Jerry Bigg was drunk.
He got drunk regularly once a month in the Red Onion, part of the reward he paid himself for groveling in the dirt like a gopher, for thirty days placering up in the Burro Mountains. He had a set routine. A bath and a shave, a room at the Star Hotel, where Del Truesdell would look after Jerry’s dust while he had what he called his ‘whoopdang-dingle’; a couple of drinks with the steak and egg and canned tomatoes he would eat before spending some time at Morrill’s Opera House, watching the show, giving the girls the eye; and then some serious drinking at the saloon. Jerry was a ‘quiet’ drinker, never gave anybody any trouble. Harvey Whitehill, the sheriff, knew him and let him alone, even when Jerry started singing songs about his mother in a terrible off-key tenor.
So here it was getting towards midnight and Jerry was well and truly smashed. He had his arm around one of the Red Onion’s bar-girls, a pert little redhead called Jenny who was stringing the miner along for all the drinks she could get out of him. The girls in the place had a rota system with Jerry, which was the only fair way to play it. He was openhanded to the point of stupidity when he was having his sprees, and he had never laid a hurtful hand on anyone of them, which was no small blessing if you worked in the Red Onion.
‘’s oft in the cool of the eeeeeeeeevenin,’ Jerry was roaring softly, his voice full of maudlin passion, ‘whe’ the shadders shink in th’ west … ’
‘Come on, honey,’ Jenny told him. ‘Knock off on that yowlin’, will ya?`
‘Yowlin’?’ Jerry said owlishly. ‘Shin — singin’, that is. “I think o’ the twi-hi-ligh’ song you shang, an’ the boy you loved the best … ” ’
‘Aw, c’mon, honey,’ the girl said, wriggling herself around against him. ‘Don’t ya wanna come back to my place?’
He looked at her, drawing his head back and focusing on the painted pouting little face. ‘Wharra pretty gal,’ he remarked.
‘We could get a bottle an’ go back to my place, Jerry,’ the girl said. ‘Wouldn’tcha like that?’
‘Madam,’ Bigg said, staggering to his feet and almost spilling the girl to the floor, ‘your servant. Wharra pretty girl,’ he said to a smiling crowd of miners at the next table.
One of them neighed like a horse and there was a burst of laughter. Jerry Bigg glared at them for a moment, then his natural good humor reasserted itself.
‘Bring a bottle,’ he told the girl and headed for the door. She caught him as he veered off towards the right, his balance centers totally out of kilter, grimacing at one of the other girls by the bar.
‘Good luck, honey,’ the other girl minced.
‘Up yours,’ said Jenny elegantly, and lurched out into the crowded street with Jerry Bigg leaning heavily on her. People made room for them on the sidewalk, grinning hugely as Jerry burst brokenly into song as . they reeled along. She piloted him up the street and turned left into the alleyway towards her shack on Sandy Lane. She figured Jerry still had twenty or thirty dollars left and saw no earthly reason why he should waste it on the Red Onion’s rotgut, good money that she could nicely use. She had a sock inside her mattress with a hundred and twenty dollars saved already and when she had enough she was going to open a place of her own and then, by God! let any horny-handed bastard try to lay a finger on her! She staggered down the alley with Jerry still singing happily, waving the bottle he was clutching firmly by the neck. If she could get him into bed, he’d go out like a light and wouldn’t remember tomorrow whether he’d spent the money on drink or her or both. Perspiration streaked her heavy makeup and she cursed silently as she helped the drunken miner down the side of a shallow gully that ran behind the Orpheum. Her place was on the far side. Jerry stumbled and slid down into the wash on his backside. She let him go and then went down into the brush-choked gully where Bigg was pawing around like a drowning swimmer, laughing uproariously at this new pastime. As she hitched up her skirts and eased down the slope, Jenny saw a white thing lying off behind the bushes. She thought at first it was an old mattress, or some discarded pottery, for the light was poor.
Frowning she took a step towards it and then saw it was the body of a naked man and as the moon soared clear of the cloud for a moment she saw what had been done to it and started screaming. Jerry Bigg froze as the scream rent the air and then tried to get to his feet, falling over in his haste and panic.
Jenny kept on screaming until the sheriff came pounding down into the gully and followed her pointing finger to the naked body of Frank Angel. The girl stopped screaming then and started sobbing as they shepherded her away. She had no idea at all that she had saved a man’s life.