"Eddings, David - High Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Hunt)

"What the fuck else is there to do?"

He had a point there. I'd gotten tired of looking at the North Atlantic after about twenty minutes. It's possibly the dullest stretch of ocean in the world — if you're lucky. Anyway, I know he'd be at me until I sat in for a while, and it really didn't make that much difference to me. Maybe that's why I started winning.

"All right, Arsch-loch." I gave in. "I'll take your goddamn money. It doesn't make a shit to me." So, after chow, I went and played poker.

The game was in the forward cargo hold. They'd restacked the five hundred or so duffle bags until there was a clearedout place in the middle of the room. Then they'd rigged a table out of a dozen or so bags, a slab of cardboard, and a GI blanket. The light wasn't too good, and the placed smelled of the bilges, and after you've sat on some guy's extra pair of boots inside his duffle bag for about six hours, your ass feels like he's been walking on it, but we stuck it out. Like Benson said, what else was there to do?

The game was seven-card stud, seven players. No spit-in-the-ocean, or no-peek, or three-card-lowball. There were seven players — not always the same seven guys, but there were always seven players.

The first day I sat in the game most of the play was in coins. Even so, I came out about forty dollars ahead. I quit for the day about midnight and gave my seat to the Spec-4 who'd been drooling down my back for three hours. He was still there when I drifted back the next morning.

"I guess you want your seat back, huh?"

"No, go ahead and play, man."

"Naw. I'd better knock off and get some sleep. Besides, I ain't held decent hand for the last two hours."

He got up and I sat back down and started winning again.

The second day the paper money started to show. The pots got bigger, and I kept winning. I wondered how much longer my streak could go on. All the laws of probability were stacked against me by now. Nobody could keep winning forever. When I quit that night, I was better than two hundred ahead. I stood up and stretched. The cargo hold was full of guys, all sitting and watching, very quietly. Word gets around fast on a troopship.

On the morning of the third day, Benson finally went broke. He'd been giving up his place at the table for maybe two-hour stretches, and he'd grab quick catnaps back in one of the corners. He looked like the wrath of God, his blond, blankly young face stubbled and grimy-looking. The cards had gone sour for him late the night before — not completely sour, just sour enough so that he was pretty consistently holding the second-best hand at the table. That can get awfully damned expensive.

It was on the sixth card of a game that he tossed in his last three one-dollar bills. He had three cards to an ace-high straight showing. A fat guy at the end of the table was dealing, and he flipped out the down-cards to Benson, the Spec-4, and himself. The rest of us had folded. I could tell from Benson's face that he'd filled the straight. He might as well have had a billboard on the front of his head.

The Spec-4 folded.

"You're high," the fat dealer said, pointing at Benson's ace.

"I ain't got no money to bet," Benson answered.

"Tough titty."

"Come on, man. I got it, but I can't bet it."

"Bet, check, or fold, fella," the dealer said with a fat smirk.

Benson looked around desperately. There was a sort of house rule against borrowing at the table. "Wait a minute," he said. "How about this watch?" He held out his arm.

"I got a watch," the dealer said, but he looked interested.

"Come on, man. I got that watch when I graduated from high school. My folks give a hundred and a half for it. It'll sure as hell cover any bet in this chickenshit little poker game."

The fat guy held out his hand. Benson gave him the watch.

"Give you five bucks."

"Bullshit! That watch is worth a hundred and a half, I told you."