“I ain’t got no change for gold.”
“Didn’t ask for any.”
“Shoot-up money,” the hostler muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.” The hostler caught the mule’s bridle and led him inside.
“Rub him down!” the gunslinger called. “I expect to smell it on him when I come back, hear me well!”
The old man did not turn. The gunslinger walked out to the boys crouched around the marble ring. They had watched the entire exchange with contemptuous interest.
“Long days and pleasant nights,” the gunslinger offered conversationally.
No answer.
“You fellas live in town?”
No answer, unless the scorpion’s tail gave one: it seemed to nod.
One of the boys removed a crazily tilted twist of corn-shuck from his mouth, grasped a green cat’s-eye marble, and squirted it into the dirt circle. It struck a croaker and knocked it outside. He picked up the cat’s-eye and prepared to shoot again.
“There a cafe in this town?” the gunslinger asked.
One of them looked up, the youngest. There was a huge cold-sore at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were both the same size, and full of an innocence that wouldn’t last long in this shithole. He looked at the gunslinger with hooded brimming wonder that was touching and frightening.
“Might get a burger at Sheb’s.”
“That the honky-tonk?”
The boy nodded. “Yar.” The eyes of his mates had turned ugly and hostile. He would probably pay for having spoken up in kindness.
The gunslinger touched the brim of his hat. “I’m grateful. It’s good to know someone in this town is bright enough to talk.”
He walked past, mounted the boardwalk, and started down toward Sheb’s, hearing the clear, contemptuous voice of one of the others, hardly more than a childish treble: “Weed-eater! How long you been screwin’ your sister, Charlie? Weed-eater!” Then the sound of a blow and a cry.
There were three flaring kerosene lamps in front of Sheb’s, one to each side and one nailed above the drunk-hung batwing doors. The chorus of “Hey Jude” had petered out, and the piano was plinking some other old ballad. Voices murmured like broken threads. The gunslinger paused outside for a moment, looking in. Sawdust floor, spittoons by the tipsy-legged tables. A plank bar on sawhorses. A gummy mirror behind it, reflecting the piano player, who wore an inevitable piano-stool slouch. The front of the piano had been removed so you could watch the wooden keys whonk up and down as the contraption was played. The bartender was a straw-haired woman wearing a dirty blue dress. One strap was held with a safety pin. There were perhaps six townies in the back of the room, juicing and playing Watch Me apathetically. Another half-dozen were grouped loosely about the piano. Four or five at the bar. And an old man with wild gray hair collapsed at a table by the doors. The gunslinger went in.
Heads swiveled to look at him and his guns. There was a moment of near silence, except for the oblivious piano player, who continued to tinkle. Then the woman mopped at the bar, and things shifted back.
“Watch me,” one of the players in the corner said and matched three hearts with four spades, emptying his hand. The one with the hearts swore, pushed over his stake, and the next hand was dealt.
The gunslinger approached the woman at the bar. “You got meat?” he asked.
“Sure.” She looked him in the eye, and she might have been pretty when she started out, but the world had moved on since then. Now her face was lumpy and there a livid scar went corkscrewing across her forehead. She had powdered it heavily, and the powder called attention to what it had been meant to camouflage. “Clean beef. Threaded stock. It’s dear, though.”
Threaded stock, my ass,the gunslinger thought.What you got in your cooler came from something with three eyes, six legs, or both—that’s my guess, lady-sai.
“I want three burgers and a beer, would it please ya.”
Again that subtle shift in tone. Three hamburgers. Mouths watered and tongues licked at saliva with slow lust. Three hamburgers. Had anyone here ever seen anyone eat three hamburgers at a go?
“That would go you five bocks. Do you ken bocks?”
“Dollars?”
She nodded, so she was probably sayingbucks.That was his guess, anyway.
