“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.
Tumbling Q
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.
“Cole, have you seen Billy Ray? I looked into his room. It doesn’t look like he even came home last night.”
Cole cleared his throat, then looked over at a cowboy who was standing nearby.
“Well, sir, uh, accordin’ to what Reeves just now told me, Billy Ray got hisself into trouble yesterday. I was about to come tell you that Billy Ray is in jail.”
“Reeves, are you saying Billy Ray got into trouble yesterday but you are just now telling us?” Quentin asked angrily.
“Yes, sir, well, the thing is, I got drunk yesterday, and spent the night in jail my ownself,” Reeves said. “And that’s where Billy Ray is. I couldn’t tell you before this mornin’ ’cause the marshal didn’t let me out till this mornin’.”
“If it was just drunkenness, why didn’t he let Billy Ray out at the same time?”
“With Billy Ray, it was a little more than just bein’ drunk,” Reeves said.
“What has Billy Ray done now?” Quentin asked with a long-suffering sigh.
“Well, sir, you may remember that he ordered himself a new pair of boots and had the shoemaker make ’em for him. But when he went down to try ’em on, they didn’t fit, so he got mad and busted up the boot store pretty good. He threw a bench through the window, broke up some of Mr. Donovan’s tables, even broke one of his machines.”
“Surely Dawson didn’t have to put him jail for that, did he?” Quentin asked. “He knows I would have paid Donovan for the damage Billy Ray did.”
“Yes, sir, and I think if that had been all there was to it, the marshal would have let him go. But Billy Ray still had a mad on when he come into the New York Saloon, and he beat up Mary Lou.”
“He beat up who?”
“Mary Lou Culpepper. She’s one of Gibson’s whores.”
“Dawson put my son in jail, just for beating up a whore?”
“Yes, sir. From what the marshal was sayin’ this mornin’, there was lots of folks pretty upset about it.”
“Cole, get my horse saddled,” Quentin ordered.
“Yes, sir, I’ll get him ready.”
It took about fifteen minutes to ride the three miles into town. Quentin rode down the street toward the marshal’s office, which was located at the far end of town, and as he did so, several citizens of the town paused to nod at him, or to raise their hands to their eyebrow in a respectful salute. Reaching the marshal’s office, he dismounted, tied the horse off at the hitching rail, then stepped inside.
Marshal Dawson was sitting at his desk, playing a hand of solitaire.
“I figured you’d be comin’ in here as soon as you got into town,” Dawson said without looking up. He put a red queen on a black king.
“What the hell is Billy Ray doing in jail?” Quentin asked.
“Maybe you ain’t heard the whole story.”
“I heard he broke up some furniture and windows over at Donovan’s Leather Goods. Hell, Dawson, you know I’m good for whatever damages he might have caused. You didn’t have to put him in jail.”
“Did you also hear about the girl he beat up?”
“I heard he slapped a whore around a bit. You can’t tell me that’s the first time that’s ever happened to her. Whores get slapped around all the time. It’s the nature of their business.”
“He did more than just slap her around. He broke her nose. There was some folks got pretty upset over it. I figured the best thing to do was to put Billy Ray back in jail until you come into town today. Else there might have been even more trouble. You know how he is.”
“No, how is he?” Quentin asked, a sharp edge to his question.
“Come on, Pogue, you know how he is. Billy Ray’s got about the quickest temper of anyone I’ve ever known. You need to talk to him about that. One of these days he’s goin’ to get mad at the wrong person.”
“You let me worry about my boy,” Quentin said. “He’s my problem, not yours.”
“That ain’t entirely right. He’s my problem, too, as long as I’m marshal of this town.”
“Yeah, well, that’s another thing, Dawson. You are marshal of this town only as long as I say you are marshal of this town.”
“I know that, Pogue,” Dawson said obsequiously. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I was sayin’.”