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washed his yellow hound today. General Custer trotted by the saloon a couple hours ago, leaving the scent of Ivory soap, fresh dirt, and dog behind him. If you breathe in deep, you can still smell it.”
    â€œI have no interest in sniffing after a dog who’s half clean.” Selecting a folio, Pap pushed the brim of his hat up his forehead. “Besides, I don’t smell anything but your cigar and Rupert Teats’s livery.”
    Frank let the last of his Hennessy slide down his throat, then licked his lips with a satisfied swallow. “That’s because you don’t know how to smell life, Pap.”
    â€œI can smell food and I can smell women—and not necessarily in that order.”
    Frank laughed as he felt along his jaw for the heavy stubble roughing up his chin.
    A June bug bounced off the crystal chandelier above Frank. The hot, cut glass globe glowing from kerosene light burned the insect’s wings, and the bug plummeted to Frank’s beer mug with a plop. “Damn good thing my glass was empty,” he said to the dead beetle, and dumped the brown spot onto the sawdust-covered floor with a drop or two of cognac.
    â€œPlay me something unrefined if you won’t play ‘Hot Time,’ ” Frank persisted.
    Pap gave his elbows a bone pop to stay limber. “I’ll play you ‘Hot Time.’ ” He set the sheet on the music desk and began with the chorus.
    Frank closed his eyes and let the song dance through his mind. He pictured sunsets in the Mexican desert—an almost endless pancake of land barren as a ninety-year-old woman—where the only shadows on the ground came from his horse and himself. He waited for an arid breeze to mantle his face with dust, but the dry wind never came. And never would again. Gone were the days of rambling and a panoramasprawling as far as his gaze could see. He’d traded in empty prospects and an empty life and decided to travel a road of stability instead.
    Though the shoe of proprietorship didn’t quite fit him yet, he hoped time would soften the leather and his sole would adapt to the size of small-town life. Hell, he had no place else to go. This was it for him. The final watering hole in a long line of thirsty ventures as a jack-of-all-trades. He’d mined silver on the Comstock, laid track for the Southern Pacific, ridden shotgun on the Overland Stage, ran a trading post in Nogales, and his last occupation—bardogging at the El Dorado in Frisco.
    It was there he’d met Charley Revis and bought this building from him sight unseen. Old Charley had said he’d tried to make a go of things in Weeping Angel a couple of years ago, but fortune hadn’t been on his side. He’d had a string of bad luck, most notably run-ins with the crones who didn’t abide a second saloon in town. He’d been in business just shy of a month when his cash box disappeared the same day his hurdy-gurdy dancer ran off. After that, Charley had called it quits, boarded up the place, and went to San Francisco.
    The night Frank met Charley, Charley had ordered a round of drinks for everyone in the El Dorado to celebrate his newfound wealth in the stock market. They got to talking, and Charley’s description of Weeping Angel had appealed to Frank. There was a crystal-clear lake with trout for the taking, the seasons were pretty to watch, and a man need only bother to keep a dog at his side instead of a gun. Frank had been looking for just such a town to hang his hat up. The challenge of turning the shebang into a glory house had cinched the deal for Frank, and he and Pap had ridden out of Frisco by the weekend.
    Frank felt the whir of June bugs as they flittedthrough his saloon and opened his eyes to the false light. He viewed the Moon Rock as if he were seeing it for the first time.
    A fine diamond-dust mirror ran the length of his thirty-foot, golden walnut bar. His back bar—or altar as the