LU WOKE THE NEXT MORNING to find Sadie gone. Her blanket was balled up in its usual spot, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Henry was crouched in front of the fireplace, stirring a pot of strong coffee. Chino was still fast asleep.
“Where is she?” Lu whispered.
Henry pointed at the door.
Lu went to the window and peered out. Sadie was sitting on her father’s grave talking a mile a minute, but Lu couldn’t hear what she said. All four horses were groomed, saddled, and tied to the porch rail. Lucky too. Strangely, the mule was wearing Chino’s old army saddle.
“Come away from there,” Henry said. “Leave the girl alone.”
Lu sat down on the floor beside Henry. The heat rising from the fire felt good. Mornings in the high mountains were cool, even in late summer.
“Any idea what month this is?” Lu asked.
“Must be September,” Henry said.
“Do you think the kids in St. Frances are at school?”
“Unless it’s Saturday or Sunday. I can’t tell you that.”
“Sadie saddled our horses. Do you think that means she’s ready to leave?”
“I’m sure she’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
Chino got up a few minutes later. “Where’s Sadie?” he asked.
Henry handed him a cup of coffee. “She’s talking to her father.”
“Maybe I ought to take her a cup.”
“Not just yet.”
Sadie came in soon after. She plunked herself down by the fire and stretched her hands to the heat. “What’s for breakfast?” she asked.
“Coffee,” Henry said.
“Nothin’ else?”
“Vegetables, if you want ’em.”
Sadie shook her head. “I’m sick of vegetables. Let’s get out of here.”
They packed up the remaining provisions, placed the five sacks of gold dust into the bottom of Sadie’s trunk, and hauled it all outside. Chino and Henry shouldered the heavy trunk up and onto Lucky’s saddle, and Sadie strapped it down tight. They had no more need of a sledgehammer or drill bit, so Lu tossed them in the shed.
“Well,” Chino said, “I guess that about does it.”
“There’s just one more thing,” Sadie said. “I want you to have Daddy’s saddle.”
Chino was taken aback. “I couldn’t.”
“What’ll I do with an extra saddle? And you need something better ‘n that old army thing you’ve been ridin’.”
She didn’t wait to hear his thanks before turning to address Lu.
“And I want you to take his guitar.” Lu tried to protest, but Sadie wouldn’t listen. “You enjoyed his playin’ more than any of us. If you’d learn to strum a bit, I know he’d be honored.”
“I’ll try,” Lu promised.
“Good enough.”
Finally, Sadie turned to Henry. “I’d like to give you Daddy’s boots. I did some lookin’ while you were asleep, and I reckon they might fit.” She took the boots from her saddle bags and handed them to Henry. They were dusty and scuffed, no longer the ebony mirrors Lu had first observed back in the doorway of the Stars and Bars in St. Frances, but they were still among the finest pieces of leather he’d ever seen.
“Daddy always liked a man that cared for his shoes,” Sadie said.
Henry sat down on the porch, kicked off his old boots and pulled on the new. “Fit like they were made for me,” he said. “Soft as butter.”
Sadie beamed.
They rode into Silver City just after noon the following day, and went directly to the house of Pearl and J.D. Lower. Their girls, Hazel and Claire, were sitting on the front porch, shucking corn. As soon as they saw who was coming, they screamed for their mother and father to “come out front” and “see who’s here.” The noise they made was high-pitched enough to wake sleeping dogs the world over. Their mother burst through the front door a moment later, no doubt wondering who’d got murdered. J.D. came loping around the side of the house, still wearing his blacksmith’s apron.
“We’re back!” Sadie said. “And I reckon we’ll repay that loan now.”
“John?” Pearl called. “Are you there, John MacLemore? Someone has come lookin’ for you.”
“Who is it?” Sadie asked.
But before Pearl could answer, a man strode through the open door behind her, his spurs jangling on the wood porch.
“I hear you folks have had some adventures,” Jack Straw said.
He looked even more ragged and woebegone than Lu remembered. His cheeks were sallow and unshaven, his mustache long and greasy. The skin on his hands was chapped and blistered. Even his coat, Jack’s lone piece of decent clothing, was damaged almost beyond repair. There was a bullet-hole in the right breast, and the cuffs of both sleeves had been scorched black. He was even missing a few brass buttons.
“Are you all right?” Lu asked him.
“Fine,” Jack said. “Some Confederates were trying to sneak across the border. We told them they couldn’t, and they took it amiss.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, they went back eventually, one way or another.”
“Daddy was killed,” Sadie said.
“Lord!” Pearl Lower moaned. J.D. hugged her to his chest.
“How’d it happen?” Jack asked.
For the next three hours they talked, first in the front yard, and then over meatloaf sandwiches Hazel and Claire served in the garden. Sadie told every last detail of their ride across the Lago del Fuego, even reciting whole conversations word for word. When she got tired, Henry took over. He told Jack all about their encounter with the Saints, and their subsequent flight from the Sons of Dan. Lu told about the hanging they’d witnessed in Silver City, and how he and MacLemore had purchased blasting powder and tools. They left it up to Chino to describe the storm, their separation, and MacLemore’s death. Lu could see it pained him, but Chino left nothing out. Sadie finished by explaining how they’d buried her father and discovered the gold under her mother’s tub.
When the story was all told, Jack took a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it with a match. “So what’s your plan now?” he asked.
“I can’t speak for the others,” Chino replied. “But as for me, I aim to hunt Phillip Traum to the ends of the earth.”
“You can speak for me,” Henry said.
“And me.” Sadie glowered so terribly that Lu could barely stand to look at her.
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to go that far,” Jack said. “Will they, Lu?”
Lu shook his head. “Traum is in the saloon. Right where he’s been this whole time.”
The sun was setting as they rode into town, passing between the boarded up store-fronts and abandoned houses.
It felt strange, Lu thought, and a bit spooky, not to have his bedroll with him, or his saddlebags. Everything they’d hauled across country was now hidden, right along with Sadie’s trunk, in the crawlspace beneath Pearl Lower’s pantry. They’d only brought one type of equipment on this adventure—guns.
It was quiet in Silver City, the streets all but deserted. Even the saloon was wrapped in a ghostly hush. The usual plink and plunk of the barroom piano was conspicuously absent, as was the chatter and hum of half-drunken voices.
A pair of saloon girls were rifling through the saddlebags of a half-starved, sway-backed old plug, tied to a hitching-rail across the street from the saloon. It was a poor fortune they had to pick through, judging by the quality of items Lu saw lying in the mud. An empty whiskey bottle, a broken hairbrush, some rusty shell-casings for a scattergun Lu suspected had been pawned long since, and bag after bag of worthless gray rocks. Lu wouldn’t have given a penny for the whole lot. Even so, the saloon girls didn’t quit digging until they’d turned both saddlebags inside out. Finally, empty-handed and grumbling, they led the horse down the street and through the open doors of what had once been a livery stable. Lu wondered what they planned to do with it.
“We’ve seen all this before,” Henry remarked. “Right after they hung Sawyer.”
Sure enough, a fresh body was dangling from the gallows next door to the saloon. It was Mike Dunleavy, the very same young prospector they’d met after the previous hanging. A third saloon girl, the most slovenly of the bunch, was going through the hanged man’s pockets. She’d discovered the mica samples from his claim, but apparently didn’t think nearly as much of them as Mike Dunleavy had. The glassy stones littered the ground beneath his still swinging feet.
“I can’t stand this,” Chino said, climbing down from his mare. He strode over to the gallows and marched up the steps. When he’d reached the top, he pulled out his knife and began sawing at the noose.
“And just what in the hell do you think you’re doin’?” the saloon girl asked. “This here’s an Irishman. Mayor don’t like ’em cut down for at least a day and a night.”
“You’d best get out of the way,” Chino warned.
The girl stepped aside as the body fell.
“That’s your death!” she shouted. “Mayor Strong is going to hear about this, just you bet. And I’ll tell him who did it, too. I guess he’ll use one of you as a replacement. You damned turds!” She finished with an obscene gesture, and then sprinted off toward the front of the saloon.
“Strong is liable to be upset,” Henry said.
“Yep,” Jack agreed. “He’ll be fightin’ mad all right.”
“So let’s go meet him,” Sadie suggested.
Quick as they could, they tied their horses, all but Jack’s appaloosa, to a hitching rail in front of the boarded up dry goods emporium. Henry said they’d be out of danger there, and Lu hoped he was right. That done, Jack told Chino and Henry to get inside the Grange Hall, directly across the street from the tavern, and to be ready for action.
Jack stationed Sadie at the southern corner of the saloon. There were no windows on that side of the building, which meant that no one was liable to get the drop on her from behind. And by peeking around, she could easily see anyone that might try to come out the front door.
Lu was told to crouch down behind a watering trough, directly in front of Franklin Moss’s hardware store. From there he could look over the top of the trough or around either side, and so keep a watch over everything that happened. It also gave him a good vantage point from which to use his revolver, when the time came.
Jack remained in the street, seated atop his appaloosa.
They waited.
From his hiding spot, Lu watched as Sadie reached into her jacket pockets, lifting out both her own tiny revolver and her father’s somewhat larger model. Her hands shook violently. Lu could see her trembling even from twenty yards away. But his hands weren’t doing much better. He nearly dropped his pistol as he lifted it from his holster, and holding it steady was next to impossible. Lu tried aiming at the saloon doors, but for some reason the tip of his gun dipped and bounced with every breath he took.
He was scared. Terrified.
Lu had yet to hit anything with his strange brass revolver, and he didn’t guess he’d fare much better this time unless he figured out some way of controlling his nerves. Lu tried to breathe deeply and relax, as Henry had taught him, but it was no use. The pistol seemed to have a will of its own. He squeezed the grip as hard as he could, but that just made the jumping worse.
Finally, after what seemed hours, the saloon doors swung wide and Mayor Strong, dressed in his usual three-piece suit, strutted out. His boot heels echoed on the board sidewalk.
“Who cut down the Irishman?” Strong roared. He had a pistol in his hand, the largest Lu had ever seen, and looked more than ready to use it.
“I did!” Chino called through the open door of the Grange.
“What did you want to do that for?”
“Maybe he figured it’d make you mad,” Jack said.
Strong looked at the gunfighter and sneered.
Jack was the only one of them who had yet to draw his weapons. In fact, he wasn’t even sitting up in the saddle. He sort of slouched with one elbow resting on the horn. Lu thought he looked bored, but guessed that must just be playacting.
“Who are you?” Strong asked.
“You know me,” Jack said. “Know me all too well, I’d say.”
“So what do you want?”
“It’s time you left this town and let it die in peace. The gold’s gone. No more roughnecks will be coming after it. No more adventurers. Your time in Silver City is at an end.”
“No one knows it’s gone,” Strong said. “Besides, it wasn’t the gold they wanted. It was what the gold could buy. Glory. Fame. Women. Some even thought it could buy freedom.”
“They’ll know it’s gone soon enough.” Jack motioned toward Sadie, peering out from behind the corner of the saloon. “When that girl deposits her share in the treasury at San Pablo, word’ll get out.”
“Good point. So why would I let her do that?”
“No choice. As usual, you’ll be off licking your wounds in some cave.”
Strong grimaced. “Not this time.”
“No?” Jack sat bolt upright. “Well, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Strong turned and leapt back through the swinging doors of his tavern. As he did, the windows all along the second floor slid upward, and gun barrels of every description jutted out, all of them pointing down at Jack.
Jack went for his pistols, but it was too late. The guns in the upstairs window fired. Spooked, Jack’s appaloosa reared, sending him toppling out of his saddle.
Lu could scarcely believe his eyes. Quick as thought their gunfighter was down. Lu couldn’t tell whether Jack had been shot and killed, broke something in the fall, or was knocked unconscious. Whatever it was, he made no move to get up. And his appaloosa tore off down the street, disappearing in the gathering dusk.
Stunned, Lu watched as bullet after bullet cascaded down and into the corpse of his friend. It was the most gruesome thing he’d ever witnessed. And without Jack, Lu supposed they were as good as dead, too. He was so sure of it, in fact, that he very nearly gave himself up. And he would have, if not for the earsplitting roar of Henry’s rifle.
A thrill of hope raced up Lu’s spine as smoke and muzzle-fire belched from the open door of the bullet riddled Grange Hall, smashing in one of the saloon windows across the street.
Not to be outdone, Chino peppered the saloon with a full dozen slugs, managing to break all of the remaining upstairs windows and sending hot lead careening through the rooms beyond.
Mayor Strong and his men replied.
Soon, the air was filled with the clattering zip and boom of bullets being fired back and forth across the road, and over the prostrate form of the downed gunfighter, Jack Straw.
The speed of the attacks, the reloading and emptying of the guns on both sides, beggared description. Three times Lu tried to stick his head up and over the lip of the trough, intending to enter the battle. He never did see any faces in the saloon windows, but figured a bullet or two from his own pistol, even if he missed, might help his friends.
But every time he tried, the vast majority of the melee would suddenly be directed at him. Lead slugs crashed into the trough in front of him, splintered the wood sidewalk behind him, and tore holes through the front of Moss’s store. Lu couldn’t possibly get a shot off. Not without having his head sheared clean from his shoulders.
Sadie appeared to be having similar difficulties. Around the side of the trough, Lu could see her. Every few seconds she’d lean out from the corner of the saloon, aiming shots at the second story windows. None did much good, unfortunately. Sadie’s angle was all wrong. From that position she had no chance whatever of hitting Strong’s gunmen. Worse, every time she fired Strong himself would lean through the batwing doors and send a bullet toward Sadie’s head. Somehow, he always managed to miss. But Lu didn’t guess that could go on forever. Sooner or later, Strong was sure to get lucky.
Finally, after as many as a hundred shots had been fired in either direction, one of Chino’s slugs found a target. With a cry, a gunman collapsed through the middle upstairs window and went tumbling to the wood-plank sidewalk below. His pistol clattered across the boards and into the street. Lu saw no blood, but judging by the way he’d landed, he guessed the man’s neck must’ve been broken.
Unfortunately, the gunman refused to stay dead.
All at once, they heard the rolling thunder of a galloping horse. It was so loud, so unexpected, that for a moment it sucked the will right out of the combatants. Sadie paused in her battle with Mayor Strong. The gunmen in the upstairs windows ceased their rain of death. Even Henry and Chino were quiet.
Lu, wondering where the sound could possibly be coming from, gazed skyward. What he saw froze his blood.
It was one of the ghost-riders. Or its mount, anyway. The fiery beast shot the whole length of the town, leaving a trail of blazing hoof-prints in its wake.
When it reached the downed gunman, the demon horse stopped. It pawed the ground, setting even the mud in front of the plank sidewalk aflame. Tongues of hell-fire, some ten feet tall, leapt from its mane. Its coat was a roiling boil of liquid steel.
The dead gunman lurched to his feet. His skin and clothes scorched under the heat, then burned off as he climbed into the saddle.
With a curse and a howl of vicious laughter, the ghost-rider spurred his horse, whipping it up and over the town.
As they gained altitude, Henry shot wildly upward, his rifle sending what should have been certain death and destruction into the very heart of the flaming demon. But nothing could unseat him from his horse.
Just as Lu began to hope that he was leaving for good, the ghost-rider set his spurs, yanked his reins, and turned straight back around, diving hell-bent-for-leather toward the Grange. Like a comet he streaked earthward, crashing through the roof of the rickety old Hall, laughing as it exploded into flames.
Chino and Henry fled into the street, their clothes and hair smoldering, but still blasting away at both the saloon and the ghost-rider. Lu screamed at them, telling them to take cover. But it did no good. They had nowhere to hide. Without the meager protection that the Grange Hall provided, Henry and Chino were quickly shot to bits by Mayor Strong’s gunmen. Tears coursed down Lu’s face as his friends collapsed in the street beside Jack Straw.
Lu sat up, no longer caring whether he was killed, and aimed his revolver at the saloon. He hoped against hope that Mayor Strong would lean out just once more, so he could get a shot at him before being killed himself.
But Mayor Strong never did stick his head out. Instead, four more fiery horses appeared at the edge of town. Still sitting bolt upright, Lu watched in mute horror as they flew to the second-story windows of the saloon, pausing for only an instant as their riders, now stripped of their human forms, leapt into the saddle.
Cursing and whipping their mounts, the ghost-riders burned the town. With a mere flick of their tales, the slightest touch of their hooves, the demons set fire to everything. In moments, the whole of Silver City was consumed by hell-fire. All but the saloon and the gallows, both of which they left standing.
Lu sat in front of Moss’s store, watching the flames race along the dry shakes of rooftops, shoot through abandoned doors, and leap out of chimneys. He felt the heat. Soon, even the plank sidewalks would burn. At that point, he’d have no choice but to abandon the middling safety of his watering trough and move into the street.
He was just about to make a run for it and hope for the best, when their horses went galloping past. They’d broken their bonds, and were fleeing the burning town. Crash was in the lead. Lu was glad to see him go. He didn’t want his horse to die, too.
As he contemplated his own death, Lu saw one of the ghost-riders come swooping down over the gallows, heading straight for Sadie. Lu screamed himself hoarse as the demon chased Sadie across the street, finally latching onto the blond pony-tail that stuck out from under her flowered bonnet.
Sadie burst into flame as the ghost-rider lifted her onto his horse, setting her on the saddle in front of him. Her mouth opened wide, howling in agony. And then the ghost-rider leapt skyward once more, disappearing up and through the flames of the former Grange Hall, lost amid the holocaust of Silver City.
Lu put a hand over his eyes. He couldn’t stand to see any more. Any second now, Lu expected to be set on fire, his clothes first melting to his flesh, and then his whole body bursting into unholy flame. He only hoped it would kill him quickly.
Suddenly, above the crackling of the fires, Lu heard a voice. It wasn’t the voice of his own thoughts, which he’d heard every moment of his life, but it was familiar. He listened, trying to make out words. After a few seconds, he came to realize that the voice was saying only one word, over and over.
“Shoot,” it said. “Shoot.”
“Jack?” Lu called, recognizing the voice at last.
“Shoot!”
All of a sudden, Lu realized that he was still holding his revolver. He lifted it, eyes still shut tight, and pointed at what he hoped was the saloon.
His pistol gave its normal stunning roar.
Lu would’ve been blasted over backward, except that he was sitting with his back propped against the wood sidewalk in front of Moss’s store. As usual, he hadn’t managed to hit anything. So far as Lu could tell, his bullet had shot straight over the top of the saloon, headed for the infinities of space.
But that hardly made any difference.
Instantly, everything Lu thought he’d seen over the last couple of minutes was gone. All the lies and illusions had been whisked away.
Henry and Chino stood in front of the Grange, firing up at the second floor of the saloon as fast as they could reload their guns. Sadie leaned out from behind the corner, aiming up at those same windows, and then darting back. But most amazing of all, Jack sat astride his appaloosa, right in the middle of the street.
The ghost-riders, seeing that their illusions had been pierced, made one final impotent turn over the town, their laughter and curses now turned to wails of torment, and retreated behind the nearest mountain.
“It was all lies,” Lu muttered to himself. “Again. Just lies.”
As the reality of their situation sank in, Henry gave up shooting. Chino quit soon after. And Sadie stumbled from around the corner of the saloon, pistol still in hand, but no longer bothering to aim or pull the trigger.
Lu gazed at them, his ears ringing until he thought his head might crack in two, tears of joy running down his cheeks. He saw the whole truth now, recognized the entirety of what they’d faced.
The danger had never come from Mayor Strong, or Phillip Traum, or whatever else you might like to call him. It had always been them—Henry, Sadie, Chino, and even Lu himself—they were the real danger. Even tonight, Traum’s only hope had been that they would flee their hiding places, give in to anger and hatred. In the confusion, he thought he could fool them into gunning each other down. It was the same trick he’d been using forever. The same use of illusion. No different from when Chino had accidentally killed Mister MacLemore. Or Sawyer had murdered Pitt. Traum had done it time after time, year after year. The body count was enormous.
“Just lies,” Lu said again, and felt sick to his stomach.
The hell-fires that had bounded from the surfaces of the surrounding buildings were nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t even a puff of smoke. In fact, the only danger that remained was Phillip Traum himself, who stood in front of his now battered saloon, dressed in Mayor Strong’s three-piece suit, face wrinkled up in disgust.
“There’s your Phillip Traum!” Lu said, standing up and pointing. “There he is! The Prince of Lies!”
“Guess you couldn’t fool the boy,” Jack said.
They walked toward him, cautiously at first, guns raised in case of danger.
Traum glared. His three-piece suit was in tatters. The cuffs of his pants were shredded to ribbons. The pockets of his jacket had been torn open and were hanging by mere threads. His chin was no longer clean-shaven, but bristling with whiskers parted cleanly down the center. In his hand, rather than the pistol Lu would’ve sworn he’d seen there earlier, was a reed flute.
“Goddamn each and every last one of you to hell,” Traum said. His voice was odd. To Lu he sounded like an actor, trying to mimic some European king. “You’re nothing but a pack of filthy mongrels,” Traum continued. “True sons of—”
He didn’t finish the thought. Sadie shot him in the side of the head, and Traum went spinning off the plank sidewalk.
Screaming at the top of her lungs, Sadie ran toward him. When she was at point-blank range, she emptied her revolver into Traum’s body. As soon as that gun was empty, she fired the remaining bullets from her father’s pistol.
Henry went after her, tried to stop her, but she shoved him away.
“That’s enough,” he whispered. “It won’t do any—”
“Let her go,” Jack said.
Sadie looked at them, wild-eyed. “Give me your guns,” she said to Chino.
Dutifully, he handed her his pistols. Sadie emptied both into the motionless body of Phillip Traum. After that she demanded Henry’s rifle, and quickly shot it empty as well. Finally, she looked at Lu.
“No,” Lu said. “You’ve got to quit.”
Sadie bit her lip. She looked at Jack Straw.
“Feel any better?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. No, I don’t.”
“Small wonder,” Phillip Traum said. He sat up, brushed off the front of his suit, now even more torn and dirty than before, and slowly climbed to his feet. He was favoring one leg, Lu noticed. “Still, we all enjoyed the effort.”
“Old Scratch,” Jack said. “Good to see you in the flesh.”
“I say, you’ve always been a bother, Jack Straw,” Traum replied. “Even back in the old country, you always made a point of meddling in the affairs of your betters.”
“Betters? I don’t suppose you’d care to settle this once and for all?”
Traum grimaced. His teeth were as brown as tobacco leaves, but still looked strong enough to bite through hardened steel. “And just what did you have in mind, Jack?”
“The usual.”
Revolvers leapt into Jack’s hands, faster than sight, faster than thought, and in an instant he’d fired both empty.
Traum cart-wheeled backward. Chunks of flesh, muscle and bone ripped from his body. Lu winced as a section of Traum’s skull tore open, his brains bursting outward like a child’s jack-in-the-box.
When he was done, Jack dropped his pistols into their holsters and went back to leaning on his saddle-horn.
For a moment, Traum seemed finally to be dead. Blood spurted from a dozen wounds. Most were in his chest and stomach, but the ring-finger of one hand had been shorn off as well, and coils of purplish brain waggled from the hole in his skull.
“Is that it?” Sadie asked, hopefully. “Is he finally—”
Jack pointed. “Look.”
Traum turned toward them. He winked. “Guess I’ll be seeing you, old boy,” he said to Jack. “Here and there and everywhere.”
And with that, Traum raised the flute to his lips. The notes he played seemed to Lu as familiar as any he’d ever heard, though he couldn’t place the tune.
He was about to say as much when a shooting star pierced the inky dark above the tavern, causing Lu to glance upward. As he did, a flash of brilliant red fire shot past. For an instant, Lu was blinded. When he looked again, Phillip Traum was gone.
“Where’d he go?” Sadie asked.
“Ghost-riders took him,” Jack said.
“I didn’t see them.” Sadie looked at Henry and Chino. Both shook their heads.
“I saw something,” Lu said. “There was a flash, and then—”
“Nope, I don’t guess you would have seen them,” Jack said. “Not anymore.” He looked at Lu. “Do you remember what I told you about the ghost-riders?”
A shiver ran up Lu’s spine. “Only the innocent and the damned can see them.”
Jack nodded.
“But why’d you let him get away?” Sadie demanded. “Why did you let him go?”
“Don’t worry, Traum’s hurt plenty. Might take him years to put himself all back together. That’s about as much as we could’ve hoped.”
Henry sighed. “So he really was the Devil after all? Lucifer himself.”
“Not Lucifer,” Jack said. “Not by half.”
“Jesus y Santa Maria.” Chino made the sign of the cross. “I could use a drink.”
Jack laughed. “What’s your poison?”
“Tonight? Whiskey, straight, and lots of it.”
“Good idea.” Jack led them into the saloon.
Franklin Moss lay slumped over his usual table, an empty bottle beside his elbow. There was also one saloon girl, sitting in a straight-backed chair at the bottom of the stairs, passed-out drunk. All the rest of the saloon was deserted.
Jack reached over the bar, grabbed a bottle of brown whiskey by the neck, and slammed it down on the nearest table.
“Have as much as you like,” he said. “Tonight, drinks are on the house.”