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strength of their hands to one another to squeeze out the maximum number of raises when one of them caught a good hand. It wasn’t exactly cheating, in Axel’s view, but that didn’t mean it was fair, either. In any case, Tommy quickly became too drunk to signal properly, so Axel had simply been playing his own cards, playing tight and winning.
    Tommy, who could irritate a squeal out of a dead pig, insisted on calling the rancher “Bud.” The rancher kept on correcting him, getting more prickly every time he had to explain his name was Bum, not Bud. Each time, Tommy would say something like, “You mean like a ho-bo?”
    It had started out, Axel supposed, as a strategy to throw the rancher’s game on tilt, and it had worked. But he was wishing Tommy would ease up. Bum was almost out of money anyways, so it didn’t make sense to keep on needling. But that was Tommy.
    At four feet eleven inches, Tommy was by far the smallest man at the table, an accident of birth that he used to justify a nasty streak all out of proportion to his size. Axel had met him back in ’44, when they were both in the merchant marine, sailing supplies out of Brisbane, Australia, to support the Allied efforts in the Solomons. They had matching kangaroos tattooed on their wrists, souvenirs of a four-day weekend in Sydney. Axel couldn’t remember their significance, but a lot of the guys had them. He didn’t think about it much anymore. It was a long time ago.
    Tommy Fabian had grown up working fairs and carnivals in the Midwest, and he had the carny’s contempt for a sucker. He figured he could say just about anything, and if some sucker got upset, fuck ’em, he’d just move on to the next town.
    That night in Deadwood, with most of a bottle of bourbon in him, Tommy’s mean streak was white hot. By two that morning, the game was showing signs of winding down. The businessman had long since descended into a melancholic haze, without the heart to call any sort of bet at all, and the three shitkickers were on tilt, throwing what little money they had remaining after every lousy hand they got dealt. At one point Tommy was dealt trip aces before the draw. He bet, was raised by Bum, and reraised. Everybody but Bum folded. Bum called Tommy’s raise, then drew two cards. Obviously, Tommy figured, the rancher was drawing to three of a kind. Which made his own three aces a very strong hand indeed. Once again, he bet heavily, was raised, reraised, and finally called by the rancher, who, it turned out, had been drawing two cards to fill a six-high straight. It wasn’t the biggest pot of the night, but Bum was delighted to have some cash flowing his way for once. Tommy, on the other hand, had been mortified by such a display of fool’s luck. He would have won the money back in time, but Tommy, being Tommy, couldn’t let a bad beat go without making some kind of crack.
    â€œGuy draws two to a straight. What the fuck kinda poker’s that? I was sittin’ on the nuts. No way you should’ve called my trips.”
    Bum said, “I won, didn’t I?”
    â€œWell, it was a dumb play anyways. What I get, playing cards with a guy named Bud .”
    Bum, dragging the pot toward him, looked at Tommy and said slowly, “My name is Bum .”
    â€œYou mean like a wino ?” Tommy exclaimed, widening his eyes.
    â€œAs in ‘bum steer,’ which I got a feeling is what we’re getting in this here game.”
    If ever there was a time to shut up and act nice, this is it, Axel thought. Naturally, Tommy did no such thing. He was too loaded to exercise anything resembling common sense, but not quite loaded enough to pass out like a civilized drunk.
    â€œOnly problem we got in this here game is you boys don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, Bud ,” Tommy said.
    Axel didn’t remember exactly how Bum had replied. As best he recalled, they’d played a