“A long haul, sir?” Daniel says, leaning forward on the leather seat, striking a match for the coot, then lighting up another for himself. “But I suppose you’ve knocked about this great continent of ours by harder means than the Overland train. In the good old days, eh?”
“Them was the days,” the old cowboy agrees, drawing down hard on the ciggie like a proper smoker.
“The glory, the wild glory, eh? Knocking about like that. I don’t suppose you’ve got a drop to spare of that libation you’ve been nipping at?” Daniel grins when the old cowboy squints at him with a bloodred eye, openmouthed that a stranger has discovered his closely guarded secret. “I’m dry as a bone, sir, and we’ve haven’t yet reached the coast.”
“’Tain’t somethin’ fit to drink fer a young gent like yerself,” the old cowboy grunts, eyeing Daniel’s gray gabardine suit and starched ivory collar, the blue checked silk vest and tasteful French blue necktie, his British bowler of brushed felt. “’Tain’t fit fer a bear, if truth be told.”
“Never fear, sir, I have imbibed the Green Fairy herself.”
The old cowboy peers at him more closely with that painful-looking eye. “What in damn hell is the Green Fairy?”
“Absinthe, sir.” Daniel sighs. What he would give now for a gold-green bottle of Pernod Fils, a sugar cube, a perforated spoon, a lovely bell-shaped glass. What he would give to be back with Rochelle and the gang at La Nouvelle-Athenes sipping rainbow cups, flirting with poetry, lust, and death. “La fee verte, the Green Fairy. The sacred herb. Holy water, sir. A finer, eviler brew has never been concocted. One hundred twenty proof, reeking of wormwood. Tremblement de terre. Earthquake, sir, that’s what we call absinthe.”
“Haw. Well, you’ll find some o’ that out in Californ’, young gent.” The old cowboy is unimpressed.
“Just a hair of the dog.” Daniel offers another ciggie, cajoling the coot. “That’s fine Virginia weed machine-rolled to perfection. Come now, what’ve you got?”
“Hunnert twenny proof is a cinch, young gent.” The old cowboy cackles. From beneath the topcoat, he produces a scummy bottle, a neat piece of glass with flat sides that fit against the chest and do not extrude indiscreetly. The fifth is down to four fingers, but that should last till they reach the Port of Oakland. “This here’s puma piss.”
“Puma piss?”
“Home-brewed rotgut, tobacco juice, an’ a dose o’ white lightinin’. What some call rat poison.”
“Dear sir, you cannot mean strychnine.”
“Yessir, I do, an’ a hunnert twenny proof is a cinch, but ye can’t prove it by me.” The old cowboy consults with his invisible companion, cackling and nodding.
Puma piss! Daniel will have to remember that! “Let’s have a taste, then. Just a drop, sir.” With sunlight gleaming off his teeth, he offers a third ciggie. Damn bloody coot! But Daniel can purchase more machine-rolled cigarettes in San Francisco. The American Tobacco Company is spread out all over the West. He can get anything he wants in San Francisco. Or so they say.
But right now, right now, what he needs is a drink.
“Ah, hell.” The old cowboy hands over the bottle.
“It’s a cinch.” Daniel winks, knocks back a swallow.
Vile cannot approach the taste of stagnant well water infused with putrefaction, but the sting of newly distilled grain alcohol mangles the inside of his mouth and his tongue. The taste swiftly becomes irrelevant. He knows the stuff is liquid, but the sensation in his throat is of scorching fire. Or fangs. Fangs of a ravening beast.
In less than an instant, his heart begins to pound like lunatic desperate to escape his chains. Pure vertigo seizes him, whirls him around. A black satin curtain drops over his eyes. Oh, no! Has he suddenly gone blind? Sometimes homebrew steals your sight along with your sanity. But no, the black satin curtain is abruptly whisked away.
And he stares out at the golden-brown hills of California, curving like the bodies of women. Golden-brown women lolling about like whores with their golden-brown breasts and hips and swooping waists. The ill-starred Sioux, perhaps, or the Apache. Or the fabled Celestials, the Chinese. Golden-brown women harried and driven by the brute forces of rape and slavery and murder till they have fled, disguised themselves, mysteriously reincarnated into the landscape itself. He sees their awful transmogrification, their anger parched and mute save for the testimony of the hills, the golden-brown hills in which a man could get lost and die. He hears them screaming