Free Play a Lone Hand by Luke; Short Page B

lone drink or to stay a week. For Sid Bentham, who had looked upon the face of trouble and therefore never invited it, seldom asked questions; the slow-witted Mexican family he employed were incurious and could speak no English.
    Sebree had his look at the dim-lit bar and the almost dark dining room, and satisfied, crossed the bridge, tied his horse at the saloon tie rack and climbed the steps. It had been three months since his last visit, he remembered, and thinking of Sarita, Sid’s wife, he thought drearily, She’ll be nasty, but it can’t be helped .
    He entered the dining room where a fat Mexican woman was wiping off the long oilcloth covered table. “Where’s Sid?” he asked her without bothering with a greeting.
    In the fashion of her people, the woman pointed with her chin to the kitchen.
    â€œGet him.”
    The woman left and Sebree walked through the doorway into the saloon adjoining. It was a comfortable room, low ceilinged and cool. The bar and two oversized circular card tables with their chairs almost filled the room. An overhead kerosene lamp burned dimly. Sebree turned up its wick, then slacked into a chair and idly studied the labels of the whiskey bottles on the back bar. He heard footsteps crossing the dining room and was relieved that they were not a woman’s. Sid Bentham came through the doorway, said, “How are you, Grady?” then halted at the end of the bar. He was a spare, clean man past middle age, dressed in townsman’s clothes, and his dead white hair parted deep on the side was combed with a barber’s neatness. His features were sharp and had once been handsome, but now a cynical weariness was reflected in his dark eyes. “Sarita will be ’long in a minute,” he said.
    â€œIt’s you I want to see, not her.”
    Wordlessly Bentham turned and went back into the kitchen.
    Sebree wondered if Bentham had ever spoken an unnecessary word. He remembered the night in Henty’s saloon two years ago when he had caught Bentham dealing a marked deck of cards. Only the two of them had been playing and the game was Black Jack. As Henty’s new houseman, Bentham had not yet learned the names and habits of the customers. Sebree had been drinking; Bentham saw it, underestimated his man and took the chance. When Sebree had said suddenly, “Give me that deck,” Bentham settled back in his chair, looked blandly at him without any fear at all, and said, “All right, they’re marked. Want me to wake Henty?” That was the night that Sebree found a husband for Sarita, who had been his mistress for a year.
    He often wondered how Bentham, a townsman at heart, bore the tedium and isolation of this remote spot. The fact that he was married to another man’s woman wouldn’t bother him, Sebree knew. It had been an arrangement of convenience and had worked out admirably. Bentham could watch Sarita, and the fact that she was Mrs. Bentham, combined with Sid’s earned reputation as a rough man with a gun, kept other men at a distance.
    Sid came back now, halted by the bar, and said, “Want a drink?”
    â€œYes, brandy.” Sebree watched Bentham take down two glasses and a bottle and he asked, “How is she?”
    â€œI haven’t asked her.”
    Sebree smiled, but did not comment. Bentham brought the glasses to the table, sat down and poured the brandy. He accepted Sebree’s offer of a cigar and both men lit up in silence. If Bentham was curious as to Sebree’s mission, he did not show it. That was a quality Sebree admired in a man—that and the ability to be really secretive, which Bentham had also.
    When Sebree had sipped his brandy and had his cigar burning evenly, he said, “Sid, you’ve never told me this, but I took the trouble to find out. You ran with a hardcase crowd over in Beaver County before you came here, didn’t you?”
    Sid nodded.
    â€œI want a man for a job.