A game of Patience was laid out before him: black on red, red on black, the partially formed Square o’ Court above all, just as it was in the affairs of men. In his left hand the player held the remains of the deck. As he flipped the cards up, one by one, the tattoo on his right hand moved. It was disconcerting somehow, as if the coffin were breathing. The card-player was an oldish fellow, not as thin as the Mayor or his sister, but thin. His long white hair straggled down his back. He was deeply tanned, except for his neck, where he always burned; the flesh there hung in scant wattles. He wore a mustache so long the ragged white ends hung nearly to his jaw-a sham gunslinger’s mustache, many thought it, but no one used the word “sham” to Eldred Jonas’s face. He wore a white silk shirt, and a black-handled revolver hung low on his hip. His large, red-rimmed eyes looked sad on first glance. A second, closer look showed them only to be watery. Of emotion they were as dead as the eyes of The Romp.
He turned up the Ace of Wands. No place for it. “Pah, you bugger,” he said in an odd, reedy voice. It quavered, as well, like the voice of a man on the verge of tears. It fit perfectly with his damp and red-rimmed eyes. He swept the cards together.
Before he could reshuffle, a door opened and closed softly upstairs. Jonas put the cards aside and dropped his hand to the butt of his gun.
Then, as he recognized the sound of Reynolds’s boots coming along the gallery, he let go of the gun and drew his tobacco-pouch from his belt instead. The hem of the cloak Reynolds always wore came into view, and then he was coming down the stairs, his face freshly washed and his curly red hair hanging about his ears. Vain of his looks was dear old Mr. Reynolds, and why not? He’d sent his cock on its exploring way up more damp and cozy cracks than Jonas had ever seen in his life, and Jonas was twice his age.
At the bottom of the stairs Reynolds walked along the bar, pausing to squeeze one of Pettie’s plump thighs, and then crossed to where Jonas sat with his makings and his deck of cards.
“Evening, Eldred.”
“Morning, Clay.” Jonas opened the sack, took out a paper, and sprinkled tobacco into it. His voice shook, but his hands were steady. “Like a smoke?”
“I could do with one.”
Reynolds pulled out a chair, turned it around, and sat with his forearms crossed on its back. When Jonas handed him the cigarette, Reynolds danced it along the backs of his fingers, an old gunslinger trick. The Big Coffin Hunters were full of old gunslinger tricks.
“Where’s Roy? With Her Nibs?” They had been in Hambry a little over a month now, and in that time Depape had conceived a passion for a fifteen-year-old whore named Deborah. Her bowlegged clumping walk and her way of squinting off into the distance led Jonas to suspect she was just another cowgirl from a long line of them, but she had high-hat ways. It was Clay who had started calling the girl Her Nibs, or Her Majesty, or sometimes (when drunk) “Roy’s Coronation Cunt.”
Reynolds now nodded. “It’s like he’s drunk on her.”
“He’ll be all right. He ain’t throwing us over for some little snuggle-bunny with pimples on her tits. Why, she’s so ignorant she can’t spell cat. Not so much as cat, no. I asked her.”
Jonas made a second cigarette, drew a sulfur match from the sack, and popped it alight with his thumbnail. He lit Reynolds’s first, then his own.
A small yellow cur came in under the batwing doors. The men watched it in silence, smoking. It crossed the room, first sniffed at the curdled vomit in the comer, then began to eat it. Its stub of a tail wagged back and forth as it dined.
Reynolds nodded toward the admonition not to argue about the cards you were dealt. “That mutt’d understand that, I’d say.”
“Not at all, not at all,” Jonas demurred. “Just a dog is all he is, a spew-eating dog. I heard a horse twenty minutes ago. First on the come, then on the go. Would it have been one of our hired watchmen?”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
“Don’t pay to, no, don’t pay a bit. Was it?”
“Yep. Fellow who works for one of the small freeholders out along the east end of the Drop. He seen ’em come in. Three. Young. Babies.” Reynolds pronounced this last as they did in the North'rd Baronies: babbies. “Nothing to worry of.”
“Now, now, we don’t know that,” Jonas said, his quavering voice making him sound like a temporizing old man. “Young eyes see far, they say.”
“Young eyes see what they’re pointed at,” Reynolds replied. The dog trotted past him, licking its chops. Reynolds helped it on its way with a kick the cur was not quite quick enough to avoid. It scuttled back out under the batwings, uttering little yike-yike sounds that made Barkie snort thickly from his place of rest beneath the piano bench. His hand opened and the playing card dropped out of it.
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Jonas said. “In any case, they’re Affiliation brats, sons of big estates off in the Green Somewhere, if Rimer and that fool he works for have it straight. That means we’ll be very, very careful. Walk easy, like on eggshells. Why, we’ve got three more months here, at least! And those young'uns may be here that whole time, counting this ’ counting that and putting it all down on paper. Folks counting things ain’t good for us right now. Not for men in the resupply business.”
“Come on! It’s make-work, that’s all-a slap on the wrist for getting in trouble. Their daddies-”
“Their daddies know Farson’s in charge of the whole Southwest Edge now, and sitting on high ground. The brats may know the same-that playtime’s purt' near over for the Affiliation and all its pukesome royalty. Can’t know, Clay. With folks like these, you can’t know which way they’ll jump. At the very least, they may try to do a half-decent job just to try and get on the good side o’ their parents again. We’ll know better when we see em, but I tell you one thing: we can’t just put guns to the backs of their heads and drop them like broke-leg bosses if they see the wrong thing. Their daddies might be mad at em alive, but I think they’d be very tender of em dead-that’s just the way daddies are. We’ll want to be trig, Clay; as trig as we can be.”
“Better leave Depape out of it, then.”
“Roy will be fine,” Jonas said in his quavery voice. He dropped the stub of his cigarette to the floor and crushed it under his bootheel. He looked up at The Romp’s glassy eyes and squinted, as if calculating. “Tonight, your friend said? They arrived tonight, these brats?”
“Yep.”
“They’ll be in to see Avery tomorrow, then, I reckon.” This was Herk Avery, High Sheriff of Mejis and Chief Constable of Hambry, a large man who was as loose as a trundle of laundry.
“Reckon so,” Clay Reynolds said. “To present their papers ’ all.”
“Yes, sir, yes indeedy. How-d'you-do, and how-d'you-do, and how-d'you-do again.”
Reynolds said nothing. He often didn’t understand Jonas, but he had been riding with him since the age of fifteen, and knew it was usually better not to ask for enlightenment. If you did, you were apt to end up listening to a cult-manni lecture about the other worlds the old buzzard had visited through what he called “the special doors.” As far as Reynolds was concerned, there were enough ordinary doors in the world to keep him busy.
“I’ll speak to Rimer and Rimer’ll talk to the Sheriff about where they should stay,” Jonas said. “I think the bunkhouse at the old Bar K ranch. You know where I mean?”
Reynolds did. In a Barony like Mejis, you got to know the few landmarks in a hurry. The Bar K was a deserted spread of land northwest of town, not too far from that weird squalling canyon. They burned at the mouth of the canyon every fall, and once, six or seven years ago, the wind had shifted and gone back wrong and burned most of the Bar K to the ground-barns, stables, the home place. It had spared the bunkhouse, however, and that would be a good spot for three tenderfeet from the Inners. It was away from the Drop; it was also away from the oil patch.