“Care ta’ try your luck, agin’ greenhorn? Only two-bits.” Every now and then, his recorded voice taunted tourists and drunks. Or, as now and oftentimes, my empty bar.

Wiping sweat from my nose, I carelessly shoved the old Colt into the deteriorating holster stand. It was only a prop pistol; not real, an imitation only, a lot like the tourist trap I’d bought.

The Cave Inn Hotel & Saloon was a deteriorating old brick building, a survivor from the pioneer days when the gold mine had made a dusty arroyo into a boom town. The Hotel offered ancient rooms with uneven floors and the Saloon faked authenticity with Old West relics hung on nails. In a concession to newfangled ways, I’d installed wi-fi internet throughout and electric-car charging stations by the horse railings. Outside, the wooden walkways warped and the asphalt street bubbled, cracked and curled around slanting buildings that had forgotten what square meant. On the far side of the empty lot next door, the once magnificent Burnswoode Bank crumbled under the weight of its own history (although a modern ATM machine out front kept up with the times). 

I liked running the Cave Inn Hotel & Saloon and apart from a tendency to slip into Old West jargon now and a’ then, I was as content as a cowboy eatin’ beans. Sinking every centavo I could beg, borrow or steal into the ruin had seemed like a good idea at the time and I was certain there’d be trendy customers whom I planned on cheating. In all honesty, I wasn’t one to walk the chalk and I skinned long ago that deep down I’m a crook. 

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