“This is what I want you to do,” he said. “We hear word the Free Staters is riding this way. Next time you get wind of where they are, come out here and pass it to me. That’ll even us.”
“How I’m gonna do that? I can’t get out here easy. The missus is watching me close. And Darg’s out here.”
“Don’t you study ol’ Darg,” Broadnax said. “We’ll take care of him. You just pass the word on what you hear ’bout the Free Staters. Do that, and we’ll leave your Bob alone. But if you tarry, or we get word about them Free Staters from some corner other than you? Well, you’ll be overdue. And you won’t have to sneak out here with lemonade and biscuits for Bob no more, ’cause we’ll bust him so hard across the head, he’ll have a headache that’ll deaden him right where he is. As it is, only reason he’s drawing air right now is ’cause of me.”
With that, he snatched the handkerchief holding the biscuits and the mug of lemonade I brung out for Bob, shoved the biscuits down his mouth, drunk down the lemonade, and handed me the mug. Then he turned and walked back to the other side of the pen, and the others followed.
Oh, I was stuck tight then. Love will hang you up in many a direction. I thunk on it quite a while that day, thunk about Broadnax busting Bob’s brains out and coming into the hotel after me, and that was a worrisome notion. That Negro was determined. A man would have to pump a bunch of iron into a feller like that to stop him. He had a purpose, and that strangled the hope outta me. I fretted on it quite a bit that night and the next morning, then decided to run outta town, quit the idea right off, then thunk on it again all afternoon, decided to run again, waited all night, quit on the idea again, then runned the same whole bit around my head in the same fashion the next day. The third day I got tired of spinning ’round and fretting in that fashion, and gone back and done what I normally done in them days, ever since I lost Pie really: I got drunker with greater purpose.
The fourth night after Broadnax made his threat, I went on a bender with a redshirt who’d stumbled into the saloon full of trail dust, and we was having a good go at it—me more than him, to be honest. He was a young feller, broad-chested feller, more thirsty for water than liquor it seemed. He sat at a table in a big hat pulled close over his face, a long beard, and his arm in a sling. He stared at me in silence while I laughed and joked at him and throwed his rotgut down my red lane while double-talking him and switching glasses so as to jug him more water than his whiskey. I overserved myself and he didn’t seem to mind it a bit. In fact he seemed to enjoy watching me get out my skull, which, on the prairie, if you can’t please a man one way, why you can always please him another. I seen Pie do that a million times. I took this big young feller for one of those, and after several toots and tears and swipes at his glass with him watching and saying nothing, I flat out asked him if I could polish off the entire bottle of whiskey which he had purchased, as it sat on the table hardly getting used by him in the proper manner and it was a waste of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and mother’s milk to let such a precious thing go to waste.
He remarked, “You drinks a lot of rotgut for a girl. How long has you worked here?”
“Oh, long enough,” I said, “and if you allows me to finish that bottle of bleary on the table there, sir, why, this lonely colored girl will fillet your ears with a song about fish.”
“I will do just that if you tells me where you is from, dear maiden,” he said.
“Many places, stranger,” I said, for I was of the habit about lying about myself, and the “dear maiden” part of his talking meant that he was prone to perhaps buy me a second bottle of that buttercup whiskey after we finished the first. Fact is, when I thunk on it, seemed like he hadn’t drunk much at all, and seemed to enjoy watching me do all the sipping and soaking of the alkie for him, which at that point was more than a thrill, for I was already two sheets to the wind and wanted more. I said, “If you buy us a second bottle of moral suasion, I’ll give you the whole sad story, plus a haircut, stranger. Then I’ll sing ‘Dixie Is My Home’ for you, which will stir your spirits and put you right to sleep.”
“I will do that,” the feller said, “but first I needs a favor. I got a saddlebag on my horse, which is tied outside on the alley side of the hotel. That saddlebag needs cleaning. On account of my arm”—and here he pointed to his arm, which was hung in a sling—“I can’t lift it. So if I can trust you to go out and fetch that saddlebag and bring it inside and lather it up with saddle soap, why, I’ll give you two bits or even three and you can buy your own whiskey. I rides the brown-and-white pinto.”
“I will be happy to do that, friend,” I said.
