The hostler came forward, bent, picked it up, and squinted at the slayer.
His eyes dropped to the gunbelts and he nodded sourly.
How long do you want him to put up?
A night or two. Maybe longer.
I have got no change for gold. I didn't demand any. Shoot-up money, the hostler muttered.
What did you say? Nothing. The hostler caught the mule's bridle and led him inside.
Brush him down! the slayer called. I expect to smell it on him when I come back, hear me well!
The old man did not turn.
The slayer walked out to the boys and squatted around the marble ring. They had watched the entire exchange with disdainful attention.
After long days and pleasant nights, the shooter offered conversationally. No answer.
Do you guys 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 cornshuck from his mouth, grasped a green cats-eye marble, and sprayed it into the dirt circle.
It struck a croaker and knocked it outside.
He picked up the cats-eye and prepared to shoot again.
Is there a cafe in this town? the slayer 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 chastity that would not last long in this shithole.
He looked at the slayer with a hooded brimming wonder that was touching and frightening.
Might get a burger at Bosz.
That the honky-tonk? The boy nodded. Yes.
The eyes of his mates had turned ugly and hostile. He would probably pay for having spoken up in compassion.
The slayer touched the brim of his hat. I am grateful. It is good to know someone in this town is brilliant enough to talk.
He walked past, mounted the boardwalk, and started down toward Bosz, hearing the clear, contemptuous voice of one of the others, hardly more than a childish treble: Weed-eater!
How long have you been screwing your sister, Charlie? Weed-eater!
Then the sound of a blow and a cry.
There were three flashing kerosene lamps in front of Bosz, one to each side and one nailed above the drunk-hung batting doors.
The chorus of Hey Jude had petered out, and the piano was plinking some other ancient ballad. Voices murmured like broken threads.
The slayer 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 revealed 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 work up and down as the instrument was played.
The bartender was a straw-haired lady wearing a dirty blue dress. One strap was held with a safety pin.
There were perhaps six natives 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 dude with wild gray hair collapsed at a table by the doors.
The slayer went in. Heads whirled to look at him and his guns.
There was a moment of near stillness, except for the oblivious piano player, who continued to tinkle.
Then the lady scrubbed at the bar, and things shifted back.
Watch me, one of the players in the corner said and matched three hearts with four spades, opening his hand. The one with the hearts swore pushed over his stake, and the next hand was dealt.
The slayer approached the lady at the bar.
Did you get meat? he asked. Sure. She looked him in the eye, and she might have been beautiful when she started, 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 disguise. Clean beef. Threaded stock. It's dear, though.
Weaved stock, my ass, the slayer 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 you?
Again that subtle shift in tone. Three hamburgers. Mouths watered and tongues licked at saliva with slow lust.
Three hamburgers. Had anybody 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 saying bucks. That was his guess, anyway.
That with the beer? he asked, chuckling a little. Or is the beer extra?
She did not return the smile, "I will throw in the suds. If I see the color of your money, that's it."
The slayer put a gold piece on the bar and every eye followed it.
There was a smoldering charcoal cooker behind the bar and to the left of the mirror. The lady went into a small room behind it and came out with meat on paper. She scrimped out three patties and put them on the grill. The aroma that arose was so intense.
The slayer stood with stolid boredom, only peripherally aware of the wack piano, the slowing of the card game, and the sidelong looks of the barflies.
The dude was halfway up behind him when the slayer saw him in the mirror. The dude was completely bald, and his hand was wrapped around a heft of the gigantic haunting knife that was looped onto his belt like a holster.
"Go sit down," the slayer said. " Do yourself a favor, cully."
The man stopped, his upper lip lifted unknowingly, like a dog's, and there came a moment of calm. Then he went back to his table and the atmosphere shifted back again.
The beer came in a rough glass schooner. I don't have change for gold, the woman said truculently.