The fat man found all of this tedious. “I said it was enough. Can you not even tell by its weight that your precious blaster is empty?”
Then she knew. She placed the automatic on her coverlet, lying back, hands up in front of her face to protect herself from the expected attack.
He loomed over her, smelling of a mixture of perspiration and scented lotion, his huge hands poised.
“Just talk,” he said. “Talk about Ryan Cawdor.”
Chapter Eleven
The Allied Merchants’ Federation of Deathlands had come from far and wide for its annual three-day convention in Twin Forks.
Because of its site at the confluence of the Big White and the Sippi, most had come by river, while others had come along the dusty coach roads. It seemed to Ryan that all of them were cast from the same mold middle-aged, white, overweight, in suits that were a little too tight across the stomach, carrying leather cases and wearing large badges that proclaimed their names and firms and where they came from.
And all of them had eager, sweating smiles pasted on their highly colored faces.
They reminded Ryan of an assortment of pigs disguised in human clothes.
Dolores Stanwyck’s concern was well based.
Ryan had gone along to sit quietly in a shadowy corner of the Montana Queen, minding his own business, eating a bowl of chili and sipping at a schooner of beer. He watched as the delegates to the convention set to enjoying themselves, which involved drinking too much too fast, insulting the barkeeps, puking in the sawdust, upsetting the regulars and harassing the hardworking girls, all in between complaining about the high prices and poor quality of everything from the ten-minute rooms to the imported liquors.
Dolores herself was doing what she could to keep the atmosphere pleasant. She wore a low-cut brocade dress and her highest heels, keeping a smile in place despite all the aggravation, circulating through the bar, offering a free drink here and there to keep a particularly noisy group sweet. She constantly turned her head to spot trouble brewing, making sure that her bouncers, including Jak and J.B., were on their toes and in the right place at the right time.
There had been several minor scuffles, with a hideaway pistol drawn in one of them. But the sec force kept the lid on it, taking away the blaster, unfired, from the staggering-drunk merchant without triggering more trouble.
One incident happened right by Ryan’s table, handled by J.B. and Jak.
Five of the conventioneers had been trying to persuade two of the older gaudy sluts to go upstairs with them and give them a special discount.
“Five of you want fucking, then you pay the fucking price for five,” said the taller of the whores, a Mex-looking woman with olive skin and cascading black hair.
“I give a good discount in my store up in Oregon,” said one of them.
“That’s fine, but we don’t here in the Montana Queen. Check it out with Miss Stanwyck.”
The man, whose badge proclaimed that he was Jerry Ettinger, laughed loudly and unpleasantly. “Suppose we just take you out back, and that way you give us a hundred percent off the price.”
Suddenly, unnoticed, Jak and J.B. appeared at the merchants’ table.
“Having trouble, Maria?” the Armorer asked.
“Yeah. These gentlemen” she invested the word with contempt and loathing “say they’re going to drag us both out back and rape us.”
Aware of the sec men, the merchant changed his tune a little, falling back on fake jolliness. “Hey, boys, we was just having some sporting with the hookers. They kind of got the wrong end of the handle.”
“That so?” J.B. said quietly. “Then best let them go about their business, and you stick to enjoying the rest of the pleasures of the Montana Queen.”
One of the other men at the table, even fatter, whose name badge had fallen off, was struggling to focus his rolling, poached-egg eyes on Jak. “Hey, this snow-head son bitch’s some kind of mutie freak,” he eventually pronounced. “We don’t take no shit from mutie freaks.”
Ryan smiled grimly, watching as the white-haired teenager made his move.