I stuck my foot into the accelerator and held it there for three seconds. Then I backed off. I couldn't afford to catch that sonofabitch. II I left him in a ditch I'd be jeopardizing the project that had brought mc to Hudson. I braked the Ford, put it in reverse, and backed up. Maybe I could do something for the dog.
I stood on the edge of the ditch and looked down. The shepherd was trying to get up. He had a long scrape on his head and one leg wasn't supporting him. I reached in the car window and got my jacket, wrapped it tightly around my left hand and forearm, and scrambled down the bank. The shepherd was still floundering. 'You gonna let me help, fella?' I asked him. I held out the wrapped arm until it touched him. I had to know if he was hurting so bad he'd bite anything he came in contact with.
He didn't bite. I moved closer, stooped down, and picked him up. He growled a little, but that was all. An animal has to be in a real bad way to bite me. They just don't do it. He was a big dog, and it was a steep climb, but I made it to the car and put him on the front seat. I turned around and started back toward town. A guy walking on The road told me where I could find a vet.
'Shoulder sprain,' the vet said when he'd gone over the shepherd on the table. 'And a few gashes. Nothing serious. He'll be lame for a few days. Leave him with me overnight. You ought to get tags for him.'
As though on cue the shepherd reached up from the table and took my wrist in his mouth, lightly. 'I'll get the tags tomorrow,' I told the vet. 'Give him whatever he needs.'
Outside, I had to stop and think where I'd been going.
I headed north again for the Dixie Pig.
VI
I had no trouble finding the place. It was a long, low building encrusted with neon. No cars were visible although there were marked-off parking spaces in front. I followed a crushed stone driveway around to the rear and found a dozen cars parked. Hazel's customers evidently didn't care to advertise their drinking habits to passersby on the highway.
Inside it was like a thousand others, low-ceilinged, smoke-misty, and dimly lit. Three or four booths were occupied, while another six or eight customers lolled on bar stools. Nobody even looked around as I sat down at the bar.
A curtain rustled in an opening at the center back bar, and a woman's head poked through. She stepped forward onto the business side of the horseshoe-shaped bar at the sight of a strange face. My first impression was that she was standing on elevated duckboards. She seemed enormous.
I looked again, but the back bar flooring was on the same level as my side of the mahogany. The woman wasn't enormous, perhaps, but she sure as hell was big. Six feet, at least, and straining every seam of skin-tight Levis and a sleeveless fringed buckskin shirt that was no more than a vest. Her upper arms looked larger than mine, but the skin was like a baby's. She had flaming red hair and a pleasantly wide mouth.
'What'll it be, pardner?' she asked. Her voice was a ripened contralto, deep and rich-sounding.
'You're Hazel?' She nodded. 'I'm Chet Arnold. Jed Raymond sent me along. Make it bourbon and branch. Jim Beam.'
She smiled, a quick, attractive smile. 'Jed's a good boy.' She turned to the bottled array behind her, and I watched the smooth ripple of muscle in her forearm as she poured my drink. I couldn't see an ounce of fat on the woman except where female displacement required it. She was the best-looking big woman I'd ever seen.
She examined me frankly as she set my drink down. 'Staying with us awhile?'
'Depends,' I answered. 'I'm prospecting the area. I make like Tarzan for a living, only with more equipment.' She looked her inquiry. 'I swing through the trees with an ax and a saw on my belt,' I amplified my first statement.
Her red head was cocked slightly to one side as she took me in feature by feature, her powerful-looking arms folded over her superb big breasts. 'I'm not so damn sure you've got the face for that kind of work,' she said finally. I've been in front of X-ray machines that didn't get as close to the bone as that woman's eyes.
I moved onto the offensive. 'Are you from a ranch around Kingman, Hazel?'
Her deep voice warmed. 'Not bad for a guess, pardner. Nevada, not Arizona, though. I was raised in McGill, north of Ely. And I get so homesick for the rim rock country sometimes I could bawl like a week-old calf.'
'The planes are still flying,' I suggested.
She shook her good-looking head. 'I guess I'm married to this goddamn place. I just drink another fifth of my live-star shellac and forget about it. Did you want to eat?'
'Jed said you featured steak.'
'Jed said right. Take your drink over to the booth there.' She pointed to a corner. 'I'll put your steak on the fire.'
'Medium well,' I said.
When she brought it to the booth twenty minutes later with a mound of french fries and a pound of sliced tomatoes, I ate for a quarter-hour without coming up for air. I mean it was really a slab of beef.
I was divot-digging with a toothpick when Hazel returned to the booth. 'Apple pie? Coffee?' she wanted to know.
I tested my straining belt. 'Better rain check me.'
She glanced at the bar. Everything was quiet. I had my first look at her feet as she stood beside the booth. She had on worked-leather cowboy boots studded with silver conches. They're not given away. Evidently the Dixie Pig wasn't about to declare bankruptcy.
Hazel slid into the booth opposite me and sat with her chin propped in her hands. Her steady gaze seeped through to my backbone again. 'Maybe it's not the face,' she decided. 'Maybe it's the eyes. What do you really do for a living, Chet?'
I reached for my cigarettes, offered her one, and lit two when she accepted. 'Your pa should have hairbrushed you out of asking questions like that, Hazel.'
'My pa never hairbrushed me out of anything I wanted to do,' she answered. 'Well?'
'I've been known to make a bet.' I humored her.
'That's more like it,' she said briskly. 'A workingman you're not, pardner. What's your action? Horses?'
'Horses,' I agreed.
'Is that right?' She straightened up as though someone had turned on an electric current in the booth seat. 'D'you remember old Morning Star? I saw him run five-and-a-half furlongs at Delaware Park in a tick less than —'
So we sat and played Remember When.
It's a damn small world sometimes. Hazel's first husband had been Blueshirt Charlie Andrews, the man who bet 'em higher than a duck could fly. I'd never met him, but he'd been a pal of a friend of mine who unfortunately attracted a small piece of lead. I didn't tell Hazel this.
In five minutes we found out we'd both been in Louisville for the same Derby and in Baltimore for the same Futurity not too many years ago. We argued about which
year it was. 'I
was my first year at the tracks. I was seventeen.'
'Which makes you—'
'Never mind the arithmetic, Horseman.'
'—younger than I am,' I finished.
Her inward look turned back down the years. 'I guess Charlie Andrews was about the ugliest man I ever knew. He was about five-five and weighed two-forty, and even his ears had muscles. He stopped off for a cup of coffee in a diner in Ely where I was a waitress. He was on his way to Santa Anita, but three weeks later he was still sitting in the diner trying to talk me into sharing the wealth. He was about as subtle as a blowtorch, and I was green as grass. He'd sit across the counter from me, taking up most of two stools, and he'd spread the grease in his
