I was just the piano man. Nobody ever paid any attention to me. My job was to play while the customers gambled and whored and drank. I never said much, but I'd watch and I'd listen. That's what I was doing the night a man named Morgan bet his daughter on a poker hand.

It was deep in the fall of 1880, and I was working in the Bad Dog Saloon near Fort Laramie. The glory days of the Oregon Trail were a long time gone, but people still came along, all the time. The fort itself had become almost civilized by that time, with boardwalks in front of the officers' houses and even a few trees that someone had planted to keep the place from looking so bare.

The Bad Dog wasn't anywhere near civilized, and it catered to a rough crowd: bullwhackers, trappers who thought there were still pelts in the mountains, whores, and gamblers who preyed on hapless pilgrims.

Like Morgan, who'd started out too late in the year, got caught by an early snow, and was now down on his luck and hurting for cash. And drunk and stupid enough to try to win some in a poker game in a place like the Bad Dog Saloon.

"Play 'Nellie Was a Lady'!" some maudlin drunk yelled, and I did, moving right on to "Hard Times Come again no More" after that, but all the while I had my eyes on Morgan's daughter.

She must've been about fifteen, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and an innocent face like an angel. She sat there with her chair against the wall, fifteen feet away from the table where her father was about to bet her on the cards he held.

"I ain't got enough money to stay in the pot," he said. He had a big voice to go with his thick neck and wide shoulders. The drunken desperation rolled of him in waves. "But I'm stayin' in. I'll bet the girl."

I glanced over at her when he said that. She didn't say a word, didn't even move. Just kept looking straight ahead out of those blue eyes.

Two of the other men at the table folded then. They were cold men, hard men, but that was a little too much even for them.

Ray Tabor didn't fold. He owned the saloon, and compared to him the snow outside was warm. He sat at the table in his wheelchair. It had a wooden frame, big spoked wheels, and a wicker seat. Texas Mary stood behind him. She was a whore but she worked for Tabor, like all the whores in the saloon, and she was his favorite. She was his whenever he wanted her, paying customers be damned.

He looked over at the girl and licked his thin lips. Then he looked at the pot.

"That's a hundred dollar bet," he said.

Morgan nodded. "The girl's worth it."

"I don't doubt it." Tabor smiled. "Very well, let's say you've called."

He fanned out his cards on the table.

"Full house."

Morgan swallowed hard. I couldn't see his hand from where I sat, but I figured it was something pitiful, a pair of threes maybe. Two pair at best. Morgan was a fool.

He didn't even show his cards. He stood up fast, knocking over his chair. His hand went for the pistol at his hip.

Texas Mary had moved around behind him, so I launched into "Rock of Ages," which would do, I figured, for his funeral song. Except Mary didn't shoot him with the little derringer she carried. She hit him in back of the head with a whiskey bottle before he could draw. He fell face-first onto the table, and broke his nose.

I played "Oh, Susannah," to get the boys in a jolly mood and take their minds off Morgan, who was pulled off the table and dragged out the door by the other two gamblers. They threw him out in the street, with Tabor looking at that little girl like a hungry dog looks at a meaty bone.

He spun his chair around and wheeled off to the back, toward the hall leading off to his room.

"Bring her to me," he said to Texas Mary, who smiled. She'd have more time to make money if Tabor was otherwise occupied.

She went over to the girl, who was staring at the door. Texas Mary took hold of her arm and pulled her out of the chair. She didn't want to come along and dug in her heels. Texas Mary slapped her a time or two, and that got her moving. She whimpered like a whipped dog and looked over her shoulder when Mary dragged her into the dark hall. Tears ran down her angelic face. Nobody made a move to help. They knew Tabor too well.

I played "Carve dat Possum" to cover the sound of the girl's crying, because someone's possum was sure enough about to get carved. Not that it was any business of mine.

* * *

I was a godly man once. My father was a preacher, and the first songs I played were things like "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," "Just as I Am, without One Plea," "Fairest Lord Jesus." Nobody had to teach me. The music was just in me. If I heard the song, I could play it, and when I sat down at the piano and looked at the keys, it came out through my fingers. My parents thought it was a wonderful thing, a gift from God that would lead me to a life of service to the Lord.

It didn't turn out that way. As I got older, I found the call of the flesh far stronger than that call of the spirit, and I found that any number of lovely young women (and even more older ones) were eager to show their appreciation of my playing by letting me have my way with them after the services. That sort of thing did not endear me to the deeply religious husbands of many of the women. My fondness for the strong liquor, the only spirits I truly appreciated, did little to endear me to my parents, or to anyone else.

By the time I was twenty, I was a serious toper, and by the time I was twenty-two, I was a dangerous degenerate in my parents' eyes. I hadn't entered a house of worship in over a year. The only employment I could find was playing piano in saloons and whorehouses, and over time I was so overwhelmed by drink that even the more high-toned among those places wouldn't have me.

One morning I woke up lying on a pile of garbage in an alley somewhere. I didn't know the name of the town or how I'd gotten there. It was some time before I could even remember my name. I was so frightened by the experience that I vowed never to drink liquor or consort with prostitutes again.

It was a vow in vain, of course, as most vows of that kind are, but I did manage to achieve occasional sobriety, or at least the appearance of it. As to consorting with prostitutes, by that time the liquor had almost eliminated the desire for physical contact with the opposite sex, and I was convinced that merely playing piano in the vicinity of the soiled doves could do me no harm.

The piano was all I knew. Playing it was all I had left. I had to do it somewhere. Which more or less explains how I came to be in the Bad Dog Saloon.

* * *

"What do you think he does to her?"

That was what Frank wanted to know. Frank was the bartender in the Bad Dog, and when things were slow in the afternoon, sometimes he'd come over to the piano and talk or ask me to play "When You and I were Young, Maggie" or "I'll Take you Home Again, Kathleen." He was a sentimental man, was Frank.

"It's not any of our concern, Frank," I told him, trying not to think about it.

"Yeah, I guess not. How about you playin' "In the Sweet By and By."

I did, and he sang along in a passable tenor. I didn't join in. I don't sing, and for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about what he'd asked, even if it was none of my concern.

* * *

Morgan came back the day after he'd bet his daughter. Tabor had probably been expecting him because he'd told Hamp to stay close. Hamp was the bouncer. He was...