Free Way Down on the High Lonely by Don Winslow

high. Down there is the Reese River valley, although it isn’t much of a river as rivers go. That’s the Toiyabe Range across the valley. The big peak there is called Bunker Hill. My place sets at the base of it. Believe it or not, I actually climbed that damn thing once or twice with my daughter Shelly.”
    Steve pulled the truck back onto the road and started the descent into the valley.
    “It’s mostly cattle country,” Steve said, “but it takes a tremendous amount of land for the cattle to graze, it being mostly sagebrush. We grow the best alfalfa in the country up here but it costs an arm and a leg to irrigate and we don’t have the water to do more than we’re doing. Used to be a lot of gold mining around, but that’s about finished.”
    “So what do people do?” asked Neal.
    “Leave, mostly.”
    Steve pointed to a dirt road off to the right. “Our place is about twenty miles down that way,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the winters up here. That’s called a non sequitur, isn’t it?”
    “Right.”
    “I got a B.A. in English, although that doesn’t impress the cows.”
    “From where?”
    “Berkeley. Back before the whole free speech stuff, of course. Which is sort of too bad, seeing as how I’m all for free speech,” Steve said. The road took a sudden steep rise, curling through several switchbacks flanked by thick stands of piñon pine. “Now, we’re coming up to Austin, which ain’t got much except it does have a bar and I thought I should give you the whole tour.”
    “The wife doesn’t approve of drinking either?” Neal asked.
    “Well, not since my heart attacked me. Damn doctor … nice enough guy, but Jesus, he tells me to give up smoking, drinking, and red meat. I’m a rancher. I raise beef. I smoke and drink and eat my own beefsteak and I might be the happiest man in America. Well, here’s Austin, such as it is.”
    It sure isn’t much, Neal thought. The town seemed to cling to one of the gentler slopes on the west side of the mountain range. Route 50 narrowed to make the town’s main street, along which there was a raised wooden sidewalk. Old buildings that looked like a run-down movie set of a bad western flanked the street. The buildings were mostly wooden, with a couple of red brick edifices thrown in, and featured classic western facades and wood canopies held up by long poles. There were a couple of cheap motels, a gas station, one restaurant, maybe three saloons, and a grocery store. A few houses dotted the hill that led up from the north side of the road. The hill was sparse except for a few pinon pine.
    “Let’s go see and be seen at Brogan’s,” Steve said as he pulled the car over on the side of the road.
    He brushed the dust off his pants and old leather boots and ambled toward Brogan’s. Neal watched his slightly bowlegged gait and the little hitch in his left leg. Then he gently lowered himself out of the truck and he followed him into the bar.
    It wasn’t really a bar, though. It was a saloon, as dark and cool as an old cellar. The two small windows were grimy from forty years of collected grease and smoke and let in unsteady streams of filtered sunlight to highlight the specks of dust that floated in the stale air. The low ceiling sheltered cobwebs in each corner and the three small, round tables showed only a nodding acquaintance with anything resembling a rag.
    A few stools, a couple with torn red upholstery, were pushed up against the bar, behind which sat an old man, fat and wrinkled as a bullfrog, with jowls to match. His butt sank deep into the cushion of an ancient wing-back chair and he was sipping what looked like whiskey from a jelly jar that was as greasy as the hand that held it. An enormous dog of dubious ancestry and ineffable color lay beside him and raised its gigantic head to see who was coming through the door.
    A younger man, tall and wiry, was perched on a stool at the far end of the bar. His sandy hair peeked out under a red gimme