He had a quick flickering of an image in his mind - a little cattle spread he would operate himself, and of Haley waiting for him at the house when he returned each night. But he pushed that image away. It was way too soon for him to be having such thoughts.
The barkeep was a man of maybe fifty, with thinning hair, but his face was decorated with bushy sideburns showing flecks of silver. He wore a white shirt and a checkered vest, and an apron was tied about his middle. He looked at Dusty from under bushy brows.
“What can I do for you, son?” he said.
“You open for business?”
He shrugged. “It’s early, but what the hell. What can I get you?”
Though Dusty had settled his thirst outside, he now thought a beer might taste good. And it gave him a moment more to procrastinate before asking the question that might end his long ride in disappointment.
“I’ll have a beer.”
“I don’t serve boys under twenty-one. How old are you, son?”
Dusty looked at him coolly, annoyance rising inside him. He was tired to the bone, and if he felt like a beer, then he was damned well going to have one. “I’m old enough to have a beer without no sass from you.”
The bartender grabbed a mug, and filled it from one of the tapped kegs that were mounted horizontally behind the bar. He was grinning, apparently finding something amusing about the situation. Or about Dusty. Dusty was filled with the gumption and spine that comes with being twenty, but he was too tired at the moment to take offense at being the source of anyone’s amusement.
The barkeep said, “You got money to pay for this?”
Dusty reached into the pocket of his levis. He had seen a coin in there a few days earlier. He found it, a nickel, and dropped it to the bar. “There you go. All the money I have to my name.”
“You’re life savings, huh?” the barkeep snorted a chuckle. “That should cover it.”
The barkeep set the mug on the bar before Dusty. “I hope you enjoy it, son, because with no more money, you won’t be having a second one.”
Dusty tipped the mug, pouring down a few gulps. Then he dragged the back of one buckskin sleeve across his mouth.
He found the barkeep was staring at him.
Dusty said, “You got a problem?”
The barkeep shook his head. “You look a little familiar, that’s all.”
“Ain’t never been through these parts before.”
“Never said you had. You just remind me of someone, that’s all.”
The barkeep went back to wiping glasses and straightening behind the bar, but as he worked he would steal an occasional glance at Dusty.
When the beer was finished, Dusty said, “Since I can’t afford a second one, how about some information instead.”
The barkeep raised his brows in sort of a half-shrug. “I’ll do what I can.”
“I’m looking for a particular woman. Might be about your age. I don’t rightly know. Name of Rose Callahan.”
The barkeep’s good humor drained from his face. He eyed Dusty levelly. “I might. Who is she to you.”
“Now, that’s none of your damn business. I take it you know her?”
The barkeep said nothing.
“Do you know where I can find her?”
The barkeep was silent for a long moment, as though he were weighing the situation in his mind. He reminded Dusty of a card shark, deliberating over a hand.
Finally, the man said, “Up those stairs. First door on the right.”
“Much obliged.” Dusty turned and strode across the barroom floor.
He took the stairs one at a time, not in twos like he normally might. He found himself suddenly...he was not sure...scared? Maybe.
This was Rose Callahan he was about to see. The woman who had brought him into the world. She had given him up for reasons he did not know – reasons he hoped to learn. What he really wanted, he had to admit to himself, was to connect with her, to form a parent-child bond. He wanted his mother in his life.
A thought struck him – what if this Rose Callahan was not the one he was seeking? But he immediately dismissed this as irrational. The name was not that common. And in the west, there were so few women in general. It was so unlikely there would be two with the same name, working saloons in the same area.
Even though he had never met his mother, and had never known anything about her, he had learned a year earlier what her name was and what she did for a living. The last anyone had known, she was living in or near Carson City, Nevada.
His mother was a saloon whore, and that did not rest easily with him. How could it? But as the year ticked away, he had let the news gradually settle. Mister Cantrell had helped.
“It doesn’t matter who your parents were, or what they did,” he had said. “What matters is who you are. What kind of man you make yourself into.”
This had helped. A little. In time, Dusty found a sort of acceptance of what his mother was, and it was then he decided to find her, with the first stop in his journey being Carson City, where he began asking questions. Questions that eventually led him to this saloon.
And now, he was climbing the stairs that would take him to her. First door on the right.
He did not know what he expected to gain from this, really. He knew what he wanted, but was he being realistic? After all, he and his mother were strangers. You cannot expect to gain an entire lifetime of bonding in one visit. And maybe they would have nothing at all in common. Maybe they would not even like each other.
As the boy climbed the stairs and moved beyond the barkeep’s line of sight, a woman stepped from a doorway behind the bar. Her hair was sandy colored, and piled atop her head in an assortment of curls. Her face was painted to hide the lines of hard living.
“It’s him,” the barkeep said, his eyes on the now vacant staircase.
She followed his gaze. “Who? I don’t see anyone.”
“Him. A boy who was just in here. Had a beer. Just went up the stairs. He looked familiar, I thought. I didn’t think much of it, at first. After you’ve tended bar for so many years, you see more cowboys and miners than there are stars in the heavens, and it’s not unusual for a customer to strike me as looking a little familiar. But the more I looked at him, the more I figured it out. He’s about the right age. Then, when he asked for Rosie, I knew it had to be him.
“And the way he walks, the way he carries himself. The way he wears his gun like it’s a part of him. The spitting image of his father.”
“After all these years,” she said with a sort of hushed wonder.
The barkeep sighed. “We knew he’d come looking for her someday.”
The woman shook her head, her gaze fixed on the empty staircase. “I hope he’s ready for what he’s going to find.”
THREE
Dusty stood before the door. He raised a fist to rap on it, to announce his presence, then he pulled his hand away. Here he stood, his face streaked with trail dust and sweat, his jaw covered with a half-inch of whiskers – he had bathed the night before, but not shaved since he had left Arizona. He was wearing his buckskin shirt, which was stained with grease and campfire smoke. He suddenly felt he should have been in a white shirt and tie. Maybe a jacket. After all, he was about to meet his mother. If the woman in the next room, answering to the correct name, was indeed his mother.
But he had spent his final nickel downstairs. His only options were to meet her looking like this, or not meet her at all. And he had ridden too far for the second choice.
He raised his fist again, hesitating for only a moment while he pulled his hat from his head, then knocked on the door.
There was no answer. No one was in there. Maybe she had gone out. No, that could not be. The barkeep downstairs had said she was here.
He knocked again. Still no answer.
He stood uncertainly for a few moments. Should he go downstairs and wait? Should he knock a third time? Should he simply stand out here like a fool?
He raised his knuckl
es for a third knock, but then thought better of it, and reached for the doorknob. This was wrong, Dusty thought. You don’t just go into someone’s bedroom uninvited. But he couldn’t bear to wait, either. He found himself almost tingling with anticipation, and maybe even just a touch of fear. His knees felt weak. Here I go, he thought, and he turned the knob and let the door swing open.
He leaned forward to peek past the edge of the door into the room. A single bed was against one wall, and there was a small bureau with a basin and pitcher atop it. A window overlooked the street below. The smell of whiskey was in the air.
Someone was lying in the bed. A woman.
“Hello?” Dusty said.
There was no response. Dusty did not want to be caught stepping in here like this. These were prudent times, and such a thing would be unseemly. Less than gentlemanly behavior toward a woman could land you in a rash of trouble. Dusty himself wouldn’t tolerate such an action by another man. Yet, she had not reacted when Dusty spoke. It wasn’t odd for one to take a light nap during the day, but this woman seemed to be out cold. He thought what-the-hell, and stepped in.
The woman was maybe sixty-ish, her face lined, the flesh sagging at her neck and puffy beneath each eye. It was not simply the skin of age, he realized, but of illness. Her cheekbones and jaw line were starkly pronounced, her eyes deeply set, almost sinking in, giving her face a skeletal look. Her skin bore a tinge of yellow. He became concerned; was she breathing at all? She was lying so still.
He moved to the side of the bed.
“Ma’am? I don’t mean to intrude, but the door was open,” a little lie, “and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
No response at all, not even the flutter of eyelids, but at least from where he now stood he could see that she was indeed breathing. Lightly, almost silently.
He shifted a foot, and his toe touched something which rolled away. He reached down and under the bed, his fingers finding and curling around a glass bottle. He pulled it out, finding it bore a whiskey label.
There was no glass. She must have been drinking directly from the bottle. Drank herself into a drunken stupor, he realized. She might have finished the bottle, or it might have spilled when it fell. The floorboards were stained and discolored, and the smell of whiskey was strong.
He wondered if this could be the Rose Callahan who had been his mother. No, he decided. The name might be the same, the line of work might be also, but this woman was far too old. Her hair, flying wildly about the pillow, was salt-and-pepper in some places, snowy white in others. Her face was too deeply engraved with the lines of age. She must be sixty if she’s a day, he thought. That would have put her at forty-three when he was born. You didn’t see too many whores that old. The younger competition usually forced them out of a job long before they reached their forties. And you almost never heard of a woman giving birth at that age.
Dusty stood the bottle upright on a small stand by the bed, then turned and stepped out of the room. He closed the door behind him.
So, his journey was over. This woman, this Rose Callahan he had been pursuing, was not the one who was his mother.
He replaced his hat and stood outside the door, not quite sure how he felt. He had tried to find his mother, but had been unable to. Hell, it had been a long-shot from the start. And now he would return to the Cantrell spread and hopefully get his old job back. Now he could devote all of his attention to saving money and starting his own outfit, without his thoughts drifting any longer to his past. His unanswered questions would simply have to remain unanswered.
He supposed there should be some sort of feeling of completion. His journey was over. He should be glad. But he found he was not.
Was it so terribly wrong to want to know who your mother was? To know something of her background? Was it so wrong not to want to feel alone in the world? Sam Patterson had given him all that he could, been like a father to him, and because of Sam, Dusty thought he might know what it would like to have a family. A home. But it had not been enough.
He turned and started down the stairs. He suddenly felt weary. Not the bone-weariness he had been feeling because of all the riding, but a deep-down-to-the-soul exhaustion. He took one step after another, his feet feeling heavy. This ride, this goddamned long trail he had been following, had all been for nothing.
He stepped down onto the barroom floor. Ahead of him was the door, and out beyond, his horse waited. But then, he caught sight of the bar with his peripheral vision, and a second drink suddenly seemed appealing. Something a little stronger than beer.
A saloon woman was standing at the bar, alongside the barkeep. Her hair was lightly colored, her age difficult to guess because of all of the paint on her face. Dusty stepped up to the bar.
“I’ll have another drink,” he said to the barkeep. “Make it a whiskey this time.”
“I thought you were out of money,” he said.
Oh, yeah. Dusty had momentarily forgotten, in the wave of weariness and despair that had struck him outside the woman’s doorway upstairs. He had spent his last nickel on a beer before he had gone upstairs. “I don’t know...I’ll work it off, or something.”
“No, you don’t have to. This one’s on the house.” The barkeep set a glass on the bar and poured a shot of whiskey. “You look like you could use one.”
Dusty downed the whiskey in one gulp, but barely noticed its burn as it traveled down.
“Was she awake?” the barkeep asked.
“No,” Dusty said quietly. “She was asleep the whole time I was there. It turns out she wasn’t the one I was looking for. I made this whole ride for nothing.”
“No. No, you didn’t. She’s the one.”
Dusty had been staring at his empty glass, but now he looked up to the barkeep, curiosity suddenly rising like a tide, washing away the weariness.
As if in reply to an unanswered question, the barkeep continued. “She might not be what you expected, but when a man goes searching for his past, he’d best be prepared for what he might find.”
“How did you know?”
“You wouldn’t remember me. You were too young when she gave you away. My name’s Lewis.”
The saloon woman stepped over. “And I’m Annie McGraw. We used to work with you mother, years ago. About twenty years, actually. We sort of take care of her, now.”
“But,” Dusty said, “how can she be my mother? She’s so old. She looks old enough to be my grandmother.”
“She’s not well, Dusty,” Lewis said. “I assume you still call yourself Dusty?”
Dusty nodded. “It’s the only name I know.”
“Like I said, she’s not well. Too much whiskey over the years. Her liver’s about gone. So’s her heart. She’s dying.”
“She’s forty-six,” Annie put in. “But sickness can age you. And she’s done a lot of hard livin’.”
Dusty said, “But I saw an empty whiskey bottle up there. Why are you letting her drink if she’s as sick as you say?”
“The doctor doesn’t think it will make much difference at this point,” Lewis said.
Annie continued. “She’s been out of her head, more or less, for weeks. The doctor says her liver is so badly gone it’s poisoning her blood. About a week ago, she took a turn downhill. Sleeps most of the time, now. When she’s awake, there are times she doesn’t even know her own name. The doctor doesn’t think she has much longer left.”
“Forty-six,” Dusty said. “I guess I’ve never seen anyone quite that sick. And I thought I’d seen a lot. I’ve seen a man die of a bullet wound. I’ve seen a cowhand dragged to death when he was thrown from the saddle and his foot stuck in the stirrup, and the horse started running. But I’ve never seen this.”
“It’s been hard. She, Lewis and me - none of us had a family, so we all sort of became each other’s family. Took care of each other, when there was no one else to. Now, she’s all but gone.”
Lewis said, “We always thought you might come back. Annie and I always tol
d her so. Even as a child you were so determined. That doesn’t seem to have changed any.”
“Lewis, Rosie and I bought this place years ago. Lewis tends bar, and Rosie and I would wait tables. No more whorin’. This gives us a chance to have a little more of a decent life.”
“Why?” Dusty asked. “Why did she choose that life?”
“No one chooses it, Dusty. A woman has to do what she has to do when she finds herself suddenly alone in a land like this, where there are no jobs for unmarried women. I had met a man, a gold miner, through the mail. We corresponded for a year, then I spent what little money I had inherited from my parents to come west and meet him. Thought I’d surprise him, but he surprised me. When I got here, I found he had a wife and five children. I had no money to get me back east. Not even enough to eat on. So I did what I had to, to keep from starving.
“Your mother, she found herself in a similar situation. She had been raised by her parents in a cabin in the mountains. When they died, she found herself alone, with nothing. Her father had been a mountain man, running a line of traps which was their only source of income. He provided food for the table mostly by hunting. Deer, rabbit, occasionally a bighorn sheep. Then they both died suddenly, and Rosie had to find a way to feed herself. Her father had never taught her how to hunt or shoot, and once the supplies they had in the cabin were gone, she had no choice but to go down to the mining camps and make a living.”
“Don’t condemn her,” Lewis said. “She and Annie are two of the finest people I have ever met. You shouldn’t judge a person by the things they are forced to do to survive.”
Dusty nodded, and his gaze dropped back to his now empty glass. He had found his mother, after all. He had found Rose Callahan. And yet, he had still not found the past he had been searching for.
The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) Page 3