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“I thought you might have noticed,” Adam said, while dismounting and tying his horse to a hitching rail, “my sister seems capable of taking care of herself. I had hesitated allowing her to come with me to Arizona. Now, I think she sometimes fares better than me.”
“I do not doubt that,” Runner said. He gave Adam a half smile as he slid from his saddle and flung his horse’s reins around the hitching rail.
“Well? Ready to give it a try, old friend?” Adam said, taking a chance by slinging an arm around Runner’s shoulders. “Let’s pretend for a while that we’ve never had cause to dislike one another. We are boys again, making challenges and having a lot of damn fun doin’ it.”
Runner placed a stiff hand to Adam’s arm and lifted it from his shoulder. They exchanged steady gazes, then moved toward the “Big Tent.”
After entering, they paused and took a look around the smoke-filled interior. It was crowded with drinking and card-playing men and lewd women. As Runner listened, he frowned. He had never before been brought face-to-face with such vulgarity, profanity, and indecency. He could not help but think that what he was seeing and hearing beneath the roof of the “Big Tent” could disgust even the most hardened man. It was apparent that not only was this a place to drink whiskey, it was also a retreat for thieves and robbers of all shapes and sizes.
“I didn’t come just to gawk,” Adam said. He nodded for Runner to follow as he began making his way toward a bar that sported a supply of every variety of liquor and cigars, with cut-glass goblets and a splendid, huge mirror reflecting everything beyond it, as though there were two huge rooms, instead of one.
Adam elbowed his way to the bar, making standing room for himself and Runner.
The bartender stood behind the bar, a wide, thick mustache hanging low over his upper lip. A fat cigar was positioned at one corner of his mouth. He was polishing a glass, then set it aside and leaned both of his hands flat down on the bar, looking from Runner to Adam.
“What’ll it be, gents?” the bartender said, chewing his cigar over to the other side of his mouth. “A regular glass of whiskey is two pony glasses. If you like it in quarts, that’ll be forty cents. It’s ten cents a drink if you’ll take them one at a time.”
“I’ll take a double shot for starters,” Adam said, searching in his pockets for some loose change.
“And what for the ‘White Indian’?” the bartender said, leveling his squinty, gray eyes on Runner. “You are the one who’s called the White Indian, ain’t ya? You fit the description to a tee.”
His jaw tight, his mouth clenched, Runner glared at the bartender.
Adam shuffled his feet nervously. “Never you mind what my friend is called,” he said, slamming his coins down on the bar. “Get him a shot of whiskey. And make it snappy, do you hear? Or we’ll take our business elsewhere.”
Runner turned his back to the bar and again looked slowly around him. When he caught sight of a couple of young Navaho braves on the far side of the room, he tensed up. When he saw that they had drunk far too much alcohol, he felt an ache encircle his heart. These young men were his brother’s age. They attended school together. Theirs was to be a much brighter future because of their abilities to read and write.
With their bellies filled with whiskey tonight, their brains fuzzy because of it, it would be impossible for them to attend school tomorrow and learn anything. He had to wonder how often they came to the “Big Tent.” He had to wonder what they had traded off to get the money that they were spending so foolishly.
“Runner?” Adam said, nudging Runner in the side with one of his elbows. “I’ve got your drink. Come on. Let’s find us a table.”
Runner took a last, lingering look at the two young braves, seething with anger inside. He turned to Adam, glared at him, then knocked both drinks from Adam’s hand.
Adam’s eyes lit with rage. “What the hell did you do that for?” he shouted. He placed his hands on his hips as he stared down at the broken glass and spilled drinks, then up at Runner again. “You came in here willingly. You knew that you were expected to drink. Why on God’s earth did you knock the drinks from my hand?”
The bartender came around the end of the bar with a broom and dustpan. He gave Runner a heated glare, then bent to a knee and proceeded to clean up the mess. “Get that White Indian outta here,” he ground out between his clenched teeth as he shifted a look up at Adam. “Now. Or, by damn, I’ll have you both thrown out.”
“Damn it, Runner, now do you see what you’ve done?” Adam said. But when he looked over to where Runner had been standing, he found him gone.
When he searched for Runner and found him talking with the two young Navaho braves, his gut twisted. He was seeing Runner getting angrier by the minute as the two drunken lads refused to leave the “Big Tent,” in spite of Runner’s insistence.
“Get outta my way,” one of the braves said in a slurred manner, falling over a chair as he tried to step around Runner.
Runner reached down and lifted the young brave bodily from the floor and started to sling him over his shoulder, as though he were no more than a mere bag of potatoes.
But he didn’t get the chance. Just a hint of a fight was all that it took to get the whole pack of men in the bar into small fistfights. This turned in
to a brawl that left no table untouched as some became upturned, while others were used to knock men over their heads.
“Now see what you’ve done!” Adam shouted as he struggled to defend himself from first one blow, and then another.
When a fist smashed into his right eye, he cried out and crumpled to the floor. When someone stepped on his groin, he screamed and rolled over to his side, curling into a fetal position.
Runner saw Adam’s distress and ignored it. He had the two young braves by their collars. He dragged them outside, leaving the “Big Tent” half destroyed in his wake.
“Runner, I do not want to go home yet,” one of the young braves said, his voice drunkenly slurred. His face blank, his gaze filmed over, he wiped his mouth with his hand and looked longingly at the flap that led back inside the tent. “Runner, I want more whiskey.”
Runner looked at the lad sympathetically and felt a tugging at his heart, which was quickly replacing the anger he was feeling toward these two Navaho braves who had disgraced themselves before many white men tonight.
