The sun rose and filled the cantina with light. Agent Farley was fast asleep on the piano bench at the saloon in Crooktail Pass, ten miles out of Brimstone. His large abdomen rose and fell with his breaths. In his grubby right hand, he held a bottle. A red headed whore had watched him sleep all night. She gently grabbed the hand with the bottle and held it up over Farley's head. He opened his blue eyes and gave her a sincere smile. "Well, it isn't often when you wake from a drunken stupor and see such an angel as you, sugar."
She wretched and slammed the bottle on his head. "Jackson Farley, you are a sorry son of a bitch!" She would know. She'd gone around the block with him a time or too. She would never admit it, but she felt a soft spot for this soft man. If he'd lose about fifty pounds, he'd be very attractive. The ladies at Crooktail Pass loved him.
Farley rubbed his thick brown locks, shaking the glass out of it. "Damn, woman! What did I do?"
The girl lifted her foot onto the bench, and kicked his head. "First, you never gave me the money to support our son last month. Second, every goddamn Friday morning I walk in here to do my shift and I see your good for nothin' self passed out on this piano."
"Wait! Betty…it's Betty right? Or are you Carlotta. NO! Carlotta was the curvaceous dame in Sepulcro."
The girl slapped him. "This is Regina, doofus! Regina Fordham!"
"Oh…ho."
She stomped, "We…have…a…son…named….ARCHER! ARCHER FORDHAM!"
"Ah. Yes, Archer. How is he? Rounding about twenty, right? No. You're the Crooktail Pass harlot. He's…..eight."
"Well, yeah you can remember that." Her hands were on her hips. "Listen, bastard, Mr. Scott will be in soon and he's tired of your fat ass being hungover in this fine establishment."
"Fuck me, establishment? More like bordello."
"Anyway," Regina was not bothered. "If'n you meet the wrong end of the deadest eye in Crooktail Pass's gun…."
"Look here, Jessica….I'm getting out of this damn place. I got…I got…I gotta find Rerharrowwww."
"Excuse me?"
"Ruuuuuudd Harlow."
"Haven't seen that cat in many moons. Thank stars, because they say he gunned down the guvner."
"That he did, Tammy."
"Before you leave, you needa give me my hundred."
"Your what?"
"Don't play dumb, Jackson Daniel Farley! We've been screwing around for fifteen years. You done got me preggers back a decade ago, but you got angry one night and took a coathanger to me. Then eight years ago out comes old Archer. You promised me you'd give me a hundred dollars a month to pay for that demon. You quit paying me three years ago."
"Huh, no wonder you look a bit emaciated. I bet Archer is half dead."
"I have had to work three clients a night. I used to work one. Now I get three times the money."
"Yeah, but that is sufficient for you and the brat?"
"Hell, Jackson," Regina shook her head. "Not every chap is as 'loaded' as you. Not every sonuvabitch what comes in here has a father who's an English lord."
"Fine," he stood up and straightened his French mustache. "Take this and buy a train to Blackwater. You know where my manor is. I'll send my butler, Grant, a telegraph saying you can have your hundred."
"Why do that? You gave me…." She didn't dare go farther. The drunken ass had accidently given her two grand, enough for her and Archer for quite a while. "Now, head out, mister. Mr. Scott is around the corner there."
A large black man lumbered into the saloon carrying a double-barrel shotgun around eleven-thirty at night the following day. He requested a scotch, but instead got beaten senseless by a young man named Landon Ricketts.
