Frank told them, “I want to talk to that old-timer who was at the hotel earlier. I figure he can tell us something about what the weather’s going to do. The clerk says that if he’s not here, he’s probably at a saloon called Ike’s.”
“I know the place,” Jennings said. “I can show—Well, no, I reckon I can’t show you where it is, after all.”
“We’ll find it. Come on.”
Jennings looked surprised. “You still want me to come with you? I figured once we got to Skagway, I’d be on my own.”
Frank lowered his voice and asked, “How long would you last in this town without being able to see? From what I can tell, there are as many dangerous critters around here as there are in the woods.”
Jennings sighed. “Maybe more.”
“So you’re one of us now, at least for the time being.”
Conway frowned, visibly upset by Frank’s words. “No offense, Frank,” he said, “but this fellow is an outlaw. As far as we know, he may be the one who killed Neville.”
Jennings shook his head emphatically. “I didn’t kill nobody, Mr. Conway. I was holdin’ the horses while the rest of the boys jumped your camp and grabbed them ladies. I swear it.”
“Yeah, you’d say that whether it was true or not,” Conway said with a disdainful grunt.
Jennings held up a hand like he was being sworn in to testify in court. “Word of honor, sir. I…I stole plenty of things in my life, but I never killed nobody, at least not that I know of.”
“You can travel with us as long as you behave yourself,” Frank said. “Get out of line, though, especially with the women, and you’re on your own.”
“You can count on me, Mr. Morgan.”
The three of them walked along the street, Frank resting a hand on Jennings’s shoulder to guide him. Ike’s was a tent saloon with a couple of stumps in front of it where pine trees had been cut down. When Frank pushed aside the canvas flap over the entrance and stepped inside, he saw several more stumps sticking up from the dirt floor. Men sat on them to drink, using them as makeshift chairs. The bar was to the right. It consisted of rough planks laid across the tops of several whiskey barrels. As a saloon, Ike’s was about as crude as it could be.
It was doing good business, though. More than a dozen men stood around nursing drinks from tin cups, and all the stumps were occupied. Frank looked around and spotted a familiar pile of furs shuffling along the bar, stopping next to each of the customers to ask something. Each of the men shook his head, and some of them barked angrily at the desolate old-timer.
In fact, one of the drinkers seemed to take offense at being approached like that. He turned toward Salty and said loudly, “Get away from me, you damned bum.” He drew his arm across his body, as if he were about to backhand the old-timer.
Frank’s left hand fell hard on the man’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t do that if I was you, mister,” he said.
The man jerked around with a furious glare on his face. He started to say, “Who the hell do you think you—” Then he stopped short as he saw the menace glittering in The Drifter’s eyes. He said, “You know that old tramp?”
“We’re amigos,” Frank said.
“You ought to keep him from bothering people, then.”
Frank took his hand off the man’s shoulder, reached into his pocket, and found a coin. He tossed it on the bar and said coldly, “Next drink’s on me. Just take it down to the other end of the bar.”
“Sure, sure,” the man muttered. He held out his tin cup to the moon-faced bartender for a refill, then moved away toward the other end of the bar.
“Thanks, Tex,” Salty said, “but you didn’t have to do that. I’m sorta used to gettin’ walloped.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be. We want to talk to you, Salty. Is there someplace better than this?”
Salty licked his lips, which were barely visible under the bushy white mustache and beard. “I reckon we could go to my shack.”
“How about if we take a bottle with us?”
Salty cackled. “Now you’re talkin’! Damned if you ain’t!”
Frank bought a bottle from the bartender, who looked like a half-breed. The bottle had no label on it, and he was sure that what was inside had been brewed up in one of those barrels. It was probably raw stuff, but if they were lucky, it wouldn’t give them the blind staggers.
The four men went outside. Salty led the way to the edge of the settlement, stopping at something that was more shed than shack, a haphazard arrangement of broken boards, tarpaper, tin, and canvas. It looked almost like the various parts of it had been thrown up in the air, and however they came down was the way Salty had left it.
The place had a door, though, and when they went inside, Frank saw that it had a rickety table as well, and a tangle of blankets in a corner that served as a bunk. The only places to sit down were a wobbly stool and an empty nail keg. Frank told Salty and Jennings to take those seats, and then placed the bottle in the center of the table.
Salty licked his lips again and obviously ached to grab the bottle, but he resisted its lure for the moment. “How come you’re bein’ so nice to me, Tex?” he asked.
“I told you, we’re from the same part of the country. And the name’s Frank Morgan, by the way, not Tex.”
Salty’s head jerked up. “Frank Morgan!” he repeated. “You mean The Drifter?”
“Heard of me, have you?”
