Dodge City
September 6, 5:00 PM
He peered out from under the rim of his hat as he looked at his cards. Horns and wings, this is almost too easy. I almost feel bad.
Almost.
The four earth ponies at the table stared at him disparagingly. “Well, stranger? Think you can beat three queens? That’s the best hoof we’ve seen today, and I’d wager that not even you can top that,” said the stallion on his right, eyeing the cards on the table. The red bandana around his neck clashed with his sienna-tinted hat, and considering how bright with confidence his face was, the combination of his hat, bandana, and face probably could’ve blinded somepony.
Let’s see who’s smiling after this.
Ace dropped his cards onto the table, smirking as the other ponies caught sight of them: four eights. “Huh. Guess that makes your hoof the second best we’ve seen today, huh?”
“Moon and stars…” muttered one of the stallions. He pushed his ten-gallon hat back off his forehead. “What a hoof…”
“Alright, that’s it!” the tacky-colored stallion on his right exclaimed as Ace began to gather in the chips. “I’ve seen enough! Nopony is that lucky!”
Ace stared at him innocently. “What, can’t accept that somepony’s better than you?”
“Don’t give me that!” the stallion shouted, his yellow face gradually shifting to a bright shade of red. “You’ve won six games in a row! You ain’t playing honest!”
“Honestly, I won three of those because you four are too scared to try and call a bluff,” Ace countered, stacking his chips nonchalantly.
“Don’t play dumb with me!” he pressed, slamming a hoof into the table and toppling a few piles of chips. “I know a cheater when I meet one!”
Ace sighed. This happened every time he played poker. Inevitably, somepony would get upset at his (perhaps suspicious) tendency to win, but he couldn’t help it if he was good at playing cards. He knew how to conceal his tells and notice others’, he knew how to play his bluffs, and he admittedly did have some ridiculously good luck. But to accuse him of cheating? That was just insulting.
And it was getting old.
“Hey, somepony had to win those games, right?” Ace countered. “It just so happens that somepony was me.”
“Fat chance you won fairly,” came the sour response.
Ace snorted. “Because you’ve been so good at judging the odds today, right?”
Ace saw it coming. He took a step back as the table suddenly tilted his way until it flipped clean over, spilling the cards and chips all over the floor. The other patrons of the saloon looked up, startled, to see the cause of the commotion. Though in a few eyes, Ace could see a distinct look of expectation, as though a few of them knew what was supposed to come next.
“This rotten, cheating scoundrel’s played his last game in this town!” the tacky stallion shouted, aiming an accusatory hoof in Ace’s direction.
“Whoa, there, Blind Bluff,” the bartending burgundy earth pony called. “Just take it easy. What’s all this about?”
A disembodied voice echoed in Ace’s mind. Did you have to get him so riled up?
I can’t help it that he’s a sore loser, he protested. He’s not used to losing...especially considering his tactics.
Well, see if you can get him to stand still for a moment. I think I know how he’s been doing it.
“Hey, uh, listen…Blind Bluff, was it?” Ace interrupted, stepping forward to the irate pony. “Tell ya’ what…why don’t we just not count that last game? I’ll take what I’ve won from the first five and call it even. Whaddya say to that?” he asked, throwing a wink in for good measure.
“Hardly!” Blind Bluff shouted. “If you’re going to cheat, then you win nothing! You ain’t walking outta here with so much as one bit! Cheaters never prosper—ain’t that right, boys?” he asked, to which several stallions grunted their assent, rising to their hooves.
Ace sighed in exasperation. Ready?
Now that he’s not jumping around and raving like a lunatic? I’m ready whenever you want to move this along.
“Hey, I agree with you one hundred percent,” Ace answered. “Which is why I think we need to reveal who the real cheater is here.”
Before anypony could even begin to ask what he was going on about, there was the distinct sound of a metallic click, and Blind Bluff yelped. “Ow! What the hay was that?”
“That,” Ace said with a smile, “sounded an awful lot like the truth.”
Slow gasps began to be heard around the room as the center of attention shifted from Ace to Blind Bluff. Because now, almost miraculously, there was now a horn in the center of his forehead.
“Blazin’ buffaloes!” exclaimed the bartender. “You ain’t no earth pony! You’re a unicorn!”
“What?!” Blind Bluff shrieked. He took a nervous step back towards the exit. “What gave you that idea?”
“Maybe that horn you’ve been hiding from everypony in this town,” said Ace, striding forward with new purpose. “I’ve been tracking you for a few weeks now. You’ve been busy, haven’t you?” he pressed, levelling his eyes as he advanced. “Never staying in a town for very long…just long enough to swindle the good ponies out of some of their hard-earned bits in a game of poker—a game you never played fairly.”
“Like you can prove that?” Blind Bluff countered, though his face betrayed a sense of panic.
“I think you’ll find we can,” a new voice spoke out. Suddenly, appearing right in the midst of the room was a pony in a grey cloak. Another collective gasp filled the room as they beheld this new figure who had arrived seemingly out of nowhere. He tossed his hood back, revealing a forest green pony with a brown mane. “Every pony we’ve interviewed has described you in the exact same way. And it’s a match for how you look right now. Awfully careless of you.”
“What the hay?!” the bartender shouted in surprise at Scope’s sudden appearance. “Where’d you come from?”
He never got a response. Blind Bluff turned to run, but Scope, quick as a flash, stretched his leg out, causing the folds of his cloak to fall away and reveal the polished shooter affixed to his leg. There was a short click, and a small orb sprung from the shooter and collided with Bluff’s flank, freezing him where he stood. Ace came up beside his quarry and inspected his front left leg. “Blind Bluff…it’s no wonder you have that name. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Make other ponies blind to what you don’t want them to see? Like the fact that you’re a unicorn? And that you’re the cheater?”
He reached down and removed something from Bluff’s leg, hoisting it into the air with his magic. “Sneaky. A second deck of cards. Identical to the playing cards they use here at the saloon. I wonder if there’s anything special about them…”
Drops of sweat began to run down Bluff’s face as he watched. Ace turned his attention back to the table that had been flipped and the mess around it. Slowly, he gathered up all the cards and placed them into a neat stack. He lifted a single card and threw it to the cloaked pony in the center of the room. “Scope, hang onto this for me. I wanna test something.”
Scope snatched the card out of the air with a quick move that was barely more than a blur. He stared at the card nonchalantly. “A three of diamonds. Or was I not supposed to tell you what my card was?”
“Hey, uh…who are you guys?” asked one of the patrons of the saloon.
“I’m Ace, and that’s Scope,” Ace answered, never looking up from the cards before him. He shuffled through the deck of cards, taking a quick glance at each card before moving on to the next one. “We’re Sentinels of Harmony, answering directly to Princess Celestia herself. We’re here to take care of a certain…pest problem.” He cast a sideways glance at the stationary unicorn to his right.
“Well?” Scope asked after a few tense seconds.
“Bingo,” Ace said, lifting a single card from the stack. “Three of diamonds. Wow, sure looks shiny, doesn’t it?”
He dropped the card onto a table, attracting a crowd as it settled. It looked almost exactly like a normal card, save for the fact that upon its face, each of the diamonds carried a distinct red glow.
“What’s it mean?” the bartender asked.
“It means that those cards are enchanted,” Scope answered. “They’re linked to the cards in the house deck. Whenever a card from his deck is in somepony’s hoof, it’ll glow like that. It’s a way to know what cards are in play, so you don’t play a copy and give away that you’re cheating. He could just use the cards that weren’t glowing, and be sure that nopony would question his play.”
“But how come we never saw his horn before now? Or his second deck? Or for that matter, why didn’t any of his cards get shuffled back into the regular deck?” asked another pony.
“Because his cards never went back into the regular deck,” Scope explained. “He used the same magic he used to hide his horn and his enchanted deck to sneak his cards back to his deck without anypony seeing. He would just pull out the cards he wanted to play, look to see if they were already in someone else’s hoof, and adjust accordingly. Pretty sneaky.”
“I’d call it ‘unnecessarily elaborate,” Ace commented. “He could have just learned to play the game well.”
“He hid the cards? And his horn? How does that work?” the pony persisted.
“Funny you should ask,” Ace answered. “Blind Bluff…that’s your specialty, isn’t it? Your unique magic…making others blind to what you don’t want them to see. You’re an illusionist…hiding what would be inconvenient if others saw.” Ace walked back to where Blind Bluff stood frozen like a statue. “You just had to use it to cheat, didn’t you? Couldn’t bear to try to help others with that talent, could you? You just had to be naughty.” He shook his head in disapproval.
“We’ll take care of him,” Scope said, fiddling with his shooter and reloading another orb into the stock. “He’s got quite a laundry list of charges against him. We’ll make sure that Blind Bluff here reimburses your town for everything he’s swindled from you.”
“We’ll be on the first train outta town with this scoundrel,” Ace added, dragging Blind Bluff behind him with his magic. “Hey, thanks for not lynching me, by the way. You guys are great.” With that, the trio passed through the swinging doors out onto the street.
“Wait…Ace, was it?” the bartender called out.
One side of the doors opened again, revealing Ace’s head poking from around the corner. “Yes?” the white unicorn answered.
“What about your winnings? You did win six games in a row. They’re yours to claim,” the bartender explained.
“Oh, well, you see,” Ace began, stepping full into the doorway again, “I got what I came for. So, you know what, you guys can keep all that. My reward was catching that criminal.”
The deep red earth pony didn’t seem convinced. “Are you sure?”
Ace’s eyes slowly drifted to the chips scattered across the floor. Each one was technically his. His eyes glossed over as he considered the actual amount of his winnings. “Well…maybe I could take just a little…”
Scope’s voice came calling from the street outside. “Ace! We talked about this! Just leave the bits and let’s go!!”
Ace snapped back to reality and smiled sheepishly at the bartender, whose face was a mix of amusement and bewilderment. “Whoops! Guess I better be going. Uh, you guys keep the change.” He dashed through the doors, leaving them swinging in his wake.
The patrons of the saloon stood in stunned silence for several seconds before the pony with the ten-gallon hat finally spoke up. “What the hay just happened?”
“I’m not rightly sure myself, Bart,” the bartender stammered. “But if that’s a sign of things to come, then things are about to get a lot more interesting around here, that’s for sure.”
“What did he say they were called?” another pony asked. “The ‘Sentinels of Harmony’?”
“Something like that,” Bart confirmed. “What does that even mean?”
“Can’t say,” the bartender replied, grabbing a broom and beginning to sweep up the cards and chips from around the flipped table. “But you can bet your boots that if those two show up again, we’re probably gonna find out.”