Chapter 6: The Border Bar

The bar in Galax had no sign, only a black rag nailed over the door.

Jude parked the quartermaster's truck across the street and sat for a minute with the engine ticking.

The black phone was in his coat pocket.

He had not called the number, because a man who calls first has already lost.

He got out and crossed the street.

Inside, forty people were drinking in a low room that smelled of wet wool and spilled beer.

Most of them wore a strip of black cloth on their left arm.

The talk died as he came through the door.

He walked straight to the bar, laid his hands flat on the wood, and spoke to the bartender.

"I'm looking for Corwin Quillon," he said.

The bartender was a heavy man with a gap in his teeth.

He wiped a glass for a long time.

"Never heard of him," he said.

"Then tell your friends in the corner I said hello."

Three men were already getting up from a table by the pool cue rack.

The first one swung a bottle.

Jude caught the man's wrist, turned it, and drove the bottle into the bar edge so the glass burst in the man's own fist.

The man screamed and fell away.

The second grabbed Jude from behind in a bear hug and lifted him off his feet.

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