CHAPTER FIVE

“That old brute is a monster,” Pam was saying as Stringer walked her back to the hotel. “Well,” he said, “I’ll go along with grotesque. Most folk in these parts seem to like him, and his kids are devoted to him.”

“They love him,” she said. “Their mother must have loved him too. Even when she was alive she had to put up with her man’s moonstruck devotion to that Jersey tart, Lillie Langtry. I could tell you things about her, our current King Edward and half the House of Lords, but to poor little Laura Bean she’s been held up as an unattainable goal. The only woman her father could possibly respect.”

Stringer nodded. “I was wondering what could be keeping you so long. Did you fill the kid in on all the rich lovers who’ve enjoyed Miss Langtry’s favors?”

Pam grimaced. “Not all. There wasn’t time, even if I knew half the men our Lillie’s slept with.”

“Hold it, Pam you’re not being fair to a lady you don’t know and I’ve never met. To know for certain just what went on with all those gents, you’d have to know ‘em as well as she might have, and what would that make you?”

Pam laughed sheepishly. “Very rich, to begin with. They say she spends money as if in fear it will go out of style and... You’re right. I am being bitchy. But that poor little half-breed was so upset over the way her silly old father feels about a distant glamorous white woman, that—”

“You tried to help by mean-mouthing her,” he cut in, adding, “I don’t suppose you thought to explain how harmless and sort of pathetic old Bean’s fixation is, eh?”

“I’d hardly call it harmless,” she said. “I find it cruel.”

He shrugged. “The Mex mother of those kids knew he was a crude sort of gringo when she chose to get mixed up with him. Hispanic gals can be possessive to the point of spitting and kicking, if they think their man is fooling around with another gal they can get at. But she likely knew pictures pasted to the wall don’t count. For all we know, the judge may well have started the whole thing as a means to soothing a hot-natured señorita. I notice his kids look clean, well-dressed, and well-fed, next to a heap of their border-Mex cousins.”

She said, “Laura said he’s always looked after the three we met and an older brother well enough. But you certainly don’t know women as well as I thought you did, dear, if you think even an illiterate peasant girl would be cheered to find her man the distant admirer of a more glamorous woman!”

“I never said he was out to cheer her up,” he replied. “He might have simply meant to calm her down. I may know my own gender a mite better than your own. I was exposed to the country manners of the good old boy at a tender age. Old boys like Bean just can’t allow true feelings to show. They have to pretend to be rough, tough, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing hombres, whether they feel up to all the effort or not. How would it look to the other compulsive toughs in these parts if a man who ruled ‘em with a big brag and little more had suddenly taken to sipping Moxie and allowing he was sissified enough to be content with one woman?”

She started to tell him he was crazy. But Pam wasn’t a roving reporter because she was slow-witted. “Well,” she said, “I can see how hard it would be for a Mexican spitfire to claw at another woman who lived thousands of miles away, and I suppose nobody would expect a man who was openly in love with an unattainable goal to chase the sort of drabs his cowboy friends could get at. But there’s more to it than that, dear. You heard him slobbering love words at me when he took me for Lillie Langtry just now.”

“Respectful, not slobbering,” Stringer insisted. “After telling the whole world for almost twenty years that you’re desperately in love with the picture of a gal who can’t be that young in the flesh anymore, a man has the right to talk a little dumb when he’s delirious. I’m sure that if the real Lillie Langtry ever showed up here, and he was up and about at the time, he’d put on one hell of a fiesta for her, like he said, and he might even kiss her hand, if she let him. But that’s all. If the fat old man was still horny enough to matter, he’d have a grown woman of his own instead of faded photographs. Getting gals along the border has never been too tough for a man of substance or even one with his own horse.”

“I didn’t know you had a horse,” she said. “It must have been that cowboy hat of yours. But I have to enjoy a nice long tub soak before we discuss how easy I may or may not be right now. How much time do you think we have before another train comes through, dear?”

He frowned thoughtfully. “My timetable says the next eastbound jerks water here around five. Were you planning on going someplace, Pam?”

She took his arm and hugged closer to him as she answered, “Of course, and the timing works out just about right. We’ll have most of the afternoon to see how well you did with that bell under our bed. Then, if we can get a private compartment aboard that eastbound—”

“We can’t,” he cut in, and asked, “What about our story?”

“We have it,” she said. “I certainly have mine, at any rate. Our Lillie should be ever so pleased when she reads my feature in the Guardian. So many people over the years have hinted there could be something to her notorious romance with a Wild West ruffian. I have to admit old Bean is still more attractive than His Majesty. Lillie’s admirers will no doubt be pleased to learn there’s at least one dirty old man she’s never slept with.”

Stringer didn’t answer. They’d reached the hotel by this time, and their conversation was no business of the old boys spitting and whittling on the front steps, now that there was shade on that side. But when they got upstairs, Stringer told her, “I can’t grab the next train out, coach or Pullman. I was sent here to cover more important matters than a sick old man’s love life. I got shot at and you almost got murdered, just getting here, and I still haven’t found out what the story is.”

He started to add he’d hardly want to catch an east-bound rather than a westbound when he did know what those two murder attempts had been meant to hide. The time to bid a gal adios was when you were fixing to part, not fixing to get in bed together.

“Darling,” she said, “we’ve been here for hours, and there just isn’t anything going on. This little jerkwater hamlet is about as interesting as a cow pat baking in the sun. And speaking of baking, I’m about to get in that tub. Care to join me?”

He laughed. “It sounds like fun, but there’s barely room for your sweet hips, lonesome. You go ahead and I’ll just have a lie-down atop the covers whilst you soak all you like.”

She pouted. “Then what? I didn’t mind a little body odor on the train last night, since I was just as stinky, but—”

“I’ll take my own bath, a shorter one, after you. Save me some hot water.”

She laughed, called him a goof, and stepped into the bath as he shucked his denim jacket, hat, and gun rig to flop down across the big brass bedstead. The springs were pleasantly bouncy. He enjoyed a chuckle as he recalled what he’d done to that telltale bell. Then, before he knew it, he was asleep. He hadn’t got much sleep the night before. But he hadn’t realized how tired he might be until, somewhere in the distance, the moan of a locomotive whistle woke him up.

He yawned, sat up to stare at the open bathroom door as he wiped his sleep gummed eyes, and when he noticed nobody was there, dressed or undressed, muttered, “What the hell?” He rose to his feet to gaze about in wonder, softly calling “Pam?” but not surprised to receive no answer. For while his own kit bag was in the same corner he’d left it, Pam’s baggage, as well as Pam, was missing.

He quickly strapped on his gun rig, snatched up his hat and stepped over to the door. It was, yeah, already unlocked. It was nice to know nobody after him had tried for him again as he lay slugabed behind an unlocked door.

He was more than a little pissed as he tore down the stairs and out the front. He saw the cross-country combination that had paused just long enough to jerk water was already starting to move again, eastward. It was that five o’clock train he’d told the fool gal about, and if she hadn’t boarded it, where was she?

The tracks were only a few yards away. But he saw he’d never catch a combo so anxious to leave him and West Texas behind. As he slowed back down to a walk, he saw a bunch of Mex kids loading a mule-drawn buckboard with crates the freight cars of the combo had obviously just dropped off for them. Since there wasn’t any depot, searching for a station master figured to be a bother. But he had to know for sure. It hardly seemed possible a gal and all her baggage could get kidnapped with him dozing, sober, in the same room. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have given odds that anyone would throw down on a man drinking with old Pat Garrett either.

He walked over to the Mex kids, meaning to ask if they’d seen a nice-looking blonde with a heap of baggage boarding the train that had just left. But as he approached, one of the kids saw him coming and murmured something to a bigger, tougher-looking mu-chacho, who turned, smiled pleasantly enough at Stringer, and asked, “Hey, gringo, does your mamacita know you got out of your crib?”

Stringer moved closer, albeit slower, as he replied just as sweetly, “Pero no, I had to sneak out because my mother looks after her own babies better than your mother. Maybe that’s because she knows who their fathers might have been, eh?”

The wise-ass Mex kept smiling. “You mention my mother in the same breath with the whore who had you by a goat?” he asked.

Stringer shrugged. “I spit in your mother’s milk and I’d piss on your father’s grave, if anyone knew who he might have been.”

Then, just as their game of Tu Madra! was getting interesting, an older youth with a wispy moustache under an Anglo hat stepped into view from behind the half-laden wagon. “Drop it, Gordo,” he snapped. “He’s all right.”

“He just mentioned my mother,” replied the aptly named Gordo, or Fats, in an injured tone.

The taller and more muscular youth, who was dressed Anglo, said, “You mentioned his first. He’s a friend of mine, and even if he wasn’t, can’t you see he’s packing a gun, or that this is a gringo town?”

“I spit on Gringo towns and pick my teeth with Gringo gun barrels,” Gordo said. “But I do not fight with friends of friends, so fuck you, gringo. The rest of you, get back to work.”

They did. As they went on loading the buckboard, Stringer’s unknown friend came over to him and held out a hand. “Gordo’s all right. Some Texans dragged his father half to death one time. I’m Roy Bean.”

Stringer shook with him, but had to say, “That sort of mixes me up, no offense. For I was just paying the real Roy Bean a friendly visit a few hours back.”

The half-Mexican youth nodded. “My sister Laura told me. She says you called her Miss, not Chica, as well. So what can I do for you, Mr. MacKail?”

“You can call me Stringer, and you’d be Roy Bean, Junior, right?”

The younger Bean nodded. “I don’t answer to any other name, no matter what some lighter-skint hombres in these parts find more fitting for one of His Honor’s greaser by-blows. Our Anglo dad may be vague on family records. I’ve hunted high and low for a marriage certificate, but it’s an established fact he’s never refused to acknowledge the four of us as his own.”

“Anyone can see the family resemblance, Roy,” Stringer said. “What I come to pester you all about was an Anglo lady I seem to have lost around here someplace. Did you just now see a blonde in a white blouse and side-button skirt around here?”

Bean, Junior nodded. “We helped her aboard with the three big bags she was toting. She was strong as well as pretty. One of the reasons Gordo was so rude to you just now was that she tried to tip him when he helped her up the steps.”

Stringer found that easy to buy, having grown up with Hispanic neighbors and classmates in the old ran-chero country farther west. Next to beating up a gringo, nothing made a Mex of Gordo’s class look better than playing the caballero to a lady of any breed. So he said, “She was sort of rude to me just now. Or it could have been plain common sense on her part. I know if I was fixing to leave some old gal I liked, whether I wanted to or not, and found her snoring instead of fixed to argue about it, I might consider just stepping out quiet. But never without locking the damned door behind me. I reckon we just live and learn. You need any help with these boxes, amigo?”

“Gracias, pero no,” Bean, Junior answered. “I always hire more help than I really need. The pobrecitos squatting on the other side of the tracks find it hard to make an honest centavo around here.”

Stringer followed his gaze toward the narrow but fairly dense jungle of cottonwood and willow between them and the near but invisible Rio Grande. Blue wood smoke rose here and there among the oft-cut-back and dense bushy trees. He didn’t have to really see the wattle walls and thatched roofs of a choza to know a tribe of squatters were north of the border with their feet still wet. Bean, Junior explained the supplies were for the Jersey Lily, adding, “Just in time too. I was sure Dad ordered more just before he went off on that spree to San Antone. Running the business for him while he’s feeling poorly would be a lot easier if only I could get folk to pay attention to me.”

Stringer asked how come they didn’t, seeing he was old Bean’s son and old enough to shave.

The youth smiled thinly. “You must be color blind. This is West Texas and I’m a Mex. A half Mex, anyways. It’s widely held, in these parts, that the people of my mother may work out as day-labor, do you keep an eye on ‘em, or even a good screw, do you catch ‘em alone. But the notion a greaser can read and write, let alone run a business, is difficult to grasp, see?”

“Nope,” Stringer said. “Another Scotch-Mexican named Pete Maxwell runs a good-sized beef operation over in New Mexico, not too far from here. They say he drives a hard bargain on his beef too.”

Bean, Junior shrugged. “I heard that family of beef barons was part Mex. Tough as hell too. It’s no doubt more comfortable to howdy a man Billy the Kid and his gang was friends with than to call him a greaser.”

“Do you get called names a lot, Roy?” Stringer asked.

He was only mildly surprised when the youth bitterly replied “Not until recent. The judge sired us all when he was getting on in years. But nobody ever called us nothing but cute little tykes while the old man still had the whole county cowed respectful. Lately, though, even before he took sick, more than one old boy has felt able to talk disrespectful, even to him, to his face. Now that he’s helpless on his back, the buzzards seem to be hovering closer every day.”

Stringer started to say something, then decided to wait until he knew for sure what he was talking about. “Well, seeing you don’t need help with these stores,” he said instead, “I’d best go scout up a place to eat supper. Amid all this confusion it just occurred to me I skipped a noon meal. Women sure can get a man mixed up about the time.”

Bean, Junior frowned at him. “You have met my father, you have treated my sisters with respect, and you still think you have no place for to eat this evening? Get up on that buckboard, Stringer. Both my sisters are fair cooks, and even if they were lousy cooks, the Jersey Lily would still be the only place in town serving meals to travelers.”

But as Stringer moved toward the buckboard with the younger Bean, the boy’s voice sounded worried as he muttered, “It’s still our town. So far.”

Young Bean had been right about his sister’s cooking, unless they were swiping credit from one of the shy and silent Mexican women who drifted through like wisps of smoke now and again. They ate at the one table out front, early, because another train was due at seven-thirty. Young Bean explained it was a local, and so local folk getting on or off might want to grab a bite or at least a cold drink before riding on home. The township itself occupied an area six by six miles, most of it empty, but the Jersey Lily catered to outlying spreads as much as a day’s ride from the tracks.

After supper Stringer and young Bean moved out to the front porch as the girls, young Sam, and the servants or whatever got things shipshape inside. Young Bean hauled a rocker out with them and told Stringer the chair already out there was his. It was starting to get dark, and Stringer knew he’d soon be goosebumped by the fickle desert air if he didn’t get his denim jacket from the hotel. But it was rude to eat and run, so he’d just have to smoke and bear it a spell. It usually took a few hours after sundown to get really freezing on the desert, even this early in the year.

They hadn’t been smoking out there long before young Sam came out to join them and sat on the steps. “Zulema made Papacito some chicken soup,” he said. “But we couldn’t get him to eat none. Do you reckon he’s fixing to die, Roy?”

“Don’t call Dad Papacito like you was a dumb greaser, Sam,” his elder brother replied. “You’re old enough to talk English like the rest of us.”

Sam shrugged. “I’ve always called him Papacito, and he ain’t never told me not to. I asked you if he was fixing to die, not for a durned old lingo lesson.”

Bean, Junior’s voice was softer as he half murmured, “I don’t know. I hope not. I sure never figured on him passing on afore the four of us was full growed, at least.”

“Me neither,” Sam said. “But he is sort of old, next to most fathers around here. How old do you reckon Papacito is, Roy?”

Bean, Junior shrugged. “Hard to say. It’s always depended a lot on how he was feeling when you asked him. How old does he look to you, Stringer?”

Their guest answered honestly that he couldn’t say. He was too polite to say all fat old men with white hair and beards looked as old as Santa Claus to him. He settled for, “Fifty to eighty, if I had to guess. I wouldn’t bet money either way. Don’t you have kin who’d be able to pin it down better?”

“He has or had two elder brothers we know of,” Bean, Junior said. “We’ve never met neither Uncle Sam nor Uncle Josh. Dad allows they were born in a log cabin in Kentucky. I suspect he was only funning when he said him and his brothers fought the redcoats at New Orleans with Andy Jackson, though.”

“He rode in the Mexican War, for sure,” Sam said. “I’ve heard him talking about it with old Mexicans who was on the other side. That was before he was out in California, chasing Joaquin Murieta. Was that the Mex he shot it out with down Chihuahua way, Roy?”

“Not hardly,” his elder brother said. “Must have been some other bad Mex. It was just afore he led the Free Rovers against the damnyankees in the War Between the States.”

Stringer was silently reaching for some salt by now. But young Sam’s tone was adoring as he said, “Papacito’s been everywhere and done most everything, so I’ll bet he’s at least a hundred. What do you think Mr. MacKail?”

“He’d have to be, if he fought in the War of 1812,” Stringer dryly observed. But figuring silently from the Mexican War the old man at least knew something about, he hit on seventy and change for a regular trooper, a mite younger if old Bean had tagged along as a drummer boy. Stringer knew for a fact that Joaquin Murieta was a mythical character. But to be fair, a lot of old boys had been out looking for the Californio version of Robin Hood in the 1850’s. Making up mighty convincing bullshit was a long-established cottage industry of the west.

Before they could fret about it further, the westbound train they’d been expecting paused down by the water tower. Young Bean told Sam, “Go make sure them lazy greasers has tidied up inside. I’ll come in to tend bar, do we get any customers.”

Stringer waited until he was alone with Roy Bean, Junior before he asked, casually, “How many of the local Mexicans hold your father to be their patron, Roy?”

“You might say all of ‘em and you might say none of `em,” the youth replied. “Dad savvies greaser ways better than most Anglos. On the other hand, he don’t have funds nor inclination to act as an all-out Mex patron. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” Stringer said. “I grew up on Anglo-Mex range. My clan was pure Scotch, no offense, but we found it common sense to help any neighbor who was down on his luck, and by the way, we never called ‘em greasers.”

Young Bean grimaced. “You must not have had near as many pestering you for a handout, then. Every infernal wetback who passes through here hits us for a job and citizenship papers. Lord knows how they all know Dad as a friendly U.S. justice of the peace, but they do. He can’t give ‘em all jobs. But he’s usually good for a warm meal and such papers as they need to get work some damned place.”

Stringer frowned thoughtfully. “I can see by the sign above us that your father considers himself a notary public as well as postmaster and chief bottle washer of these parts. But, no offense, neither a J.P. nor a notary can grant citizenship to anybody, Roy.”

“Sure he can,” the youth said. “He does it all the time. He just makes ‘em out an affidation, attesting it’s a well-knowed fact that the rascal was birthed in this county, even if he don’t speak English, and so far it’s always worked.”

Stringer smiled thinly. “I can see how it might. I can see why you have some Mex folk helping with the housework too. But you had to pay those boys who helped you with your stores today, and I’ll bet you put your own mule and buckboard away after, right?”

“Sure, in the stable out back,” Young Bean said. “What’s so mysterious about hiring Mex day-labor? They work a heap cheaper than anyone else, and what the hell, I feel sorry for ‘em.”

“I know,” Stringer said. “You feel superior to ‘em too. I’ll bet when your father’s up and about and wants something done, he doesn’t offer money.”

The young Scotch-Mex shrugged. “That’s not the same. Dad has the Indian sign on half the whites around here.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Roy,” Stringer said. “One old man, no offense, could hardly bully his whole world, even a small world. As I’ve been putting her together, your dad’s stayed top dog here by mixing tough with friendly. The one-man town-tamer is a myth, like Deadwood Dick and other Penny Dreadful badmen. Nobody has eyes in the back of his head. So no matter how tough a rep a man might enjoy, he’s asking for a bullet in the back if it gets about that nobody is watching said back for him. If your dad’s been dispensing cold drinks and rough justice all these years, as they say he has, he’s got a lot more friends than enemies in these parts. If I were you, I’d start by referring to the folk down in shantytown as something more polite than greasers.”

Young Bean started to cut in. Stringer said, “I’m not finished. I’m not a head doctor neither. But I don’t have to be to see why you’re busting a gut trying to appear a good old Texas boy with good-natured contempt for your mother’s people. I hope you won’t take my words unfriendly, Roy, but it won’t work. You can dress Anglo, talk Anglo, and cuss Anglo till the cows come home. But you’ll still be part Mex, and it will always show. I told you about Pete Maxwell over New Mexico way. He doesn’t try to be anything he’s not, and by the way, do you mess with old Pete or his stock, you’ll have a whole army of Mex vaqueros climbing your frame poco tiempo.”

“Those peonés down among the willows ain’t what I’d call vaqueros,” young Bean protested. “Gordo, at least,” Stringer said, “was ready to fight at least one armed Anglo this afternoon. If I were you, I’d cultivate those old boys better, for if your father doesn’t make it, you’re going to need a heap of friends. How many of the local Anglo riders could you count on in a hard time?”

“I can’t say,” the youth said. “Some, at least. You was right when you said Dad was on good terms with most of ‘em. I ain’t been shaving long enough to know how I might stand with ‘em.”

As if to prove the point, they both heard a mess of riders coming in from the north. As they rode into sight, young Bean sighed and said, “The Double W crew again. We can use the money, but they sure mess the place up, damn it.”

The eight or ten cowhands reined in out front, but none of them dismounted. “How’s your pa, boy?” one called out.

“Tolerable,” young Bean replied. “He just et some chicken soup, Sunny Jim. How come your ramrod let you come to town two nights in a row? Don’t he love you no more?”

The one called Sunny Jim laughed. “He only gets to screw the Chinee cook. We didn’t ride in for beer this time. We’re missing over a dozen head of stock again, so we thought we’d pay a call on your in-laws down by the river and see what they had to say about it.”

“They don’t even have a dozen goats between ‘em.” young Bean said. “I was just down there this afternoon. I thought my dad told you boys not to rawhide them folk no more.”

“Aw, we ain’t out to rawhide nobody,” Sunny Jim replied. “Leastways, we ain’t out to hurt nobody who can prove he didn’t have beef for supper. Tell your pa we all pay our respects and sure hope he gets better, boy. It’s been nice jawing with you.”

Young Bean rose from his father’s rocker, calling out, “Hold on. Don’t you boys want some cold beer first, after riding in so far? We just got a shipment in, and it’s been in the cooler a spell.”

Sunny Jim shook his head. “Not tonight, boy. Maybe another time, after we see how much old One Thumb Brown means to charge at his place.”

Young Bean snorted in disbelief, “One Thumb Brown ain’t about to serve nobody drinks,” he snapped. “My dad only issued him a town permit to run his hotel, not compete with us in the saloon trade, damn it!”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Sunny Jim called back. “But you know that shed betwixt the hotel and the stable out back?”

“Sure, Brown’s tack room. What about it?”

“It ain’t a tack room no more. It’s One Thumb Brown’s card house and drinking establishment. I reckon Brown would feel it was unfair to call it a saloon, without a permit. But liquor is liquor, so what the hell.” Then he shouted, louder, “Vamanos, muchachos!” and the whole bunch went thundering toward the hotel.

“Hell-fire and damnation,” young Bean growled. “I’d best strap on my guns and—”

But Stringer rose to tell him, “Don’t talk like a kid, kid. If those old boys mean to get liquored up before they hit that shantytown, someone had best warn those pobrecitos, pronto!”

The youth nodded. “You’re right. I’d best tell Sam to circle ‘round and tell ‘em all to go home to Mexico a spell.”

“You’d build more credit with your distant relations if you went yourself, Roy,” Stringer said. “Even if little Sam fails to get hurt, sending a boy on a man’s errand could be taken the wrong way by some.”

“You go, then,” young Bean said. “I got to strap on some hardware and have it out with One Thumb Brown. The son of a bitch might have waited until Dad died afore he defied us open, cuss his mother and aunts!”

“Goddamn it,” Stringer said, “stop and study on this before you go rushing in blind, mayhaps expected. I’ll go see what’s going on behind the hotel. I have to pick up my jacket in any case, and I somehow feel Gordo and his gang would be more likely to listen to you than me.” Then, seeing the youth was just standing there, undecided, he snapped, “Let’s move her out, Roy. I’ll meet you back here in say an hour or so. That should give us time to warn the folk in shantytown and find out what we’re warning them about.”

Young Bean nodded. “You go ahead, then. I’ll get my guns and circle south, like you said.”

Having told the youth not to waste time, Stringer had to nod and light out for the hotel. As he covered the short stretch afoot, he only saw one pony tethered out front. So those Double W riders had circled round to the back, as they’d said they might.

There was nobody in the lobby. Stringer moved up the stairs to find the door of his hired honeymoon suite ajar. That was a thing to ponder. So he drew his .38 and moved in casually. The oil lamp near the bed was lit. That hardly seemed right for an ambush. As he eased through the doorway, he spotted a red dustmop handle leaning against the bedstead. A mighty fine female rump was sticking out at him near the floor. If it belonged to a chambermaid, she had her fool head and shoulders under the bed for some reason.

Stringer put his gun away before he cleared his throat. “Lose something, ma’am?” he asked.

The girl gave a little gleep and crawfished back out, her tawny face blushing as red as her Mex features could manage. She was pretty as any sort of gal usually got and he figured her for eighteen or so, knowing he had to allow for Anglo gals looking a mite younger at any given age. Had the maid been Anglo, he’d have figured her for twenty-odd. She said, “Por favor, señor, I thought you had checked out, until I saw your bag in the corner and your jacket in the wardrobe. I decided as long as I was here, I might as well dust and fix the bell.”

He moved across the room to get his jacket as he asked her, casually, whose odd notion said bell had been. She looked away as she murmured, “Senor Brown, the owner. He has most droll ideas of humor, no?”

Stringer slipped on his jacket. “He must be a bundle of laughs to work for. How did you like my little joke under the bed, ah...?”

“I am called Ramona,” she said. “I thought you were most clever. I was trying to decide whether to connect the string to the bedsprings again, just now.”

“Did you?”

“Pero no. Señor Brown told me for to find out why things were so quiet up here. He did not say for to fix anything, and I do not think it would be fair to you and your mujer, señor.”

He chuckled wryly. “I figure on sleeping alone tonight, Lord willing and I don’t get lucky. What time do you get off?”

She gasped. “Señor! Is that any way for to talk to an honest working girl?”

“Just funning,” he said. “It must be catching around here. Would I be able to find your boss in that new saloon out back right now?”

She shrugged her shoulders, one bare and one covered by her thin cotton blouse. “Quien sabe? I only work here. Señor Brown asked me if I would like to work in his cantina, but I said no. Is going to be much trouble over that cantina, I think.”

“You could be right,” Stringer said. “Did you figure it out on your own, or have your people been discussing it, Ramona?”

“Both. Anyone can see it was not wise for to take on El Patron Bean while he was still alive, no?”

He sighed. “Maybe someone got tired of waiting. It’s been nice talking to you, Ramona.” Then he flipped a quarter on the bed and ducked back out.

Downstairs, since nobody was around to direct him, Stringer explored his way to a back hallway leading to the sound of clinking glass and hearty laughter. As he made his way into the smoke-filled erstwhile tack room, he saw another Mex gal doing a fandango in the center of the modest-sized floor, clicking her high heels like mad. The shoes were all she had on. She could have used a shave under her armpits as well, but she had a nice body, and knew it. Nobody noticed Stringer standing there. They’d have as likely missed a man with two heads, the way they were all gaping at the naked dancer.

There wasn’t a real bar, though everyone seemed to be holding glasses. A heavyset brute with eyebrows that met in the middle was wearing a dirty apron as he presided over a big keg set on sawhorses. Stringer made his way along the rear wall until the gent in the apron met his eyes with a scowl. Stringer smiled and joined him by the keg. “Howdy. I’ll try anything you may have on tap but coal oil.”

“It’s pulque,” the heavyset man growled. “Good stuff. I got an old Mex who makes it for me right. So you can tell your pals I don’t need no damned beer license to serve it, see?”

“You must have me mixed up with somebody else, landlord,” Stringer said. “I’m an innocent guest in your hotel, name of Stringer MacKail.”

The other man nodded. “I’m One Thumb Brown, in case you can’t count. I know who you are and all about you. You come to give the judge a hand, right?”

“Wrong,” Stringer said. “I’m a roving newspaperman, here to do a piece on old Roy Bean, if ever he’s up to talking to me. I’d best add that as a rule I pick my own fights. But if you’re sore at me, just say so and I’ll bed down somewhere else.”

One Thumb poured a glass of pulque for him, growling, “On the house, seeing you’re a guest in my hotel. I just wanted to clear the air betwixt us, MacKail. Some say you and that lady of your’n seem sort of thick with the Beans, considering how long you’ve been here. How is the old bastard, anyway?”

Stringer accepted the pulque, sipped, and pronounced it about as good as pulque ever got before he said, “He’s in piss-poor shape, as well you must know. Of course, if his fever breaks in time, he may surprise us all. Are you saying nobody can serve beer and such in Langtry without old Bean’s permission?”

“I never said that,” Brown said. “He did. Getting here earlier than the rest of us, the old bandit sewed up all the township positions from J.P. to postmaster for his fool self. Anyone can see it ain’t fair for a saloonkeeper to enjoy sole power to issue a town liquor license. But what’s a body to do, sue him?”

Stringer took another sip. “That would be a chore, knowing who’d be trying the case. It does sound a mite monopolistic. On the other hand, President Roosevelt wouldn’t be raising all that hell about monopolies, back east, if a lot of old boys hadn’t always taken the view that first-come has first dibs. A heap of small towns are run much the same. Who holds title to the land Langtry sits on, the railroad?”

One Thumb Brown looked blank, then said, “Bean owns it, I hope. I’ve been paying land rent to him for quite a spell. Are you saying he’s been skinning us that way too?”

“It’s an interesting angle,” Stringer said. “How do I go about sending a few telegrams out of here?”

“You don’t. The judge tried to get a Western Union franchise a spell back. They told him not to be silly. He don’t cut much ice, outside his private town.”

There was a gleeful roar of laughter behind him, so Stringer turned his head to see the naked dancing gal had been joined by a young Mex dancing partner. He was naked, too, and they weren’t exactly dancing. Stringer grimaced and turned back to One Thumb Brown. “Are you sure the judge only turned you down for a beer license?” he asked casually.

The owner of the whole shebang scowled. “He called me a whore monger to my very face, the old fool. Anyone can see Rosalita ain’t no whore. She’s just putting on a show for the old boys. She ain’t screwing none of ‘em.”

“They probably couldn’t afford it,” Stringer said dryly. Then, having spotted the hand called Sunny Jim through the smoke on the far side, Stringer finished his pulque, put down the glass with a nod of thanks, and turned to go.

“Hey, MacKail,” One Thumb called out, “try not to get any thicker with old Bean and his whelps, hear? Some of the boys don’ seem to think much of a white man who’d side against his own kind, see?”

Stringer stared soberly at the crowd grinning down at the Mex couple writhing on the floor before he nodded. “Don’t worry, you have my word I’m not fixing to take sides against the sort of gents I have anything in common with.”