“Nobody asked you to come.”
“Looking for somebody.”
Eyepatch smiled. “Well, if it’s anybody respectable, you sure won’t find him here.”
“His name is Frank Nolan.”
Eyepatch’s gaze flicked to the table where the man was passed out. “Never heard of him.”
Fargo tossed a coin on the bar. “Beer and a shot.”
Eyepatch smirked. “Cold day in hell when I serve you a damn thing.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means I don’t like your looks. Means I don’t like you standin’ in front of me.” He leaned forward and gave Fargo a shove.
Fargo’s move was almost invisible in the shadows. He grabbed the man’s right arm and twisted it with enough force to lift him up off his feet and hunched over the bar.
“Shit!” Eyepatch cried.
But Fargo didn’t relent. He kept on turning the arm slowly back on itself. One of the drunkards at the bar managed to raise his head from his stupor and focus long enough to understand what was happening. And what was happening made him grin. “Looks like you met your match, Earl.” Then he nudged the man slumped over to his right.
The man’s head was lost beneath a wide sombrero. The enormous hat began its ascension and finally a small dark Mexican face could be seen. The face was suddenly lit by a huge smile. “Earl, man, you be in trouble.”
Done with him, Fargo flung the man back against the wall, rattling the six bottles of rotgut that rested on a raw two-by-four.
“There wasn’t any reason for this,” Fargo said. “All I wanted was a beer and a shot.”
Rubbing his arm, wincing in pain, burning with shame, Eyepatch obviously thought of saying something. But then immediately realized that Fargo might just come over the bar and start it up all over again.
“I’ll take that beer and shot now.”
Cursing, moving in and out of the flickering light of the lanterns, Eyepatch got Fargo what he wanted. He slammed them down hard on the bar. Fargo pitched the coin at him, grabbed his alcohol and then strode over to the table where Frank Nolan was just now sitting up and crawling out of his liquid hibernation.
He was a round little man with frightened eyes and a bad complexion. At one time his shirt had been white probably but not anymore.
“Eyepatch holds grudges, mister.”
“So do I.”
“I heard you askin’ for me. How come?”
“Your brother.”
“Oh.” He was hound-dog sad suddenly. “Near to broke my ma’s heart. She’ll never get over it.”
“My name’s Fargo. I’m working with Sheriff Cain. We’re trying to find out who killed your brother and the two others and why.”
Nolan sat back in his chair. The move put him in deep shadow. He was almost a disembodied voice. “Glad Tom Cain’s getting some help. He kinda let everybody down.”
“How so?”
“Well, he didn’t have no luck catchin’ any of the stagecoach robbers who killed that Englishman and driver. He’s usually pretty good at huntin’ people down. And then right on top of it he hasn’t had any luck finding out who killed my brother and them others. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt but a lot of people are sayin’ maybe he’s too old now. And maybe he’s good with a gun but nothing else. The Denver paper’s always got stories about detectives finding killers and maybe that’s what we need here. I hate to see the town turn against him but with three of them dead—”
“I’m trying to find out how your brother acted the last couple days before he was killed.”
“What’ll that tell ya?”
“Maybe nothing. But maybe you or somebody else will remember something he might have said or done that would tell us something—maybe somebody was after him. Something like that.”
Nolan yawned. He was half-sober after his sleep but he was still in the process of waking up. “There was just that one night, I guess.”
“What night?”
Another yawn. “I need some fresh air.”
“Right now I need you to talk to me.”
“How about I take that shot of yours?”
“Fine by me if you’ll keep talking.”
“I’m not a drunkard. It’s just my kid brother’s death and all—”
For some reason Fargo believed him. He shoved the shot glass across the table.
“Thank you.” Nolan belted it back.
“Tell me about your brother and that night you mentioned.”
“There’s this creek where we fish. I was bedding down the horses when I seen him come up from there and he looked madder than hell. I asked him what was wrong but he wouldn’t tell me. But then when he got in the light I could see that his jaw was red and swollen.”
“Somebody hit him.”
“Sure looked that way. So I went down there. To the water. Looked around. I could see somebody up against the foothills, ridin’ away.”
“But no idea who?”
“Too far away.”
“Your brother ever mention it again?”
“No. He kind of kept to himself. Especially after his friend got killed. Ma got scared. She kept beggin’ him to talk because something was wrong. You could see it all over his face.” Then he shook his head. Miserably. “Then he got killed, too.” Was that a sob? Fargo wondered. “I usually do day work, anything that comes along. Me and another fella, there’s enough work to support us all right except in the worst of winter. I should be workin’ now. But I haven’t felt like it. And it’s hard to go home. Facin’ my ma. She’s of the notion that since I was his older brother I should have taken care of him. And you know the hell of it?”
“What’s that?”
“I sort of feel the same way myself. Guilty. Maybe that’s why all I want to do is sit in this shithole and get drunk.”
Fargo put money on the bar for more drinks.
“How was your brother acting before he got killed?”
“Funny. He’d jump at every noise. And I’d always see him staring off like he was really trying to think something through. But mostly I noticed how nervous he was. He’d never been like that before and I grew up with him. I asked him about it and asked him why he was so scared. But he just blew up—started shouting at me that he was fine and that his business was his business and that I was to stay out of it.”
“Did you see him the day he disappeared?”
“No.”
“I’m at the Royale for the next twenty-four hours. In and out. If you think of something leave a note for me there.”
“Eyepatch’ll have to write it.”
“How’s that?”
“Never learned to write.”
Eyepatch had been listening to it all, of course. “Next time you call this place a shithole, Frank, you can take your business someplace else. I worked hard to get this place up to snuff.”
Fargo did the man a favor. He didn’t laugh out loud.
It was a town of cowboys and miners and greenhorns, of outriders and homesteaders and drummers. And gunfighters and cardsharps and slickers. And as recently as a month ago Cawthorne had been the private domain of Sheriff Tom Cain. He had tamed it and he made sure it stayed tamed. Most of the good citizens here both liked him
