The Floor of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

make his way. Of course, a little gumption, even a card up the sleeve if it came down to that, would certainly help things along, too. He rode out of camp without hesitation, already imagining the fortune he’d make and the bracing good times he’d enjoy.
    NAVIGATING HIS way in the moonlight across the dark prairie, Soapy was startled to hear the faint, whistling sounds of a calliope playing somewhere in the distance. It was a merry, lighthearted tune, and for lack of any better plan, he followed it. The syncopated clatter led him through the deep shadows that enveloped the unfamiliar country, into the heart of Abilene, Kansas, and on a bit farther, to the outskirts of town. When he crossed the railroad tracks the noise was suddenly booming, and he saw the calliope as well as the pitched tent and wagons of a traveling circus. Years later, after the course of his life had been firmly set, he would look back on this journey and, puffing up his biography another self-important notch, insist that the festive music of a steam organ had guided him through the lonely night to his destiny, as surely as if he had been a wise man following a shining star toward Bethlehem. At the time, though, he just hitched his horse and went off to see if the circus was hiring.
    Clubfoot Hall, who ran the shell game in the circus midway, took approving measure of the innocent-looking, smooth-faced young man and was further encouraged by his grand and eloquent way of talking. Here was a boy who with a little instruction might have the makings of a good roper, Clubfoot judged. And moving on his gambler’s instinct, he offered Soapy a job on the spot.
    Clubfoot had learned the grifter’s craft on riverboats decades earlier, and, unencumbered by his deformity, he still practiced it with both dash and skill. Yet to his own considerable surprise, he also proved to be an inspired teacher. Of course, he had to concede, it helped that Soapy was such a gifted and eager pupil. It wasn’t long before his protégé had mastered the roper’s conversational gambit of steering the marks to the game, as well as the more subtle ploy of encouraging misguided bets. To Clubfoot’s prideful amusement, he saw that when Soapy got to talking he could be as persuasive as a six-gun aimed at a victim’s heart, and nearly as dangerous. He sure could, as the grifters said, “tell the tale.” Another of the young man’s natural gifts was his dexterity. Soapy quickly learned to mimic Clubfoot’s fast-handed way of keeping the pea deceptively moving from walnut shell to walnut shell. It didn’t take long before the pupil’s hand, too, was quicker than the sucker’s eye.
    And from the start Soapy appreciated the one fundamental truth that puts any con into play: A mark desperately wants something for nothing. It was the grifter’s sport and challenge to keep the victim believing he’d receive a payoff that was too good to be true. Soapy relished this tense, often inventively complicated game. Even better, he was good at it.
    For a while, Soapy traveled with the circus to the prairie cow towns. It was a comprehensive education. He learned the value of bribing the local sheriff; “putting in the fix,” Clubfoot lectured, was a business expense that prevented the more costly inconvenience of jail and also provided protection in case a seething victim came looking to get his money back. And while sitting in with Clubfoot as the day’s take was divvied up between a half dozen or so players—steerers, inside men, and the requisite muscle—Soapy began to appreciate that the confidence racket was a fraternal enterprise. To pull off the more lucrative and complicated capers, a gang was necessary.
    But after more than a year with the circus, Soapy grew restless. He felt he had learned all he could from Clubfoot. The shell game was nimble sport, but he also wanted new, more complex challenges. Besides, Clubfoot would always be the “fixer,” the ringleader of the circus