Free I'm Off to Montana for to Throw the Hoolihan (Code of the West) by Stephen Bly

didn’t take him long to discover the Bear Cub S aloon and Cafe. A quick look around the crowded, narrow room, and Tap knew he was in the right place. These weren’t prospectors, Easterners, nor store clerks. A Friday afternoon room full of drifters, cowpunchers, gamblers, and horse thieves. It was Tap’s kind of place.
    The bartender looked twice when Tap ordered coffee but came back and leaned against the polished mahogany bar with a cup of coffee for himself as well. Tap figured the man was six inches taller and about a hundred pounds heavier than hi mself. The bartender stooped and put his elbows on the bar and looked Tap in the eyes. “If you ain’t goin’ to get soused and you ain’t eatin’, have you got somethin’ else in mind?”
    “I just took over the Slash-Bar-4 and need someone to cook chuck and baby-sit the stock at the headquarters. How many of these boys have some cow sense?”
    “Most of ’em have herded bovines.” The bartender straightened the black bow tie that encircled his massive, collar-incased neck. “’Course it wasn’t always their own beef they was chasin’. Most of the good hands are workin’ the roundups north and west of here. You say you want a cowman or a yard man?”
    “To start with, a yard man.”
    “I don’t think there’s an hombre in here that could cook worth spit. But I do know one old boy who fits the bill. Comes in here ever’ night and orders a beer, then sits in the corner and plays solitaire. Smells like a skunk, but his two bits is as good as the next man’s. I heard some of the boys say he drove a chuck wagon all the way from El Paso and never took a bath once. So I guess he can cook.”
    “Plays solitaire? Does he talk real loud when he plays?” Tap asked.
    “Yep.”
    “Wears a round hat and rides a tall white horse?”
    “That’s him.”
    “Where’s he stayin’?”
    “Smellin’ like that, he surely don’t have a room,” the bartender chuckled. “Must be camped out along the river. All I know is, I expect he’ll be here right after suppertime.”
    “If he comes in, tell him to wait right here. I’m lookin’ for him.”
    “What’s your name, mister?”
    “Tap Andrews.”
    The man flinched when he heard the name, but Tap didn’t bother asking why. He finished his coffee and left the crowded, noisy, smoky room. He rode Roundhouse out along the tracks to the river looking for a tall white horse and a stoop-shouldered man wearing a round, floppy hat. He found neither.
    Tap rode every street more than once before he spotted the white horse parked by itself on a rail in front of the El Dorado Club. Most of the tables still had chairs stacked on top when he pushed open the tall, narrow doors and stepped inside. The room had a fifteen-foot-high ceiling and a bar that ran the e ntire length of the room. On the wall behind the bar hung a twenty-foot picture of a reclining woman.
    Peering around the stacked chairs, Tap spotted a man si tting alone in the far corner of the room with his back to the wall, a deck of cards spread on the table in front of him. The man mumbled something about the ace of clubs.
    “Don’t look under that jack of clubs,” Tap called out. “That’s cheatin’.”
    The man’s head shot up so quickly he rammed his knees into the table. He grabbed at a teetering amber bottle. “You almost made me spill my . . .” The man cocked his head sideways. “Tap? Did I die and go to Hades? I thought you was dead.”
    “I’m not dead, Howdy, and I don’t aim to go to Hades when I am. What are you doin’ in Montana?” Tap pulled up a chair, turned it backwards, and plopped down next to the older man.
    “Me? I come up here with the O-Bar-O . . . wasted my money . . . and got stuck in this railroad town. But what about you? You’re supposed to be rottin’ at A.T.P. Last I heard the Yaquis shot you down east of Yuma.”
    “Ever’thing’s changed. I’m a married man with a baby on the way, runnin’ a big Montana