Pettie’s face fell a foot; the heavy coat other makeup actually seemed to crack apart. She took the funnel from under the bar, stuck it in the neck of the bottle, and poured the shot of whiskey back in. Some went onto the bar in spite of the funnel; her plump hands (now ringless; her rings had been traded for food at the mercantile across the street long since) were shaking. “I’m sorry, sai. So I am. I was only—”
“I don’t care what ye was only,” Coral said, then turned a bloodshot eye on Sheb, who had been sitting on his piano-bench and leafing through old sheet-music.
Now he was staring toward the bar with his mouth hung open. “And what are you looking at, ye frog?”
“Nothing, sai Thorin. I—”
“Then go look at it somewhere else. Take this pig with’ee. Give her a bounce, why don’t ye? It’ll be good for her skin. It might even be good for yer own.”
“I-”
“Get out! Are ye deaf? Both of ye!”
Pettie and Sheb went away toward the kitchen instead of the cribs upstairs, but it was all the same to Coral. They could go to hell as far as she was concerned.
Anywhere, as long as they were out of her aching face.
She went behind the bar and looked around. Two men playing cards over in the far comer. That hardcase Reynolds was watching them and sipping a beer. There was another man at the far end of the bar, but he was staring off into space, lost in his own world. No one was paying any especial attention to sai Coral Thorin, and what did it matter if they were? If Pettie knew, they all knew.
She ran her finger through the puddle of whiskey on the bar, sucked it, ran it through again, sucked it again. She grasped the bottle, but before she could pour, a spidery monstrosity with gray-green eyes leaped, hissing, onto the bar. Coral shrieked and stepped back, dropping the whiskey bottle between her feet . . .
where, for a wonder, it didn’t break. For a moment she thought her head would break, instead—that her swelling, throbbing brain would simply split her skull like a rotten eggshell. There was a crash as the card-players overturned their table getting up. Reynolds had drawn his gun.
“Nay,” she said in a quavering voice she could hardly recognize. Her eyeballs were pulsing and her heart was racing. People could die of fright, she realized that now. “Nay, gentlemen, all’s well.”
The six-legged freak standing on the bar opened its mouth, bared its needle fangs, and hissed again.
Coral bent down (and as her head passed below the level of her waist, she was once more sure it was going to explode), picked up the bottle, saw that it was still a quarter full, and drank directly from the neck, no longer caring who saw her do it or what they thought.
As if hearing her thought, Musty hissed again. He was wearing a red collar this afternoon—on him it looked baleful rather than jaunty. Beneath it was tucked a white scrap of paper.
“Want me to shoot it?” a voice drawled. “I will if you like. One slug and won’t be nothing left but claws.” It was Jonas, standing just inside the batwings, and although he looked not a whole lot better than she felt, Coral had no doubt he could do it.
“Nay. The old bitch’ll turn us all into locusts, or something like, if ye kill her familiar.”
“What bitch?” Jonas asked, crossing the room.
“Rhea Dubativo. Rhea of the Coos, she’s called.”
“Ah! Not the bitch but the witch.”
“She’s both.”
Jonas stroked the cat’s back. It allowed itself to be petted, even arching against his hand, but he only gave it the single caress. Its fur had an unpleasant damp feel.
“Would you consider sharing that?” he asked, nodding toward the bottle. “It’s early, but my leg hurts like a devil sick of sin.”
“Your leg, my head, early or late. On the house.”
Jonas raised his white eyebrows.
“Count yer blessings and have at it, cully.”
She reached toward Musty. He hissed again, but allowed her to draw the note out from under his collar. She opened it and read the five words that were printed there:
“Might I see?” Jonas asked. With the first drink down and warming his belly, the world looked better.
“Why not?” She handed him the note. Jonas looked, then handed it back. He had almost forgotten Rhea, and that wouldn’t have done at all. Ah, but it was hard to remember everything, wasn’t it? Just lately Jonas felt less like a hired gun than a cook trying to make all nine courses of a state dinner come out at the same time.
Luckily, the old hag had reminded him of her presence herself. Gods bless her thirst. And his own, since it had landed him here at the right time.
“Sheemie!” Coral bawled. She could also feel the whiskey working; she felt almost human again. She even wondered if Eldred Jonas might be interested in a dirty evening with the Mayor’s sister … who knew what might speed the hours?
Sheemie came in through the batwings, hands grimy, pink sombrera bouncing on his back at the end of its cuerda. “Aye, Coral Thorin! Here I be!”
She looked past him, calculating the sky. Not tonight, not even for Rhea; she wouldn’t send Sheemie up there after dark, and that was the end of it.
“Nothing,” she said in a voice that was gentler than usual. “Go back to yer flowers, and see that ye cover them well. It bids frosty.”
She turned over Rhea’s note and scrawled a single word on it:
tomorrow
This she folded and handed to Jonas. “Stick it under that stink’s collar for me, will ye? I don’t want to touch him.”
Jonas did as he was asked. The cat favored them with a final wild green look, then leaped from the bar and vanished beneath the batwings.
“Time is short,” Coral said. She hadn’t the slightest idea what she meant, but Jonas nodded in what appeared to be perfect understanding. “Would you care to go upstairs with a closet drunk? I’m not much in the looks department, but I can still spread em all the way to the edge of the bed, and I don’t just lie there.”
He considered, then nodded. His eyes were gleaming. This one was as thin as Cordelia Delgado … but what a difference, eh? What a difference! “All right.”
“I’ve been known to say some nasty things—fair warning.”
“Dear lady, I shall be all ears.”
She smiled. Her headache was gone. “Aye. I’ll just bet ye will.”
“Give me a minute. Don’t move a step.” He walked across to where Reynolds sat.
“Drag up a chair, Eldred.”
“I think not. There’s a lady waiting.”
Reynolds’s gaze flicked briefly toward the bar. “You’re joking.”
“I never joke about women, Clay. Now mark me.”
Reynolds sat forward, eyes intent. Jonas was grateful this wasn’t Depape. Roy would do what you asked, and usually well enough, but only after you’d explained it to him half a dozen times.
“Go to Lengyll,” he said. “Tell him we want to put about a dozen men—no less than ten—out at yon oilpatch. Good men who can get their heads down and keep them down and not snap the trap too soon on an ambush, if ambushing’s required.
Tell him Brian Hockey’s to be in charge.He’s got a level head, which is more than can be said for most of these poor things.”
Reynolds’s eyes were hot and happy. “You expect the brats?”
“They’ve been out there once, mayhap they’ll be out again. If so, they’re to be crossfired and knocked down dead. At once and with no warning. You understand?”
“Yar! And the tale after?”
“Why, that the oil and the tankers must have been their business,” Jonas said with a crooked smile. “To be taken to Farson, at their command and by confederates unknown. We’ll be carried through the streets on the town’s shoulders, come Reap.
Hailed as the men who rooted out the traitors. Where’s Roy?”
“Gone back to Hanging Rock. I saw him at noon. He says they’re coming, Eldred; says when the wind swings into the east, he can hear approaching horse.”
“Maybe he only hears what he wants to hear.” But he suspected Depape was right.
Jonas’s mood, at rock bottom when he stepped into the Travellers’ Rest, was now very much on the rebound.
“We’ll start moving the tankers soon, whether the brats come or not. At night, and two by two, like the animals going on board Old Pa’s Ark.” He laughed at this.
“But we’ll leave some, eh? Like cheese in a trap.”
“Suppose the mice don’t come?”
Jonas shrugged. “If not one way, another. I intend to press them a little more tomorrow. I want them angry, and I want them confused. Now go on about your business. I have yon lady waiting.”