Punk took off his sap gloves and slid them back in the pocket of his hoody, then took off the hoody and stretched it over the back of the chair. These wood stoves were enough to roast a body out of his clothes.

The wind whipped up outside and swept down the street as the door opened with a rattling creak, and, not a soul walked in…

“Oh, that’s bad,” whined the slightly less sissy queer.

But Punk could hear the door shut, despite the absence of footfalls on the hard plank floor and he saw Ishmael, a man who he instinctively trusted, smile down over his shoulder, and say, “Well, I’ll be, if it’s not a dog. The darned thing opened and even shut the door. Looks like a heeler, maybe mixed with a black shepherd—come here boy.”

Into the room strutted a short-haired black dog, that looked like a giant Manchester Terrier, its black tail curled up behind him, a neutered male, his amber eyes aglow with expectation over his narrow snout.

The dog came over to the large man and, then pawed the big man’s hand in an asking way.

“What do you want, boy?” asked Ishmael, and the dog turned away from him in apparent disgust and walked around the table to Punk who grinned, as the major narrated, “Coons of a feather flock together.”

Punk petted the dog’s head and then noticed that it’s lower back, over the haunches, had some dandruff—not snow, but dried skin. So he reached over the dog’s back and scratched him there and the dog grinned in an open-mouthed ecstasy of appreciation.

“I know, boy” Punk soothed, our tropical skin cracks up in this high country.”

Then the cute shorty—not so gorgeous as the two blond bitches next to him, but having that wholesome country look about her, came in with two pitchers of beer in each hand, followed by the two masked youths, each having a pitcher of beer in the left hand and a tray of mugs in the right hand.

Things were getting right up in here, with three hot white bitches and the two next to him ripe for the picking. If shit was getting as bad as these two Mountain Men seemed to think, and the Indian had his white buffalo eaten by stray yeti pit bulls, then it was about time for an old player to dish his last slice of tender pie—nothing like a knot roll of bills to get that cutie booty ball rolling.

As he scratched the dog’s butt he asked the barmaid, “Miss, since Mista Joe brought da meat, en dese fellas give me a ride, I think I should pay the bill. Put it all on me.”

With those words he took out his knot roll in his big, ashy right hand—women like big hands—and peeled a couple hundreds off the outside with the same hand and handed them to the barmaid between pinkie and thumb, “Keep da change, Baby Girl.”

He would have hoped it was due to his compassion for the dog, or his cool delivery, but sensed it was a combination of the Major’s hostility to faɡɡots and pussy-eating bitches and the size of that knot roll of bills in this time when cash was like underground gold and credit was as lame as a check used to be. But that tall, beautiful blonde thing next to him—the dyke don’t you know—reached over and grabbed his knee, winking at him and pursing her lips.

The other dumb bitch didn’t notice, so Punk slid his chair closer to the girl, while making all slick like he was making room for the dog to belly up to the table and said, “Here you go, Boy, get you a seat at the table,” and reached one arm back behind him for the extra chair between him and the wood stove and pulled it up for the dog.

And don’t you know, the dog seemed to understand and pranced up into that chair and scratched the table meaningfully with his right asking paw, making a light scratch of which many a kind already decorated this rough-cut table with its old, worn to almost gone varnish.

“Whadz he wan’ miss?” he asked the barmaid as the pussy eating slut next to him grabbed for his junk with her soft questing hand under the table.

“Oh,” she said in her exotic accent, “Toby wants some of your rum.”

The Major guffawed, “Well you black as Toby’s ass, the two of you!”

He petted Toby and asked, “Why y’all call ‘im Toby?”

She smiled as she began to pour a beer and the youths in masks left with the trays. “Oh, we call him Tobbes. The owner named him Toby.”

Punk then scratched the dog behind the ears and decided to wow the crackers with some standard English, “I will be glad to share my rum with Tobias—those who respect him employing his full name—though I would prefer not to fall afoul of the owner by corrupting his dog. Besides, we each owe the owner a shot.”

With that Toby put both paws on the table as the barmaid took three shot glasses out of her apron, placed one before the Major, one before Ishmael, one before Punk and one between Toby’s black paws.

“What?” blurted one of the faɡɡots.

The pretty barmaid soothed, “Tobbes is the owner. Old MacDonnelly, willed the bar to Tobbes. We work for him, and he likes his whiskey. But we have not been able to apply for a whiskey license in his name, so he always hopes someone will stop by with a bottle.

Punk grinned from ear-to-ear and poured that shot glass—a double shot glass—to the rim and apologized, “I’zz sarry massa Tobias! A nigga can lose hisself in prejudicial assumptions of species-based hierarchical injustice!”

And Toby went licking to town, lapping that stuff up.

The barmaid smiled and glided around the table filling the Major’s mug as the others, all except the bitch next to him, now fascinated with his ghetto ass, poured their own. The Russian accent was making him wish the barmaid could jump inside of this blonde’s body, “Thank you so much for entertaining Tobbes. He’s been so lonely without old Mac!”

The varied command of various English dialects had hit that clit. Now the shameless pussy-eating dyke bitch was all but in his underpants with those “please save my sweet ass from the cruel world while I throw my fembot under the bus” fingers.

As Toby drank, Major Wolf offered a toast as the barmaid stepped back and smiled like innocence blooming in autumn, “A toast, to Joe Medicine Crow and a white buffalo named Sweet Plums.”

“Skoal,” intoned Ishmael as the fagots squealed, “Poor Plums,” and the bitch next to him finally found his old dick—rising with a thirst once again…and the beer was sweet and cold.

Ishmael then pushed his shot glass over to the dog, who impatiently pushed the empty glass aside with one paw and licked his lips and the big man soothed, “Tobbes.”

In the meantime, with a grunt, the Major raised up and walked over behind Ishmael and slid his glass over as well, “Mister Tobison, I presume? So fortunate to find you marooned here in this wilderness in the very lap of savagery.”

The ice finally broke all the way around the table as all parties laughed in concord about something. The young hussy already had him ready to rock, and noticing this, her lesbian lover hissed something in her ear and there was a whisper back and forth which he could not make out, but which he did not have to, as he was sure that this survival-minded bitch was already telling her little fuck-buddy that she was going to have to snuggle up with the Major while mamma rode this old bull, all in the interest of saving their sweet asses from whatever was coming.

This made him feel high and low all at once, and brought him closer to the Major in camaraderie, and raised his opinion of old Ishmael, a man apparently beyond such carnal concerns.

‘I suppose the Major and I are two killers of a kind—bad men. We don’t deserve Ishmael’s quiet grace.’

Then the darker light that still burned like an ember deep in his inner night took light, ‘I’m gonna wreck this pussy and never look back. It’d rather save this darned dog from whatever is rolling down that mountainside.’

As if sensing his thoughts she shivered and her hand went to the back of his still strong forearm and he lied his black ass off, “Don’ worry, Booiful. Maja Wolf en me ‘ill neva let nottin’ bad happen to you en you pretty frien’. En you gotz Joe Medicine Crow ta witchdoctor sidewayz-spinnin’ shid up straight as an arrow, en ole Ishmael ova hea’ ain’ a afraid a nuttin’ but Moby Dick!”

To that the Major raised his half empty beer bug and offered another toast, “To friends, old, new, pretty…and, well, even sissies who find themselves confused!”

They all raised their glasses and cheered, “To friends!”

Toby rolled away Ishmael’s glass and looked askingly up at Punk, who had a pretty blond head resting on his shoulder as her friend rose and walked around behind the Indian, and, on cue, like in some country square dance, the Major pulled over another chair for her to grace.

Punk slid over that glass of fine rye and announced, “Only the finest rye for Massa Tobias—HNC up in Cooke City!”

And Toby howled, a long, low, drooling, teeth-gnashing, mournful howl, as he snuffled in the fumes emanating from that glass of whiskey.

‘And the bitch is already drinking my rum without a by-your-leave.’

‘Does this ho even have a name?’

‘Whatever!’

‘Actually, she seems fine with Booiful.’

‘Booiful it is—she is fine and young. Maybe I ought to keep her?’

‘Bitch probably has a crib she shares with the one that’s goin’ to give the Major a heart attack tonight.’

‘Shieeee, nigga. We’ll be lucky if we even see the night.’

‘Greedy bitch!’

He then grabbed the bottle gently, not wanting to chip them perfect teeth and eased it away, “Easy, Booiful, dat shid is one-fitty-one.”

And lunch had yet to come—who was to say that they were rundown and done. The day—let alone the unborn night—was still young.