"S-some. Only if I get too much, I s-stutter worse than ever. Only I
d-don't give a d-d-damn." He returned the bottle to his pocket and
extended his hand. "Name's William Silverknife. Folks call me Whisky
Willie."
Tesno sat down to pull on his boots. He reached up awkwardly and shook
hands. He said, "I can see why."
"Hell, I t-take it like medicine. I only been what you'd call drunk
once in my life. Stole a loco-m-motive on the Coeur d'Alene spur and
run it plumb off the end of the track."
"Seems like I heard about that. But the way I got the story, it was
some crazy Indian."
"M-me."
"You're Injun?"
"Three-eights."
Tesno studied him closely now, matter-of-factly. Under the freckles,
the kid's skin was maybe a bit darker than you noticed at first,
and the cheekbones in the round and boyish face were maybe a trifle
prominent. But it was the steady little black eyes that confirmed the
touch of the moccasin.
"That's a hell of a percentage," Tesno said.
"Pa was half Yakima. Ma was a q-quarter-breed Cayuse. It figures out."
"Nobody'd know it if you didn't mention it," Tesno said.
"I g-generally mention it. What did you say your name was, mister?"
"Tesno."
"Jack Tesno? Hell, you headed for Tunneltown?"
"This road go any place else?"
"J-just my luck. I heard Ben Vickers is looking for a troublebuster.
I f-figured to hit him for the job. Reckon I wouldn't have a chance
against you."
_No_, Tesno thought, _you wouldn't have a chance. Even if Ben
hadn't already made me an offer, he would never trust a stammering,
whisky-sipping breed kid to tie on a gun and do his tough-work._ But
he found himself clapping Willie on the shoulder as he moved past the
boy to pick up his saddle. He caught the blue roan and stroked its neck
with the saddle blanket.
"I haven't signed on yet," he said.
"Hell, I'll wind up as water boy or some d-damn fool thing," Willie
said. He grinned and added, "As usual."
"Maybe you could charm that town boss-lady into giving you a job. That
Persia Parker they talk about."
Willie blushed at the mere idea. "Ch-charming ain't among my talents.
Not that I wouldn't l-like to. You ever seen her?"
"No, but I'll lay odds she isn't the looker the rumors have her. She's
probably a fat, mannish type or a tired-faced little tart with dollar
signs for eyes."
"You'd lose the bet," Willie said. "I saw her down to Ellensburg. She's
a kn-knockout. And a real lady."
"How do you tell that?"
"Well, she ain't no honky-tonk gal or anything like that. She was
a lady married to Duke Parker, who was a gentleman. He t-took out
townsite papers and built that town up there. Then he got k-killed in
an accident and she's been running things."
"That's about the way I heard it, too," Tesno said. "But I knew Duke
Parker at Sandpoint, before he got married. He might have been a
gentleman by education, but he was about as slippery a cuss as I ever
met."
"That don't make her a non-lady," Willie persisted. "Wh-what k-kind of
a job you think she might give me?"
Tesno saddled up, and they rode together the rest of the day, following
the raw new road that looped and plodded through rock and timber to the
very backbone of the range. They passed a slashers' ragcamp, a supply
train of a dozen heavy wagons, a stagecoach stalled with a broken wheel
and loaded with laborers. With the sun haloing snow-veined peaks ahead
and the chill of an early-May twilight lurking in the shadows of the
pines, they topped a writhing, ragged ridge and looked down on the
place called Tunneltown.
It lay in a stump-studded gulch, a double row of log buildings neatly
toeing boardwalks along a wide, rut-scribbled street. Tesno whistled
through his teeth. He hadn't expected a solid-looking town here
eighty-five miles ahead of track--though the why of it was plain enough
when a man stopped to think. The workmen here had a tunnel to ream
through the rock of Runaway Mountain, two miles of it. They would be
here two years, more or less. For that long, Tunneltown was assured of
a population with money to spend. And it was assured of a steady stream
of transient spenders--freighters, engineers, inspectors, salesmen.
The horses had fallen into an eager trot on the down-grade, sensing
food and rest ahead; now they slowed to a walk in the heavy mud of the
short, broad street. Tesno made out another cluster of buildings now,
six or eight large ones among the pines on the far slope of the gulch.
That would be Ben Vickers' camp, he concluded. He reined toward a
hitchrail in front of a long, false-fronted building from which floated
the tinny notes of a piano. Above the doorway a sign bore the words
PINK LADY, painted in red letters against a black background.
"I'll buy a drink," he said to Willie.
"N-no, thanks," Willie said. "D-drinking for pleasure don't agree with
me." He nodded toward a livery barn at the head of the street. "You
want me to s-stable your horse for you? He'll get better care there
than in a construction camp corral."
Tesno dismounted and handed him the reins. "Buy him a quarter's worth
of oats. See you around."
He pushed through the batwing doors into the saloon. Men near the end
of the long bar turned to look him over, their eyes darting from his
face to the Colt on his hip and back again. Gambling tables, mostly
faro layouts, were scattered about the large, smoke-layered room. Tesno
moved along the bar to a place near the second of two bartenders, who
started toward him, then stopped to stare. He was a plump, red-faced
man with a white scar on one cheek. He spoke one word, making a
question of it.
"You?"
"Howdy, Pinky," Tesno said tonelessly.
"I'll serve you liquor like anybody else," Pinky Bronklin said. "I
don't have to say howdy to you."
"Whisky," Tesno said.
Pinky set a bottle and a glass on the bar. His bloodshot little eyes
combed Tesno with a look of pure malice.
"This your place?" Tesno asked.