After the Ashes(50)

Luckily, the drunk was far from observant. Braddock approached the marble slab that served as a bar, the card players at the far table in his peripheral vision.

“Regular beer for me and the kid. Ginger beer for my wife, if you’ve got it.” Braddock leaned his back on the bar and surveyed the room like a tenderfoot. “This place must have been something in its day. Didn’t expect to find anything so fancy out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Red wallpaper with a swirled gold-leaf pattern peeled from the walls. The floor matched the pink marble of the bar, but which held more dirt was debatable. Braddock swore he saw hoof prints in the drifts of dust and sand that had accumulated here. A chandelier hung askew from the half painted ceiling, dripping crystals like a waterfall.

The bartender giggled from behind him and set three dusty bottles on the counter. “I don’t even know what ginger beer is.”

Braddock picked up one of the green bottles, examined the murky liquid inside, then turned the bottle upside down. The contents had congealed into a sludge that had trouble sliding to the corked top.

“How about if we just stick with whiskey?”

“That we have. For all three of you?” He pushed a bottle and two large shot glasses across the bar. They made trails in the dust that allowed the rose grained marble to peek through.

“The missus had better stay away from the whiskey. She’s a delicate thing,” Braddock said, as if he were confiding in the man.

The bartender glanced in Lorelei’s direction. “She’s a mighty pretty one.” His gaze jumped to the card players, and he frowned. He leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t want to seem inhospitable, but this isn’t the best place to bring a lady of quality, or your son, if you know what I mean.” Braddock lessened the distance between them. He nodded to the two men who were watching the exchange. “Had trouble here, have you?”

“You don’t know the trouble.” The bartender gingerly fingered his swollen eye.

A chair scraping against the marble floor drew their attention to the table in the back. One of the card players stood. His belt sagged with the weight of two navy revolvers. “Who’s your friend, Archie?”

Archie grabbed a soiled cloth from under the counter and wiped the bar, leaving as much grime as he mopped up. “A stranger passing through.”

The man strode toward them, both his hands resting on his guns. “What’s your business, stranger?”

Braddock spread his hands on the bar. “I don’t want any trouble. I’ve got my wife and son with me. We’re on our way back from selling our herd in Santa Fe.”

The young gunslinger studied Lorelei and Corey. “If you’re from around here, you should know better than to wind up in Coyote Pass.”

“Come on, Buster. He just wanted a drink for his wife and boy. You don’t want to go shooting up women and children, do you?” Archie put another bottle of whiskey on the counter. “Have a drink on me and finish your cards.”

The gunslinger strolled in Corey and Lorelei’s direction.“If you had a few less drinks on the house, Archie, maybe you’d learn how to pick your friends better. How old’s this kid?”

“Thirteen,” said Lorelei before Braddock could answer. “Almost fourteen,” Braddock followed up, wondering if the gunslinger were blind enough to believe Corey was his son. He should have stuck with the hired hand story.

Behind him he could hear a bottle being uncorked, a drink being poured.

“I told you that Sullivan fella wasn’t my friend. He just wanted a game, had his own cards. I didn’t introduce him to Mulcahy. I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Archie said.

The gunslinger—Buster, the bartender called him—stared hard at Corey, then turned back to Lorelei. “You look much too young to have a child that old, ma’am. You’re a girl yourself.”

Lorelei returned his flirtatious smile. “Thank you.” Braddock marveled at the acting ability of both brother and sister. They hadn’t even flinched when Archie had mentioned Corey’s name. Luckily, Buster had his back to him and Archie was too busy drinking to notice Braddock tense. “Son, take your mother outside. This is no place for her.”

“Yes, Pa.” Corey’s voice sounded higher than usual. Whether the change was intentional or just a result of plain terror, Braddock didn’t know. But it sounded good.

“Proper or not, I’ll just faint if I get back into that heat.” Lorelei removed her bonnet and fanned herself with it. “I’m fine here, sugar.”

He’d warned her not to do this. “What about the corrupting influence on our son, dear? He’s too young to be in a saloon with gambling and spirits and God knows what else.” Braddock laid on the Southern drawl so thick he almost choked on it.