As the seconds and minutes and hours and days pass, zip-zip-zip-zip-zip of the tabled riffle shuffle keeps time better than any clock Hank ever saw in his life. And that was good, because there is no day or night here, no sleep or waking or chowtime or … anything, really. No sky, no earth, no sun, so moon, no stars. Just the chair that didn’t hurt his ass or feel particularly comfortable; the table of smooth and shiny wood, like something out of a fancy parlor; other than there’s just whiteness, just nothing blankness without horizon or shadow or any feature at all. 

As the seconds and minutes and hours and days pass, zip-zip-zip-zip-zip of the tabled riffle shuffle keeps time better than any clock Hank ever saw in his life. And that was good, because there is no day or night here, no sleep or waking or chowtime or … anything, really. No sky, no earth, no sun, so moon, no stars. Just the chair that didn’t hurt his ass or feel particularly comfortable; the table of smooth and shiny wood, like something out of a fancy parlor; other than there’s just whiteness, just nothing blankness without horizon or shadow or any feature at all. 

PART TWO

“Ah, I see the issue now. I neglected to fill in the details.” Pip motions for Hank to hang on to the eerie deck rather than hand them back. “What I ask you to do is to shuffle these special cards, again and again, until you have exhausted all possible arrangements. For example, one arrangement would be new-deck order, such as how they lie right now.”

“Wrong, dummy. You just saw me shuffle … um, twice …“ Hank says, but loses the thread as he spreads the cards in his hands and sees that his shuffles either never happened or he accidentally shuffled them right back into twos through aces for each suit. “Heh, would you look at that.”

PART ONE

Deadwood Jail, South Dakota, 1877. 

A man lies upon the wooden bench that serves as a bed, running his fingers over a face he keeps shaven even after two weeks in stir. This is the card sharp “Hard Hank“ Hart—“Triple H” to his friends.

Or would be, that is, if Hank still had any. Most of the men he once called friends had preceded him to gallows just like the one being assembled rather loudly on the other side of the cell’s barred window; and the rest, to a man, had ended up shot dead for cheating … or sure looking like they were, anyhow.

Hank would know, too, since he’s the one who pulled the trigger.