“Hello, Billy Ray,” Doc Patterson said. “How was your trip?”
“What trip?” Billy Ray replied. He tossed down the glass of whiskey.
“Didn’t you and your pa go up to Colorado Springs to buy a bull?”
“What? Oh, yeah,” Billy Ray said. He poured himself another glass. “Yeah, I guess we did.” He drank that glass as well.
“I’ll be anxious to see him,” Doc Patterson said. Doc was a veterinarian, and as he was the only veterinarian in the county, he did a lot of business with the Tumbling Q. “Tell your pa I’ll come out and look him over whenever he wants. I’ve read about him, sure will be nice to examine a champion. What’s he like?”
“What’s who like?” Billy Ray poured himself a third glass of whiskey.
“Why, Prince Henry, of course. I’m talking about the champion bull you bought,” Doc said.
“We didn’t buy no bull,” Billy Ray said. He tossed down the third glass, then poured a fourth, spilling a little of it onto the bar.
“You didn’t? I thought that was why you went.”
“That’s why my pa went,” Billy Ray said, tossing down still another glass of whiskey.
“Say, you’d better go easy on that. It’s not good to drink that much whiskey that fast,” Doc said. “Why don’t you slow down a little?”
“And why don’t you mind your own damn business?” Billy Ray replied. This time, when he poured the whiskey, he got more on the bar than he did in the glass. “You ain’t a people doctor anyway, you’re a horse and cow doctor. What the hell do you know about what’s good for me and what ain’t?”
“Nothing at all,” Doc said, holding up his hands and backing away. “I was just making conversation.”
“Yeah? Well make it somewhere else.” Billy Ray looked around the bar and seeing Mary Lou toward the back, he called out to her. “Hey, you! Whore! Let’s me an’ you go upstairs.”
“You’re drunk,” Mary Lou said.
Billy Ray walked toward her, stumbling into a chair and knocking it over, almost falling, but catching himself at the last minute by putting his hand down on a table.
“All right, if you won’t go upstairs with me, come have a drink with me.”
“I’d rather not.”
“What do you mean, you’d rather not? Ain’t that what you’re supposed to do? Drink with your customers, then go upstairs with them when they want?”
“Mr. Gibson lets us choose who we go upstairs with,” Mary Lou said. “And I don’t choose to go upstairs with you.”
“Gibson, our ranch does a lot of business in this saloon,” Billy Ray said. “How would you like it if I said nobody who works for us can come in here any more?”
“I’m not going to make her go upstairs with you if she doesn’t want to,” Gibson replied.
“All I want is to have a drink or two with her. Just till I get calmed down. Donovan—” With an unsteady hand, he pointed toward the street. “Donovan, that cheatin’ son of a bitch, just cheated me out of a pair of boots.”
“Have a drink with him, Mary Lou,” Gibson ordered. “You don’t have to do any more than that.”
“All right,” Mary Lou replied in a nervous voice. With a little look of apprehension, Mary Lou walked over to him. Thinking it would be better to have him calmed down, she forced a smile. “All right, cowboy,” she said. “Let’s have that drink.”
Billy Ray smiled at her, but there was something about the smile that alerted Mary Lou, as if the smile was a reflection in a flawed mirror. Suddenly, the smile left Billy Ray’s face, to be replaced by a snarl.
“I’ll teach you not to say no to me when I tell you I want you to go upstairs with me!” Billy Ray said. He swung at her, hitting her in the face with his doubled-up fist.
Mary Lou went down.
“Now, I’ll carry you upstairs,” Billy Ray said as he bent over to pick her up.
Billy Ray didn’t see Gibson coming up behind him. Gibson brought a small wooden club down on Billy Ray’s head, and Billy Ray went down and out.
Everyone else in the saloon was shocked into silence.
“What do we do now, Boss?” Evans asked.
Gibson sighed. “I don’t reckon we have much choice,” he said. “Go get the marshal.”
“The marshal? Are you kidding? You know Quentin controls the marshal.”
“Go get him,” Gibson said again.
When Pogue Quentin awakened the next morning, he got dressed, then walked down the hallway to his son’s room.
“Billy Ray? Billy Ray, you in there?”
Getting no answer, he opened the door and looked inside. The bed had not been used.
Leaving the big house, Quentin walked out to the bunkhouse. Several of the cowboys were already up and about, including Cole Mathers.
