Mick was in love and not just a little. Every night after closing the Lucky Nickel Saloon, he took his profits and ambled down to Dolly's Boarding House for Ladies and partook of the entertainment offered there by a certain Miss Emma Drummond, late of Saint Louie and points east.
"She's the prettiest girl in Wyoming Territory," Mick reminded us often, in case we regulars forgot, a little. He had a photograph taken of her. She looked like a lady in the picture, all gussied up in petticoats, a bustle, toting a parasol and suchlike.
Us regulars daren't tell Mick what we thought. Even mud fence ugly, with a mustache better than Mick's, she looked as tolerable as any girl in Laramie in the entertainment trade. And Mick'd win no beauty contest himself unless he competed with mules. So, it didn't seem proper to opine unasked.
One day Mick came late to open and we regulars got close to calling the sheriff to see if he'd fallen down an outhouse somewheres. But no, up he comes, finally, droopy-faced like somebody shot his favorite dog.
"What gives?" Casper asked in brotherly concern.
"Yeah, what?" Banky added.
"My life is over," Mick pronounced. We waited for him to drop the proverbial other boot as he set up for the day and he sighed a powerful lot of heavy weight sighs. But there was no egging him on. He worked at his own steady pace.
At last, he informed us. It seemed as how he'd asked the light of his life for to marry him and she turned him down.
"But why?" Charlie inquired.
"Yeah, why?" Banky added.
Seemed as how Miss Emma wanted Mick to pay off her contract to Miss Dolly first.
"Well," Casper put in, "we could help you. Pass the hat, so to speak. How much does your lady owe?"
"Yeah, how much?" Banky added.
Mick said and us who'd had breakfast near lost it.
"There's more," Mick noted, his countenance bleaker than any I'd seen outside a funeral home.
Given Mick's last news item, nobody wanted to hear, but he said anyway. "She wants me to give up the saloon trade and take up homesteading."
In the silence which ensued, you could have heard a cockroach fart.
We liked Mick right well enough, and if he took a fancy to a soiled dove, we figured more power to him. A man needs companionship. Besides, if he took a notion to marry such a one, that was okeydokey too, even if she demanded he become frugal in the process and do something noble like rescue her from some onerous contract. It might do Mick good to do something noble for a change. T'would keep him from going to hell for watering his whiskey.
But abandon the saloon business?
They'd build a cobblestone road twixt Laramie and Cheyenne afore us boys would cotton to such like. I saw my compatriots frown, shoulders hunched, brows furrowed, trying to figure how to talk Mick into accepting fate.
"The Lucky Nickel won't make you rich enough, I reckon," Charlie commiserated, "to buy out Miss Emma's contract, let alone give up the business. Too bad."
"Yeah, too bad," Banky added.
We all nodded agreement.
Besides, none of us could get credit anywheres else.
Mick just shrugged, saddened. He dusted off his picture of Miss Emma which he kept behind the bar to moon at.
Somehow we had to get him quit from thinking of Miss Emma, or the worst would happen. Mick was a clever enough businessman and no mistake, and if he set his mind to it, he'd figure a way to make his stake soon enough. I had to confer with the boys and see we got cleverer quicker.
I had no sooner thought up this thought when the day's first unregular customer sauntered in.
T'was a cowboy, judging by the chaps, dirty boots and spurs, and just in off the trail, judging by the smell.
He toted a fair-sized canvas bag in one hand. In the other, he dragged a rope with a leather loop on one end across the sawdust floor. He moseyed to the bar and ordered a beer.
"I'm seeking a buyer," he announces bold as a politician. He held up the loop connected to the rope on the floor.
"What's for sale?" I wondered.
"Yeah, what?" Banky added.
"Why, this here dragon," he responded, nodding at the loop he held up.
"Dragon?" Mick questioned.
"Well, I don't see no dragon," Casper noted.
"Me neither," Charlie joined in.
"Of course you don't," the cowboy agreed. He snorted and spat. Ping. "It's an invisible dragon."
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