Bodyguards For High Stakes Poker Game

Report Date: 9 Jul, 2020
Written By: Oscar Lupine
Marshal: estarrion

Heya grandad,

You told me I’d know when to send you a letter. Postage ain’t that expensive, but not wanting to be tracked is. Well I think I got a handle on what you meant now. Got some new scars, shallow but they didn’t feel it at the time, and a new story that I can’t tell any folk that haven’t been on the trail themselves, if you get what I mean.

I’ll start at the beginning, though. You told me to keep an eye on the Tombstone Epitaph so you probably saw an article ‘bout this guy, Greely, and the tournament he was taking part in. Well, lucky for me the rich guy put out an ad that he wanted extra security, figured that famous gut instinct of mine would be good for that kinda work, so I signed up without thinking about it. Just some goons and gamblers who might try to jump him in an alley or threaten him into throwing a game right?

Anyway, we get there, me and the other two who showed up for the job, A guy by the name of Moses Bridgewater and a Doc McCoy, think his name was James or something. Anyway, we get off the train and head to the St. James Hotel where Mr. Castor Greely is staying, don’t figure we should be looking around the town till we check in and all. Poor Hotel clerk was overworked; didn't even ask us why we wanted to know Greely’s room. Can’t blame him, though, musta been hundreds of visitors in town, if not more. Some were shootin’ guns in the air even, as if the birds were attackin’. I’m getting off track. Anyway we meet with Greely, after the girls he had stayin’ over left. Mr. Greely decides we should check out the town, I’d agree, good to know the land. First stop, High Plains Saloon, crowded, but besides running into a competitor, drunk as hell and calling Greely a cheat, nothing much happened. Remember him though, Name’s Mason O’Sullivan, he’ll be back later. Big irish dude, had a large knife hidden on him. Point is Moses had some drinks, Doc held off, I had my one glass, and Greely started drinking and wouldn’t stop for the rest of the night, but he didn’t get bad till later.

From there we went down to The Pale Moon, The tournament venue, both we and Greely wanted to get a lay of the place before tomorrow. Ran into an odd character there, by the name of Edgar Grimm. Moses noticed him first, I was checking exit routes and such, you know how it is. Doc and Moses didn’t seem to be the talkin’ sort, though, so I sat down to have a chat with the guy. See, he had been glancing at Greely out of the corner of his eye from tables away, pretending to drink, all that stuff that signals an amateur scoping out a mark. Now, from the moment we got on the train, I had felt something weird about this job. Lots of security was already here, the pay was low for someone so notable, and a bunch of other stuff, but Grimm set off the alarm bells. See, he said that Castor Greely, this milquetoast coward of a man who’s had a hard time sayin’ much of anything so far was an angry and dangerous drunk. The kind that we had to watch out for. Us, the security guys, armed and trained. He implied that we couldn’t handle Greely. Now I don’t take kindly to being talked down to, and I hadn’t been fully focused until this moment, but sure as shit was I not taking that sort of talk from a scrawny amateur like him. He left after giving us this warning, and had I known it wouldn’t cause more trouble, I mighta followed him.

I was right annoyed by this point, but Greely decided to spend a while gambling to get ready for tomorrow’s event. He said we could head out for the night, I’d made a joke about how we were starting a day early a while back, Greely took it too seriously. We were on a job so Bridgewater and McCoy stuck around while he gambled, and I ran out to check some old newspapers. Suppose that was something from your wheelhouse Pops, even met some old guy there, white hair, frail, coulda been your brother. Back on track, I stopped in there to check the obituaries from last year’s tournament. Something was stirring in my mind that Grimm’s warning was some kinda hint or trap, and I had to find out which. Didn’t find any death reports that stood out, but there was something on Grimm. He was jailed for an assault, 4 months time. Not information that helped in the end. Point is I knew someone to watch, and so did the others when I told them about it. Bridgewater was still drinking when I got back, McCoy was watching Greely gamble. Must not have gone well for him, lost a few hundred dollars. Hell, wish I could lose that on a game and only be a bit annoyed.

Greely was done with the place soon after, so we went to a bit more of my kind of saloon. Wildheart Saloon, Rowdier and full of less rich types. Were in there for a while, McCoy was doin’ a hell of a good job keeping an eye out with me, and Bridgewater was doing close detail. All in all, glad they were along. Some escorts saw the cash Greely was throwing about, and he wasn’t opposed, so not long after that we were out of the saloon, but not before Bridgewater convinced Greely to hand over an advance and his extra cash so we could stash it back at his room. Smart guy. Me and McCoy made sure Greely got to where he was goin’ alright, and Bridgewater went up to the room to stash the cash, turns out he’s honest as well as smart. Went to bed early, knew the parties in the street would need it. McCoy got back soon, Bridgewater a little later, and finally Greely got back. He had blood on his jacket. That’s when I started taking Grimm’s warning seriously, something was up, and Greely didn’t even mention it. Doc checked him out just to be safe, the blood wasn’t his far as we could tell.

Got up at dawn, so did McCoy. Kicked Bridgewater awake once Greely was starting to get about. They had breakfast in the hotel, I headed down to the brothel Greely was at, had to check if anyone knew what happened. Guys there didn’t see or hear anything, the girls were fine, and I couldn’t find any traces of where that drunk asshole was after he left. Obviously something was wrong, though. Whatever it was though, it had to wait, had to go to the tournament. Not much to say about it, I’m no good at cards and all. Greely seemed to be managing just fine, but Bridgewater noticed Grimm at the bar putting something in a drink. I’d got that prickle that told me what was up, but damn was it nice knowing it wasn’t a false alarm. Waiter comes by, I pretend to argue with McCoy, and back straight into the poor guy, drinks everywhere, my duster is gonna smell like alcohol for a week. Pain in the ass, but I did it perfectly enough to show up Grimm. Mettery, the gambler who probably hired him to to spike or poison the drinks started going red in the face, gave him a wink. That set him reeling.

I figured we were done with Grimm for the day. Kept my eyes out, obviously, but nothing happened the rest of that day of the tournament. I was figurin’ we should have an early night, but Greely wanted a drink, so we went to the High Plains. O’Sullivan came by, swearing that Greely was cheating. Now, I didn’t see anything provable, but I did see Greely stare at a guy, and when he did, luck turned on him. Weird, sure, but nothing that you could say was his fault right? Not unless he was one of them ‘Hucksters’ or something weirder that the Epitaph reports about. Anyway, I was at the bar, and O’Sullivan decided to start a fight. I didn’t need to even stand up, Bridgewater had Mason’s arm pinned and was walking him out before I had even decided what bottle to hit him with.

Wish that had been the end of the night, but it wasn’t. We headed out the back in case O’Sullivan was waiting outside. Don’t know if he predicted that, or someone else had heard the plan, but as we stepped outside, I was already drawing your old pistol before I knew why. Turns out a group of pistoleros were trying to ambush and kill Greely. Damn fools. I told them they were slow, meant both with a gun and in the head, while opening the door to give us some cover. Sadly McCoy and Bridgewater don’t share my knack for awareness and were caught off guard without any cover. Bullets started flying, and Greely managed to avoid the hail, but Bridgewater caught one in the leg. Couple of bullet trades later though, and they’re down to one, we’re still standing. Greely was on the floor. Then he wasn’t. He changed, clouds parted, and suddenly he’s over seven feet tall, claws, covered in fur, and fangs. A wolf on two legs.

I’d understand if you stopped believing me at this point, if you were anyone else, Granddad, but you always said there’s more truth in stories than people realize. For everyone else, Greely just caught a stray bullet while cowering behind a door. To people who know about the weird, myself now included, he was a god damned werewolf. I was stunned, I wasn’t quite sure what to do, Bridgewater stopped looking at the guy shooting at him, lucky he didn’t take one to the head. I didn’t see how McCoy reacted. Eventually I feel heat and pain across my chest, snapped me straight out of the daze, claws tearing into you will do that. This was the point where McCoy proved himself, though, bullet and knife hit Greely, knocking out use of one of his arms and piercing his eye, respectively. This gave me and Bridgewater enough time to move, the remaining ambusher probably shit himself when he saw Greely as a wolf and ran, of course. Don’t know where he went, but we didn’t care. Bridgewater rammed Greely, throwing him back into the building, and not long after we managed to finish him off. He turned human when he died. I didn’t waste time, security from the saloon was on the way, so I told McCoy to start acting like he was trying to patch Greely. Took him a moment to get why, but he was damn good at faking it when he understood. I switched some bullets at the scene around, we took Greely’s hotel key and cash, and decided to head out. We took what we could from his room and left, he was dead and all, nothing else for it.

You told me the agents will read this, pops. You also said they’d still pass it to you without changing anything. I talked to Grimm to see how much he knew after the fact. He said werewolf before I did. Bright side, despite fucking up a job for the guy, I think I made an ally of him. I’ll keep you updated, but you have questions to answer.

-Oscar