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By the time Archer sees the town over the ridge, he's down to the dregs in his canteen, his horse is nearly dead, and he's on his third day without whiskey, which is the real tragedy of the situation. The place doesn't look like much, a strip of buildings in a cleared stretch of forest and a handful of homesteads surrounding it, but Archer would bet—well, not his own shoes, he needs those, but something moderately less valuable that there's probably a saloon somewhere in the mix, and, like, at least a handful of whores. Granted, his purse is as empty as his flask, but one problem at a time.
The road there is longer than it looks, the path switchbacking through the trees and down into the valley before finally dumping him out into the town itself. Calling it a town is maybe too generous, though—up close, Archer can see that it's more tents and canvas than proper buildings, narrow and muddied aisles running between pop-up storefronts selling new boots and cookware and soap (judging from the smell of the place, easy money that last one's not bringing in many sales.) But smack in the middle, easy access from all directions, Archer sees a sturdy two-story setup with a canvas banner hanging over the front door. Gillette's Saloon.
"Get yourself something to drink, Lucy," Archer says, looping the reins over a hitching post near the trough out front. "Fuck knows I'll be spending the rest of the day doing the same."
On the inside, Gillette's is a little more ramshackle, but suitable enough for Archer's purposes (then again, that's a pretty low bar at the moment.) There's a beat-up piano in one corner and a card game going at one of the back tables, and—most important—a row of bottles behind the bar and a group of half-dressed women lounging on the upstairs landing. One of them winks at Archer as he walks in, and he grins back.
"Afternoon," he calls up, tipping his hat. "Out of curiosity, are any of you willing to work for a check—?"
"They do not, and neither do I." It's a man behind the bar who says it, blonde hair trimmed back neat and a mustache that's thin enough Archer can't tell whether it's intentional or just the best he could grow.
"Thanks, but you're not really my type."
The man huffs. "Easy, tiger—like I'd be so quick to jump into bed with you, either. No, I'm talking about the bar. I don't take checks, and you can only run a tab here or upstairs if you've got the money to pay it off." He raises an eyebrow. "Do you?"
Getting drunk now versus any possible and undefined future consequences? No contest. "Yeah, of course."
The man gives him a steady look that pretty clearly reads bullshit, but Archer just smiles in response, meets the bartender's stare with one of his own until the bartender sighs and relents. See? Easy. When it comes to bluffing, not backing down is half the fight. (Then again, Archer did say goodbye to most of his savings at a poker table in Cheyenne, so what does he actually know.)
"What'll it be?"
"Whiskey," Archer says. "And lots of it. My mouth is drier than my mother's—"
"Ew, stop. Don't finish that thought."
"—sense of humor . God, that's what you thought I was going to say? Christ, do you take me for a Hapsburg or something?"
The bartender gives him a tired look as he pours the drink. "Put it this way, you wouldn't be the first man to come through here who wants to pretend he's bedding down with his own momma."
Archer downs his shot and grimaces. "Okay, you owe me another on the house for one, making me have to hear that, and two, watering down the liquor."
"I do not—"
"I haven't had whiskey that weak since I was twelve. So, unless you want me here for the rest of the day trying to get drunk off this bottom-shelf shit, you'd best break out the good stuff. Scratch that—I can't afford the good stuff. Whatever's a shelf above the bottom shelf, pour me that."
The bartender rolls his eyes but obliges as he pours Archer a fresh shot. This time when he empties it, he feels the burn he was looking for rolling all the way down his throat.
"Much better," Archer says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Thanks—what was your name?"
"Raymond Gillette. This is my joint."
Archer gives him a once over. "Don't take this the wrong way or whatever, but I, uh—wouldn't have thought running women was something you'd be interested in."
"What, because I'm gay?"
"I mean, yeah?"
"First of all, men can be whores, too—"
"You're right. That was very un-equal rights of me."
"—but second, a saloon's a business just like any other. I can look after my employees without wanting to screw them, and I didn't get into this line of work as an excuse to get laid."
Archer frowns. That sounds like it would be the main appeal. "So, why did you?"
"What is this, twenty questions?"
"It could be, since that is apparently a very popular game in this time period. Plus, when the alternative is sitting in silence with my own thoughts…"
"When the alternative is breaking my back panning for gold, selling liquor and sex is sort of a no brainer. Besides, while some folks are lucky enough to still be turning a profit on claims they'd staked out early on, most of the land around here that's really worth a damn has all been bought up by Mama."
"Mama?"
"Not her real name, obviously, but at this point she may as well be the town matriarch."
"Jesus, no wonder half your johns come here looking for something Oedipal." Archer taps the rim of his still-empty shot glass. "What are you waiting for, Sammy Slowpoke? Do I seem drunk to you yet?"
"Honestly?"
"Ha ha, very funny. Laugh it up at the guy who's probably suffering from dehydration."
Gillette gives him a baffled look. "Then why are you drinking?"
"Why am I drinking? For dehydration?"
"Not alcohol, stupid! It's a diuretic!"
Archer shrugs. "Look, I'll deal with that problem when I start pissing it out. For now, hit me again."
—
The next thing he knows, Archer is waking up with his head pounding harder than the headboard of a sailor on leave. For a second, he worries he's turning pussy enough to start feeling hungover—then he registers the bars of a jail cell in front of him, and remembers the chair that the big, blonde juggernaut of a deputy had brought down over his head. Everything else is still a little fuzzy though. Had he started a barfight? Pissed off the wrong local higher-up? He's made that mistake more than once, but usually that involves bedding down with some Mrs. Local Higher-Up, and Archer is pretty sure he would've remembered that —
No, dammit, it was an unpaid bar tab. Well, that was the next guess on the list. Gillette had called for the sheriff after finally realizing Archer had neither the inclination nor the funds to pay back his—eight? ten?—whiskeys. So, really, the whole thing is Gillette's fault in the first place for having let Archer get that far along on some vague promise—or, cough, outright lie—that he had the cash. Anyway, after that it was all, "You're under arrest," and, "Yeah, we'll see about that," which they then had, abruptly and painfully when Archer started throwing fists with the deputy only to get slamdunked into a table, then chair-fucked over the head.
Which brings him here, apparently. The cell he's in takes up about half the room, with a door along the far wall that presumably leads to the office out front; through the gap, Archer can just see a pair of boots propped up on the edge of a desk. He goes to stand up from the cot and immediately lurches forward with a groan, reaching out to steady himself against one of the bars as it feels like his goddamn brain swims around in his skull. At that, the boots swing off the desk and onto the floor, and a voice calls out, "Pipe down back there."
"Make me," Archer fires back, then immediately regrets it as the deputy with fists like sledgehammers steps into the doorway. "Just kidding, don't make me. We have already established you are very, very capable of that."
The deputy—Poveck, he thinks he heard Gillette say—snorts out a laugh. "Right? Sleeping Beauty over here getting dropped by two little love taps."
"You broke a chair over my head!"
"Oh, yeah, Gillette's adding those damages to what all else you owe him."
"Well, too bad, because I don't have it."
"Then I guess you better get comfortable," Poveck says, tapping her fingers against the bars. "Consider this your new home until a fairy godmother shows up or a leprechaun climbs out of your ass."
"Why would there be a leprechaun up my ass?"
"Where else is he gonna hide his gold?"
"Jesus, let's hope not." Archer glances around the small footprint of the cell—cot and blanket on one wall, pisspot in the corner, and fuck-all else. "You all couldn't spring for a dart board or some jacks or whatever?"
"Does this look like a bar to you?"
"Speaking of, can I get something to drink? Whiskey, preferably. Pretty much only whiskey, actually, if that's an option." He's feeling significantly less drunk than he'd expect, given how many he knocked back at Gillette's. "How long was I out, anyway?"
Poveck shrugs. "I don't know—a couple hours or something?"
"Goddammit."
"Right? That's, like, so bad for you."
"Yeah, and since I don't want to take my chances with whatever this place has that passes for a doctor—"
"You do not."
"I'd really love that whiskey we talked about. I'm pretty sure that giving you alcohol and opium is all doctors these days do, anyway."
"Sorry—" Poveck's eyebrow disappears somewhere up near her hairline. "You get arrested for failure to pay a bar tab, then expect us to give you more liquor for free?"
"Or, whatever. Put it on my existing tab."
"Yeah, I'm not falling for that one like Gillette. You can just cool your heels and sober up. Let me know if you start dying or something, but otherwise, I don't want to hear a peep out of you. And barely even then."
Poveck leaves Archer there in his cell, metaphorically holding his dick, and heads back to her desk, closing the door on her way out. So, what the fuck is he supposed to do now? Twiddle his goddamn thumbs? Bounce a ball against the wall? Chew his way out of here like a fucking beaver?
"At least take care of my horse!"
—
The next morning starts early—or, so Archer assumes. His cell doesn't exactly have a clock or a sundial, or even a window for the latter to be at all useful. He's in the middle of a fitful and unpleasant dream that's part-traumatic war flashbacks, part-weird bullshit involving some steampunk robotic bird when he's woken by a loud, repeated, deeply annoying banging. Archer opens his eyes to see Poveck wearing a shit-eating grin, rattling her coffee mug against the bars.
"Rise and shine, princess," Poveck says. "You've got a visitor."
"Pass."
"You might want to hear what I have to say first." Stepping through the doorway behind Poveck is a well-dressed, older woman who's looking Archer up and down with an appraising, too-interested eye.
Archer coughs. "Listen, I'm flattered, but cabana boy—or, whatever, stable boy—isn't really the sort of thing I'm looking for. That said, if you're willing to pay back my debt, I might be willing to consider—"
"As tempting as whatever unwashed, thrice-whorehouse-traveled lice I'm sure you're carrying is, I have a different sort of employment offer in mind." She glances over her shoulder at where Poveck is leaning against the wall, one eyebrow raised until Poveck rolls her eyes and backs out of the room. Once the door is closed, the woman—Mama, he has to assume—turns back to him. "So, Mr. Archer, is it?"
"People don't usually add the 'mister,' but sure."
"You're certainly making a name for yourself. Barely an hour into town before you're stirring up enough trouble to end up in a jail cell. Not to mention, word traveling that you held your own admirably well against our nebulously human, nebulously polar bear Deputy Poveck—"
"I heard that!" Poveck calls from the other room.
Mama continues on unperturbed. "Granted, you did still lose, but on the whole, I find that level of resilience and initiative useful in my line of work."
"What, gold mining?" Archer snorts. "Thanks, but hard pass. Compared to spending twelve hours a day hunched over in a tunnel with rats climbing up my legs and the constant risk of being buried under what is basically a mountain, I'd rather stay in jail and wait until I shit out some gold."
"Relax, I have more disposable sources of labor for that kind of work. Irish, mostly, and what with the whole Catholic thing, you're never at a shortage for more."
"Is it that sort of nurturing personality that earned you the nickname 'Mama?'"
She takes a step closer to the cell. There's gold thread woven into the collar of her shirt and the hem of her waistcoat, which is the sort of needless expense that Archer would expect from the proprietor of a mine. "I've been called a lot of things, Mr. Archer, but 'patient' is not one of them. Now, if you would like out of the cell, as well as more money than you could have ever hoped to earn in the rest of your assuredly uninspired lifetime, you will pipe down and listen."
Whatever she's about to say is probably a load of horseshit, but the promise of getting sprung (phrasing—wait, no) is tempting enough that, for the moment, Archer stays quiet.
"In recent weeks, my accountant has recorded an uptick in complaints from the labor force regarding… disturbances in the mines. Given the vagueness of their descriptions—strange noises down the tunnels, lights going out unexpectedly, and so on—it's likely just the overactive imaginations of pansy Irishmen with too much whiskey in their stomachs, but they won't hear reason. Some have even started claiming more serious physical ailments after working in these supposedly haunted tunnels, which to me reeks of laziness and run-of-the-mill truancy, but once word of an illness starts traveling the camp, the operation will grind to a halt, and that's hardly ideal for my bottom line.
"That's where you come in," Mama says. "I'd like to hire you on in the role of security officer. To the miners, you'll be there to investigate these concocted ghost stories and provide protection. As far as I'm concerned, your primary responsibility will be to… persuade some of the more gullible miners that there's nothing to fear, as well as to follow up with any supposedly infirm employees and stamp out any rumors of disease before word starts spreading."
"Stamp out—" Archer says, eyebrow raised, "—meaning?"
"I'm not telling you how to do your job," Mama says, waving a hand. "I am only interested in the results. Help me get my once-oiled machine up and running again—"
Phrasing. Archer thinks. Then, Ew.
"—and you'll be rewarded handsomely for your efforts. Of course, I'll also be happy to handle the matter of your debt to Gillette, in order to expedite the start of your employment."
Archer frowns, considering. If Mama is right, and the only real threat to contend with is maybe some hungover Irishmen wanting to play hooky, then the gig sounds too good to be true. She's gonna bail him out and cover his tab, and all he has to do is play a little bad cop? Granted, he's not actually interested in leaning on any workers too hard because they've got what are, likely, very reasonably concerns for their safety, but Mama doesn't need to know that. In fact, the whole situation sounds like nothing that couldn't be solved by a few conversations with the right folks—maybe stretched out over a strategic period of time, no need to handle the problem too fast and have Mama cutting the checks short—and then Archer's looking at a reliable source of steady income that he can put towards retirement or whatever. Think of it that way, and he'd be an idiot to say no.
"Alright," Archer says, reaching a hand through the bar to shake on it. "Get me out of here, and you've got yourself a deal."