Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes Page A

need to ask another favor some day. He might have to come back to this town some day.
    The guy put the Philip Morrises on the counter and made change from the half dollar. “I sent him out on an errand,” he said. “I got tired of listening to how his wife used to treat him. Before he skipped out. If she was that bad, I don’t see why he stuck it twenty-two years. You ought to hear him. Twenty-two years in a doghouse like he tells it.”
    Sailor said, “Thanks, Butch. Be seeing you.” He hoisted the suitcase and went out on the sidewalk. The Plaza was still quiet enough. Fiesta didn’t get started particularly early. It was only a half block and across to La Fonda; a good thing no more. The bag wasn’t any lighter than it had been yesterday.
    He was almost to the corner when the bells rang out again. Louder now, stronger now, and against their clangor he heard the tinkle of guitar and scrape of violin. He saw them up by the cathedral, the crowds on the church terrace; the people lining the streets. People on the streets as far down as La Fonda. As he readied the corner a brass band blared in a marching hymn. Band and tinkling and the cymbal crash of church bells, all sounding together in Sunday morning triumph. He crossed quickly and set down his bag as the parade rounded the corner. It wasn’t much of a parade but he stood on the curb gawking like the rest of the peasants. First the brass band, then maybe a dozen people, men and women, all dressed in dark velvet, wine and purple and black velvet with woven gold chains around their necks. Behind them the queen in her white lace with a crimson velvet cape around her shoulders and the gold crown on her head. The princesses in crimson velvet walked behind, all pretty, dark girls. At the tail end came the court musicians, guitars and violins.
    It was like a picture of Queen Isabella’s court when Columbus was asking for her jewels. Like a court of old Spain, here in a little village street in the bright hot sunshine, lords and ladies and the royal retinue marching up a little village street to the mass of brown gray cathedral on the terrace.
    The bells rang out and the band played and the court moved in slow regal dignity up the short block. Sailor goggled after them like everyone else, even moving up the street a way the better to gawk. The court stopped at the intersection and from around the corner came another procession. An archbishop in his crimson and white and gold, brown-robed friars following. The bells pealed louder as the archbishop’s procession ascended the stone steps, passed slowly up the walk and through the open doors of the cathedral. The royal retinue followed. And the people closed in behind them, poured into the church. The bells stopped and there was a great void of silence in the street. Until the street watchers who weren’t going to High Mass broke the void with their little sounds of talk and laugh and movement.
    Sailor turned and went in the hotel. He carried his suitcase over to the check room by the closed bar. There was a pretty girl there, black-eyed, black-haired, small-boned. She had a red flower in her hair, a red and green skirt sparkling with sequins, a sheer blouse heavily embroidered in red and green and blue flowers. She smiled, she had a fresh morning look to her.
    “Mind if I check this a while?” Sailor asked.
    She said, “Certainly,” and passed him a numbered check and another smile. Not a come-on smile, a nice clean one.
    He smiled back. “It’s pretty heavy. Too heavy for you. I’ll set it in.”
    She opened the counter gate and he put down the bag in the farthest corner where it would be out of the way. Where no one would be kicking it around wondering what made it so heavy. He said, “Thanks.”
    He walked over to the desk, his arms swinging free, sure of himself, swaggering a little. The old hag with the yellowed white hair was gone. The man behind the desk was just a part of the equipment, like in the Palmer