Chapter 4
I stopped off at the post office on the way out of Van Horn. A good postal agent will know most of what's going on in the area and won't mind telling you what they think if you listen quietly and compliment their uniforms. This particular agent behind some rusty bars in a little booth below the flophouse had hawkish features with a weak chin, an aquiline nose, and a greasy black moustache between. The bushy mutton chop sideburns he sported made him look like some rarified breed of chicken you'd see at a county fair.
"Where can a lady get a drink around here?" I asked him, smiling demurely.
"I don't normally talk to womenfolk if I can avoid it," the postal agent said, lisping and lilting his way through the declaration.
I'll just bet you don't, fella. I dropped the shy maiden routine immediately.
"But I can steer you away from Josie Dawson's establishment unless you're interested in drinking swill in utter squalor," he said. "Annesburg used to have a decent watering hole, but it shuttered awhile back. Emerald Ranch also had a saloon until the…unpleasantness. Your best bet would be in Valentine, but it's a ways to the west."
"I don't mind the ride," I said.
"If you're heading that way, would you mind doing some work along the way?" he asked.
I shrugged and nodded.
"You see, I'm a discouraged man," he said.
I'd never heard it called that before.
"I'm discouraged by a great many things, but mostly the ways in which the postal service takes me for granted and doesn't pay a wage commensurate with my efforts," he continued. "There are other discouraged members of my profession outside Emerald Ranch and at the Valentine station. Obviously our communiqués can't pass through official channels, so if you're willing to carry some tips and hints to my fellow discouraged men, we'd all be grateful to the tune of more work in the future if you're the type to get your hands dirty." He slid a $5 bill and two letters across the splintery counter and I took them.
"Consider it done," I said. "I'm pretty discouraged myself." Meaning it in both ways I assumed he intended it.
"I thought you might be," he said. "I'm Alden, by the way. Angus will be affixed to the benches at the station outside Emerald Ranch. Hector is managing stages and wagon traffic in Valentine's station, but only for another day, so you best hurry."
"Fine to meet you, Alden," I said. "I'm Sara for what it matters."
"We'll see how it matters in time," he said.
I rode west, following his instructions more or less to the letter. The skin and bones plow horse Horley stuck me with couldn't keep a consistent gate to save its life and didn't have the lung capacity to work up a lather. I walked it some of the time and came to call the hapless beast Dog Food because it's good to remember our futures, especially when they're so near.
Electric lights buzzed on the train station awning for Emerald Ranch when I rode up. Heavy summer bugs floated through the glow in thick clouds. The man I was meant to meet, Angus, sat on a bench, reading a newspaper and yawning like he was getting paid to do it.
"You Angus?" I asked. "Are you discouraged?"
"I am Angus," he said. "Discouraged, sure, I suppose. What I am is bored. I thought this little side venture of discouraged men would keep me awake, but it's just a different kind of tedium. Do you want work or…?"
I handed him the letter meant for him. He yawned, nodded, and tucked it inside his uniform jacket without reading it. "Thank you, I suppose," he said around another yawn that I was pretty sure was fake.
I nodded and walked back to Dog Food. I heard Angus mutter about living in a picture frame or some such nonsense as I rode away. 'If you're bored, you're boring,' my mom always said, then she'd heap chores on whoever dared claim idleness was a burden. Angus would not get along with my mom and I'd be pleased to see how she filled his schedule and kept after him in his tasks. Probably would end up an outlaw inside a week and light out for the territories like yours truly.
The ride west from there was powerfully boring until it wasn't. A great smoking, clanking, glowing compound arose from the rolling prairies and I wondered if the strange behemoth could possibly be Valentine. The presence of armed men, the stench of oil, turpentine, and gasoline told me different when I got close enough for inspection: a refinery of some kind surrounded by mercenaries. I had to wonder if so many armed men was normal in the heartlands. Did folks steal lamp oil?
I rode up and over the hill, putting the refinery at my back, and smelled Valentine long before I saw her. Sheep shit. It wasn't even cow shit. There's a hierarchy in ranching. Horses are at the top. To breed, raise, and sell horses, you have to have money, knowledge, and a mountain of tack and the skilled labor to maintain it. Then comes dairy cows. Below that are beef cattle. At the very bottom you'll find sheep. Sheep don't take more knowledge than falling off a log does. Almost anyone can drove them. In fact, a smart and by smart I mean lazy, sheep rancher will use dogs to move them and hire professionals to shear them. Any wall-eyed moron could raise sheep, most children included. Valentine wasn't likely to have money and the folks in it were probably going to be as callow and dim-witted as the animals they raised. Still, they'd have booze and that's what I was after.
I hitched Dog Food outside the train station and moseyed in to find a lone man on a bench, reading a newspaper, the only inhabitant of the building at that late hour. His hair was jet black and slicked backward.
"You Hector?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am, and you have the look of one of Alden's," the raven haired man said. "I'll tell you what I've been telling him for years. I'm not disgruntled, despondent, or any other word he can think of to justify his acting out."
"Can't say I care what your disposition is." I removed the letter from my pocket, crumpled it up, and dropped it in the nearest waist basket.
"If you're interested in honest work, I'm heading west to Blackwater in the morning," Hector said. "Maybe even Strawberry if the money is right. Hell, I might go all the way to New Austin if the mood strikes. If you find me, I'll find some honest work for you to do. How's that sound?"
I knew more than enough of being a woman in a world run by men to know when I was being propositioned and that wasn't what Hector was doing. The guy seemed legitimately disinterested in my name, what was between my legs, or what kinds of skills I might have. It was the mark of a man with more work to be done than lifetimes to do it in and if I wouldn't or couldn't do it, he wouldn't mind asking the next desperate soul to come his way.
"If I make it that far west, we'll have a chat," I told him before walking out.
I had to ride past the stockyard to the rest of the town and I nearly vomited on the back of Dog Food's head in the process. The potency of sheep shit, urine, and unwashed swine was enough to make even a hardened rancher girl like myself pitch biscuits. By the time I was on the other side of the stench, I was more in need of a drink than ever. The saloon was easy to find on the lone muddy lane of the town. Light poured from the swinging doors and front windows carrying the tinkling of piano music with it. I hitched Dog Food in front of the general store, closed for the evening, and headed up the plank sidewalk into the saloon.
Judgmental folks who never set foot in a saloon don't know the joys and the pains of the places, especially if there's a brothel attached. Right through the swinging doors is an odor unique to most whiskey and whore establishments. Customers track in mud and animal shit from the thoroughfare; they add vomit, spittoon mud, sweat, and cigar smoke once inside; and then there's the stale beer, both spilled and waiting to be spilled, from the bar, the musk of sex wafting down from upstairs, and fetid food being cooked in the back if the establishment boasts a dinner menu. The Valentine saloon had all of the above, but the overwhelming nose was that of sheep dung.
I breathed it in, not only because I had no other choice, but also because it smelled like freedom. People that say freedom is a sweet smell don't know the smell of incarceration or what stench freedom can have.
I was an oddity in the saloon, not that I'm not peculiar most places. A wary eye followed me as I walked in long-legged strides, tall as the tallest man there and armed with a silver plated pistol on my hip in a gunslinger's holster positioned for a quick draw.
Someone had painted the white and red barber pole stripes down a post at the front of the saloon, creative if not befitting of the overall humbleness of the town. I saw a man in a white coat in the back, working a cigar beneath a trimmed moustache, waiting for patrons in need of a shave or a haircut. Most everyone there did need grooming, but the patronage had unanimously decided to spend their money on whiskey and women rather than on hygiene.
I passed a poker table on the right, abandoned for more raucous carousing, and a piano on the left where a squat man in a bowler hat pounded out a tune with far more enthusiasm than skill. The barber set aside his newspaper and vacated the barber chair when I was clear I'd be his only customer that night.
"What can I help you with, Miss…" the barber asked.
"Miss Bostik, and if you can get the frizz off the ends, the road off the rest, and a shine back into everything, I'd be happy to tell everyone you're a miracle worker," I told him as I flopped into his chair.
He tried to be gentle. Considering his clientele was mostly ranchers, cowboys, and day laborers, he actually did a pretty good job of getting the prison off my head and making me look like someone of a reasonable station in the world. My second-hand, or even third or fourth-hand clothes immediately betrayed me as a vagabond, but at least my long, fire-red hair was all pointed in more or less the same direction, smelled of fine pomade, and shined like penny straight out of the Denver mint. I thanked him, paid in the handful of change I'd freed out of dead men's pockets, and made my way to the bar.
"Working girls don't get service until after midnight," the bartender said when I shouldered my way between two sloppy patrons.
"I'm not a working girl," I replied. "I'm a relaxing woman and don't make that mistake again."
"You got money?" he snorted.
"You got an attachment to your teeth?" I sneered back.
"Go soak your head, missy," the bartender said and waved me away.
"If she ain't got money, I've got a way for her to earn it," someone behind me slurred. "My pecker is ripe from the trail and sheep fucking, but I figure it can stand to get a little dirtier inside…"
The rest of his sentence was lost in a spray of blood and broken teeth. I'd fought boys when I was coming up and men when the boys learned to run from me. If the drunk had been smart, he'd have gone down and played possum. Instead, he fought to stay upright and took three hard strikes to the ribs, an elbow smashed across his nose, and a right hook so hard his jaw swung back and forth like a rusty gate all the way down to the floor.
At the right hour on most nights, a cow-town saloon is one stubbed toe away from an all out brawl. The hour was too late and the effort required to conjure a melee among the gathered thirty or so men simply didn't exist anymore. The drunk hit the floor and people simply stepped over him. I kept a keen eye to the crowd for any friends the downed man might have, but it appeared he wasn't known or liked well enough for anyone to revenge on his behalf.
Since I wasn't getting service downstairs, I headed up into the mezzanine where the working girls surveyed the masses hoping for a customer who didn't offer to pay in pretty words and didn't look like the muddy scrotum of a diseased bull. There weren't many men in the saloon that didn't match that exact description, so there were plenty of girls left staring and wondering how dirty they were willing to get for a dollar.
I wasn't immediately more welcome upstairs than down, walking among the smoke that had risen to the ceiling, the potent perfume the ladies of the night wore to be noticed above the saloon's stink, and the red carpeting that had thinned out to a handful of threads right down the middle. Maybe they took me for competition. They'd definitely seen what I'd done with my fists and might have wondered if I'd give the same treatment to a lady if she tossed a cruel word my way. Prison was full of women worth fighting, but outside the penitentiary walls, those women were rare and I'd need a damn good reason to throw fists at another lady.
Rather than go begging for attention, I simply leaned over the railing to watch with the rest of them. I wasn't interested in plying the whore's trade, wouldn't be any good at it even if I had a mind to give it a go. It was simply a nicer view and sweeter smelling company on the second level.
"My, my, my, am I lucky I ran into you," a velvety voice whispered from the left.
"And why is that?" I asked before turning my head. When I did give her a look, my heart flew straight into my throat and nearly choked me. Her raven hair was braided and draped over a shoulder. Her pouty lips sported a crimson sheen. And her blue eyes sparkled like ice frozen against granite.
"Because I've got a room and a wet pussy and nobody's been in either all week," she said with a smile that set fire to my imagination and nearly took out my knees.
"That is a goddamn tragedy and I won't let it stand for one moment longer," I assured her and followed where she led.
