“And what will we be having today, gentlemen?”
Clark Rowe scratched underneath his beard, and the waiter couldn’t tell if he was being thoughtful or just had an itch. Clark abruptly said, “I’ll take the steak, rare. What year Merlot do you have?” Before the waiter had the chance to respond, Clark waved his hand. “Never mind the year – any would do.”
“Very well, sir,” the waiter said, relieved that Clark didn’t care for a particular year, because they only had an 1872 available. He then turned to the little man with a goatee and glasses across the table. “And you…”
“How fresh is the salmon?” Davis asked, not bothering to look up from his menu. “Still kicking, I hope?”
The waiter was not sure how to respond. “It was at one point, sir.”
“I’ll take that with a nice Riesling.”
The waiter’s eye twitched. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we don’t have any Riesling onboard. Instead, may I interest you in a fine Pinot gris?”
Davis sighed. “As long as the grape isn’t from Alsace.”
“Certainly, sir. And will anyone else be joining you for the meal?”
“No,” Rowe said with a laugh. “The wives somehow found something more interesting onboard a train than eating and staring out the windows.”
As the waiter hurried off, Rowe turned to Davis. “You know,” the old man said gruffly, “anytime you’re out in public, you should be ordering steak. Anything else is just bad advertising.” Rowe waved a hand at the full dining car around them and said in a lower, but not softer, voice, “Ezra, just think what they’re thinking: a rancher who doesn’t eat his own produce.”
Davis shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Apparently you kept your eyes closed when we toured that vile slaughterhouse back in Kansas City.”
Incredulous, Clark demanded, “Don’t you dare tell me you got faint at the sight of the carcasses. Humor me and ask yourself why the hell did you buy a ranch if you’re afraid of what you raise?”
“I let others ask that question so I don’t have to,” Davis said defensively, a trace of his Highlands accent rising in his voice like the red in his cheeks. He took a moment to pull a crystal flask from his pocket and take a swig from it. “Tell me, Mr. Rowe, when was the last time you did something you didn’t want to do?”
Clark laughed as he propped up his arm on the table, the back of his hand facing Davis. As the golden shackle glimmered on his ring finger, Clark asked, “Is this too obvious of an answer?”
“I’m being serious,” Davis said, trying not to pout.
“Well, so am I.”
“When you get back home to Cheyenne, what’s the first thing you think of when you see your ranch?”
“Mice playing in the fields.”
“Mice playing in the fields,” Davis repeated.
“When my father had built the porch years ago, he squeezed the boards too close together. They squeak, and when the children run on them, it sounds like mice.”
“And there you have it. The ranch is your past – it’s all you’ve ever known. My ranch is my future, my investment, the rock on which I will build my church.”
“And what a rocky place it is,” Clark said with a short laugh. “You couldn’t have picked a worse place to build.”
Davis ignored the quip and persisted. “Don’t forget your father was the one who built that ranch, who gave you that ranch.”
“And he never failed to remind me of that,” Clark added.
“I found my ranch only after my father had exiled me from my home. What your father giveth, my father taketh.”
“But really, whose fault is that?”
Davis showed a little bit of teeth, and he tried to pass it off as a smile. He asked suddenly, “Do you want to play a game of chess?”
Clark wasn’t expecting the question. “Chess? How in the world are we going to play chess?”
Davis tossed up his hands. “I don’t have the world at my feet – yet – but we do have the game at our feet.” He pointed at the black and white tiles that ran the entire length of the dining car. “I’ll be white, if that’s okay with you.”
Clark looked at Davis for a long moment before shaking his head, a sigh falling off his lips. “I guess it’ll be something to do while we wait for our food.” He pulled a piece of scrap paper and a pencil from his pocket and smooth out the paper on the table. As he did so, he looked at Davis curiously. “You aren’t going to use any paper?”
Davis tapped his head. “No need – I can remember the pieces just fine. Like I said, I have the game at my feet.”
Clark wasn’t ready to believe this. “If you can keep all of that straight, then I’m the King of England.” That last part was usually just a harmless saying, but Clark knew that it meant more to Davis than that. After all, at one point, Davis was an heir to the throne – 23rd in line, to be more specific. Clark enjoyed the flinch in the Scotsman’s eye.
Their pieces obviously already set, Davis made the first move, pushing his imaginary king pawn forward two spaces. The pawn rested at the feet of a man sitting at a table nearby, the piece curled at his feet like a dog. Davis announced, his hands folded in front of his face as if in prayer, “King pawn to e4.”
“How original – I think that’s the first time that move’s ever been made in chess,” Clark said sarcastically, making the annotation on the chessboard he had written down on his scrap paper. He then said, “King pawn to e5.”
Davis’ next move was unleashing his bishop pawn, which Clark’s cannibal king pawn immediately ate. The gambit accepted, Davis took the sacrifice in stride and immediately began pouring his troops through the hole in the ranks. Davis posted his bishop on c4, whereas Clark brought out his queen.
As they played, Clark said, “I guess you could say your ranch has had a rocky start in more ways than one. You couldn’t have picked a worse time. Our little safari with the rustlers some months back cost us a lot.”
“How much are we talking here?” Davis asked, looking down at the checkered floor, thinking of his next move. “Because the other members look at me like I’m crazy when I ask about the finances, as if the ledgers don’t exist.”
“Well, that’s because they don’t exist,” Clark said, before adding, “at least not on paper. If it did, then the investors will know how broke we are.”
“How broke?” Davis repeated. “I can’t speak from experience, but I don’t’ think there are degrees of poverty.”
“That’s what you took from what I just said?” Clark asked. “Don’t you understand? When we took the fight to the rustlers, it milked us of every dollar we had. And what were the spoils of war? A head of cattle at an all-time low, and even then we can’t get a damn buyer. We couldn’t even get the railroads back in Kansas City to agree to a partnership with us, transporting the cattle at a discount in exchange for a voice in the association. A few years ago, people would kill to have a say at our meetings. Now look at us. And the Knickerbocker Trust was able to secure us a loan, but only by using our ranches as collateral. The moment we default on that loan, we lose everything.”
“And why wasn’t I made aware of this loan?”
“Well, you would have had to have actual collateral in order to play the game. You have the ranch, but you don’t have the cattle.”
“I told you – I’ll have the cattle in the spring…”
“Which makes me wonder,” Clark interrupted, “how in the world you became a member of a rancher’s association when you don’t even have any cattle. What do you even know about cattle besides the price for a steak?”
“My knight to f5,” Davis said. “And it’s not what you know…”
“It’s who you know?” Clark said, finishing his sentence. “Who do you know?”
Davis looked sour for a second. He took another drink from his flask as he spoke. “Don’t interrupt me. Just because I was torn out of my father’s will doesn’t mean I can?
??t be useful. I’m so much more than my father. I have connections in royal houses across Europe, each of them sitting on a throne of money. And I am the sum of their parts. I am the string that moves their hand that writes the check. You’re wondering why I’m not worried about this little money trouble – truth be told, I’ve never felt more comfortable. I’m exactly where I want to be. Are you going to move?”
“I’m moving my pawn to c6,” Clark said quietly, taking in what he had just heard. “You may be able to win over some of the members with the promise of money…”
“I already have.”
“But the association is just that – an association. We’re all equal partners in this, and I’ll be damned if we become slaves to your money.”
“Pawn to h5,” Davis said. “There’s going to come a time when the storm clouds roll in, and my ranch will be the only one with its doors opened.”
“Moving my queen back to f6…”
“You mean you’re retreating,” Davis said with a little smile. “Are you afraid that, by this time next year, you’ll be answering to a British nobleman, just like your ancestors had?”
“I’m not afraid. And don’t put words in my mouth or I’ll put bullets in my action,” Clark growled, patting the revolver holstered under his jacket.
“Well, it’s like they say: actions speak louder than words. Who am I to say otherwise?” Davis said, not at all afraid, which scared Clark a little.
“You know what?” Clark said, standing up abruptly. “Forget your game. If that waiter ever comes back, tell him to send the food to my room.”
As Clark walked away, Davis called out, “Be careful where you’re stepping! Don’t mess up the board now.”
As Clark slammed the door behind him, startling the passengers in the dining car, Davis laughed to himself. While Clark thought that he was leaving the game, truth be told it was a one-player game ever since the first move. Davis had planned for Clark to take his queen, two rooks, and a bishop – each kill distracted Clark all while the Scotsman slowly but surely surrounded the black king. Davis had calculated that he would have won the game in precisely three more turns if only the old man had only been more cooperative.