Read Online The Adventures of Slim & Howdy by Bill Fitzhugh, Kix Brooks, Ronnie Dunn - Free Book Online

Charlie dealt two down to everybody.
    Conversation was lively and strayed like unfenced cattle from one subject to the next. It started with a thorough dissection of the upcoming college football season, by which most of them meant the games to be played by the Aggies and the Longhorns. But Mack Osborne, proud booster of the Horned Frogs of Texas Christian University, managed to get in a few words about their hot young redshirt quarterback.
    Howdy looked at his hole cards. Ten and jack of diamonds. He checked to Gutterball, who opened for twenty. Mack, Dempsey, Charlie, and Howdy called the bet.
    After the flop and the turn, the best Howdy could put together was an outside straight. But he needed a queen or a seven. Dempsey bet big. Charlie raised. Howdy called. Sure as hell, he got the queen on the river and won himself a nice pot. He won the next hand too, with a pair of eights, after he bluffed Gutterball into folding trip nines. Next hand, Howdy and Dempsey Kimble both had two pair—both queens and tens—but Howdy took the pot with an ace kicker against Dempsey’s jack high. “Easy come, easy go,” Howdy said as he raked in another pot.
    Dempsey Kimble poured another shot of whiskey, killed it, then peered over the top of his glasses and said, “Yeah, we’ll see about that.” None too friendly.
    After a while, from out in the club, they could hear Slim onstage, tuning up. Even with the sound muffled through the walls, Howdy could hear the guitar’s fine tone.
    It was Gutterball’s deal. He tossed two down for everybody and said, “It’s up to you, Mack.”
    Out in the main room, Skeets came over the sound system, told everybody to give a warm Piggin’ String welcome, which they did. It sounded like a pretty good crowd out there too.
    Following the applause, Slim stepped to the microphone and said, “Thank you. Here’s one you prob’ly know.” A man of few words.
    Howdy bet himself that Slim would open with the song that landed him the gig. “She’s Gone, Gone, Gone.” But he didn’t. Instead, he went with a sly, winking arrangement of “Act Naturally” that clicked with the crowd and had them singing along with the familiar chorus.
    All the sudden, Mack Osborne said, “Hey, cowboy. It’s a hundred to you.”
    Howdy looked at his hole cards. Three, nine, unsuited. He tossed them into the muck pile and said, “Fold.” As the rest of them played out the hand, Howdy listened to Slim do his thing. The guy was good, no doubt about it. He was eager to hear one of Slim’s original compositions.
    Meanwhile, back at the table, the hand came to a showdown between Dempsey Kimble and Mack Osborne. Mack won it with a jack high flush.
    Dempsey Kimble muttered something un-Christian under his breath. As he gathered the cards, his elbow hit his shot glass, spilling the whiskey on the muck pile. “Ahh, shit.” He pushed back from the table to keep his pants dry, then he gathered the wet cards and looked for a place to dump the ruined deck.
    Charlie Pepper pointed at a cabinet and said there was probably a fresh deck in there. Dempsey dried his hands and looked in the cabinet. A second later he turned around and tossed a new deck—still in the cellophane—onto the table. Mack Osborne broke the seal, started shuffling, and said, “Okay, we’re back in bidness.”
    They played a half-dozen hands, trading pots back and forth across the table.
    Outside, Slim was still doing covers, a Haggard followed by a Jones, then a Buck Owens. Howdy was starting to wonder if the guy actually had anything original.
    Charlie Pepper dealt the next hand. Two down around the table. Howdy had a good feeling about this one, even before he picked up the cards. He brought them close and slowly slid them apart. And there they were, gaudy as all Vegas—Siegfried and Roy, two big queens. Howdy did his best not to tell. He looked over at Dempsey, who was studying him through his reading glasses. When the bet came to Howdy, he threw in