For my father.

***

The lone horseman rode into Gallop from the south. He was on the trail at sunup and his sorrel filly had tired an hour ago. Each plod of her hoofs seemed slower than the one before. Her head was low and the rider gave her the reins. The Nogales Trail crossed the tracks of the Atlantic & Pacific Rail Road between the depot and the water tower, which was the oldest structure in the fledgling settlement.

The sun was high in the sky and the horseman noticed the large wooden tank cast no shadow. Despite the heat, neither the horse nor the rider showed any sign of sweat. The heat and the dust absorbed any moisture before it could form. As her hoofs clopped across the boards set longways in the tracks to create a crossing, the mare lifted her head and focused her ears on the water tank.

The large windmill that pumped water into the tank from some unknown source was still.

The horseman wondered briefly if the tracks had stirred a memory in the seasoned horse. Then he saw the source of her interest. The water tank had a slow but steady leak and someone had thought to put a half whiskey cask underneath to collect the spillage.

The horseman wondered that the water didn’t evaporate as fast as it escaped, but a puddle of water pooled in the makeshift trough and he let his mount indulge. When she was finished, the rider urged her on to the next block where a weathered sign, high on a facade, advertised the Ellie Hotel.

On the covered boardwalk in front of the hotel, a young boy was arranging small stones in formations. The rider took no time to consider whether the stones represented soldiers, cattle, railroad cars, buildings, or surrounding mountains. There was no shade at the hitching posts. “Any place I can get my mare out of the sun?” the rider addressed the boy.

The boy looked at the horseman, as if sizing him up on one side of the law or another, and after a few moments had passed he replied, “Round the side’s a shed.”

The horseman pulled a small copper coin out of his pocket and flipped it at the boy. “How ’bout takin’ her round and gettin’ her some water.” The boy caught the coin in midair and obediently took the reins as the rider dismounted. “Not too much,” he added, and the boy nodded knowingly.

As the horseman walked up the wooden steps and across the boardwalk, dust fell from his boots and his chaps, leaving negative bootprints where he had walked. Before he entered the hotel, he brushed the remaining dirt from his long sleeve canvas shirt, and dumped an ample amount that had collected on the brim of his wide leather hat.

***

It took a few minutes for the horseman’s eyes to adjust to darkness of the hotel interior, but when they did, it looked like every other frontier establishment, only smaller. The dark cherry bar along the left side of the room was made of cheaper wood and painted black. There were three tables in the middle of the room and a staircase with a simple handrail clung against the right wall.

A small second floor balcony, with the same simple railing, ran across the back of the room. Central hallways on both floors connected to rooms deeper in the building. On the back wall opposite the stairs there was a large portrait of a beautiful woman, having the air of royalty. The horseman was too far away to read the brass plate that was inscripted with the name Elizabeth.

At first the horseman thought he was alone, but as his eyes adjusted he noticed the saloonkeeper behind the bar, dusting a modest mirror, with his back to him. The keeper could dust the mirror every hour and still not keep up with the dirt that seemed to permeate from the earth, even when there was no breeze.

In fact, the keeper was watching the rider since he engaged the boy and dismounted. He studied the stranger carefully in the mirror as he entered the hotel. It was his job to notice everyone.

“Can I get a beer?” the stranger was the first to speak.

“Don’t got beer. Jus’ whiskey and mescal,” the keeper answered without stopping his dusting or turning around. “Both local.”

“Gimme whichever is wetter.”

The stranger placed a small silver coin on the bar and the keeper reciprocated with a tin cup half filled with a thick yellow liquid.

“Can I get somethin’ to eat?”

The keeper was slow to answer, again studying the stranger in the reflection, as he resumed dusting the mirror. “This ain’t no Harvey House.”

The keeper wiped, while the stranger took a sip from the tin cup. Neither man spoke, each studying the other in the impasse. A train whistled in the distance, signaling its arrival on Gallop. The rider twitched ever so slightly with a nervousness, and at that moment, the saloonkeeper knew why the stranger looked familiar. He let the knowledge settle.

“Maybe I can round you up some beans in the back.” As he disappeared into the darkness of the back hallway, the stranger noticed the keeper moved with a hitch, seemingly from a lame right leg.

Time stood still for an indeterminate period, as it often does on the frontier.

When the keeper returned, it was with a plate of steaming beans which he set in front of the stranger. Even though he hadn’t emptied his first drink, the saloonkeeper set another tin cup of mescal on the bar. “Don’t reckon I ‘member askin’ for ‘nother,” the stranger grunted with a mouthful of beans. He looked at the silver piece, still on the bar top, and then suspiciously at the keeper.

“Happy hour,” the keeper replied. “Two for one.”

As the stranger contemplated the implications of happy hour in an empty bar, a female voice approached from no where. “Howdy stranger,” the words came closer in a high pitch and a slow draw. “How ’bout some comp’ny?”

With another mouthful of beans, the stranger sized up the young woman in the long khaki skirt and the white frilly blouse, cut low to reveal most of the bearer’s pale breasts. Her curly brown hair framed a face with so much makeup, he could not accurately guess the girl’s age. She had a narrow perky nose which the rider noted as a cuteness which didn’t quite approach beauty. But he didn’t answer her question.

“I’m Cassy, mind if I join you?”

Not wanting to be rude, the stranger nodded at the stool next to him. The girl gathered her skirt and hiked herself up on the bar stool in a graceful movement that revealed plenty of practice.

And then, she helped herself to the second tin cup of Mescal, downing its contents in one shot.

The stranger was finished with his beans, but just glared incredulously at the girl next to him. “Thanks for the drink,” she said, and gave him a wide honest smile. “How ’bout buyin’ me ‘nother?”

The stranger nodded at the tin cup in front of the girl, and then at his own, and the keeper, who was watching the interaction intently, served another round of drinks.

“Where you from?” the girl asked, and then downed her second drink without waiting for an answer.

“Tejas,” the stranger answered cautiously, being the first thing he said to the girl.

“Texas is a big place,” the girl replied in an octave higher.

“I had big dreams,” the stranger allowed wistfully, finishing the yellow liquid in his tin cup. “Couple whiskeys.”

This time the keeper delivered doubles, and again the girl drank hers immediately in one shot. The stranger was impressed by the girl’s capacity for drink. He was trail weary, and the beans and the drinks and the girl made him want to lay down.

“This place rent rooms?” the stranger asked the girl, unaware now of his lustful stare.

“I got reg’lar ‘commodations,” she replied with another smile. “Would you like to see ’em?”

The horseman finished his drink, and the girl let him take her by the waist. “Upstairs,” she whispered.

As they walked toward the stairway she leaned into him, letting her breast brush up against his arm. The smell of her perfume was intoxicating, and as the effects of the mescal and the whiskey rushed his brain, he tripped over the leg of a chair and stumbled.

His nose broke his fall, on impact with the bottom step, and erupted with blood. He had the sensation he was bleeding out his eyeballs and drowning all at the same time, and as he tried to collect himself, he heard the unmistakable metallic click of a revolver hammer being cocked. And then another one.

“Don’t move a muscle!” It was the saloonkeeper.

“Elias Cousins, you are under arrest for train robbery, cattle rustling,” he paused to let this charge sink in, “and shooting me in the leg.”

The last part confused the horseman. “I didn’t rustle no cattle,” he said in his own defense.

Both men knew that train robbery might carry some prison time, but a guilty verdict on stealing cattle would result in a hanging at dawn. “I’ll take that as a confession,” the keeper nodded.

“Cassy, don’t wait to shoot this fella if he so much as blinks.”

“What ‘thority you got to ‘rest me anyway barkeep?” The stranger considered his escape options as the keeper yanked him into the chair that caused his downfall. But he knew he was beat when he saw the girl holding his own gun, which she skillfully retrieved during the stumble. She held it casually like she knew how to shoot, and was eager for a willing target.

“I am Sheriff Tyler Bean. I am the law here.”

“And I have been waiting for you to walk into my bar for a long time.”

The sheriff removed a snub-nosed pistol from the prisoner’s boot and proceeded to lash him to the chair with a length of rawhide he had tucked in his keeper’s apron. Again time seemed to standstill as the three witnesses contemplated the implications of the drama that just unfolded.

“Miss Clabber, thank you for all your assistance.”

“You know its always my pleasure to serve the law, Sheriff,” she replied with a smile and a wink.

And then she walked over to the prisoner and whispered not so quietly in his ear, “Don’t let this good lawman charge you for all them drinks you bought me.” She laughed in an even higher pitch.

“They weren’t nothin’ but that god-awful railroad water.”

###

2016 Kirt Van Buren