Two young men, passing through the town, stopped in front of the Boar’s Breath saloon. Swinging down from their horses, they patted their dusters down.
“Damn me, Boomer, if you don’t look like one of them dust devils,” one of the men said, laughing at his friend.
“Yeah, well you ain’t exactly a clean white sheet yourself, Dooley,” Boomer replied. “What do you say we get us a couple of beers?”
“Sounds good to me,” the other man said.
Pushing through the bat-wing doors, the two men entered the saloon and stepped up to the bar. The saloon was relatively quiet, with only four men at one table and a fifth standing down at the far end of the bar. The four at the table were playing cards, the one at the end of the bar was nursing a drink. The man with the drink had a scar that started at his right eyebrow, came through the eye, disfiguring it, slashed down his cheek like a purple lightning bolt, then hooked into the corner of a misshapen mouth.
As the boys stepped up to the bar, the man with the scar looked over at them with an unblinking stare.
“What’ll it be, gents?” the bartender asked.
One of them continued to stare back at the man standing at the end of the bar. He had never seen a face quite as disfigured.
“Dooley?” Boomer said. “The bartender asked what’ll we have.”
“Oh,” Dooley replied. “Uh, two beers.”
“Two beers it is,” the bartender replied, and turned to draw them.
“And I’ll have the same,” Boomer added.
The bartender laughed. “You boys sound like you’ve got a thirst.”
“Just sayin’ we’re thirsty don’t quite get it,” Dooley said. “Why, I got that much dust you could grow cotton in my mouth.”
“Cotton, huh? You boys must be from the South,” the bartender said as he put the two beers in front of Dooley.
“You got somethin’ against the South?” Boomer challenged.
“No, Lord, no,” the bartender said, chuckling. “I’m from southeast Missouri myself. I wore the gray and fought with ol’ Jeff Thompson durin’ the war.”
“We wasn’t neither one of us old enough to fight in the war,” Dooley said.
“But if we had been, we woulda fought with General James Henry Lane of the Texas Fifth,” Boomer said. “He’s my uncle,” he added proudly.
“So, you boys are from Texas, are you?”
“Yes, sir. We just rode up here.”
“It’s a long ride all the way up here from Texas.”
“Sure is. We ’bout rode the legs offen our horses,” Dooley said.
“What brings you to Wyoming Territory?”
“Well sir, we just got a little bit of the wanderin’ fever, so we thought we’d come up here ’n’ see what it’s like,” Boomer said. “We’re pretty good cowhands. Do you know if any ranchers are hiring?”
“Cowhands, huh?” the man with the scar said. It was the first time he had spoken, and he snorted what might have been laughter.
“I beg your pardon?” Boomer asked.
“I’d be willing to bet that you aren’t cowhands at all. More than likely, you’re store clerks, out for a little adventure, and you don’t know the difference between a cowhide and a buffalo turd.”
“Are you hirin’, mister?”
“No.”
“Do you know anyone that is hirin’?”
“No.”
“Well, then, whether we are cowhands or not ain’t none of your business, is it?”
“Who did you say your uncle was? Some general?” the scar-faced man asked.
“I said my uncle was General Lane. General James Lane,” Boomer said. He took a swallow of his beer, leaving some foam trapped in his moustache. “You got somethin’ to say about that?”
“I heard of General Lane.”
“Yeah? What did you hear?”
The scar-faced man poured himself another whiskey, then drank it, all the while holding Boomer in a steady gaze.
“I heard he was a cowardly son of a bitch, leadin’ a pack of Texas cowards,” the man replied.
“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” Dooley said, joining the conversation.
“Mister, I expect you’d better take that back,” Boomer challenged.
The bartender leaned across the bar and said, very quietly, “You boys might want to ease up just a bit. Don’t you know who that is?”
“I don’t care if he is Abraham Lincoln,” Boomer said. “I already don’t like the son of a bitch and just met him. And if he don’t shut the hell up, I may just shut him up.”
“Easy, Boomer,” Dooley said, reaching out for his partner. “We’ve come a long way from home, and we didn’t come up here to get into no fight.”
Boomer glared at the scar-faced man, but the expression on the man’s face never changed.
“I ain’t goin’ to just stand by while my own kin and a bunch of brave men are being insulted by some ass-faced son of bitch who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Boomer said.
“Cowboy, no!” the bartender gasped, reaching across the bar. “My God, do you really not know who this is?”
“Whoever he is, I reckon I can handle the likes of him,” Boomer said.
“Boomer,” Dooley said. “Come on, have your beer and leave this be.”
Boomer stared at the man for a moment longer, then, with a shrug, he turned back toward the bar. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll let it go this time. Maybe folks up here just don’t have as much sense as the folks do back in Texas.”
“Texas,” the scar-faced man snorted. “If it weren’t for whores and their bastards, there wouldn’t be anyone in the whole state but Mexicans and coyotes. You don’t look like a Mexican, and you didn’t come in here walking on all fours. I guess that means your mother is a whore.”
“That’s it, mister!” Boomer shouted in almost uncontrolled anger. “I’m going to mop the floor with your sorry hide!” He put up his fists.
The scar-faced man smiled, though it was a smile without mirth. “Well now, cowboy, if we’re going to fight, why don’t we make it permanent?” he asked. He stepped away from the bar and flipped his jacket back, exposing a pistol that he wore low and kicked out, in the way of a gunfighter.
“Mr. Dancer, I’m sure these boys would apologize to you if you asked them for it,” the bartender said. “There’s no need to carry this any further.”
“Dancer?” Dooley said, his voice cracking. “Did you call him Dancer?”
“I tried to warn you boys,” the bartender said. “This is Ethan Dancer.”
“Boomer, back off,” Dooley said. “Back off. My God, you don’t want to go bracing the likes of Ethan Dancer!”
Boomer realized then that he had gotten in much deeper than he ever intended, and he stopped, then opened his fists and held his hands, palms out, in front of him.
“My friend is right,” he said. “There’s no need to carry things this far. This isn’t worth either one of us dying over.”
“Oh, it won’t be either of us, cowboy. It’ll just be you,” Dancer said. He looked over at Dooley. “Both of you,” he added. “You came in here together, you are going to die together.”
Dooley shook his head. “No, it ain’t goin’ to be either one of us. ’Cause there ain’ neither one of us going to draw on you,” he said. “So if you shoot us, it’s goin’ to have to be in cold blood, in front of these witnesses.”
“Oh, you’ll draw all right. You’ll draw first, and these witnesses will say that.”
“They ain’t goin’ to be able to say it, ’cause we ain’t goin’ to draw on you,” Dooley said. He looked over at the four card players, who had stopped their game to watch what was going on. “I want you all to hear this. We ain’t goin’ to draw on Ethan Dancer.”