by Janzen, Tara
“Halsey Morgan,” she muttered, finally hanging up the phone in disgust. With the unconscious ease of habit, she slumped against the beer cooler and absently wiped her hands on the bar towel wrapped around her waist. Dampness stained the front of her worn jeans. Loose strands of honey-brown hair clung to her cheeks and trailed down the front of her red shirt, adding to her mussed and tired appearance.
Sure as the sun rising in the morning, she was doomed to spend the rest of her days in this backwater wilderness tucked up against the Rocky Mountains. The Trail’s End Bar actually would be the end of her trail. The same old faces, the same old gossip year after year, she thought, and all thanks to a miraculously resurrected Halsey Morgan. Obviously the rumors about his death in the South Pacific had been just that—rumors. If half of the rest of what she’d heard about his exploits was true, he should have been dead a long time ago. But he wasn’t, and now her plans were ruined.
“Hey! Stevie! What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?” A booming male voice carried the question into the semidarkened hall.
A weary sigh escaped her lips. Too tired to kick the man out, she crossed her arms and leaned harder into the beer cooler to wait him out. How she’d ever allowed Kong Kingman to overdrink was beyond her. Sure, she’d had a lot on her mind, but only a fool would let the behemoth of Grand County get snockered in her bar, and the one thing Stevie prided herself on was being nobody’s fool.
“Hey! I know you’re back there!” Kong hollered again. Of course she was there, she thought irritably, tucking her hands further under her arms. She was always back there, cleaning up, serving up, and dishing out.
Damn that Halsey Morgan anyway.
* * *
Halsey had gotten himself another bargain, that was for certain. Why he didn’t invest in a real car instead of always picking up somebody else’s lemon was beyond him; or rather, it was beyond his financial situation. Everything was beyond his financial situation. Delilah had sucked him dry.
He dropped the last of his groceries into the bed of the pickup truck and wrestled a tarp over them to keep out the high country blizzard. Heavy gusts of wind whipped his hair and chilled his face. His half-frozen fingers struggled with a length of climbing rope.
It was springtime in the Rockies, when Mother Nature let loose with her whole bag of tricks from blizzards to thunderstorms, rolling them all up into one and throwing them across the night sky. Bolts of lightning danced behind the low-hanging clouds. Thunder rumbled across the Kawuneeche Valley and echoed off the Never Summer Range. The beauty and power of the display got his blood going; Mom Nature was good at that. She’d stolen his heart at a very young age, and she’d never let go.
He slip-knotted the rope, then jumped in the cab and slammed the door a couple of times until it caught. Each attempt deposited a fresh layer of snow on the seat, and tightened his mouth another degree toward grim. He didn’t need this kind of trouble, not after what he’d been through. People had been looking at him funny all day, setting his nerves on edge. Halsey wasn’t a common name, but the wide-eyed, slack-jawed response of the Grand Lake postmaster had made him wonder if it was stranger than he thought. He hoped not. He needed to figure out a way to make a living in this town, which meant getting a job—which wasn’t likely if everyone he ran into looked at him funny.
With equal amounts of cussing and praying, he turned the key and waited through the truck’s prerequisite coughing and hacking. When the engine finally caught, a flicker of a smile crossed his mouth. “Just get me home.” He gave the dash a solid pat.
Home. The word had a foreign sound in his mind. He’d spent too many years in faraway places, he thought as he wiggled and shook the gearshift into first—and too many months stuck on that island where even the greatest boat builder in the world couldn’t have put back together what the South Pacific had taken apart.
Hal didn’t know what the rest of the world had called the maelstrom of wind and water that had swallowed his sailboat and spat it out on a strange and desolate shore, but he called the storm ‘Delilah,’ the lady who had laid him low. If a cruising yachtsman hadn’t spotted the wreckage, he’d still be rotting away under the coconut palms, living on sushi, and trying to rig together everything that could float. The episode had put a slight crimp in his adventuresome spirit and a major fracture in his bankroll. He told himself he was damn lucky to be back in the good old U.S. of A., told himself he was glad to be home—but he wished like hell he still had Freedom under his feet with the wind in her sails.
Instead what he had under his feet was a worn-out clutch and a gas pedal that went through the floorboard. He’d never seen the likes of it. A rainstorm in Utah had soaked him to the knees, and now his legs were encased in a thin layer of icy cotton.
Yessiree, he thought with a wry grin, darn glad to be back in the good old U.S. of A. Maybe he should have a drink to celebrate his return before heading back to the cabin.
As if seconding his thoughts, the engine groaned and choked. Hal slammed down on the clutch and gave the truck more gas. The damn thing loved gas. Hal doubted if they’d missed a station between the West Coast and the Continental Divide. The engine warmed up in spits and jerks, and then, out of the blue, it died. Not a hesitant death, not in the least. Nope. Hal had enough experience to know when an engine left for the great beyond, and his just had.
Wonderful. He slumped over the steering wheel, muttering every dockside obscenity he knew. The list took a couple of minutes to complete and did little to ease his anger. Now, besides needing a drink, he needed a ride home.
Fat chance, he thought. The grocery clerk had locked the door behind him and was probably long gone. He glanced out the windows for another sign of life in the deserted mountain town and found only one.
TRAIL’S END . . . TRAIL’S END, a flash of blue neon glowed at the end of the block, backlighting the flurries of wind-driven snow. He sighed. This wasn’t at all how he’d imagined his end of the trail. An ice crevasse on Mount Everest maybe, or getting “Maytagged” in a stretch of white water, but not freezing to death in the middle of Grand Lake, Colorado.
A wry smile curved a corner of his mouth again and stuck. Trail’s End. If he wasn’t so tired and hungry, the situation would be funny. But there wasn’t anything funny about freezing to death, so he hauled himself out of the cab and began the cold walk to the Trail’s End Bar.
* * *
“He looks a little rough around the edges, Stevie. I wouldn’t want to tangle with him.”
Stevie heard her older sister’s summation of Halsey Morgan through the buzz and crackle of the phone line and let out another heavy sigh before answering. “I don’t plan on tangling with him, Nola. If he’s got the money to get his property out of hock, fine. If not, I’ll pay the taxes on it again this year and it will be mine. All legal. All tidy.” All shot to hell in a hand basket, she added silently, doubting if Mr. Morgan had any intention of losing his cabin and acreage to back taxes. What a sweet deal it had been.
“Well, he didn’t look as though he had much money.” Nola’s voice lifted hopefully.
“His kind never do.” But his kind managed to wander the world freely, which was more than Stevie could manage. No one could tell her he didn’t have something stashed away.
“Dried beans, generic coffee, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, ten pounds of potatoes, peanut butter, no jelly . . .”
Stretching the phone cord behind her, Stevie walked over to the window and pressed her nose against the glass. “Nola?” she asked, interrupting the rundown of Morgan’s grocery list. “Why are you telling me this?” A snowplow turned onto the main street and lowered its blade. Great, she thought, she shouldn’t have too much trouble getting home. Her Mustang had chains, but she wasn’t up to putting them on tonight.
“And three of those little boxes of macaroni and cheese,” Nola added, finishing the list. “Isn’t it obvious? The man is broke. Your position is secure.”
That was a pretty
big leap of logic, even for Nola, Stevie thought as she walked back to the beer cooler and rested against the door. The phone line hummed and buzzed through the silence in typical backwoods style, even though the call originated less than two blocks away.
“Okay,” her sister finally conceded. “I’m sorry, honey. We all know how much you were counting on . . . well, on Halsey Morgan being dead or something.”
Unvarnished with particulars, the truth sounded awful, and Stevie felt an immediate pang of guilt. That it was her first pang all day only increased her unease. Ridiculous, she chided herself, trying to brush the emotion aside. Most people wouldn’t last a week doing the things Halsey Morgan did year in and year out, but then Halsey Morgan wasn’t most people.
From the Himalayas to the Amazon Basin, he’d blazed a trail of danger and adventure. When he had first disappeared in the South Pacific, some folks had believed he’d be found, hale and hearty, soaking up French Polynesian sunshine on one of the outer islands. They had discounted his disappearance as a mere breakdown in communications. “Halsey Morgan,” they said, “followed his own star.” Skeptics, like Stevie, usually added, “—right off the edge of the earth.”
When a piece of his boat had washed up on Pukapuka, or Bora Bora, or wherever, the skeptics had congratulated Stevie on her foresight in attempting to buy up his tax-delinquent property. But foresight was hardly the word Stevie would have used. Desperation had been her motivation, one last desperate chance to get out of debt, and out of town. This backwater wilderness had held her captive for a lifetime, which was long enough in her book.
“Hey! Stevie! We need another beer here!” Kong bellowed.
We? Stevie glanced over her shoulder. The last time she’d checked, Kong had been alone. From the hallway she caught a glimpse of another man’s back. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d go away. She’d planned on kicking Kong out as soon as she hung up. Staying open for two late-night loners was a waste of electricity—and she already had two pink slips from the power company. One more and she’d be pouring beer in the dark. “I better get going, Nola. Kong’s shouting down the rafters.”
“Well, you just tell him to hold his horses. That boy probably has enough beer stored up in that gut of his to float a battleship.”
“Yeah, and most of it’s mine.” Stevie opened the beer refrigerator with her free hand. She wanted to finish up and go home. She mentally tallied up the stock. A case of Bud, half a case of Molson’s, a couple of Hussong’s . . .
“Are you coming to Sunday supper?” Nola asked.
“Stevie Lee!” Kong bellowed.
Stevie quietly sighed. “Not this Sunday, Nola, and you won’t be there either. It’s Memorial Day, remember? There’ll be tons of people in town buying groceries and booze. Be sure to remind Mom.”
“Oh, gosh! I forgot. Oh, honey, I’ve got to go. I need to double my order. Bye.” The phone clicked in her ear.
Yep, a real helluva night, Stevie thought, giving the receiver a wry look. Then she hung up and walked back to the storeroom. With luck, both of her customers would be gone by the time she refilled the cooler.
Hal watched the hairy giant of a man ease himself off the bar stool, squeeze himself behind the bar, and lumber into the dark hallway. Hopefully he’d come back with the unknown Stevie in tow. And hopefully the bartender would give him a ride home. One look at the big guy weaving on his bar stool had convinced Hal not to approach him for the needed favor—that and the suspicion that the wreck parked out front belonged to him. The car had seen its share of the bottoms of ditches.
On the other hand, the Mustang out front was a dream on wheels. Even half-frozen, he’d taken a moment to run his hand over the cherry-red paint job with white flames scorching the sides and the word “Dynamite” swirled across the back panel. She was somebody’s baby all right. With a little luck, she’d also be his ride home.
Hal stepped closer to the stone fireplace to warm his backside and looked around the Trail’s End. Small and shabby, it reminded him of a hundred others he’d seen all over the world, a locals’ bar. A dart board hung next to the fireplace, but only someone standing behind the bar could have gotten enough distance on a dart to hit it. Sure enough, he thought as his gaze roamed the shelves of liquor on the far wall and found the darts in a box between the bottles. The board was there for the bartenders, not the customers. It was strange but not surprising, considering the lack of business. Maybe if they fixed the place up, they’d do better. In return for a ride, he’d offer his handyman services for a day.
A thudding sound drew his attention to the dark hallway. He listened for a second and, when no other noise was forthcoming, went back to looking around. He could fix the broken table stashed in the corner, the busted shelf behind the bar, the ripped vinyl on the booths flanking both sides of the front door.
The sound of glass breaking snapped his head back toward the hall. Curiosity almost propelled him forward, but the fire was warm, and once again no other sound followed the second. He brushed off the crash by deciding the unknown Stevie had stupidly entrusted the big drunk with something breakable. He returned his attention to the bar. Maybe he’d offer to clean the smoke and soot off the fireplace. Then again, he thought, his cabin was only five miles out of town, a distance which shouldn’t demand too many hours of repayment.
A muffled sound came next, hitting a wrong chord in his mind, and Hal moved forward a couple of steps. Then a woman screamed.
* * * * * *
