“Now what?” Glenda asked, studying the man in the street who was picking up horse droppings.
“We’re going to need information,” Tanda said.
“And we just can’t come out and ask for it,” I said.
Everyone agreed.
“We’re also going to need horses,” Glenda said. “Unless you want to do more walking in this heat.”
I glanced down the street at the open countryside beyond the limits of the small town. Walking back out into that for any distance would be a very bad idea.
We all agreed that we didn’t want to do that as well.
“Well, we need two things,” I said. “Information about the golden cow, and horses to get us to the treasure.”
“Skeeve and I will try the place across the street,” Glenda said. “You two head for another one farther along.”
“All right,” Aahz said, surprising me by agreeing to Glenda’s plan. “We meet back in the cabin on Vortex #6 in one hour.”
I made sure Glenda understood, since she was my ride out of here. Then we stepped into the street, making a wide turn around one of the large piles of horsepoop the guy was collecting.
He just smiled at us and said, “Howdy.”
I tipped my hat at him and he seemed satisfied enough to go back to work.
I was right in all fashions about Audry’s Place. It was clear as we went through the door that it was both a restaurant and a bar. The bar was wooden and long, stretching the entire length of the left wall as we entered. A hatless guy wearing a white apron stood behind the bar, a rag in his hands.
Three of the tables were occupied with a total of ten patrons, all of them eating what looked to be large plates of vegetables. The music was loud and had a pretty good beat to it. It seemed like it was coming from a piano in the back, only there was no one sitting at the piano.