Free Mojave by Johnny D. Boggs

Isaac Noel’s saloon. He could see who was passing by the window that was behind my head. He could even see the long mirror that stretched behind Isaac Noel’s mahogany back bar. I sat on Whip’s right, where all I could see was Whip, Guttersnipe Gary, and the backs of seven miners crowding along the bar, plus an overflowing spittoon. Guttersnipe Gary sat on Whip’s left, where all he could see was me and Whip and the window and the people outside staring inside and likely wishing they had money for a fine wine, a fine liquor, or a fine cigar.
    Whip Watson leaned forward, and his eyes got darker, and his right hand let go of his glass of wine, and he reached for his whip, which lay atop the felt-topped table like a rattler.
    â€œMister,” he told the man with the brown teeth, “who in hell invited you to join our private conversation?”
    I glanced at the man. He got all pale, and his eyes growed with fear—and, criminy, he hadn’t even witnessed what had happened to Conrad a few days back. So he muttered his apology, and slid his chair, careful not to make anybody’s skin crawl, and got back to the conversation he had been invited to listen to at his own table.
    After letting go of his blacksnake, Whip Watson drained his glass. I refilled it because that’s the kind of guy I am. Then I needed a drink myself, so I filled my glass and slid the bottle to Guttersnipe Gary.
    â€œThat’s right.” Whip had lowered his voice. Just so some other fool wouldn’t think he was invited to join our private conversation. “No jail. No law.”
    Guttersnipe Gary emptied the bottle into his own goblet. “My kind of town,” he said.
    â€œNot quite.” Whip Watson straightened, sipped his wine, all pleasant again. “What else is missing?”
    I sipped my wine and thunk. Guttersnipe Gary sipped his wine, but I don’t think he had a brain to think with.
    My brain drew pictures of what I had seen. There was an apothecary . . . and Whip Watson had spent considerable time inside J. M. Miller’s store, which had a powder depot attached to one side . . . and I recollected the barber shop on account that I needed a haircut . . . and another mercantile on account that I needed some new duds . . . a doctor’s office . . . a newspaper called the Calico Print (I remembered that because the editor’s name was stenciled on the window, and Guttersnipe Gary had told me how he’d hate to be called Overshiner, which told me that Guttersnipe Gary knowed how to read) . . . a couple of picket homes that said they was boardinghouses . . . and the Applewhite Livery and Lodging House.
    â€œCome on,” Watson said, just a trifle louder. “We rode up and down Calico. What didn’t you see?”
    Right then I knowed, but turned out that Guttersnipe Gary had a brain and could think and had noticed the same thing that I hadn’t seen.
    â€œPetticoats!” he shouted.
    Actually, he used another word that begins with a P.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Don’t misunderstand me. There was women in Calico. A town five or six years old with a population of twelve hundred, there had to some petticoats, and after our bottle of wine and our rye whiskey chasers at Noel’s place, we discovered some. Like that prostitute named Betty who had a crib behind the privies behind one of the worser grog shops, but she was, as Guttersnipe Gary described (mind you, to her face), “a dried up ol’ whore,” which wasn’t polite but did describe Betty to a T. Denver Dotty run the South Saloon, where we’d stop for another drink, and I’d hate to tangle with her. She’d stitched overall pockets onto the front of her dress, wore a cap made for a man and boots made for a miner. Her whiskey wasn’t fine. Another lady, if you ain’t too particular about who you call a lady, we found at another watering hole, where we stopped for another drink, but