West of Here Read Online Free

view its namesake promised, it conferred no view whatsoever, save for a partial vantage of the flooded street, obscured further by the mud-caked windows.
    The Frontier Room, thought Ethan. Now
that’s
the name for this saloon. Promptly he produced a small pad and the dull nub of a pencil from his coat pocket, whereupon he jotted his newest idea alongside two hundred other flashes of inspiration, including the Walla Walla chip (a variation on the Saratoga chip — made with sweet onion), the electric stairs, the electric pencil sharpener, the magnetic coat hanger, and a flatulent comic revue titled
Will-o’-the-Wisp.
    Replacing pencil and pad in pocket, Ethan turned to the gentleman next to him — a dough-faced fellow of forty or so, with a steam-shovel jaw — and extended a hand.
    “Thornburgh, Ethan. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr…. ?”
    Dough Face eyed Ethan doubtfully. “Whatever you’re selling, mister, I’m not buying.”
    Undaunted, Ethan forged ahead. “You’re certainly not, my friend, because
I’m
buying. Barkeep! Two whiskeys,” he called out to Tobin.
    The pale man still did not offer a hand. “Dalton Krigstadt,” he said, as Tobin poured out the whiskeys.
    Lowering his hand casually, Ethan looked his new friend up and down: denim trousers, leather boots, coarse hands. “Let me venture a guess,” he said. “Woodsman?”
    “Nope,” said Krigstadt, staring straight ahead.
    “Mason?”
    “Nope.”
    “Railroad man.”
    “Nope.”
    “Hmm. Well, then, I’m beat. What’s your line of work?”
    Krigstadt suppressed a sigh. “Mostly, I haul things,” he said.
    “Ah, transportation! Where would we be without it? Especially here, where things are always moving. To transportation,” said Ethan, raising his glass.
    Krigstadt offered a less than enthusiastic nod and promptly shot his whiskey in a single throw. “What about you?” he said, wiping his mouth.
    “I, Mr. Krigstadt, am a businessman.”
    Krigstadt eyed him doubtfully, once more; the flashy mustache, the ill-fitting jacket, the moth-eaten trousers. “What sort of business would that be?”
    Ethan smiled and slid his empty glass forward for a refill. “Presently, sir, that remains to be seen. My background is in accounting. But I’ve come here to make a new start, Dalton. May I call you Dalton?”
    “That’s my name, ain’t it?”
    “Yes, of course. You see, Dalton. I’ve come west because I’m tired of toiling for others. I want to work for myself.”
    Krigstadt spun his empty glass. “Don’t anybody work for themselves when you get down to it. Less he can make money out of thin air.”
    “Exactly my point,” said Ethan. “You’re a wise man, Dalton Krigstadt. A wise man, indeed.”
    Krigstadt slid his empty glass forward on the bar just as Tobin replenished Ethan’s.
    Two more rounds ensued, during which Ethan elucidated at some length upon his status as
an idea man.
Krigstadt offered little encouragement beyond the act of sliding his glass forward each time the barman approached.
    After roughly an hour, Ethan, whose neatly parted hair was now mussed, referred to his pocket watch, plucked his hat off the bar, and stood to leave.
    “Well, then, Dalton Krigstadt. It’s been a pleasure. I trust in a town this size we shall soon meet again.”
    “Probably,” said Krigstadt.
    On his way out of the Belvedere, pleasantly flush from the whiskey, though not so flush, he imagined, that Eva would notice, Ethan stopped to inquire more specifically as to the colony’s location. On this occasion, he solicited a one-eyed gentleman with what appeared to be gristle in his beard, whom he found leaning against the splintered rail of the boardwalk, carving a naked female form out of a potato. The result was a decidedly stubby female form. The artisan paused long enough to subject Ethan to a thorough visual inspection, whereupon he gruffly issued the coordinates “over the hump.”
    Ethan trod onward in the pitchforking rain.