laughed shortly.
“You know Joe, don’t you, Dex—and Judy? And this is Mrs. Latham. This is Joe Lucas. He’s a real cowboy. Never’s been east of Denver.”
“Or is it west of Chicago?” Dex said.
Joe Lucas, who looked well-polished and shy and rather nice, grinned boyishly.
“Ah never bin no’th of Salt Lake, anyhow,” he said, in as Georgia a drawl as I ever hope to hear. “How’re you, Mis’ Judy? Howdy, Miz’ Latham.”
Judy sat there, her slim body rigid, her face perfectly expressionless, except for her eyes, black as coal.
Just then, behind us, in a blue lace evening dress, appeared the dark-haired lush-looking girl I’d seen in white riding breeches and black boots at the twenty-one table in the Washoe Bar that afternoon.
“Take your hat, cowboy?” she said. A smile dimpled in the corners of her red mouth.
Joe Lucas reddened painfully as he gave up his hat. The girl reached for Kaye Gorman’s fox cape.
“I’ll just keep that, Vicki,” Kaye said. “It looks cold around here.”
The hat check girl winked at Dex Cromwell.
“Not having trouble being too popular, are you, Mr. Cromwell?”
I didn’t quite see how she managed to lean so close to him as she did. I hoped Judy didn’t see the neat little pinch he gave her leg, or the slow sidelong smile she returned for it. Or maybe I hoped she did.
Kaye Gorman did.
“Up to your old tricks, darling?” she inquired coolly. “Keep your head, Vicki. It takes money to keep Dex. You couldn’t do it on what you make.”
Dex Cromwell grinned engagingly at her. His strong white teeth in his sun-bronzed face made him look like a toothpaste ad. As far as that went, I thought suddenly, his light wavy hair made him look like a shampoo ad, and his cigarette and white wool jacket and colored scarf (Bond Street, not Rodeo) made him look like a tobacco ad. In fact he looked like the complete answer to nearly any manufacturer’s prayer . . . as well as any lady’s.
“She’s trying to get Judy into a scene,” I thought . . . with some apprehension. But Judy smiled serenely. “What’ll you have, Joe?”
“Rye an’ coke for me, Mis’ Judy,” Joe said soberly. “Doin’ any ridin’ lately?” he added, with lovely tact. He turned to me. “She’s sure got a sweet seat on a horse, Miz’ Latham. You goin’ to ride while you’re here?”
“Probably,” I said.
Dex Cromwell had pushed back his chair.
“Shall we dance, Judy?”
“No thanks,” Judy said sweetly. “I must have sprained my ankle today.”
Kaye Gorman flashed out of her chair. “Oh, this is more than I deserve!”
She laughed her short laugh as she took Dex’s arm. I looked at Judy. She watched them float off with a queer twisted little smile. Then she put her napkin beside her plate.
“How about a dance, Joe?” she said. “My ankle seems to be a lot better.”
Joe grinned. “Ah could give him a horse that’ll break his neck, easy, Mis’ Judy,” he said. He got up clumsily. “Excuse us, Miz’ Latham?”
I nodded. His big red hand looked strange on Judy’s white-shirted little back. I watched them a moment. They were amazingly good, she in her jodhpur boots and he in high-heeled Westerns. I turned back to my cocktail of small sweet Olympia oysters and ate a couple, glad of a moment’s peace, until suddenly I received a slap on the back that surprised me so much I was very glad it wasn’t a Lynnhaven I had in my mouth.
It was my friend Whitey. He pulled a chair up to the table and flopped into it.
“Gee, did I get a big boot out of that!” he exclaimed. His white eyelashes batted with enthusiasm.
“Out of what?” I asked.
He put his head in his hands and rocked crazily back and forth, in silent mirth, until I thought he’d lost his mind.
“Out of Kaye dragging Joe over here with you folks,” he said at last. “She’s been out of it so long she don’t know Joe’s the guy which would like nothing better’n to slit Dexter’s gullet for him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why?”
He winked at the hat check girl, Vicki, dancing with a loud, rather intoxicated and definitely apoplectic man in his early seventies, I’d say, and who’d already, so Whitey whispered to me a little later, lost four hundred dollars at the twenty-one table.
“Vicki was Joe’s girl, till Dexter chiseled in.”
“Who is Vicki,” I asked. “I mean, does she live here?”
She looked rather more metropolitan to me, some way.
Whitey shook his head.
“She came for her divorce and went broke, so Frenchy, which is the fellow owns the joint, gave her a job. She makes enough, but she gambles, and what she don’t lose that way she sops up at the bar. So as she can’t get enough ahead to get out.”
“I see,” I said.
He took the drink the waiter had brought for Joe, and sat there, suddenly and inexplicably in a state of complete dejection, staring moodily down into it, turning the glass round and round.
“Jeez, I got to get out of this hole,” he said suddenly. “It’s getting me down. I’m getting to be nothing but a goddam gigolo like the rest of ’em.”
I swallowed another oyster too rapidly and stared at him. He faced me abruptly.
“Look at me!” he said. “Do I look like a come-on man for a gambling joint?”
(He included another ancient occupation.)
“Look at me—what do you think my mother would say if she saw me now? Doing Mr. Cromwell’s dirty work! And what for? I ask you, what for?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know!” I said hastily.
“To keep body and soul together!” he said. “And does he give a damn, I ask you? Does he care what happens to me? No!”
He downed Joe’s drink at a gulp—and if anybody thinks a drink cannot be downed in a gulp, then he has never had a Reno drink.
“I’m clearing out. I’m going to get some sleep, and tomorrow I’m going to Cromwell, and I’m going to tell him to get someone else to do his dirty work! It burns me up!”
He got unsteadily to his feet.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Latham—but it ain’t often a little punk
