Ace of Diamonds

By Bruce H. Thorstad

The fourth installment of Bruce H. Thorstad's boisterous "Gents" series finds incorrigible scoundrels Cass McCasland and Riley Stokes in another lawless town and another heady situation. This time it's the mining village of Buckshot, Colorado, where the boys hope to find fortune in the underground caves belonging to Riley's Uncle Rufus. But once they arrive, they realize that their get-rich-quick scheme has turned into a get-suited-up challenge for their wits and their baseball skills. When Uncle Rufus' mine floods, the only way to save it--and their hides--is to win the big game against the Jersey Invincibles--a ball team in from the East with their throwing arms ready and their noses in the air. The Invincibles are serious challengers and the game is looking like a lose-lose situation, unless the Gents can pull off one of their signature miracle plays!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Jun 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497608597

Bruce H. Thorstad

Bruce H. Thorstad was born in Minneapolis just a mile west of the Mississippi River, making him, at least by one common yardstick, a native-born Westerner. Growing up in the northern Wisconsin towns in the 1950’s and ‘60’s his imagination was fueled by the dozens of TV westerns of that era. “Northern Wisconsin is big-woods country…it’s not the West, but it’s relatively unpopulated. I couldn’t look at a hill or a hayfield without mentally populating it with stampeding buffalo or attacking cavalry.” Thorstad concedes he “played cowboys long after it became uncomfortable to admit it, after most neighboring kids had switched to baseball and football. “In a way,” he says, “I’m still at it.” Thorstad lives with his wife and children in Orange County, California, where he is the editor of OFF DUTY America, a nationwide general-interest military magazine. As “Paydirt,” his nineteenth-century alter ego, he’s a two-time winner of End of Trail, the largest of the annual Old West shooting competition…giving him an insider’s knowledge that makes this and his other "Gents" novels so thrillingly authentic.

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Contents

Prologue

1 – Courting the Mark

2 – Riley at the Bat

3 – Gentlemen and Their Wagers

4 – Disaster for Dinner

5 – I Hatch a Plan

6 – Foiled by Advertising

7 – The Pride of Buckshot

8 – Prescott Makes an Offer

9 – Danged Near Despair

10 – I Meet the Woodleys

11 – Overhanded

12 – I Score a Run

13 – Prescott Sweetens the Pot

14 – Squiring Morgana

15 – A Lot on My Mind

16 – Ringers

17 – The Pride of Rufus

18 – Domesticity

19 – Modern Morgana

20 – Persuasion

21 – Butternut

22 – The Rockies Get Wised Up

23 – Why I Hate Baseball

24 – The Sore Loser

25 – What Saved My Hide

26 – Protecting Our Investment

27 – The Size of the Dog

28 – Spirit

29 – We Find Our Man

30 – Tall Pine and Me

31 – Horse Apples

32 – Tragedy in the Testament

33 – A Miner’s Hand

34 – Condolences

35 – Telling Prescott

36 – Murder

37 – Cheering Up Rufus

38 – Romantic Cusses

39 – Morgana’s Surprises

40 – Spilling the News

41 – Buckshot Gets Ready

42 – Trouble on the Tracks

43 – Sabotage and Weasels

44 – Riley the Magnificent

45 – Her

46 – A Leader of Men

47 – Professionals

48 – The Ruse

49 – Seeing the Light

50 – Villains

51 – Wild Rides

52 – The Wreck of Almost Everybody

53 – The Ace of Diamonds

54 – A Pretty Good Egg

55 – Plans

Epilogue

Prologue

IN JUNE OF ’AUGHT-FIVE, SOME MONTHS AFTER WE’D SPRUCED UP and traipsed east to march in Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade, me and Riley Stokes were coaxing an indignant team up a wagon road in the Colorado Rockies. A half-dozen years had passed since anyone had used that trace, and the branches hedging in and the center hump bristling with shrubbery made the going tedious. Alongside the road tumbled a lively creek fed by meltwater from snowcaps above. In places the climb paralleled an ancient track bed, though the ties were now rotten and the rails had been plundered for scrap.

In a place called the Narrows, near a derelict railroad bridge, the creek flowed over the road. There, the horses’ heads pumping tiredly, our wagon entered the water. Hooves sucked mud. Axles groaned. Iron rims graveled across the creek bottom and then were yanked, dripping, up the bank.

There’s the spot, Riley said.

Yep, I answered.

Riley, you might say riding shotgun, lounged on the tailboard with an ax across his knees, while beside me on the seat rode Mrs. Casey Joplin, Riley’s aunt by marriage and honorary aunt to most who knew her, me included. By that point in the new century, Riley and yours truly, no doubt through want of vigilance, had let ourselves get nigh unto sixtyish, which would have put Casey in her eighties.

But despite the creep of time, we were all hale as ever, excepting that Casey’s husband—Riley’s uncle, brother to Riley’s ma—had done so poorly of late that he’d up and died on us. It was his casket, a pine box without ornament, that rode in our wagon bed. A headstone lay beside it, a modest but unblemished slab of Colorado marble inscribed Rufus T. Joplin, 1819–1905, Owner of the Testament Mine, Founder of Buckshot.

Behind us trailed an assortment of rigs, ordinary hoodoo wagons like ours predominating, some with bench seats affixed to accommodate the mourners. It was a sad occasion, I reckon, burying a man who was kin to Riley and who’d treated me like kin, too, for that matter. But personally, I wasn’t wetting hankies over old Rufe’s departure, for as I looked at it, he had wrung from life a man’s full measure, and had a hell of a good time doing it. Besides which, the sun was warm and the air sharp with junipers, and I was danged if I could feel too hangdog for a person buried on so fine a day, nor feel hangdog on account of my own mortality, neither.

After the creek crossing, we gained another hundred yards of slope, me still leading the procession. Then, faced with an impediment, I whoa-upped my horses.

Aspen tree, I noted.

Riley said something I’ll not repeat here and slid off the wagon bed. When he came past me carrying his ax, he muttered, That’s the last danged time I flip coins with you.

Let’s remember it was your two-bit piece, I cautioned, lest he was suspicious I’d cheated.

I might throw in here that Cass McCasland is my name, and faro is my game—or poker, chuck-a-luck, or even fan-tan, the Chinaman’s favorite, if that’s what the crowd is playing. So long as money’s riding on the outcome, you can deal me in to any old game you like.

Riley tags me a sharper, a term at which I bridle. I will admit, however, to finding sweet music in the roll of dice and the slap of cards. After forty years of gaming and wagering, the prospect of a jackpot still sets my blood a-hum. Deal another hand, boys, and pour another round! Till the day I am planted or the West sprouts picket fences, it is the sporting life for me.

What in hell you grinning about? Riley asked me, after hanging his coat on a bush.

I was just thinking back on something.

Well, you looked mighty silly. He spat on his palms and went at it with the ax, taking six or eight bites to knock down a fifteen-foot sapling with a trunk no thicker than a beer mug. The tree crashed daintily, Riley swiveled its butt end out of the road, and I gee-upped my horses.

Time was, that’d have taken you three strokes, I said. Four at the outside.

Too pooped to argue, Riley paced our vehicle, timed his steps, then groaned himself aboard the wagon bed. It ain’t age, it’s the elevation, he declared, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. I swear these mountains are higher than they used to be.

Just half a mile now to Buckshot, said Casey, who has no patience with other people’s arguments. We’ll have our bite to eat in the meadow.

She was right, of course; considering the occasion, Riley’s and my bickering was disrespectful. I fixed my attention on the horses, hirelings as unenthusiastic about elevation as Riley was. There came a final hard climb that I remembered from twenty-one years earlier. Low branches vexed the horses, then scratched and grasped at our sideboards. Behind us, somebody got dehatted and swore over it.

Then the old road broke clear, leaving the aspens formed up like troops behind us, and opened onto a plateau that shimmered in the noon sun. I drove my rig a ways ahead, to where a quartet of tall poles marked the location of the old ball field’s backstop. There I reined us up.

A view was afforded. We beheld a meadow, its waving grasses done up in yellow-greens, the whole expanse seasoned with wildflowers. And beyond the meadow, the town itself, built on a bench of ground set against Testament Mountain. Out of place amid spring’s renewal tottered the remains of old buildings, paintless and neglected, some listing off plumb, all gazing sightless out of empty windows.

By gol, Riley said. He slid off the tailboard and took a couple steps. Over what had been the baseball field, a breeze rippled the grasses like a hand smoothing fur. A quarter mile overhead, a pair of hawks kited. For a moment, their scree-scree was all you could hear, while we mourners watched the old town as though it might suddenly come to life.

Then the horses lowered their muzzles and began chuffing grass. It was an everyday sort of sound, and it broke the spell. By gol, Riley marveled again, "that’s all that’s left of

Buckshot?"

I stepped over the wagon’s sideboard and dropped to the meadow, then set out a buggy weight to hold the horses. I was about to help Casey get down when I saw her daubing at her eyes, making it a fine time, I figured, to aim my look elsewhere.

So I strolled a bit, picked a weed near the old pitcher’s mound and mouthed it. Behind us, the others were spilling off their wagon perches, stretching their legs, unpacking a picnic.

I can’t get over it, Riley said, still as stuck as a post. He took off his hat and scratched his noggin like the bewildered do in stage plays.

I said, If you’ll remember, Buckshot was never strong on pretty. Not even in her heyday.

But I didn’t expect . . . Heck, not this.

I kept one eye on how Casey was taking it. Riley finally started moving. He slid out a pair of long-handled spades from the wagon bed, giving me one and keeping the other. At some point in the process he began shaking his head.

It’s only there used to be so much life up here, Riley said. He was lodging a protest, I reckon, against time and change.

Time was, I said, I was livelier myself.

Then Casey fidgeted on the wagon seat, signaling she’d accept a hand-down. I did the honors, finding her as light as bones.

The old home place looks stout enough, Casey noted once I set her on the meadow. Her voice had catches in it. Her hat brim bobbed in the direction of a straight-roofed house and barn set on a prominence at the far end of town. Lilacs were blooming in the front yard.

Rufe and me stuck it out till ’ninety-eight, Casey said, till the wood chopping and snow shoveling got too much. I did all my crying then, when we moved down to Denver.

How many stayed on after you? Riley asked.

Why, none, Casey said. The last left in ’ninety-five when the ore played out.

You and Rufus stayed three years by your lonesome? I had to ask. In a spooky old ghost town?

Behind us the men were stomping a flat in the ball-field grass so the women could spread blankets. The smell of coffee hooked me, and I learned I was hungry.

Rufe and me never felt it was spooky, Casey said, though I expect there are ghosts right enough. We used to stroll downtown of an evening, then end up with a tour of the ball field. Many’s the time we heard the voices.

My jaw must have slacked like an idiot’s, for I lost the weed I’d been chewing. Riley turned abruptly and showed a jerked-wide expression. Some of the mourners behind us stopped in odd poses, too.

Now, don’t be giving me that look, Casey scolded. Rufus and I heard voices clear as I’m talking now.

Reverend Mott, showing professional concern, unbent from pouring lemonade. He was portlier than in past years, a whole man now, flesh and spirit made one. He said, Casey, if you’d like to sit down . . . ?

The old woman canted her head. Shame on you, Reverend, for misbelieving. Listen for yourself. You’ll hear I ain’t crazy.

Another of her small gestures reinvited our attention to the empty town. With doubtful looks, we surveyed it, the two-story house at the head of the meadow. Joplin Creek, jeweled under noon sun. The collapsing hulks of the business district. The school, the depot sagging badly, the weedy hump that marked the former track bed. And finally, on the mountainside above the town, triangular flowages of slag, their apexes pointing higher still, to the Testament Mine nestled in its niche.

You’re all using eyes, not ears, Casey said, mother-scolding again. Didn’t I say listen?

She’s Riley’s aunt, so Riley was obligated. Riley’s my business partner, so I was, too. Riley, normally skeptical to his boots, went so far as to shut his eyes, making him look danged near reverent. Me, I heard a restlessness in the grasses, a lone scree from the hawks, and beyond that, a large and echoing silence.

Then I fancied a suggestion of ghosts hollering catcalls, phantoms razzing the pitcher. Naw, couldn’t have been.

By gol, Riley breathed.

There’s one believer, Casey said, like surefire there’d be others. You, Cass—you deaf or what?

My face unscrewed from the effort of listening. Well, now, I can easily imagine the Eulalie coming up with its fancy coaches, and the Invincibles and Woodley on board.

She harrumphed. That’s imagining.

At that point I would have chuckled—except that Riley had a light on his countenance that I hadn’t seen in years.

By gol, there’s the jingle of rigs coming into the meadow, Riley testified, his own ears apparently amazing him. Now folks, thousands of ’em, are finding places on the bleachers we built. Cass, you hear them?

Not me, I said.

Hold up a spell. It was a man’s voice, a fellow doubter behind me. You say thousands? In Buckshot?

Half of Denver came up here, Riley said, still transported.

And mountain folks from towns all around, Casey threw in.

Of course I knew the occasion being referred to. We’d billed it as the greatest sporting event of the previous century, which it danged near was. And it’d all been played out in the same meadow where we stood now, at the foot of a little spit-gob of a silver town at 8,100 feet of elevation.

Exactly what are we talking about? another voice demanded. She was a medical woman, a young nurse from the old folks’ home that Riley’s uncle Rufus had died in.

Why—baseball, Riley said, and he popped out of his trance to tug down an imaginary cap, then glared at me down Batsman’s Alley. I pantomimed a slugger with his bat cocked.

Riley inquired, You ready, Ace? It’d been my nickname in that far-off time. Not plain old Ace, but the Ace of Diamonds.

Right, I said. Riley wound up and threw a just-pretend fastball, which I belted far over his head.

Home run! I said.

But Riley stopped his horseplay and stood reverent again. He said, But I swear, Cass, you can really hear it. The Rockies finishing their warm-up. Now the Invincibles take the field. The band kicks up, but heck, the music’s drowned out by the crowd’s commotion. The ruckus goes on swelling, echoing off the mountain . . .

Casey turned toward the mourners, finding them retreating cautiously. Don’t nobody else hear it? she queried. Truly?

Amid that sea of skepticism one face suddenly went transfixed. My word, Reverend Mott said. He cupped an ear to hear better. If what I’m hearing is . . . Why, that means . . . it’s all somehow still happening!

That’s how I figure it, Casey declared.

But there’s a hush now, Riley said, cocking his head. An expectation.

I looked from one to the other, figuring the joke had stretched thin. Old Casey said, They’re waiting on you, Reverend. You were umpire that day.

Why, so I was, the clergyman said. He harrumphed in his throat a moment, looking out over the meadow as if preparing to address a throng. But his words, when they came, came whispered.

Play ball!

At which, so help me, there arose a vast cheer—causing goose bumps, making my neck hairs rise—issuing from a vast and invisible crowd, swelling to fill the old ball field, resonating through the old town, echoing off Testament Mountain, just as Riley had described it.

Well, by gol, I said, and stood converted. For, by gol, I heard it too.

1 – Courting the Mark

THWACK! WENT THE BAT. THE BALL SHOT STRAIGHT INTO THE hands of the second baseman, where it stuck like glue. Supporters of the Leadville Lions yelled their heads off. On Buckshot’s side of the baseline, all folks did was sigh.

Not me, though. My hinder warmed an empty dynamite crate. One eye I held squinted against the lowering sun. The other eye was not a whole lot busier. If I was lazing, dozing the day away, it was because baseball was Riley’s passion, Riley’s and his uncle’s. It sure as hell wasn’t mine.

The inning was the ninth, and Riley’s team—the home team—was two runs down, already the owners of a pair of outs, and could not scrape up a base runner to save their souls. The last hopes of the Buckshot Rockies were poised to drop down the ol’ privy hole. But then, so what?

Sweating vinegar over the outcome of a ball game was pure foolishness in my view. Oh, showing our bewildered English investor a hometown victory might’ve been nice enough. Success, I reckon, is always impressive.

But I was savvy enough to keep perspective. The truth was, our mission over the last few days had been to squire Mr. Roger Prescott, Esquire, the Englishman mentioned above and a bona fide moneybags, down the main shaft and into the drifts of the Testament Mine, or at least down as low as the flooding waters would let us. Meanwhile we talked potential, we talked opening new veins of silver, we talked of all the wonders that would be possible if only we could raise thirty thousand dollars, buy pumping equipment, and pump the Testament dry of the water that kept leaking into her.

When we weren’t escorting Prescott through the mine itself, we were guiding him around the environs of Buckshot, a town that had two-bit stamped all over it, and introducing him to half her citizenry.

For Prescott, you see, was an investor. He was money incarnate. He held the town’s future, you might say, in the fold of his wallet. He was also immaculately and expensively dressed, high-toned in manner, and sported manicured fingernails.

Of which the wonder was that this repository of cultivation and education professed to be delighted with just about everything we showed him. Hand him an assay sample and he’d treat it like diamonds. Buy him lunch in some flyspeck eatery and he’d exclaim over home cooking.

As for undeniable eyesores, of which Buckshot had plenty, Prescott didn’t seem to see them. Or if he did, they merely put him in mind of something pleasant or interesting. Like that very morning, the three of us strolling down from the Mother Lode Saloon to the ball field, when a dog so scabied it looked like it’d been scalped crossed our paths. Was Prescott disgusted? Not so’s you’d notice. He merely launched into the merits of breeding Airedales. It was like maybe our scabied mutt had a pedigree and a history of fox hunting.

Cass, Riley hissed at me behind Prescott’s back. Riley’s expression was scowly.

What? At the plate, Gabe McClintock, the Rockies’ catcher, bustled to the batsman’s box, spat on his hands, shifted his tobacco from one cheek to the other, then thumped the plate. That’s baseball for you—strong on buildup, weak on action.

Let me give you a couple pointers on bat handling, Riley said.

Me?

Just come over here, Riley said, letting some irritation show. Mr. Prescott, if you’ll excuse us . . . ?

Strategy of the game, is it? our Englishman said. By all means.

Gabe McClintock let a fat pitch arc past him for a called strike. Riley groaned as he led me a few steps behind the ball field’s inner sanctum, the half circle of chicken wire forming the backstop. On his way, he picked up a bat.

What in the world . . . ? I said. Don’t tell me you’re expecting me to play?

I’m worried you’re forgetting our guest, Riley said, and to show how strongly he felt about it, he cut the air with the bat. Whoosh!

Not at all, I said.

The Englishman’s our best prospect and you know it, Riley said, letting out exasperation.

You’re antsy as an old maid. Prescott’s in the bag. Why worry?

Don’t be too sure.

As for your precious ball game, he claims he’s enjoying himself, I said. Beats me as to why. You ask me, it’s boring.

He claims that on account of he’s polite, Riley said. Anyhow, it wouldn’t kill you to talk about the mine while you’re watching. You know, reassure him.

Look, I said, when it comes to courting a mark, I wrote the book.

A mark? Riley said, getting outraged. Dang it, McCasland, this is legitimate business, not one of your swindles.

Same thing, more or less, I said. The man’s got money and we want it. Riley’s scowl deepened. Look, you hammer too much about business, I said, you start sounding desperate.

We paused to watch Gabe McClintock study another fat pitch. Strike two! Reverend Righteous said.

What in hell’s Gabe want? Riley groused.

Relax, I said, taking my pard’s shoulder. Prescott’s already sold. In a few minutes the train comes in. We introduce Prescott to your uncle. We feed everybody a nice dinner, then we sit back and sign some papers.

Really?

What can go wrong? I asked. So smile. Don’t give Prescott the notion we’re arguing.

Riley tried on a smile that looked as stiff as if on a cigar-store Indian. We traipsed back to our dynamite boxes. The Englishman, in bowler hat, a splendid morning coat, striped pants, and a maroon cravat, hadn’t budged. His face held a smile, a genuine one. The man was a treasure, a sharper’s dream. Hell, he was worth two of Riley’s uncle’s danged Testament Mines all by himself.

Looks like the game’s about over, Mr. Prescott, Riley said, working hard at sounding cheerful. Hope you haven’t found it tiresome.

On the contrary, Prescott spouted. Out on the field there was a minor miracle: Gabe McClintock socked the next pitch over the shortstop’s head. The whole town of Buckshot jolted noisily awake.

I’m enjoying myself immensely, Prescott added, having to shout over the rising din. The azure sky, the vast openness of this high valley . . . the selfsame openness, by the by, that I find in your western American.

Really? Riley said. He was wall-eyed, looking at Prescott and the game at the same time.

On the field, McClintock rounded first base, saw the ball relayed from the outfield, and wisely held up.

I threw in, Us frontier types can be a friendly bunch, all right.

Indeed, Prescott said. One hears so much about the American democratic spirit. I find it particularly evident here in the West.

With the crowd quieting in expectation, I noted Blackjack Butler weaving his way to the plate, a player who’d been drinking since the second inning. Riley said over Prescott’s shoulder, Cass, I think Mr. Prescott’s buttering us up.

Why, not a bit, Prescott said. Take these fellows at the ball match, now—miners and tradesmen all, I shouldn’t wonder. Yet they look one in the eye and speak up as one’s equal. So, of course, that is how one must take them.

Hell, yes, I said. They’d get sore otherwise.

Bleary-eyed Blackjack Butler got his first pitch and mashed it manfully into foul territory. A collective groan was hauled out of the home crowd. Leadville supporters hollered derision right back.

Our British distinctions of class and so on can be damnably tedious, Prescott said. Here in your country, I find it refreshing on occasion just to, um, rub elbows. He finished with a powerful laugh, surprising himself.

Mr. Prescott, Riley said, his face taking on a shine, you want to rub elbows, Buckshot’s the place.

Oh, I think so, Prescott agreed, and chortled again.

Blackjack Butler watched a pitch go by at earlobe level, which in frontier-style play was close enough. Strike two, Reverend Righteous said.

Speaking of democratic spirit, Riley said, and gave me a wink behind Prescott’s back to show he was concentrating on money and not baseball. If the train ever gets here, you’ll finally meet my uncle. He’s as common as they come. Likes to make out he’s a tough customer, but that’s all show. The fact is, he likes everybody.

Excellent, Prescott said. The prototypical westerner.

Just as we all glanced back at the game, a sound exploded—whock!—a marriage of leather and wood, and the ball shot out past the infield. The Buckshot crowd sucked in its breath, then erupted into frenzy.

Go! Riley hollered. Blackjack Butler charged toward first base. Leadville’s right fielder gaped at the rising ball, then turned and galumphed deeper into the outfield in clumsy miner’s boots. As the ball streaked past him, he chased it in full panic.

Home! Riley screamed. Home, you ninny!

Prescott held his palms to his ears. Gabe McClintock loped around third. The ball rebounded off the board fence and disappeared into weeds. The Leadville right fielder hunted frantically, then grabbed it up. As McClintock capered across home plate, the outfielder’s throw was to second base, calculated to nail the galloping Blackjack Butler.

Slide! Riley yelled. So did almost everybody else. Butler set himself horizontally, miner’s boots leading, a human missile aimed at the second-base bag. There was a collision of objects: the sliding batsman, the second baseman, the ball. Their meeting threw up enough dust to hide a courthouse.

But when it drifted, Blackjack Butler lay hugging the busted bag, while the second baseman was left with no more than loose straw to step on. Safe! came the reverend’s verdict.

The home crowd, grasping the improved situation, put their voices into it, whooping like redskins. They fired volleys of pistol shots. They sailed up hats in flocks.

For Pete’s sakes, I’m up, Riley said in real surprise. Prescott, good fellow