not last. It never did.
The sun was directly overhead when we came upon the lonely tavern beside Salt Creek. As far as I knew, it did not have a name, in part because it had rapidly gone through a series of owners, each having even less good fortune than the last. When I had stayed there a few years earlier, in the middle of a circuit around the county to get to know my new territory, an unsavory drunkard named Esterly had run the place. I’d heard he’d been replaced as proprietor by his spinster daughter, she in turn by a fellow named Dickey, and then he by one Rugg.
An old man bent over on a walking stick hobbled out of the front door as soon as our cart lurched to a stop. He was taking no chances on letting two prospective customers get away, I supposed.
“Can you tend to my horse while we slake our thirst?” I called as the man approached. “It’s Rugg, isn’t it?”
“Rugg abandoned the place months ago,” the man rasped as he took Hickory’s reins with a gnarled hand. “My son, Sconce the Younger, took over management. Spruced it up quite nicely, he has.” The man looked at the ramshackle one-story inn with pride.
Herr Gustorf and I followed his gaze doubtfully. The inn’s dingy white paint was peeling and several of the shutters were off their hinges and hanging at odd angles. Boards had been nailed onto the roof at uneven diagonals, apparently to cover over leaks. Two scrawny milk cows grazed in the unpenned front yard. Just beyond the inn, Salt Creek trickled by unhappily.
“I can’t thank you enough for this expedition,” Gustorf murmured with genuine enthusiasm.
The Prussian slid to the ground and limped toward the front door. Meanwhile, I untethered Hickory from the two-wheeled chaise, which we let lean forward onto the ground, and Sconce the Older led the horse into a rickety stable, which stank of moldering manure. Hickory whinnied unhappily, but I scratched her white stripe and whispered assurances she wasn’t going to be here for long. Then I followed Gustorf’s path into the tavern.
Sconce the Younger, middle-aged and officious, stood behind a reception desk just inside the door, quill pen poised above a bound hotel register. “Will that be two rooms for this evening, sir?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Just a few restorative glasses and then we’re back on the trail,” I said, my eyes tightly focused on the ledger. Sconce’s shoulders sagged as he closed the weathered register and placed it into a bottom drawer of the desk.
I continued past him into the dissolute public room. Discolored shades were drawn over the windows, and the place was lit by a single, foul-smelling whale-oil lamp. Two men, looking like they hadn’t moved in weeks, sprawled in chairs next to a decrepit table littered with empty glasses. In the far end of the room, next to the barman’s stand, Gustorf was already engaged in animated conversation with a woman.
The Prussian’s new companion turned as she heard me approaching and gave me a look of composed sadness. She was middle-aged, dressed in frills and ruffles, and heavily painted. Her hair was pulled back by a band of colored beads. In her younger years, I imagined she would have been very pretty.
“May I introduce Madam Grace Darling,” Gustorf said with a grand gesture. I bowed politely.
After a quick glance, Madam Darling returned her attentions to Gustorf, who was already close to the bottom of his glass. I took a nearby chair, which shuddered as I settled into it, and listened without pretense.
“Why’d you say you were in these parts?” Madam Darling asked Gustorf.
“I’m on a grand tour of your country,” he said, speaking with a more pronounced accent than usual. “I’m writing a book, for my homeland.”
“Oh, a writer,” she replied. She stepped back to squint at him, and I guessed she was assessing the quality of the threads in his jacket. “I like writers—successful ones at least. What country are you from?”
“Prussia.”
“I’ve always wanted to visit Russia,” she replied with mustered enthusiasm.
“I’ve heard that’s very nice too,” he said. Madam Darling gave Gustorf a confused look while he glanced over her shoulder at me and winked. I rotated my hand like a wagon wheel as if to say, Get on with it.
Gustorf drained the remainder of his glass and asked Sconce for two replacements. “The hard stuff, this time,” he specified. The Prussian launched into a long disquisition on the Germanic