His eyes lowered and he sipped at the sweet liquor. There was a lot to think about. But Flynn makes everything sound simple. He looks at things in their proper perspective, things one at a time, and doesn't worry about something that's supposed to happen next week because there's no assurance there will be a next week. That's a good way to look at things, but it takes some doing. Saying, well, we're here; we might as well do the job. That's the easy way to look at things. No it isn't. It's the hard way…when you don't have any business being here. If what he says is true, it's natural to want to go back to Deneen and tell him to go to hell and next time find some authority. Staying on anyway takes humility, doesn't it? It takes something. Something that wasn't handed out with Cavalry Tactics. But that's assuming Deneen doesn't have the authority, and you don't assume anything.
Flynn can almost convince you that he's right even before he says one word. It's his manner. The way he goes about things. He doesn't get excited. He seems absolutely perfectly honest with himself; that's why you believe what he says. After being with him only a few days part of him rubs off. The feeling you've known him a long time. Relaxing. Maybe he's right about Deneen overstepping his bounds…
Don't get carried away. Maybe he is; and maybe he isn't. Remember, you're talking about a colonel with fifteen years and a war behind him. They don't generally make mistakes like that. There's something between him and Flynn, something personal, so naturally Flynn is against him. But I'm glad Flynn's here. He speaks quietly and sometimes you get the idea he's lazy and doesn't care, but I wouldn't want to be fighting against him.
He wanted to be a good friend of Dave Flynn's, and often since leaving Contention, he wondered if Flynn ever thought about their first meeting, at the cavalry post before Deneen came in. He had been aloof then, maybe snobbish in Flynn's eyes. It bothered him, because he hadn't meant to seem a snob. It was just that he wanted to show them he wasn't a kid, that he knew what it was all about. He wanted Flynn's respect…even if he wasn't sure how right Flynn was about Deneen's authority.
He noticed the Mexican girl get up: the one who had been watching him. The man next to her said something and put his hand on her arm, but she jerked away from his grasp and the next moment was coming toward Bowers.
"May I sit with you?"
Bowers half rose, self-consciously, glancing at the other table. Then: The hell with them. She can go wherever she wants. They don't own her.
"I am enchanted."
She smiled. "You speak our language well."
"That was only a word."
"Now you've said five, equally well."
Bowers smiled. "I have learned in the past year to understand some of what is said, but it is yet difficult to speak. Most of the words I don't yet know."
"You need someone to accompany you, to make interpretations." She looked at him slyly from under dark lashes and smiled.
"I would never learn the language that way."
"Perhaps you would learn other things."
He felt them looking at him. "What about your friend?"
She glanced coldly over her shoulder. "He is not my friend; nor any of them there. I amuse myself with them only." Her glance returned quickly as one of the men rose and came toward their table.
It was Lew Embree. He bumped the next table unsteadily. A two days' beard growth darkened his face; mescal showed in his glazed, watery eyes and in the way his mouth was parted, sticky wet in the corners, loose in his bearded jaw.
The girl refused to look at him.
"Honey, I didn't come to see you, but your friend. When I come for you you'll know it." The sleepy eyes went to Bowers.
"I wondered if you knew your friend Frank was here?"
Bowers hesitated. "Frank who?"
"Frank Rellis."
"I don't know anyone by that name." But he remembered it. As he said it he pictured the two riders through the field glasses and the one on the left with the Winchester; then tying that in with what Flynn had told him before. Frank Rellis. The man who shot Joe Madora. Then Lazair mentioning him.
"Frank told how he knew you and your partner. In Contention, as I recollect."
"I've never met Frank Rellis."
The girl pretended to shudder and shook her head. "That one!"
"Well, he says he knew you and your partner."
"He must be mistaken."
"Frank doesn't say much, so when he does it's something he's sure of 'cause he's had all that silent time to think about it."
"If he's not mistaken then you misunderstood what he said."
"I heard him plain as your face tell Curt that he knew you."
Bowers said nothing and looked at his glass.
"He's over eatin'. He'll be back shortly; why'nt you wait to see him?"
"If I'm still here when he comes then most likely I'll see him."
"He said it was in Contention-"
"Look, I've never met Frank Rellis!" He looked at the man steadily now wondering if he was really drunk, even though it was on his face. The girl was suddenly looking beyond him and now he heard the door and the ching of heavy Mexican spurs. Sergeant Santana stopped at the bar.
Lew Embree looked at him a long moment and then glanced at the girl. "Come on, honey."
"I like it where I am."
"You be nice now."
"Go stick your head in it!"
"Honey, Warren's back there at the table cryin' his eyes out for you."
The girl did not say anything now.
Shaking his head Lew Embree looked at Bowers. "Don't these biddy-bitches get uppity though. She suspects you got more money than Warren, which could be a case." He was standing next to her chair. His hand moved to the cane back rest then idly up to the girl's neck, and suddenly, his fingers gripping the white cotton, he jerked his hand down, ripping the loose-fitting blouse away from her back. She was up out of the chair, screaming, holding the front of the blouse to her breasts, running toward the rear of the mescal shop, past the table where Warren and the others were, trying to dodge an arm that reached for her and caught a shred of material. It pulled her off balance, jerking the front of the blouse from her hands and now she made no attempt to cover herself, standing, cursing Embree with every indecent word she knew before running crying through the rear door.
Warren called to Lew, "She looks like she can't hardly wait!"
Still grinning, Lew Embree looked from Santana to Bowers then turned his back to them indifferently and started for the other table. "For a girl that throws it around like she does," Lew was saying, "she acts awful kittenish."
Bowers watched Embree until he reached the other table, then he looked toward Santana.
"Will you sit here?"
The rurale sergeant pushed back his straw Chihuahua hat, shaking his head faintly. "I will be here only a moment."
Bowers stood and moved to the bar carrying the mescal bottle. "Let me buy you a drink." He said then, "I was wondering what that man's name was."
Santana accepted the bottle that Bowers extended and poured a glass half full. "I've never listened for his name."
"That was something he did to the girl, eh?"
"She had her clothes off in his presence before."
"I had the feeling he did it for my benefit," Bowers said, watching the rurale.
Santana shrugged, then drank. He wiped his mouth and said, "He misses no opportunity to show they have bought these women well. But it makes little difference since the women are bought; it's hardly a winning of their affection."
Bowers said idly, "But it would seem to me to be a matter of principle. I don't know if I could just let these men come in and take over all the women. That's if it was up to me."