Men of Violence by Bill Brooks

Author:Bill Brooks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2017-05-08T17:35:14+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

The man had been drinking but was not yet drunk, simply belligerent and on the prod. He’d had a fight with his wife, which was not unusual for the two of them. Both were boozers and both had long suffered the company of the other. The wife—Vineta Sorghum Blue—had spent half her forty years fighting with one man or another over one thing or another. She’d worked as a ranch cook for several of those troubled years before T. Bone Blue came along, constantly either rebuffing the advances of cowpunchers or accepting them. She had become known as an easy mark among the boys, and maybe she was and would be the first to admit it, but she liked to believe that she wasn’t easy with every last one of those yahoos. That she had a modicum of discretion, though after so many men the line of reasoning became blurred.

It was while a ranch cook that she’d met T. Bone Blue, an ofttimes drifter and saddle tramp who took work only when he had to. T. Bone Blue might not have a thin dime in his pocket and yet he acted as if the world was his oyster to eat whenever he wanted to. He was also a ladies’ man and liked to believe he could charm a snake out of its skin. He’d left a trail of wounded hearts, and whenever the occasion arose he not only stole their hearts, but their savings as well.

T. Bone Blue was wanted in several states and territories for being a bunco artist and a grifter, an alienator of affections and absconder. He always tried to keep one jump ahead of the law and thus far had been successful, using various aliases as he went. Until he met Vineta Sorghum, her unmarried name, as she put it. Vineta had big blue eyes and a rosy glow of a complexion, like a peach freshly rained upon and a sweet little bow of a mouth. She worked hard at keeping her weight down, and of course the opium that she smoked helped that particular cause.

She was sassy and knew how to lure any man alive—like fishing with real good bait, as she’d brag to some of her girlfriends. “It’s easy, if you know which bait to use for which kind of fish you’re after.”

They had tittered with admiration.

Some might say that by the time they met, Vineta was the female version of T. Bone. She’d made suckers out of a lot of men—some of them deservedly so, and others not so much. Among other past occupations she’d been a dance hall girl who sang for drinks and let the boys have a feel as a method of advertising the goods.

T. Bone met her in Big Jack Jones’ Black Cat Emporium where she was currently plying her various talents. Big Jack got fifty percent of her earnings and an occasional roll in the hay whenever he required it.

Vineta and T. Bone were like a lit match dropped in spilled whiskey.

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