“Half the people who used to come to play aren’t alive, and I had a feeling that half the people I played with tonight were hoping I wouldn’t realize any IOUs they wanted to put on the table to bankroll their play weren’t worth anything.” Parlan dealt more cards. “Of course, anyone putting in a worthless IOU had a string of bad luck tonight.”

“Of course they did,” Judd agreed. “Do I need to persuade any of them to make a payment?”

“No. Not worth it.” Parlan gathered the cards. “Want to play some blackjack to pass the time while we’re waiting for the others to arrive?”

Judd laughed, a soft, jagged sound. “I know better than to place a bet when you’re the one holding the cards.”

“No bets. Just practice.”

Judd swallowed the whiskey and poured himself another glass. “All right, then.”

Parlan shuffled the cards. “It’s time to move on. Time to get back to the West Coast and pay a visit to Sparkletown. Those are the only people who can afford high-stakes poker right now.”

“Not easy crossing borders, and we’d have to cross three of them to get to the West Coast.”

They’d been on the wrong side of the continent, providing lucrative entertainment in his private railroad car and in private rooms at select hotels, when the whole damn civilized world was torn apart. Toland was useless to him. Henry Hollis had been right. Too much destruction there and travel so limited in that part of the Northeast there was the bad chance of getting stuck. And Shikago? Tonight had shown him he’d already wrung the gamblers who could afford to play with him out of everything he could. They had to move on and find another rich vein of fools, and that meant getting out of the Northeast Region.

After a few hands, Judd pulled some papers out of his inside jacket pocket and tossed them on the table. He smiled. “Couldn’t get us over all the borders to get back to home territory, but there are the papers that will get all of us on a train that will cross into the Midwest. It leaves tomorrow. Also arranged for your private car to be added to the train.”

Parlan didn’t ask how Judd persuaded the men responsible for border crossings to provide the papers for them and the private car. Judd always knew just how to apply the right kind of pressure to the right person to smooth their travel arrangements.

“Destination?” he asked. Not that it mattered.

“For now, we have passage on a train running along the High North border,” Judd replied. “Can’t say if there’s anything left beyond the towns with the stations.” He studied the whiskey in his glass. “Sweeney Cooke slipped across the border, picked up a car once he was across. He said the previous owner wouldn’t need it anymore, so the cops aren’t going to be looking. What cops are left, that is.”

“What’s he doing on his own?” Parlan asked. Sweeney wasn’t family and wasn’t sharp enough for most of the cons and games the clan played. But he had a talent with his fists, much like Charlie Webb. Those two were hammers and useful when needed. Judd, on the other hand, was a knife.

“He heard rumors about abandoned towns and decided to take a look. First one he came to wasn’t completely abandoned. The survivors made him uneasy, so he headed back out. The next town he came to was empty. Nobody and nothing living there, but the stores and houses were full of things for the taking—money, jewelry, liquor. He had plenty of loot in the car when I slipped across the border and found him.” Judd leaned his forearms on the table. “Might want to think of setting up a headquarters, a place where we can hold our acquisitions. We can take over a couple of houses. There’s food available, not to mention cars and gasoline. Once we strip the carcass of one town, and sell off everything worth selling, we can move on to the next.”

“And if the next one is inhabited?”

Judd shrugged. “If the odds are against us and the saloon is open, you can play a few hands of poker to liven up the evening. If there’s only a handful of squatters or survivors, well, who would be surprised to discover they didn’t survive after all?”

Parlan studied the other man. “Sweeney would have fixed on easy pickings, and he’s good at finding such people and places, but he wouldn’t have thought about setting up headquarters and all the rest.” Ever since that talk with Henry Hollis, he’d been thinking about the need for some kind of base of operations.

“Nope. He would have gone around in that car, filling up the trunk with money, the back seat with jewelry, and the front passenger side with bottles of liquor to keep them within easy reach. And sooner or later, if someone he feared didn’t insist that he deposit the loot at headquarters, he’d drive into a town that still had a sheriff, and the sheriff would notice all that appropriated jewelry, and things would turn sour for all of us.”

“So we keep him close enough to control but let him off the leash often enough to satisfy his acquisition fever,” Parlan said. And other base needs.

“That was my feeling,” Judd agreed.

“Did you appropriate all the loot and put it in a safe place?”

“Of course. Sweeney wasn’t happy about that, but he didn’t argue long. I gave him enough money that he could buy a couple of hours with a whore and take his disappointment out on her.”

“He thinks with his cock too much of the time. He’s going to screw up a job one of these days.”

Judd smiled. “He does that, I’ll screw him.”

Parlan frowned at something Judd had said.“You slipped across the border and came back?” Since phones didn’t work between regions, that was the only way Judd could have found out about what Sweeney was doing.

“Pick a back road and do it quick and quiet. One man can do it if he can reach an inhabited place and blend in. The clan wouldn’t be able to get across that way. We’d draw too much attention. Each on his own, some of us would make it back to the West Coast, but not all of us.”

Parlan understood that “all of us” didn’t include anyone but the Blackstone family and Judd. “No checkpoints on the roads?”

“Might be on the highways used by trucks hauling freight, but not the smaller roads. Then again, the only time I didn’t feel like I was being watched was when I found Sweeney in that little hole-in-the-wall town. Made sure it looked like an exchange of goods, and came back.”

One by one, the men arrived at the hotel room to report any information of interest. The first ones were Parlan’s son, Dalton, and his brother, Lawry. Sweeney Cooke, having successfully snuck across the border into the Midwest, was staying there and awaiting instructions from Judd.

The last man to arrive was Charlie Webb, who was baffled and furious that the piece he’d been screwing had run off before he could squeeze the last dollar out of her, and all because he’d given her a little needed discipline.

“Charlie,” Judd said, “once we cross the border you can buy all the company you want.”

Charlie looked like he wanted to argue, but nobody argued with Judd.

At Parlan’s signal, Judd explained about the abandoned towns and how Sweeney had already scouted out a couple of them. Dalton didn’t say much, but Lawry thought having a headquarters would be a fine idea. And Charlie, fixated on the woman who had run out on him, thought having a place so far out of the way that women would have to stay put and be agreeable was just what they needed.

“Then we’re agreed that we should look for such a place?” Parlan asked.

It wasn’t really a question. He was the leader, the front man, with his quaint manners and clothing that made him look like a successful gambler from the frontier days. The fact that he and his family were Intuits made being successful so much easier.

The men agreed, as he’d known they would.

Parlan smiled. “Then tomorrow morning, the Blackstone Clan will board our private car and head to the Midwest.”

CHAPTER 14

Moonsday, Messis 13

“I appreciate you putting in a good word for me,” Truman Skye said.

Tobias Walker glanced at his companion and smiled. “I’m going to miss having you around, but I’m happy you’ll have this chance. You deserve the job of foreman.”

“It’s going to be strange working with men who aren’t like us.”

“Yep. But from what I’ve been hearing, Simple Life folk and Intuits work together in a lot of other places and get along just fine. Still, having a foreman who is an Intuit, has experience with ranching, and grew up around this land will help everyone.”

“It’s okay to call you if I have questions? And Ellen will help me keep the accounts straight?”

Tobias grinned. You’d think Truman was heading for the other end of the continent instead of taking over the neighboring ranch. “You can call me. You can call Ellen. If you ask her, my mom will help you choose the men who will best fit you and that particular ranch. Besides, we’ll meet up here in Bennett and have a drink at the saloon and play a few hands of cards and flirt with women.”

“They have women?”

Now he laughed. “They do. Of course, ‘women’ is a slippery word. Let’s say there are females at the saloon who talk and flirt with the customers.”

“And each ranch will have a cook?”

There were priorities. A man enjoyed flirting with women when he could, but he wanted to fill his belly every day. “You won’t have to rustle up your own grub when you get back to the bunkhouse. Or in your case, the main house since you’re in charge.”

Truman blew out a breath. “Big step.”

“Just take it one day at a time.”

Tobias slowed the pickup as he drove past the Universal Temple that was at the southern end of the town square. It didn’t surprise him that the place to renew the spirit was at the opposite end of the square from the train station, livestock pens, and livery stable, as well as the post office /telegraph office, hotel, and saloon. After all, Bennett had its start in the days when ranch hands had come into town to blow off steam when they needed supplies or brought in cattle to ship to market.

Slowing the pickup to a crawl, he rolled his window all the way down and turned off the fan that hadn’t done much except blow around hot air.

“Tobias?”

An ache along his right ribs—his own tell and warning that something was going on and he needed to pay attention. “I’ll drop you off at the saloon. My mother should already be there to help choose who is working where.”

“Where will you be?”

“I need to check on the horses I brought up the other day. Then I’ll be along.”

“You sensing trouble?”

“I just want to check on the horses, especially the buckskin.”

“That one has more courage than sense,” Truman said.

Tobias shook his head. “No, what he’s got is heart.” And brains.