Tiff's Game (Perry County Frontier Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1 - 1880

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About Roy Chandler

  Books by Roy Chandler

  Copyright © 1991 and 2013 by Katherine R. Chandler. All rights reserved.

  Publication History

  ebook: 2013

  Katherine R. Chandler, Publisher

  St Mary's City, Maryland

  First Printing: 1991

  Bacon and Freeman, Publishers

  Orwigsburg, Pennsylvania

  This is a work of fiction. None of the characters represent any persons living or dead.

  All characters and incidents depicted were created by the author.

  Foreword

  Who could have imagined what stories would follow when that young lad named Rob Shatto drove a wagon north from Carlisle up and over the mountain and down into what is now known as Perry County?

  I didn't imagine it, and, frankly, I don't know of anybody who did imagine or foresee it. ARROWMAKER started a flood of exciting historical novels that have become collectors' pieces prized for their continually increasing value as well as their interest.

  And now Roy Chandler's pen and imagination have come back over the mountain with TIFF'S GAME, a yarn that will keep you reading straight through to the end. Chandler is a top-notch storyteller, and this is one of his best.

  There is a lot happening in this story, and a foreword is difficult because it would not do to give the story away, so. . . maybe this will do. . . A young man went west; his son returns to Pennsylvania, but he is being followed; trouble maybe? He has a special sort of knack, and he boards a canal boat . . . Ah, you had better read it.

  Also, it might be better to buy two books. The prices for "out of print" Chandler books have no ceiling, no maximums; they keep going up in value. Not many imagined that either. Some still don't.

  TIFF'S GAME, from Chandler. It's a good one.

  Dr. Arthur B. Troup, Jr.

  Chapter 1 - 1880

  Tiff Shatto shot Baker Shade three times. Because he drew fast, his first bullet hit low, an inch above Shade's belt. The second drove through chest bones and would surely have killed, but when a man is pointing a shotgun you cannot wait for shock to set in. Tiff's third bullet entered below Baker's chin and blew straight through.

  A soft-lead .41 caliber bullet makes a big hole going in, and its exit wound could be awesome. Shade must have felt the first two Shatto bullets, but the last one collapsed him as dead as his snakeskin hatband. Shade's nerveless thumb slid off the shotgun hammer, and his loaded barrel fired into the saloon's bullet-pocked ceiling.

  Tiff Shatto's back was already against the wall. He crouched on one knee, his Colt Lightning pistol ready, three cartridges still unfired. The plastered wall behind his overturned chair was cratered by Baker Shade's first shotgun blast, but the deal table with its cards and money was untouched, as though the players might now resume their gambling.

  Gun smoke partly obscured the scene, and its acrid bite caused a man to cough. A shocked and disbelieving voice said, "My God," and men began moving and muttering among themselves. A batwing door slapped and boots pounded down the board sidewalk as someone went for the police.

  A tall man, stiff in a celluloid collar, looked closely at Shade's body. He straightened and ejected tobacco juice toward a spittoon. "Deader 'n hell." The pronouncement surprised no one.

  Tiff Shatto rose easily, his pistol lowered, but his eyes watchful. Shade might have friends. They could appear as suddenly as Shade had. Tiff stayed against the wall where his back was protected.

  Shock was replaced by excitement, and voices turned loud with exclamations of awe and justification. Men said, "By God, he asked for it." Someone vowed they had never seen quicker or straighter shooting, others clustered about Baker Shade for better looks. Only a few felt safe enough to approach Tiff Shatto.

  The saloon owner had seen it before. Killings along San Francisco's Barbary Coast were common. Seamen knifed each other with predictable regularity, and the drunken sledged, sliced, or shot each other to death over imagined insults, worthless women, or, as in this case, losses at cards. The proprietor knew what to do.

  He mounted a chair and boomed directions in important tones. "All right now, everybody stay back, and don't touch nothing.

  "Police will be along directly. They'll ask their questions, and we can tell what we saw.

  "Till then, Mister Shatto will buy one round of drinks for everybody, and we'll drop prices a little until the police get through their investigating."

  He finished loud and strong. "Belly up, boys. This one's on our friend, Tiff Shatto."

  The crowd went for it, turning to the length of the brass railed bar. A few hooted or waved thanks in Tiff's direction, and a grizzled old man in hunter's garb said, "Damned good shooting, boy. A son-of-a-bitch that'd use a shotgun ought to have his lamps put out!"

  Tiff's gaming partners stayed by their table. All had dived for cover when Baker Shade appeared with his shotgun. Now they slapped and wiped at clothing filthy with sawdust and tobacco spittle.

  The three were men of local importance. They came to the Miner's Pick Saloon to play cards and to match wits and luck with professional gamblers, like the one they knew as Tiff Shatto.

  The ship owner said, "Now isn't this a hell of a mess?" He jerked his chin at Shade's body. "If the damned fool couldn't stand losing, he shouldn't have played."

  Another straightened his chair and sat down. He glanced only shortly at the dead man. "Well, Shade won't be bothering us anymore." He waved irritably at his companions. "Damn it all, sit down. It isn't as though we'd never seen a shooting before."

  Tiff remained standing. Staying watchful, he half cocked his Colt and flicked the spent cartridges from the pistol's cylinder. The empty cases went into a jacket pocket and loaded rounds came from belt loops. The double action pistol held six cartridges. Some Lightning users left the hammer on an empty chamber, the way a wise man did with the old single actions, but Tiff did not. The Colt was advertised as safe on half cock, so Tiff loaded all six chambers. He slipped the reloaded revolver into its leather holster worn cross draw in front of his left hip. Then he sat down.

  Tiff Shatto was twenty-two years old. He stood five feet nine and weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Lean featured and lean bodied, Shatto possessed a balanced elegancy that guaranteed spring-like quickness and whippy strength. Coal black hair, worn long, shadowed dark eyes and unblemished features that remained tan despite indoor living.

  Unlike most townsmen, Shatto eschewed coat, vest, and boiled shirt. His jacket was the lightest Spanish leather, soft as satin and tanned to a golden hue. Beneath the jacket, Tiff wore only a bleached cotton shirt with the attached and open collar favored by some Mexican and Texan riders. A horseman's tight pants, flaring at the bottom in the vaquero styling, covered expensively stitched but low heeled black boots.

  Tiff Shatto sported no rings, nor did he carry the gold pocket watch and belly spanning chain common to most who could afford them. Shatto's only adornment was his wide pistol belt with a full dozen cartrid
ge loops and the holstered Colt Lightning.

  The gun Tiff used to kill Baker Shade was still new to the west. Few favored the Colt Lightning, preferring the familiar feel of the older frontier models. Shatto had taken to the Lightning because it fit his special needs. A man who practiced, Tiff Shatto had no difficulty adapting to the revolutionary pistol's feel and balance.

  Until the Lightning, a revolver had to be cocked before firing. A man could ear back his gun hammer with the thumb of his shooting hand, or he could sweep his opposite palm across the hammer in a technique called fanning. With his Lightning, all Tiff had to do was pull the trigger. The pistol's mechanism cocked and released the hammer. A gambler, who often had one hand filled with cards, could appreciate such convenience. "As quick as lightning," someone had said. The name stuck, and Colt itself was beginning to call their double action pistol a Lightning.

  Two policemen investigated the shooting at the Miner's Pick Saloon. A uniformed patrolman first peered cautiously over the bat wings, then held a door for a burly, heavily mustached superior. A customer or two looked studiously away, but the police officer, a captain it appeared, was concerned only with the corpse and who had done the shooting.

  The saloon keeper explained at a furious rate, arms waving and pointing. The captain nodded a few times and spoke to his man who immediately departed. He pulled a chair to Tiff's table and sat. A foaming mug appeared almost magically at his elbow.

  The captain allowed a good measure of beer to funnel down his throat before swabbing his mustaches with a brass buttoned sleeve. He ignored the others and spoke directly to Tiff.

  "You shoot him?"

  Tiff answered only, "I did."

  The banker broke in excitedly, "But Baker shot first, Pat. He let go with that sawed-off gun point-blank. Why . . ."

  The captain silenced the speaker with a hard look. "Damn it, Frank, I'll get to you. I want to hear Shatto's story first."

  Tiff's fingers shuffled his stack of silver dollars, as though enjoying the weight and touch of the heavy coins.

  "Well, Captain . . .

  "His name is Pat O'Malley, Tiff."

  "Damn it, Frank." The captain was irritated.

  Tiff's teeth were white with his cold smile. "Anyway, Captain O'Malley, Baker Shade played in our game for some hours. He lost money and left angry. A few minutes later . . .

  The banker again interrupted. "Hell, Pat, this isn't a big stakes game. We play for the matching of wits. Even Shade lost less than fifty dollars."

  The ship owner agreed. "That's right, Captain. We weren't playing for serious money."

  O'Malley sighed in exasperation. "If you men do not keep still, I will take Shatto down to the station where we can have quiet." He glared at the table's occupants and the ring of listeners that had formed behind them.

  "Now, Shatto, try it again."

  Tiff took up his story. "The next thing I knew, someone hollered, 'Look out!' I glanced up and there was Shade leveling a double-barrel at me."

  A voice in the crowd claimed, "That was me that called out."

  Another said, "Like hell. It was me that saved Tiff Shatto."

  Wrangling broke out with pushing and shoving.

  O'Malley muttered, "Good God." He swilled beer and nodded for Tiff to continue.

  Tiff Shatto hoped his poker face was holding. Composure was difficult. His concentration wandered and his fingers wished to tremble. The action had been too swift and deadly to reason through, and by most expectations he, not Baker Shade, should be dead on the Miner's Pick floor. He had reacted automatically, drawing and moving in the same instant. The lash of Shade's buckshot had seemed to brush his cheek, and plaster exploding from the shattered wall had stung the back of his ears and neck.

  The Colt had slid into his grip as smoothly as it had in practice. When it came level, the trigger was already moving. Tiff's eyes were on Shade. His aim was instinctive. He adjusted with each shot and kept firing until Shade and his shotgun went down. Had there been another way? Tiff saw none. Baker Shade had come to kill. Only his own demise had stopped him.

  The policeman listened through Tiff Shatto's description. He nodded to indicate understanding, but the shotgun blasted wall directly behind Tiff's chair already explained most of it. In a hard, gun-toting land, shootings were almost common. This one would make the next newspaper and then be forgotten.

  O'Malley corrected himself. Officially forgotten would be more accurate. Baker Shade had relatives.

  Other witnesses had to have their say. O'Malley heard them out. There were no dissenting opinions. Tiff Shatto had shot in self-defense. On the Barbary Coast, hell, anywhere west of the Mississippi, that was good enough.

  The ship owner detailed how Shade had grown quarrelsome as his cards fell poorly. As usual, Tiff Shatto won. Hell, Tiff almost always won. The challenge for the rest of them was trying to best the professional. An honest professional that they personally liked, the merchant pointedly explained.

  Shade had risen angrily and left muttering about tinhorns that cheated honest men. As Shatto had ignored the insults, his friends had also let them go by. They thought they had seen the last of Baker Shade, at least for this night.

  The banker elected himself to elaborate on the shooting. He rolled his words, savoring their sound, holding his audience with the richness of his telling.

  "There Shade stood, looming like a wall. His double gun was already cocked on one barrel. He poked it straight at Tiff and howled, "Now you crooked bastard!" Then he touched her off. Flame shot a foot or more out of the muzzle of that sawed-off gun, and the blast about took our hearing out.

  "Well, I'll tell you, Captain Pat, we were all a'ducking and a'scrambling, but through the powder smoke and plaster dust, I saw Shade's gun buck up from recoil. Then, Tiff's pistol started going off. It didn't sound like much after the blast of Shade's shotgun, but Baker's shirt jumped near his belly and then again at his chest where Tiff's bullets tagged him."

  The man shook his head, pondering what he had seen.

  "You'd think two solid hits would put a man down, but Baker Shade was a tough one. He was earing back his gun hammer when Tiff put in the finisher. Shot him square in the throat. Blew out Shade's neck bones, I figure. Looks to me as though there isn't much more than skin holding his head on."

  A bystander pointed at the saloon's bullet pocked ceiling. "Shade's second charge went straight up, Captain. Damned near brought the roof down."

  O'Malley did not even bother to look. The play was too familiar. He marveled that Tiff Shatto had escaped the first shotgun blast. Baker Shade's mistake had been in coming too close. The hole behind Shatto was little larger than a dinner plate. Even a sawed-off shotgun could not spread its charge much at fifteen feet.

  With the story told, the saloon keeper got his piano going and the girls circling. O'Malley's policeman returned with an alderman, to help make things official, and an undertaker who assisted both his trade and the often too busy coroner. The remains of Baker Shade were unceremoniously removed, and O'Malley returned to Tiff's table.

  A fresh beer appeared at his hand and O'Malley drank without apparent awareness.

  Then he said, "Look. Shatto. Ordinarily the city would require your presence at an inquest. That's the legal and usual way. In this case, the alderman and I are of a mind to skip that detail."

  Understanding among Tiff's companions was immediate. One laughed shortly in agreement and heads nodded.

  O'Malley said, "Likely you don't know who Baker Shade was." The past tense gave emphasis.

  "Baker was Saul Shade's oldest boy. Saul's got another son named Luke. He also has nearly thirty riders and a passel of ranch workers.

  "Saul Shade's place is inland a ways. It's an old Spanish grant that Saul runs like it was a separate country. Hell, Shade's been in here since before this ground was American. Saul Shade's got some money. He's arrogant and he is unforgiving. Saul is narrow-minded, opinionated, proud, selfish, and about every other uncivilized wo
rd you could think of. Worst of all, Shade is mean.

  "What I'm getting at, Shatto, is that Shade will be coming after you. By now, some lick spittle is driving his horse to death carrying word of what's happened. By this time tomorrow, Shade will be coming."

  Tiff started to speak, but O'Malley raised a hand. "Understand, Shatto, Saul Shade won't ride in and invite you out into the street. He'll come a'raging with his boy Luke and all the men that are handy. If you are indoors, he's not above burning the place, no matter what it is, and gunning you down when you come out.

  "He will be like a crazy man, only worse, 'cause he will understand what he's doing. We know Shade, and I'm telling you straight out, there will be no listening and no reasoning. Right or wrong won't matter. Shade will hunt you down, no matter how long it takes or what it costs."

  The captain soothed his dried throat with a long pull at his mug.

  "Now the city does not need more killing. When Shade gets done with you, we will have to declare him a criminal and pretend to look for him. Saul has powerful friends at the capital. In the end, Sacramento will let him off, but it will be messy and embarrassing.

  "So, we'd like it better if you rode out. Don't try the railroad. They would telegraph ahead and have gun fighters waiting for you. My suggestion is that you trail extra horses and go where there's no railroads. Ride hard and switch mounts often. Lose yourself up north, maybe in the Nez Perce country.

  "If you work at it, you might escape Shade's trackers, and they'll be a'coming, boy. Don't you ever doubt it. Stay gone for a year or two and the chase will likely die down, but it won't ever stop, not as long as either Saul or Luke Shade is alive."

  There was agreement all around, and Tiff Shatto took note of it. There were times when a man should stand and fight, but there were also occasions when it was right to back off.

  Professional gamblers held little social status. Their work was on the wrong side of towns, and the businesses they frequented were objects of concern to much of the citizenry. There would be no communal rallying to protect the rights and person of Tiff Shatto. When Saul Shade came, the gambler who had killed his son would stand alone.