* * *
When I woke up, I was lying flat on my back on the ceiling.
At least I thought it was the ceiling, but the furniture in the room was on the ceiling with me, and that didn’t hardly seem likely. It took a minute to get it into my swollen and throbbing head that I didn’t have to worry about falling. I was on the floor. I had already fallen as far as I was going to, and maybe it was time to get up.
My right hand made it up off the floor and felt for my gun, and I realized the whole gun belt was gone. I had been disarmed. That woke me up. I raised my left hand to my head, and I realized that I’d also been dis-hatted...and dis-booted...and pretty darn near dis-shirted and de-pantsed as well. I had been thoroughly unbuttoned, and clothes turned loose and ripped, and my pockets turned out.
I had a vague recollection of a pair of beautiful brown eyes, close to my face, and my hand in some soft blond hair. My wife had hazel eyes, and brown hair...and a pair of pearl handled Peacemakers, a Winchester and a bowie knife.
Yeah, I was in trouble. And yet I had a feeling of satisfaction, and that worried me even more, as far as I could manage a thought as sophisticated as a worry.
I raised my hand to remove the dry and sour bit of leather someone had shoved into my mouth, and discovered it was just my tongue. I put my fingers in my mouth to be sure, and they tasted sweet. I looked at them, and saw purple goo—now dry and coated with dust—staining my thumb. Pie. Blueberry and black cherry pie. I closed my eyes and nearly laughed. Wouldn’t you know there would be a pie involved when I got myself into trouble. Pie and women are pretty much my idea of heaven. But the laugh never happened, because the presence of pie made me feel I must have got myself involved in some kind of orgy, and the lingering touch of satisfaction made me feel guilty as hell.
I turned my head and saw the pie on the floor a few feet away from me. It was untouched except for the one spot oozing purple where my thumb had broken the crust when I had gripped it too hard. I remembered a flash of that too: I had felt myself passing out and I didn’t want to drop it. So I had set it down and rolled away as the drug took effect—and it was a drug, I was pretty sure. I didn’t drink that much, for one thing, and for another, my head hurt on the inside, but not on the outside, so I didn’t think anybody’d hit me.
The pie looked good, but I wasn’t hungry, so I looked at the room, which appeared to be the front of an abandoned store. A counter, a crooked old bench with an oil lamp, a couple of chairs, and my pie. And a ceiling that didn’t want to stay put. I closed my eyes and I heard sounds outside the door. Voices. I called out, although the sound came out more of a moan, muted by the pain in my head. The door busted open.
Casey, my wife and partner, stood in the door. She was a short woman, almost eighteen years old, but who looked younger, partly because she had, in the words of dime-novel fabulists, “forsaken the costume of her sex” and dressed like a man. Little girl in pig-tails, big hat, big boots, big guns, and a pair of sharp and fancy spurs. Not a woman you want to find you half-naked and groggy with a half-memory of a pair of pretty ladies getting the best of you.... Yeah, it was a pair of pretty ladies. I started to blush.
I couldn’t read the look on her face, mainly because she didn’t want me to, and partly because she didn’t know what to think. She took a deep breath and pushed aside any expression but determination, and she took three big steps over to me. She took hold of my head and started examining my scalp.
“Ow!” I said, as her fingers dug in.
“You got a bump?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t think I could manage more words, so I didn’t try. I heard a burst of laughter—laughter of disbelief—from the doorway.
“Well, hell!” said Deputy Tilly looking at me with no better expression than Casey had. “Looks like you had a good time!”
I turned to point at the uneaten pie to show how I had not had it so good, but just then Casey finished looking at my head, and decided it was whole and undamaged. She smacked me hard right above the ear, and then again harder, which hurt her hand, and we both yelled “ow” together.
“You lost the damn key!” she shouted, straight in my ear. I would have asked what key? but words were hard to come by and harder to say, and I was pretty sure I was supposed to know what key. I knew it was important, but not as important as Casey’s impression of me at the moment.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry, and I raised my finger, pointed it at her, and made an extra effort.
“I...did...not...have...a good...time.”
“What happened?” said the deputy.
“Not sure.” Actually, I’m not sure I really said that. The effort of a whole sentence had spent my ability with words and thought, and I think what I actually said was, “Weh.”
They didn’t say anything for a dozen throbs of my head, while they looked at me in disgust. I sat up and noticed that my boots were across the room. And my gun belt. I was pleased that they were still there.
“The pin is gone,” said Casey.
The Pin. Diamond pin. Oh, yeah. The one we were guarding. The one locked in the hotel office in a lock box to which I held the key. Had held the key.
That key.
And yet, even recalling what was important about it, I couldn’t bring myself to care. What mattered was those brown eyes and that silky hair that did not belong to Casey...and the fact that I was half naked.