Pandora's Bluff

“I’ll see your bet,” Miss Parson said, “and raise you four dollars more.”

- Gilbert M. Stack

The petite scarlet-haired woman followed up her statement by pushing a large collection of silver coins into the center of the table. Her pretty Irish face revealed a sprinkling of freckles across the nose and nothing else. Her placid expression gave no hint of the cards in her hand, which didn’t prevent Jim Hornsby, the gentleman to her left, from trying to read it.

“Well, now, that’s an awfully big raise for such a little lady.” Hornsby ran his thumb across the top of his cards as he analyzed his situation. “You haven’t had a truly good hand all night, so perhaps you’re due. It’s a big bet, but not so large that I can be certain you’re trying to drive me out of the game.”

He thumbed his cards again. “And adding in the value of my own cards, I think I’ll see your four and raise you another five.”

He pushed his coins across the table.

The man with the marshal’s badge pinned to his vest sat next to him staring at his hand, his expression an agony of indecision. His eyes moved from the pot, to Miss Parson, to the men sitting beside him, trying to find some clue as to the nature of their hands and seeing nothing to help him. Finally, he threw his cards down. “That’s way too rich for me. We aren’t all bankers, Jim.”

Hornsby smiled. “If the game’s too rich for you, Tom, it’s best not to play. What about you, old-timer?”

Patrick Sullivan pushed the small pile of coins sitting in front of him into the pot. “Corey, me lad, give me another four, no five, no . . .”

His voice trailed off as he tried to calculate the difference between what he had already pushed across the table and the amount he still owed to continue playing, but his brain wasn’t quite up to the task.