Guadalupe's Tears by Angelique Videaul Page B

touched the brim of his hat. “Thankee,” he said “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go ahead and buy that gelding from you now and be on my way.”
    “Ah, there ain’t no call for that. It can keep till morning.” The liveryman paused, and Lee thought he looked ‘twitchy.’ “Like I said, we’re fixing to leave and you look like you’re about to drop in your tracks. Besides, there’s Comanches out in those mountains. They’ll skin you alive if they catch you.”
    “I suppose you’re right,” Lee said doubtfully.
    “And we do have the Paragon.” The livery man reiterated, his face flushing a violent shade of purple. “It don’t look like much from the outside but it’s the best saloon between here and San Angelo.” He pointed at the run down building constructed of a mashed together mess of shiplap and adobe “There’s some nice looking gals that work there too, in case you get lonesome.”
    “Awful quiet for a saloon,” Lee stated as he stepped further out into the street.
    The liveryman laughed as he joined him. “It is now, but wait till the cattle drive comes through. It’ll liven up.”
    “And when will that be?”
    “October,” the stableman said.
    “Awful late in the year for a cattle drive,” Lee noted. “And I find it peculiar there ain’t no cattle pens.”
    His companion flushed again, the fine muscles around his eyes twitching as he stared out toward the mountains.
    “Tornado took out the corral last spring,” the stableman said after a lengthy pause, “and the cotton shed too.”
    “You’re lying to me,” Lee said quietly.
    “Well—” the stableman stuttered. He looked over his shoulder, his behavior odd, nervous, as if he were being watched.
    “What’s going on?” Lee demanded.
    “Nothing.”
    “You don’t look like a man who’s worrying about nothing,” Lee noted. “And you’ve lied to me, twice already. Once about your wife and again about the cattle pens, so what are you playing at?”
    “Nothing Mister, honest.”
    “Why are you so interested in getting me into the Paragon?”
    “I don’t mean no harm, mister. It’s just that we don’t get many strangers around here, and the bartender is my wife’s brother. I just thought he could use the extra money.”
    It was a feasible explanation, yet something didn’t set right about the way the stable master looked at him and out toward the bald mountains in the distance. It made him nervous. Almost nervous enough to go out of town and sleep under the first mesquite tree he came to. He cast a furtive glance at the Paragon, again feeling that chill that had nothing to do with the weather.
    “I’ll pay you triple whatever you’re offering for that horse if you’ll get it out now.”
    “I’m sorry. I can’t. I really have to be going,” the stableman stammered, mopping sweat off of his forehead with a bandana that might once have been red. “Boys,” he called as he stuffed the stiff piece of cloth back into his hip pocket. “Come on, Shep. It’s getting late.”
    Lee stepped back out onto the windswept red dirt road and watched as the liveryman and his boys drove off into the dusk. Feeling strangely abandoned, he crossed the street and stepped onto the boardwalk. As if on cue people left the shops and hurried out into the street. Several tired looking women wearing long black veils rushed scabby kneed children onto buckboards while their husbands waited with nervous tension at the reins. Odd, Lee thought, I didn’t see them a minute ago. Where did they come from?
    Lee saw a preacher approaching and he tipped his hat. “Nice evening for it, enit, parson?” he asked. The minister turned on his heel and fled across the street, his black jacket flapping in the hot dry air as he went.
    Puzzled, Lee watched as the minister disappeared down a side street. Several people were on the other side of the red dirt road, clumped together like branding steers. He noticed with an uncomfortable