Free Way Down on the High Lonely by Don Winslow Page A

cap advertising Wildcat. A spindly mustache outlined the narrow mouth that was bent into a frown. A long red beard hung straight down from his mouth. He was staring into a glass of beer.
    “Whoohoo,” the fat man wheezed. “I guess Mrs. Mills didn’t come into town.”
    “Hello, Brogan,” said Steve. “This is Neal Carey.”
    The man at the end of the bar looked up.
    “Steve,” he said, nodding his head.
    “Cal,” Steve nodded back. “What are you drinking, Neal?”
    “A beer?” Neal asked.
    “I guess Brogan’s got one or two. A beer for my friend and I’ll have a beer and shot.”
    “You know where it is,” Brogan answered. Neal got the feeling that Brogan didn’t spend a lot of time out of that chair. “Leave the money on the bar first.”
    “You don’t trust me, Brogan.”
    “I trust myself and my dog and I don’t turn my back on the dog.”
    Steve climbed over the bar and reached into an old-fashioned Coca-Cola cooler and pulled out two sweating bottles of beer. Then he took a bottle of Canadian Club out from under the bar, grabbed a shot glass from a rack, and filled it up.
    “I wouldn’t either if I had that dog,” Steve said. “It would probably try to screw you in the ass, and it’s big enough to do it.”
    Neal saw Cal flinch ever so slightly, then bury his head deeper in his beer. The dog lifted its muzzle with somewhat less interest. Steve Mills knocked the shot back, shook his head, turned red, coughed, and set the glass down.
    “I love this country,” he said. He popped the caps off the beer and handed one to Neal.
    Neal sat down on a stool and took a tentative sip of the beer. It tasted bitter and cold. It tasted great. He took another sip, then a swallow, and then tipped the bottle back and guzzled the stuff, savoring the feel of it pouring cool and wet down his throat.
    Steve pulled a couple of crumbled bills out of his pocket and laid them on the bar.
    “Mrs. Mills letting you have a little of your money?” Brogan teased. His voice sounded like a slow leak from a steam pipe.
    Steve turned to Neal. “The missus handles the money, which is kinda funny, seeing as I’m the one who’s supposed to have the head for it.”
    Cal looked up from his beer again and glanced quickly but sharply at Steve Mills. Nobody seemed to notice but Neal, who took an instant dislike to the guy. That felt almost as invigorating as the beer. Neal hadn’t allowed himself to feel very much in the way of emotion for a while. He swigged down the rest of the bottle and saw Steve Mills watching him.
    Steve lit up a cigarette and took a drag. “Why don’t you come out to the place with me? We can feed you and give you a place to sleep and you can sort things out from there.”
    “I couldn’t impose on you like that.”
    “We are starved for company out there, and I have a teenage daughter who would just love to interrogate you about life in the big city.
    He does have a point, Neal thought. I’m hungry and tired, and if I call Friends just now they might send the old van out to haul me back in. And I’m not ready for that just yet.
    And after all, I am looking for a ranch near Austin.
    “Well, thank you. It’s very kind of you,” Neal said, feeling like a lying hypocrite.
    But that’s what undercover work is all about, he thought.
    Three more beers met their maker before Steve and Neal got back in the truck and headed out of town. They drove west for a mile or so and then turned south down the dirt road Steve had pointed out earlier. The road ran roughly parallel between the Toiyabe Range to the east and the Shoshones to the west, through pretty flat sagebrush plain broken by deep gullies. It took an occasional dip down into one of the wider gullies but then rose right back up onto the plain.
    The terrain was mostly the blue-gray of sagebrush above the yellow-gray of the alkaloid soil, punctuated here and there by a few deep green fields of alfalfa. The mountains in the background, rising as