Fairy BrewHaHa at the Lucky Nickel Saloon
Ken Rand
Chapter one
It was mighty tranquil this morning at the Lucky Nickel, which is how us regulars like it, but this morning, it was too tranquil. Mick was late opening up and us regulars were getting a tad worried. Me—Tom Dooley, at your service—and fellow regulars Banky and Casper stood on the wooden sidewalk in front of the Lucky Nickel Saloon, Second Ave, Laramie, Wyoming Territory, U S of A, waiting, looking up and down the quiet street, bewildered. The big double doors behind the usually open batwing saloon doors were locked up tighter than a banker's conscience, a lock as big as a cuspidor firmly affixed thereto.
Jack Thatcher hadn't arrived yet and I expected other fellow-regular Charlie was still asleep under the piano inside, where he plopped when he passed out Saturday night, last we seen him, his usual spot. It was Monday now, and knowing Charlie, I didn't expect he'd waken till about suppertime this aft.
"Wonder where he's at?" Casper wondered. He lifted his black leather eyepatch, took out his glass eye, huffed a garlicky breath on it, buffed it on his shirtsleeve, put it back in, leaving the eyepatch up on his forehead, and squinted up and down the street out his good eye. His glass eyeball wandered northwestward of its own accord.
It was still forenoon judging by the long shadows laying across the dusty street, going to be a hot one and a body needed shade and liquid refreshment in such heat so we waited for Mick to open up because there ain't a better nor more tranquil place for such activity as the Lucky Nickel Saloon. I saw naught on the street but one scrawny hound pissing in the water trough in front of Stuyvesant & Sweeney's Livery Stable across the street, and an old miner passing by slowly, asleep and snoring astride his mule, another pack mule in tow, heading for some thither diggings, or wherever his mule took him. A crow hollered from atop the peaked roof of the false front of Hanson & Stern Dry Goods & Notions betwixt Stuyvesant & Sweeney's and Missy's Finer Dressery and I heard a cow moo. I think. It may have been Banky passing wind.
"Maybe he fell down an outhouse somewheres," Banky conjectured. He fiddled with the door handle and tugged on the lock, reaffirming that it was still locked, as it was when he tried the same solution ten seconds afore, then his gun-hand went twitchy near his ever-ready Colt, as if he was fixing to draw.
"Gunplay this early," I admonished with a shake of my head, "ain't tranquil." I think Banky wanted to shoot the lock off the door. "It might wake up the sheriff." I wasn't worried that it would wake Charlie.
Banky looked puzzled for a span of a two blinks of his beady eyes, then he raised his black eyebrows up to the top of his forehead, said: "Oh. There is that, yes sir." And he relaxed. Ten seconds later he rattled the door handle again.
"Maybe a gunshot would bring Mick a-running," Casper suggested. Banky's eyebrows danced again as he pondered this new solution.
"You could shoot the crow," Casper continued.
Banky blinked a sec, then took a step off the sidewalk onto the street and pondered, thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, spurs a-jingle. "Might could," he pondered.
He tilted his black hat back off his high forehead and spat, watching as an iffy morning breeze come by and snatched his high-arching spittle and flung it downwind a smidge. Then he licked his trigger-finger and held it up to test from which way the wind was coming. "Might could."
"Might wake Miss Emma," I warned.
Which gave Banky pause.
Miss Emma Drummond, of Miss Dolly Dubois's Boarding House for Refined Ladies, was affianced to Mick. Her room was up the street a block toward First Ave and you turn left two doors down on Grant, the two-story house with the nice flowered hedge, and white picket fence that smells like lavender and rose all the time, even a block downwind, with the red porch light. She's the one who talked Mick into closing the Lucky Nickel every Sunday, otherwise we wouldn't be in our present predicament.
Miss Emma liked us regulars a bit less than she liked ticks and deadbeats. She had her eye dead set on getting out of her onerous contract to her benefactor, Miss Dolly, and marrying Mick, and on reforming him, and herself to boot, and she started by insisting Mick close the Lucky Nickel every Sunday and go to church with her and Miss Dolly's other gals, most of them but not all as not all were of a church-going nature. Mick was so in love that he caved—this was maybe four months ago—which meant us regulars got to go dry one day a week, and Charlie got to sleep in an extra day.
Waking Miss Emma would only bring us further heartburn.
"Hm," Banky contemplated, regrouping. "Not much meat on him anyways." I assume he was referring to the crow, who cawed a birdie version of "neener, neener, neener," to Banky's turned back. Banky ignored it, stepped back up on the sidewalk, and jiggled the lock.
"Maybe he's with Miss Emma," Casper speculated.
"Doing what?" Banky inquired.
"Well," Casper shrugged and his glass eye drifted northwestward again, "sleeping, I suppose."
"No sir," Banky and I answered together.
Miss Dolly had an ironclad rule that customers were the onliest ones who could overnight at her dwelling, and only if such accommodations were paid for in advance. Mick was poorer than a hind-tit calf and could only afford the favors of his affianced but once a month, and that a good month to boot. No sir, Mick bunked on the floor in a little room off the back of the Lucky Nickel, where he kept his liquor cabinet and supplies and his bedroll and a picture of Miss Emma, all gussied up in petticoats, bustle, bonnet, and parasol, like the same photograph he kept under the bar to moon at from time to time during business hours.
Which is probably where he was at this very hour, sleeping.
"I bet Mick's still abed," I said. "One of us ought to go round back and wake him up."
Mick blinked and his eyebrows danced as he pondered this new solution. The Lucky Nickel did have a back door, which led to the outhouse out back and a trash barrel and compost heap next to same. Mick never locked that back door, not because he was afraid of burglars, but because a prospective customer with hard cash might choose to enter from the back way. It also wouldn't answer if he or one of his customers was to go back to relieve theirselves and not be able to return after.
He kept a Monkey Wards catalog affixed to a nail on the inside of the outhouse door and a pole nearby outside so a body could hitch his horse close if the need to sit a spell arose, whether passing-through stranger or customer. He was a neighborly fellow, Mick.
"The back door?" Casper weighed in. "Maybe he's taken to locking it on Sundays too."
"One way to find out," I suggested.
"Reckon so." Banky hitched his britches up a notch, set his hat at a rakish angle, gave the front door lock a final jiggle, and then led the way, but we didn't get far. As we neared the sidewalk end by the alley that led us aside the Lucky Nickel toward the backside of same, we heard the front door lock rattle.
We turned. Casper's eyeball almost popped out and he lowered the eyepatch to keep it in, Banky almost drew, and I admit I was startled as well. There stood Mick, jamming one of a gazillion keys on a key ring the size of a horse collar in the lock. He must have come up the sidewalk the t'other way whilst we were aiming ourselves to the other t'other way, and sudden like too, as we hadn't made but five or seven steps in said journey.
Anyways, there he was, opening up for the day, paying us no never mind as if we was invisible or of no account. He whistled a few bars from "Little Brown Jug."
He jiggled and jangled the key in the lock and it popped open with the same kind of clank you hear at the jail when the sheriff throws out the drunks in the morning. Then he turned to us, smiled through his bushy brick-red beard, like a tumbleweed stuck to his chin only thicker of foliage, and nodded welcome.
Then he pushed open the big double doors, braced them aside, and disappeared inside, the batwing doors swinging, squeaking, behind him.
We followed, pushing through the batwing doors, bewildered.
"Mick," I said, "we thought you was a goner."
"Or somesuch," Casper added. We bellied up to the bar.
"Yeah," Banky agreed. "We were about to call the sheriff, or shoot a crow, or something else equally dire. Maybe even wake Miss Emma."
"That dire," I stressed. "We was worried. You was late."
Mick went around the bar, took his white apron off a peg, hung the key ring a-jingle up on the aforementioned peg, put the apron around his ample waist, and tied it in back. "Sorry, the delay. Business."
"What business?" I queried.
"Foreclosure," he responded. He smiled as if he'd announced his dog had just had ten puppies.
"Of?" Banky prompted.
"Yeah, of?" Charlie dittoed.
"Saloon," Mick explained. The biggest smile I ever seen on Mick's face shined through under them red, briarpatch whiskers.
"When?" I wondered, and "What?" Casper also wondered at the same time, and Banky drew his Colt reflexively, looking for something to shoot at. Charlie did nothing as he lay snoring under the piano across the room and Jack Thatcher hadn't arrived yet.
"Soon," Mick told. "Landlady says."
Mick was of a taciturn nature. He spoke as little and as infrequently as he could. He was stone deef, or near enough, but he could read lips, and maybe that was why he was taciturn, but I confess it annoyed now and then, especial when us regulars was trying to coax from him the whyfor he'd been late opening for the day, and why he was so slap-happy about the imminent foreclosure of the Lucky Nickel.
What we got was this: His landlady, Miss Dolly Dubois, the same of Miss Dolly Dubois's Boarding House for Refined Ladies fame, also held the mortgage on the Lucky Nickel Saloon, amongst other businesses and establishments in Laramie up and down Second Ave, flanking the railroad station, and along down toward the stockyards. This we knew, but what we didn't know, and it took a while afore we coaxed it from Mick, was that he was in arrears and Miss Dolly was threatening foreclosure iffen he didn't pay up by sundown this very day.
He smiled whilst we coaxed this from our host. We ordered up a bottle of whiskey, Mick didn't frown a hair when we asked to put it on our tab, and we drank—slowly as we had an entire day to while away in tranquility—and did our best to coax the whyfor from Mick, and he slowly relented, one word at a time.
Finally, we Got It.
He pointed to a double eagle, Miss Liberty's twenty-dollar countenance looking up at us in shiny golden splendor right there on the bar.
"Been a while since I seen the like," Banky declared.
"Me too," Casper admitted. Casper used to be an Indian fighter before he lost his eye, but now he was a gambler, but not a good one either.
It took a few more lessons in one-syllable words and grunts and sign language afore us regulars understood that Mick was delayed in opening because there was this customer at the bar when he awoke, awaiting. This customer asked for a shot directly as he spied Mick and paid for the shot with the gold piece we now pondered in awe.
"Whereat is your benefactor?" Banky asked. We all looked around and saw naught but Charlie asleep underpiano.
Mick shrugged. Smiled.
"Can I touch it?" Casper whispered.
Mick shrugged, nodded, smiled. His little eyes disappeared in deep cheek-skin folds when he smiled that big.
We gawked and gathered close around to see as Casper reached out, and we held our collective breaths as he touched the coin, then lifted it, and turned it slowly, reverently, in his hand.
Then the coin turned to dust and fell slithering to the bar.