Last Call Poker Guide

Lucky has sent us further back in the history of the Navy Colt, to Mexico during the Mexican Revolution while World War 1 is starting in Europe, 1914.

Pancho Villa is in Juarez with his gang of Pistoleros and their renegade priest, Padre Inferno, who carries a gun that should never be at a poker table. He’s in Juarez to arrange to “import” some weapons from the U.S. that would ensure his victory in the Revolucion and a stable Mexico. His contact and arms dealer, George Abel, has arranged the transport of the weapons into Mexico through a farm on the brink of being repossessed owned by a Miss Kellie O’Grady (an ancestor of Kerry Tucker in 2005). Abel arranges for them all to meet in Juarez to solidify plans under the guise of a friendly poker match at the Hotel Apolo. However, as with all things, he should be wary of pissing into the air, because the wind might change directions.

Meanwhile, on October 26, George S Patton, 2nd Lieutenant, is currently stationed in Mexico where his cousin, John Smith, also resides. He has a meeting with his General, who wants to take Mexico, and to do that, they need to get rid of Pancho Villa, the leader of the Mexican Revolutionaries (Pistoleros). The General mentions that he knows Villa is headed to Juarez, but doesn’t know why. He’d like Patton to head on down there himself and find out what’s going on that’s got Villa so antsy in his pantsies about Juarez. Patton is like, “ooookey dokie!” and prepares his trip.

Meanwhile in Juarez, Major Damon Michael is sitting in a Juarez bar drinking whiskey when he’s approached by a stranger, asking if he’s the same guy who was kicked out of the US Marine Corps for marrying an Asian woman. Damon nods agreement and mentions that he now works for Pancho Villa as a hired gun. This makes the stranger smile, and the stranger says that he’d like to hire Damon for a job of his own. The stranger has a meeting with Villa about selling some arms (guns, not arms arms) and is afraid that Villa might not hold up his end of the payment agreement. He’d like Damon to act as protection at the meeting, and if necessary, kill Villa. The stranger offers to pay $20 a day with a $1,000 bonus if Damon actually has to do anything. Damon agrees and asks the man’s name - George Abel.

Damon then wanders down to the Chinese Pharmacy, where he manages to get himself high as a kite, stumble through the street asking about his wife and daughter, when some one from Villa’s group takes him back to Wing Lee’s pharmacy so that he can sober up in the back room. He wakes up the next day to the sound of a female voice who’s asking for Padre Inferno. She comes into the backroom and Damon looks at her and thinks she’s his daughter, Mei Lu, and goes nutshit while the girl runs away in fear of the crazy crazy man.

The woman, Rosita Klein y Flores, is in desperate need of finding Padre Inferno, because her man, Johnnie, was going to kill her if she didn’t. Johnnie (John Smith Caldwell, an ancestor of Lucky and Lucy Brown) discovered that she and her brother were passing information to the Germans about collaborating with Villa in the Revolucion. Johnnie killed her brother and threatens to do the same if she doesn’t get the Navy Colt from Padre Inferno. So she ran out into the streets of Juarez to find Padre. When she runs across Villa’s men, they tell her to check Wing Lee’s, where she runs into Damon and Wing Lee. Lee mentions that Padre Inferno is staying at the Hotel Apolo, and she heads there.

Padre Inferno, whose real name is Ambrose Bierce, has already had a run-in with Caldwell on his way to the Hotel Apolo. Caldwell wanted Bierce to sell him the gun, but Bierce absolutely refuses to entertain the idea, which probably didn’t make Johnnie all that happy. Later, Rosita knocks on his door at the Apolo and locks it behind her once she enters. She makes some slick moves on Padre and his big gun (the Colt - man, these PMs totally want my brain in the gutter 24/7 with this game), who is so not a padre, and they wind up in bed together, doing the horizontal lambada (dude, this game has more sex in it than I imagined. It’s EVERYWHERE). Once they’re lying sweattily next to each other, Rosita asks Ambrose about the gun he has, and he tells her that he had won it from Long Jim McGurk at a poker game. She then asks about George Abel, whom Ambrose says is a rich fool, chasing dreams.

George Abel, when not parading around selling guns in Mexico, is actually William R Hearst, a political hopeful for the next presidential election against Woodrow Wilson. He thinks that if he can help Villa win his war that he’ll get the credit for a “stable Mexico” and be a shoe-in for the election. (Interestingly, he’s also a business man who’s interested in building the Grande Hotel in Los Angeles, CA at the address from which Matt Viet (in 2005) is reportedly operating from.) Unfortunately for him, Ambrose Bierce knows that Hearst killed a man at a mining camp and has deposited a statement about the incident in the Hotel Apolo as a safe-guard.

In his big plans for the arms smuggling, he’s hunted down a border ranch owned by Kellie O’Grady. Seeing as she’s in some financial trouble, he’s agreed to help pay down her debt if she’ll allow him the use of her ranch as a smuggling point across the border. As she doesn’t really have much choice, she agrees in order to save her home and will be meeting with Hearst and Villa in Juarez.

Once there, she sees Padre Inferno and a Pistolero talking (probably Damon) and notices that Padre Inferno is carrying the unmistakable Navy Colt that used to be her father’s - before he was murdered. She approaches Padre Inferno at the Apolo bar after the pistolero leaves and mentions that the gun he’s carrying used to be her father’s. Bierce finds that funny as the gun was also on Wild Bill Hickok when he was killed. He won the gun at a poker game 30 years ago from a miner who had received the gun from Colton White, who had gotten it when Hickok died. And now my eyes spin with the bizarre twists of the gun.