with a casual shrug. “Mr. Churchill is a bit of a poor loser, that’s all.”
“No one leaves the Birdcage unhappy,” Strittmayer declared. “Why don’t you come over to the bar and have a drink with me before you go, Herr Churchill? I have some splendid twenty-year-old brandy that I would be pleased to share with you.”
“Who said I was going anywhere? I’m staying right here, damn it, until I win back my money!”
“I’m afraid we don’t have that much time,” Strittmayer said.
Johnny added, “Yeah, we’d all grow old and die before then.”
For a smart man, Johnny never had learned how to control his mouth, Bo thought. Churchill paled at the insult. He glared at Strittmayer and demanded, “Are you throwing me out, you damned Dutchman?”
Strittmayer looked sorrowful. “Although I regret to say it, yes, I am, Herr Churchill.”
“Do you know who I am?”
That was a stupid question, given the fact that Strittmayer had just called the cattleman by name. But Churchill was too angry to be thinking straight, Bo decided.
“Most certainly I do.”
“You’ll lose a hell of a lot of business if I tell my ranch hands to stay away from this place.”
“Then I suppose I shall have to make up that business some other way,” Strittmayer said.
Churchill got to his feet. “You’ll be sorry about this,” he said. “And you can keep your damned twenty-year-old brandy. In fact, you can take the bottle and shove it right up your—”
Strittmayer’s hamlike hand closed around Churchill’s arm and propelled the rancher toward the door. “I think you have said enough, nicht wahr? Good evening, Herr Churchill.”
The whole saloon had gone silent now. Everybody in the Birdcage watched as Strittmayer marched Churchill to the door. Even the girl in the cage wasn’t swinging back and forth anymore.
Churchill cursed loudly at the humiliation as Strittmayer forced him through the batwings. When the rancher had stalked off, Strittmayer stepped back inside, dusted his hands off as if they had gotten dirty, and beamed around at the crowd. “No more trouble, ja? The next round of drinks, it is on the house!”
Cheers rang out from the customers as most of them bellied up to the bar for that free drink. Bo had a feeling that the bartenders would be reaching for special bottles full of booze they had watered down especially for such occasional demonstrations of generosity on Strittmayer’s part.
“Sorry about that, gents,” Three-Toed Johnny Fontana told the other cardplayers at the table. “Poker should be a game of more subtle pleasures.”
“I don’t know,” Davidson said with a smile. “I enjoyed watching that blowhard get thrown out of the place. A man like that gets a little money and power and thinks he owns everything and everybody.”
Bo nodded toward the big, affable German who had gone back to the bar and asked Johnny, “Can Churchill really make trouble for Strittmayer?”
Johnny shrugged. “That depends on how badly his pride is wounded. August does enough business so that it won’t hurt him much if Churchill orders his men to stay away from the place.”
“What if he tries something a little more drastic than that?”
“You mean like coming back here with a bunch of those hardcases who ride for him and trying to wreck the place?” Johnny shook his head. “That seems like a little bit much for a dispute over a few hands of poker.”
For once, Johnny’s ability to judge other men, which was so important in his profession, seemed to be letting him down a mite, Bo thought. He had seen something bordering on madness in Little Ed Churchill’s eyes as he was forced out of the saloon. As Davidson had said, some men got that way when most people didn’t dare to stand up to them. It enraged them whenever they ran into an hombre who didn’t have any back up in his nature.
But maybe Churchill would show some sense and go back to his ranch to sleep off that rage. Bo hoped that would turn out to be the case. When Johnny said, “Shall we resume the game?” Bo nodded.
Davidson’s luck was still the best of anyone’s around the table, but Bo won a few hands and was careful to cut his losses in the ones he couldn’t win. He had increased their stake enough so that he and Scratch could afford a couple of hotel rooms and some supplies. He was about to call it a night when he heard a lot of hoofbeats in the street outside.
“Strittmayer!” a harsh voice bellowed as the horses came to a stop. “I told you you’d be sorry, you damned Dutchman!”
Bo dropped his cards and started to his feet, but Scratch grabbed his shoulder and forced him back down. “Everybody hit the dirt!” Scratch shouted, his deep voice filling the room.
Even as Scratch called out the warning, the glass in the two big front windows exploded inward as a volley of shots shattered them. The saloon girls screamed and men yelled curses as more shots blasted from the street. Muzzle flashes lit up the night like a lightning storm.
As Bo dived out of his chair he rammed a shoulder into Davidson, knocking the man to the floor out of the line of fire. Bo palmed out his Colt as Scratch overturned the poker table to give them some cover. Scratch crouched behind the table with Bo and drew his long-barreled Remingtons. Everybody in the saloon had either hit the floor or leaped over the bar to hide behind the thick hardwood, so the two of them had a clear field to return the fire of Little Ed Churchill and his men.
Churchill must have gathered up a dozen or more of his ranch hands in some of El Paso’s other saloons and gambling dens and brothels and led them back here to Strittmayer’s place. Bo didn’t know if the cattlemen had spun some wild yarn for his men about how he’d been cheated at cards and then run out of the Birdcage or if Churchill had simply ordered his men to attack. A lot of cowboys rode for the brand above all, and if the boss man said sic’em, they skinned their irons and got to work, no questions asked.
Either way, lead now filled the air inside the Birdcage. The mirrors behind the bar shattered, and bottles
