Brewster lay face down at his table as Mona returned to the bar with a fistful of treasury notes. She hopped up on the stool next to Virgil, and Earl brought her a bottle and two glasses. She gave him a large bill, and waved off the change. She poured one for Virgil, then herself. She paused, and filled Jeff’s empty glass.

“Thank ye kindly Miss Mona.” said a somewhat subdued Jeff.

Mona gave him a reproving look, then said to Virgil “Here’s lookin’ atcha Baby…” She lifted her glass to his, and they both threw back their drinks.

“Whooooaa-a-ahh!!!” said Virgil, ”Good stuff!”

Mona, laughing, almost blew rotgut out her nose. “You always say that… Hey! Look at your hair!”

Virgil’s straw-colored hair was standing straight out, making his head look like a gone-to-seed dandelion.

There was a crackling in the air. Earl suddenly grabbed at his temples and began to lurch about, babbling as though in some strange, barbaric tongue.

The piano stopped in mid-arpeggio. The patrons of the Gilded Lily looked about in confusion.

There was a creaking, rending sound like a giant carpenter’s claw pulling a rusty, tenpenny nail out of the sky. There was a blinding flash, and an enormous boom, so loud it rattled every bottle and glass in the saloon. A smell of ozone stung in the nostrils. From outside the barroom doors came an eerie, flickering radiance. A globe of pale green fire appeared and passed through the open space between the swinging doors and top of the door frame.

“Ball lightning...” somebody whispered.

The globe drifted through the air. There was a frantic scrambling to get out of the way. The globe moved erratically about the saloon, hovering and darting. Finally it drifted to the back of the bar, where it delicately brushed against the piano player.

But for the horror, it might have seemed almost comical, the way his arms and legs flailed. Sparks flew as his fingers struck the keyboard. His right shoe was smoking where it contacted the sustain petal. A mad cacophonous rhapsody arose as the piano burst into flames.

The occupants of the Gilded Lily watched this ghastly sight, dumbfounded. Then the globe drifted off.

Like a discarded rag doll, the piano player slumped bonelessly to the floor. There was much jumping and diving about as the globe of green fire drifted erratically for a few seconds until it passed into the open belly of an iron stove, and disappeared up the stove pipe.

A smell like charbroiled buffalo mingled with ozone. Earl fell behind the bar with a thud. Silence ensued, except for the crackling flames of the piano.

“Dang!” said Jeff.

Rain began to roar against the roof and walls of the Gilded Lily. Somebody beat out the burning piano with a horse blanket. Two men slung the piano player in the blanket, and carried him outside to the Lily’s broad wooden portico. It was impractical to take him to the graveyard in the midst of the deluge, so they left his charred carcass on the portico, being careful to set him off to the side so as not to obstruct saloon traffic.

Earl rose shakily and leaned on the bar. He shook his head. He noticed everyone staring at him. He seemed disoriented.

“What?”

The burble of conversation began to rise above the pounding rain.

“Earl! Earl, we lost the piano player!” said Miss Fifi above the noise.

“Ungh…not again..." said Earl, rubbing the back of his head.

The wind began to howl, driving the rain at a slant. Lightning licked the earth, and thunder rolled, as the storm slammed into the northern ridge. Black clouds tumbled back upon themselves. Rivulets of muddy water began to flow southward toward the flat plain.

“We need a piano player!” said Earl, looking around the crowd. His eyes fell on Injun Bob, holding a broom, trying to be inconspicuous.

“You!”

Injun Bob stepped back, hands upraised, letting the broom clatter to the floor. “Me no-play pie-annie!” he said, “Injun Bob no know how play!”

The position of house pianist carried with it a history of ill-fortune, and Injun Bob had no desire to be the next one to meet his doom.

“Play the goddam piano, or your ass is fired!" said Earl, who though having little education of his own, knew that Injun Bob had been to the "whiteman's school", and presumed that it included musical training.

“Me-no play pie-annie!” Injun Bob wailed.

It was quite the show. He had in fact been to Harvard University as part of a well-meaning but misguided attempt by certain do-gooder organizations back east to uplift the "noble savage", and Earl's supposition concerning his musical training was more correct than he realized.

The bartender produced a sturdy cudgel from under the bar and whacked it in his palm, staring at Injun Bob meaningfully.

With a sigh of resignation Injun Bob took a seat at the scorched piano, cracked his knuckles, and began to play an uptempo version of Bloomers on the Rosebush. The piano had gone hideously out of tune, but nobody seemed to mind.

“Well Frank, it looks like a party,” said Miss Fifi, pouring Bloody Jim a drink.

“Whoopee,” Bloody Jim raised his glass and slammed down the vile, brown rotgut.

Rain pounded ceaselessly, and intermittent lightning silhouetted the Lily’s swinging doors. Between thunderclaps sour strains of Slaughter House Rag could be heard, mingled with the crowd murmurings.

The three strangers sat quietly at their table smoking and drinking.

Earl went back to polishing glasses. The white scar on the back of his head had turned an angry red.

“That was so weird.” said Mona.

“No shit!” And this from Virgil, a man seldom given to bad language.

Mona looked at Brewster. He'd missed the events of the past few moments entirely, face down on his table. His pockets were turned inside out, and his boots were missing.

She climbed onto Virgil’s lap. She kissed him softly, tenderly, and he encircled her in his arms, oblivious to the thunder, oblivious to the lightning.

Jeff helped himself to another drink.

The rain stopped. The air became deathly still. A hole in the spinning clouds revealed a sickly yellow sky. A high pitched whine emerged from the silence as a whorl of blackness began to form.

“Y’know Frank,” said Miss Fifi, “I’m startin’ to like you.” She tossed off a slug of rotgut. “An’ when I like a guy, I really like’m. Y’know what I mean?”

Bloody Jim smiled, “I believe you might have to show me Ma'am.”

“Whut the fuck?…” Jeff got up and walked to the doors as a low modulating wail resonated in the air. He stepped out onto the covered portico, and others joined him. Jeff turned right, stepping over the former piano player, and followed the covered walkway around the corner of the building, where he afforded himself a view to the northeast. Jeff’s jaw dropped and he literally shit his pants; a cyclone at least a quarter-mile across was bearing down on Gray Gulch!

Billowing clouds of dust and debris swirled around the base of the monster tornado. The staff and patrons of the Gilded Lily stood on the wooden plank porch watching it approach in helpless terror. There was little thought of taking shelter, as there were no storm cellars in Gray Gulch. The great funnel cloud writhed as it approached, resonating like a demonic pipe organ.

Virgil and Mona clung together. As the terrifying storm drew nearer, Bloody Jim put his arm across Miss Fifi’s shoulder in an instinctive, if rather futile, protective gesture. Miss Fifi moved close to his side as she watched the approaching twister. The bargirls huddled together like a clutch of exotic birds. Rough-and-tumble miners stood transfixed. A devilish harmonic emerged as the low moaning sound continued to increase in intensity.

Lightning played across the landscape, dwarfed by the black funnel. Seconds before the destructive cone reached the fringes of the encampment surrounding Gray Gulch, it began to narrow and extend, weaving like an exotic dancer, concentrating its fury in a smaller and smaller radius.

“I’m not crazy; I’m gettin’ outta here!” Jeff suddenly exclaimed, and jumped off the portico into the deep quagmire of mud and excrement that was now the street. The others watched as he took a few strides. The mud sucked at his boots, and clung to them as he pulled free. Every step he took required more effort. His feet were encumbered by great clots of stinking mud.

The cyclone drew ever closer to the Gilded Lily. The livery stable exploded. Splintered planks, horseshoes, anvils, and wagon wheels spun crazily upwards.

Jeff held out his arms as if to embrace his fate, and he was gone.

The mouth of the funnel hovered above the street poised for the coup d’etat, but it seemed to hesitate; there was a moment almost of indecisiveness. It spun like a mad dervish just a few yards from the saloon. Then suddenly it retracted into the low-slung cloudbank.

A great yawning silence fell upon Gray Gulch.

The column of death and destruction left behind stunned observers staring at Jeff's empty boots stuck in the mud.

A cuckoo clock dropped out of the sky, and landed with a splat in the muddy street, followed by several large fish that flopped about in the filthy mire. The stunned patrons of the Gilded Lily stood immobile, staring at the bizzarre spectacle of ruin before them. The spell was broken when rain burst forth once again in sheets whipped about by the rising wind. Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled off the distant hillsides. In gathering darkness, the downpour obfuscated the results of the storm's wrath.

“I thought we was a-goner.” said Virgil, voicing the thought that was pretty much on everyone’s mind.

“You and me both.” said Miss Fifi.

There was a general assent among those gathered on the porch.

“I could use a drink.” said Bloody Jim.

They tromped back into the bar, where Earl, Injun Bob, the three strangers, and the unconscious Brewster had remained behind. Injun Bob was idly picking out Wazoo River on the scorched piano with one finger. Water plunked into a bucket in the middle of the dance floor. Earl was polishing glasses.

The three strangers sat in their booth, playing cutthroat euchre and smoking big cigars.The one-eyed stranger peered out from beneath his broad, black, flat-brimmed Stetson. His baleful eye observed the flow of patrons back inside the saloon. The mustachioed stranger sat back in the booth, his face cast in shadow, resembling a bird of prey as he studied his cards. The third stranger had a disturbing manner of looking straight forward and turning his head to scan his cards, as if his beady eyes were frozen in their sockets. In a foreign accent, he proclaimed clubs to be trump.

Brewster remained facedown on the table, pockets empty and bootless.

Bloody Jim, Miss Fifi, Virgil, and Mona returned to sit at the bar. Jeff’s empty glass remained where he sat, in mute testament to his absence.

Bloody Jim leaned across the bar. “Earl! Pour us all a round.” He handed the barkeep a double eagle.

Earl gave the coin a bite, then satisfied with its authenticity, the gruff bartender called out “Velvet! Brandy! Danni! Get over here! You too, Mona.” The bargirls scurried over to the bar. “Frank here is setting up the house.” As he spoke, he lined up glasses on the bar.

“Thanks Frank, honey!” said Danni, blowing Bloody Jim a kiss.

The other girls chimed in their appreciation as well.

Bloody Jim acknowledged them with his almost florescent smile and the tip of an imaginary hat. They quickly set drinks in front of everyone, eighteen in all, including Earl and themselves.

“Injun Bob too.” said Bloody Jim.

Nineteen.

They all waited, anticipating a toast.

“Here’s to Jeff,” offered Miss Fifi, “God knows I’ve seen worse.”

There was a muttering of assent, then they all downed their drinks. Injun Bob struck up Redeyes in the Sunset, and the Gilded Lily was back in business.

“Frank,” said Miss Fifi, “shoes?”

Two hours later Miss Fifi’s extraordinary breasts rolled to a stop as Bloody Jim finished with a groan. The rain pounded on the roof above the four-poster bed. She stroked his back, as her third climax subsided. She tenderly caressed the long red welts left by her fingernails . His body was lean, with the hard muscle and taut sinews of a panther. His hands though, were gentle and sure. Who the fuck is this guy?, she thought. Then he kissed her again and she stopped thinking.

She woke a bit later to find him clothed, sitting at her dressing table, spinning the cylinder of his revolver. She watched as he inspected the well-oiled mechanism, then flipped it back into place, and slid the gun into his side holster. The rain had settled into a steady rhythm. The kerosene lamp cast flickering shadows on the walls.

“Frank, pour me a drink.” she said.

He filled two glasses.

“Here’s to you Miss Fifi.”

“And you.”

She moved about the room getting dressed as he watched her.

“Amazing.” He said.

“What?”

“That desire persists, even in Gray Gulch.”

A small huff of laughter as she drew on a stocking. “Yeah.”