Free States

11. LAS BON TEMPS ARRIVÉE

‘MR OAKENHURST INFORMS me that you might be willing to come in on our special play, Mrs von Bek.’ Paul Minct brushed dust from his mask. One of his pale eyes peered from the ragged hole in the Rocky Mountains where Quaker marked Colorado. It was as if he brushed a tear.

After an exhausting week-long game in which the three of them had emerged equals in all but specific skills and appetites, Paul Minct, Rose von Bek and Sam Oakenhurst believed they had learned almost everything they would ever know about one another. All were prepared, in appropriate circumstances, to risk everything on the flick of a sensor, the turn of a card, an instinctive snap judgement.

Paul Minct’s topical half-face glittered in the flamelight and behind his whispering curtain of beads his ruined lips twisted in an involuntary grin, as if flesh remembered pain his mind refused.

Sam Oakenhurst cursed his own quickened blood, the vast emotions he seemed to be riding like a vaquero on a runaway bronc, barely able to haul hard enough on the reins to avoid the worst disasters as they approached.

‘I take it you are considering some unusually high stakes, Mr Minct.’ Her voice had grown warmer, more musical, like a well practised instrument. She was all of a piece, thought Sam Oakenhurst admiringly, a perfect disguise. There was, however, no evidence that Paul Minct had been deceived by either of them.

The week’s play had left the Rose and Sam Oakenhurst uncertain lovers, but it was of no interest to Paul Minct how they celebrated their alliance. He appeared to be under the impression that a more reckless Rose von Bek had persuaded Mr Oakenhurst to let her join him.

‘Here’s my say in the matter,’ declared Sam Oakenhurst, to open the bidding. ‘Your luck and mine, Paul Minct. Even shares. Try it once? Double our luck or double our damnation, eh?’

Sam Oakenhurst knew Mr Minct viewed treachery as a legitimate instrument of policy and that nothing he offered would guarantee Mr Minct’s consistency. But he was hoping to appeal to Paul Minct’s gambler’s soul, to whet his appetite for melodrama and catch him, if possible, in a twist or two before the main game began. At present it was the only strategy he could pursue without much chance of detection.

‘You’ll stake your life on this, Mr Oakenhurst?’

‘If you’ll give us some idea of the odds and the winnings, sir.’

‘Good odds, limitless reward. My word on it. And your word, Mr Oakenhurst. How do you value it?’

‘I value my word above my life, sir. In these troubled times a jugador has nothing but honour. I will need to know a little more before I stake my honour. So I’ll fold for the moment. Save to say this, sir - you play an honest game and so will I.’

‘And you, Mrs von Bek?’ Paul Minct made an old-fashioned bow. ‘Do you also offer an honest game?’

‘I have played no other up to now, Mr Minct. I’ll throw in all I have, if the prize suits me. We can triple our luck, if you like. We all have some idea of the size of the stakes, I think. But not the size of the bonanza. Whatever it shall be, I’ll put in my full third and take out my full third - or any fraction decided by any future numbers.’

‘You can’t say fairer than that, ma’am. Very well, Mr Oakenhurst. We have another pard.’

Sam Oakenhurst could not fathom her style, but he recognized that she was a peerless mukhamir. It was as if she had trained in the very heart of Africa. She was his superior in everything but low cunning, that instinctive talent for self-preservation which had proven so useful to him and which had resulted in his becoming kin to the machinoix, rather than their prey. He had never underestimated this useful flaw in his character. But now it could only serve his honour and help him keep his word to the Rose. He had no other choice.

She had played Paul Minct well so far. Mr Minct’s weakness was that he had less respect for a woman than he had for a man. Yet the enmascaro was in no doubt about her worth to their enterprise, so long as, in his view, Mr Oakenhurst kept her under control.

‘I have always preferred the company of women,’ said Paul Minct. ‘It will be a pleasure to work with you, my dear.’

‘I like the feel of the game,’ she said. As yet she had given Sam Oakenhurst no clue as to the nature of her quarrel with Mr Minct or why the masked man did not recognize her (or did not choose to recognize her. He was the master of any five-dimensional bluff on the screen and a few more of his own invention.)

‘We shall form a family as strong as our faith in our own strengths,’ said Paul Minct. For once his eyes looked away from them, as if ashamed. ‘We are peers. We need no others. The three of us will take our sacrifice to the Fault and reap the measureless harvests!’

‘You anticipated my sentiments, Mr Minct,’ said the Rose, almost sweet, and Sam Oakenhurst thought he caught a swiftly controlled flicker of emotion in Paul Minct’s bleak eyes.