The Cold Deck
Summary
In a frontier town where gas-lamp glow barely grazes the mud-slick boards, card-sharp On-the-Level Leigh—laconic as a prayer book with the pages razored out—folds a royal flush of resignation, vowing to bury his spurred boots beneath the snow-loaded eaves of a sanatorium for the sake of Alice, his tubercular sister whose every breath rasps like dry leaves skittering across tin. The mountains rise like cathedral glass gone opaque with frost, yet the air proves no balm for a purse hemorrhaging yellowbacks; destitution, that old coyote, nips his haunches. Back into the smoke-veiled den he slinks, only to be ambushed by Coralie, a dance-hall comet in spangled vermilion who flicks a deck so frigid it might have been exhumed from a Yukon grave—every card a dirge, every chip a headstone. Ruin complete, Leigh staggers out clutching nothing but the echo of shuffled paper and the metallic taste of shame. A stagecoach loomingly silhouetted against a moon of hammered pewter becomes his final table: he aims to pluck coin from passengers yet finds himself framed for a coachman’s demise when the black-clad outlaw Black Jack punctuates the hold-up with a shotgun’s exclamation mark. Blood on the snow, jangling harness, the scent of gunpowder like burnt sage—guilt calcifies round Leigh’s neck heavier than iron. Behind calaboos bars he contemplates the geometry of gallows, until night’s ink and a loose grate conspire to unshackle him; freedom tastes of rust and desperation. Fate, ever the ironist, steers him to the loot-strewn clearing where Black Jack rifles the express box—an absolution wearing a bandit’s mask. One savage tussle, wrists bound with the killer’s own bandanna, and Leigh drags the authentic fiend through Main Street’s churned slush like Ahab tethering Leviathan. Acquittal rings out with the silver-peal of courthouse bells; Rose Larkin, steadfast as a candle in a gale, steps from the crowd to stitch the torn halves of his life back into something resembling sunrise.
Synopsis
Gambler "On-the-Level" Leigh gives up his profession for his little sister, Alice, whose precarious health demands that she move to the mountains. There, the gambler meets the fiery dance hall girl Coralie whose advances he rejects. His funds exhausted from the expense of the move, Level unwillingly returns to his old profession, but Coralie induces the dealer to "cold deck" Level, and he loses every cent. Out of desperation, Level decides to hold up the passengers of the stagecoach while unknown to him, Black Jack shoots and kills the driver for the express box. Learning of the driver's death, Level surrenders himself to the law and is jailed. Escaping from his cell, Level discovers Black Jack uncovering the express box and arrests him. Level returns to town with the real murderer, is cleared of all charges and is reunited with his sweetheart, Rose Larkin.
