A Tale Out of Luck Read online

  He leapt to the top step of the boardwalk, his jinglebobs ringing merrily against his spur rowels, and shoved the double swinging doors aside, entering the saloon with something of a flourish. Those swinging doors squeaked to good purpose. Nobody stood anything to gain in a frontier town by letting anybody slip into a saloon unnoticed. Every eye turned to look at the new arrival.

  There were an odd number of eyes, for old Gotch Dunnsworth was at the bar, and Gotch had lost an eye in the war. Dunnsworth owned the livery stable next door, and spent as much time in the saloon as anyone. But Jay Blue had not come here to see Gotch Dunnsworth.

  Within a fraction of a second, he located the object of his sleepless nights of longing. Her name was Jane Catlett. She was the prettiest thing in this saloon, and perhaps in the state of Texas, as far as Jay Blue knew. Like everyone else, Jane glanced toward Jay Blue as he stood in front of the still-swinging doors. For a moment her indifferent stare brightened. But then she clearly smirked and rolled her eyes in such a lazy way that their gaze took some time landing elsewhere, and not anywhere near Jay Blue.

  He smelled lilacs, or maybe it was lavender—one of those feminine fragrances. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Flora Barlow, the owner of the saloon, standing right behind him. She was old enough to be Jay Blue’s mother, but that didn’t much tarnish her desirability, or the popularity of her drinking establishment. If young Jane was the prettiest thing in Texas, Flora Barlow surely ran her a close second. She also exuded a vague essence of knowledge of things that would surely make a man very happy.

  “I hope you don’t have your sights set on little Janie,” Flora said, her voice a tease and a warning all at once. “She doesn’t like cowboys. At least not as much as I do.”

  Jay Blue turned to Flora and smiled. “Janie? Janie who? I just came in for a beer, Miss Flora.”

  Her hands landed naturally on hips accented by her corseted waist. “You rode all the way here from your daddy’s ranch for a beer?”

  “It’s my ranch, too. Will be, anyway.”

  Flora smirked at him, crossing her arms under her breasts, and making it difficult for Jay Blue not to glance toward the low-cut bodice. “What would your daddy think about me selling you a beer? You’re barely old enough to shave.”

  “I beg to differ, Miss Flora. I’m on my second straight razor. I wore the first one smooth out.”

  Flora smiled and dropped the mock interrogation. “Well, I guess one beer won’t hurt you, then. But, just one, then you’d better make tracks for that ranch you intend to claim. If I know your father—and I do—he’s not going to hand that ranch over to you just because your name is Jay Tomlinson.”

  “Jay Blue, ma’am.”

  “Oh, Jay Blue, of course. You’re going to have to earn that ranch, Jay Blue.” She sure made her mouth look attractive when she said, “Blue.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Harry, give this big-shot rancher a beer,” Flora said to her bartender.

  Jay Blue sauntered to the bar to collect his beer, nodding a greeting to Gotch Dunnsworth.

  “You want to drink a whiskey toast to Dixie, kid?” Gotch said.

  Jay Blue knew Gotch expected him to purchase said shot of whiskey. “I never touch the stuff, sir,” he replied, lifting the beer mug to his lips and sucking in the warm, bitter brew.

  “Don’t know what you’re missin’.”

  Jay Blue’s eyes followed Jane across the room. “I’m sure you’re right about that, Mr. Dunnsworth.”

  “Your daddy know you’re here?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, your ass is gonna be exactly in a crack when he finds out.” Gotch wheezed a volley of laughter.

  Jay Blue smiled sheepishly, but then entertained himself with thoughts of what it was going to be like when Jane finally consented to being alone with him somewhere. He stood there at the bar— suffering through tiny sips of his acrid beverage and hoping Jane would again look his way, which she did not—until the squeaking hinges of the swinging doors announced a new arrival. A towering hulk of a man burst in, followed by five loud and dusty cowhands.

  The big man was Jack Brennan, owner of the Double Horn Ranch, the closest thing the Broken Arrow had to a rival on the ranges around Luck. Jack possessed the size and muscle to strike fear into the hearts of most men, but came nowhere near Captain Hank Tomlinson in his command of respect.

  The Double Horn cowboys spotted an empty table and went to claim it. Jay Blue knew them all by name, though considered none of them as a friend. The redheaded foreman, Eddie Milliken, led the way, followed by Joe Butts, Ham Franklin, Bill Waterford, and Johnny Webb. Jack Brennan stood his ground at the door for a moment, sweeping the room with his eyes. When he spotted Jay Blue, he drew back his head and furrowed his brow, then strolled over to the bar.

  “Whiskey,” he said to the bartender. “And you better send a bottle to them boys at the table, too.” His big hand gripped the full shot glass hastily placed before him. He threw the shot back and seemed to get lost for a moment in some faraway place full of worry and sorrow. “Hit me again.”

  With his second shot in hand, he turned to Jay Blue, feigning surprise. “Didn’t notice you there, Jay Boy.”

  “It’s Jay Blue, Mr. Brennan.”

  “That’s what I said. Did you see that thing outside?”

  “What thing?”

  “Looked like a cross between a ox and a javalina. I guess it was a ox-alina. Anyway, it had a saddle on it looked just like yours.” He threw the second shot of whiskey past his teeth.

  Jay Blue felt stupid for letting Jack Brennan set him up, once again, for an insult to his horseflesh. “I’ll match Old Dunnie up to any cow horse in the country—” he began, but Brennan stepped on his reply as if it were nothing but a whistle in the wind.

  “What the hell are you doin’ here, kid?”

  “Huntin’ strays.” Jay Blue kept his eye on Jane as she moved closer to the table the Double Horn Ranch cowboys had occupied.

  “I know what kind of stray you’re huntin’.” Jack tapped the shot glass on the bar at the bartender. “Gotch, you want a whiskey? Harry, pour Gotch a whiskey, for God’s sake. The man’s a war hero.”

  “To Robert E. Lee!” Gotch said, lifting his glass toward Harry’s bottle.

  Jack looked down at Jay Blue. “Where’s that little half-breed shadow of yours? What do y’all call him? Skinner? Scooter?”

  “Skeeter. He’s standing guard tonight.”

  Jack shook his head in disapproval. “Your daddy ought to know better than to put a boy out on guard tonight. I hear some Comanches are camped over on Flat Rock Creek. I don’t reckon they’d steal one of y’alls’ horses to ride, but they might want to eat one.”

  The comment galled Jay Blue, but not as much as the fact that the Double Horn foreman, Eddie Milliken, was clearly flirting with Jane. “Daddy just came back from Kentucky with a new Thoroughbred broodmare.”

  “Broodmare, my ass. That’s a racehorse. Ya’ll think you can win the stake race on Texas Independence Day with that nag, don’t you?”

  “Well, we’ve got to prove her reputation around here if we’re going to advertise her as any kind of a broodmare for our future. So, yes sir, Mr. Brennan, we’re going to run her in the stake race, alright.”

  “One prickly pear sticker’s liable to send that spoilt bitch limping back to the barn.”

  “On the contrary, I think we can win next year, Mr. Brennan.”

  “Ain’t that what you said before this year’s race?” Jack slurped at his third shot of bourbon.

  “Next year will be different, Mr. Brennan. I’d bet money on it.” Over the rim of his beer mug, Jay Blue continued to watch Jane. She was ignoring Eddie Milliken, but he was still saying something to her that Jay Blue could not hear. The foreman had a stupid grin on his face that Jay Blue did not like. Then, apparently, Jane said something that put him in his place, judging by the way the other cowboys laughed at their own foreman.
But when Jane turned away, Milliken stood and grabbed her ass.

  Jane wheeled to slap the foreman, dropping a tray of empty glasses as she did so. Milliken caught her right arm, then grabbed her left wrist as she tried to strike with that hand. Jay Blue was already advancing among the saloon patrons, arriving at the Double Horn boys’ table in seconds. He hit Milliken in the side of the head, knocking him to the floor. But Milliken managed to hold on to Jane and dragged her down with him.

  Jay Blue pounced on Milliken and landed another punch, but soon found himself swarmed by the cowhand’s friends. A fist struck his jaw, a boot kicked his ribs. He wrenched his right arm free and hit somebody somewhere, but was soon restrained again. Something hit him in the mouth. He tasted blood. He could hear Jane screaming, “Stop it! Stop it!” He could hear the Double Horn boys cussing him as they laid on more blows. He saw too many fists and boots flying at his face to enumerate.

  Jack Brennan watched the melee and chuckled until he heard Flora call out to her bartender: “Harry!” The barkeep reached for a shotgun behind the bar, but Jack cautioned him with an open palm. “I’ll break it up.” He took three big steps to the pile of cowboys and began pulling his ranch hands off Jay Blue one at a time, tossing them aside like half-grown children. When he finally got down to Jay Blue, he lifted him to his feet and looked him over.

  Jay Blue spit out some blood in the direction of Eddie Milliken. “That’ll teach you,” he slurred across a busted lip.

  Jack laughed. “You ought to know better than to start a fight you can’t win.”

  Jay Blue wiped the blood from one eye with his shirt sleeve. “Somebody had to take up for the lady.”

  “I can take up for myself, Jay Blue Tomlinson!” Jane grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him toward the door. “Now you get on out of here and go home.”

  Before he knew where he was, Jay Blue felt the cool night air in his face and heard the hollow thump of the boardwalk under his boots. He turned and managed to catch a glimpse of Jane shaking her head at him before she disappeared back into the saloon. The beer and the beating made his head swim. He spit more blood out onto the boardwalk, then grinned into the flickering lantern light of the saloon. He grinned so big that it hurt his busted lip. He blinked and snorted, trying to clear his head, then turned toward the hand pump over the water trough in front of Dunnsworth’s livery barn next door.

  4

  HE HAD HIS BARE FEET in the creek and the water was cold and crawdads were pinching his toes. Then he slumped sideways, gasping as he woke from the dream. Pinpricks of cold night air had crept through his worn boots, making him dream of crawdads in the cold stream. But now he was back at the corral, sitting on the ground, holding his rifle, leaning against a cedar post where he had fallen asleep on guard.

  Skeeter jumped up and glanced toward the captain’s bedroom window. He had been hidden in the shadow of the barn when he sat down, but the moon had risen over the roof now, bathing him in light. Thank God the captain hadn’t seen him sleeping at his post.

  He yawned and shivered. He was just so damned tired. It wasn’t even supposed to be his night on guard. It aggravated the tar out of him the way he sometimes let Jay Blue talk him into things. Jay Blue was so blasted full of confidence and forty-dollar words. Right now he was probably telling a joke and winning a poker game, with some barmaid on his lap. Not the barmaid he wanted, though, because that girl—the pretty one—didn’t have much use for Jay Blue. Still, he probably had one of the ugly gals on his lap, and he was probably drinking a beer near the woodstove at Flora’s Saloon, and he was no doubt sneaking some glances at Flora’s tits. She was always leaning over and showing them off.

  Skeeter could actually hear men snoring through the walls of the bunkhouse. He had grown accustomed to that long ago, and in fact it sort of lulled him to sleep nowadays. Right now it just irritated him. Lucky bastards. Those old, stove-up, bowlegged cowpokes were slumbering like puppies right now. Crotchety old men. They were all over thirty. Old farts. Listen to them, snoring like nobody’s business.

  “I ain’t gonna be worth a damn mañana,” he muttered to himself. It would make more sense for him to sneak back to his bunk right now and get some rest so he could pull his weight tomorrow. Hell, yeah, who would know? That settled it, he was going to sneak back into the bunkhouse. Nothing was going to happen tonight. Nothing ever happened.

  He was already at the bunkhouse door. He pulled the latch string and let himself in. He closed the door quietly, tiptoed to his bunk, and lay down on top of the covers, fully dressed. Ah, now that felt more like it. My God, they were snoring louder than a freight train! He stretched out, felt the knots shudder out of his skinny frame.

  No more crawdad dreams. He was going to have that good dream where he found out that his father was really a rich rancher out yonder somewhere, and had been looking for him for years, and wanted him to come break horses and boss the outfit. And they were always eating fried chicken. Except for breakfast, when they ate scrambled eggs. Nice firm scrambled eggs, though—not jiggly the way Beto made them in a hurry every morning.

  He yawned and closed his eyes. The snoring sounded like a sawmill.

  And his daddy had blue eyes like Skeeter’s and was the best shot in the county and rode the fastest horse, and owned the dry goods store in town where pretty girls came with their mothers to shop for cloth and buttons and . . . and the name of the town was not Luck, but it was Buena Suerte . . . and beautiful paint horses were just wandering around everywhere . . . no school . . . and apple pie . . . gold watch chains and pearl-handled pistols . . . and . . . saltwater taffy . . .

  Jane Catlett finished rinsing the last of the beer mugs and shot glasses in the lean-to kitchen adjoining Flora’s Saloon. She dried her hands and looked at her palms, red and soft right now due to the warm soapy water, but sure to dry and crack later. She wished she had some hand cream at home. You couldn’t get anything nice like that in this little frontier town. It was a day’s ride on a stagecoach to Austin, and she didn’t have the time to make the trip or the money to spend on stagecoaches.

  She heard laughter and a ridiculously loud holler of drunken joy through the thin partition wall between her and the tavern. She was hoping the Double Horn boys would have left by now, but they were still drinking and playing cards. She took off her apron, hung it on a peg, and quietly opened the door to the saloon.

  She looked to the opposite corner of the saloon and saw Jack Brennan and his men passing a whiskey bottle and playing a game of poker. That Jack Brennan made her nervous. He was just so big and rough looking. The scar on his cheek was hideous. A saloon girl, Dottie, who had never been nice to Jane the whole time they had worked together, was sitting with the cowboys, sharing their whiskey. Flora was looking over Jack’s shoulder. She seemed to sense Jane standing across the room, and looked up at her. Wordlessly, she dismissed Jane with a tilt of her head and a smile.

  Thank God for Flora Barlow. Jane didn’t have much, but she knew she’d be well nigh desperate without Flora.

  Jane walked to the swinging doors and stepped outside unnoticed. She breathed a sigh of relief that blew a stray lock of golden hair out of her face. It was cold outside, and she had forgotten her shawl when she walked to work this afternoon in the warmth of the Texas sun. She embraced her own shoulders against the chill, as if hugging herself.

  “Why don’t you wear my coat?”

  She gasped, then looked up to see Jay Blue Tomlinson in the moonlight, a saddled horse at his side. “Good Lord, are you still looking for a way to get your head stove in?”

  He offered a nonchalant shrug. “Those rounders from the Double Horn don’t scare me.”

  “Well, do me a favor, Jay Blue. Next time you knock one of them down, make sure he doesn’t have ahold of me first.”

  “Sorry about that. How about if I escort you home?”

  “I can escort myself just fine, thank you.”

  “But I insist. Here, wear my coat.”

&nb
sp; She hesitated, then grabbed the coat. She didn’t really want to encourage him, but it was cold. He helped her put it on, as if he were a gentleman instead of a cowboy, and they began walking down the street, Jay Blue leading his horse. She almost thanked him for the coat, but thought better of it.

  “It looks good on you,” he said.

  “It smells like a barn. I forgot my wrap, that’s all. It won’t happen again, so I don’t want to find you lurking out here, waiting for me anymore.”

  “Waiting for you?” Jay Blue forced a laugh. “Have mercy, Janie, you think I was waiting for you? I was just stargazing. See, there’s Pegasus. There’s Pisces, and Cassiopeia.” He was pointing every which way.

  “Don’t call me Janie. I hate that.”

  “Sorry. That’s what Miss Flora calls you, so . . .”

  “She’s the only one I let call me that. My name is Jane.”

  They strode down the dirt street, Jay Blue’s jinglebobs tinkering away like a carnival wagon. “Okay. Jane it is.”

  She glanced at him, her eyes fully adjusted to the moonlight now. “You look terrible.”

  He touched his split lip. “Of course I do, walking next to you. Helen of Troy would look like a mud fence walking next to you.”

  She tried not to show it, but she liked the way he put that. This Jay Blue tended to say things with his own flare. In general, she was sick and tired of being told she was pretty, but he always found an original way to say it.

  When she was little, back in that East Texas town where she was born, Jane’s folks told her she was pretty every day, and she had loved it then. But then her father joined the Confederate army when she was nine, and went away to war, never to return. Later, her mother took up with a freighter who started doing things with Jane that even she, at the age of thirteen, knew he was not supposed to be doing.

  So she told her mother, and her mother shot the man in his sleep. Then it got worse. The county sheriff jailed Jane’s mother. A lynch mob made up mostly of the dead man’s family broke into the jail and hanged Jane’s mother in her own cell. All this because Jane had turned prettier than she was supposed to be at the age of thirteen. No, she did not care for being pretty one little bit. She just didn’t know how not to do it.