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Another man said, "Oscar, give the boy a drink. He sounds a little dry!" Everyone in the room laughed.

"Come ’ere, boy," said the bartender. "I’ll give you a glass of water."

"Now, Oscar, water an’t gonna kill the frog in that boy’s throat. You give him a dose of that mule sweat you call whiskey, and that’ll set ’im up right!"

"Hanson, I an’t gonna give no boy whiskey, and you know it, especially a boy like this one, who looks like he should be home with his mama. How old are you, boy?"

"Sixteen," I croaked.

"Well, you’re tall, but you an’t sixteen. Fourteen more’n likely." He set a glass of water, of the usual kind, thick on the bottom and thin on the top, in front of me. I drank off the top and set it down again.

"Now, see," said Hanson. "You talk about your water, but drinking whiskey in this territory is just self-preservation, pure and simple. You see, whiskey’s been distilled. That means there an’t nothin’ in it but whiskey. There an’t no mud in it!" He held up his glass appreciatively. "You ken see all the way through it! G— d—, but I hate the taste of mud!"

"What do you need, son?" said the bartender.

"Well, I just come into the city, and I’m looking for my pa, my uncle, and my cousin, and here’s the fix I’m in. I know they changed their name, and I don’t know what the new name is!"

"What was the old name, son?"

"Well, it was Miller." I leaned over the table and whispered in the bartender’s ear. "But my ma heard from some folks that they killed them a G— d— abolitionist and had to change the name, but you see, now my ma is sick, she had a baby that died, and she might die herself, and so I got to find them!"

The bartender looked hard at me, his beard and eyebrows both shading and setting off his piercing gaze. I gripped Thomas’s watch and held the stare as best I could.

One of the other men called out, "What’d he say, Oscar? Cain’t have secrets in an establishment like this, haw haw!"

The bartender kept looking at me but said, "Deal ’em out, Hawley, and watch your cards. That’s your business!"

Everyone laughed.

Finally, he said to me, "Kansas City is a big place, son, and lots of folks are coming and going all the time. I an’t heard of nobody like you’re talking about."

"It’s been about a month or more since we heard about the shooting."

The bartender shrugged his shoulders, then said, "Now you better go on, son." He nodded toward the door, and pretty soon I was out of it.

There was a similar establishment down the street and across, and after checking on Athens, I went there.

This place had two bartenders, one fat and one thin, two tables of gamblers, and some steady whiskey drinkers. It also had a woman, most likely a harlot, as my sisters would say, but respectably dressed. She came over to me with a smile and said, ’’Are you looking for someone, dear?"

Now, I have to say that this was the first time I had tried out my disguise on a woman, and it disconcerted me to do so. She looked me up and down quite frankly, but she hid what she was inspecting with her steady smile and receptive demeanor. I whispered, "I’m looking for my pa and some other relations."

"Pardon me, dear?"

I tried a bit harder, careful to deepen my croak as much as possible. I was unsure about that "dear." "I got some relations who—"

Her smile changed, became more amused. I was sure all at once that she knew I was a woman, and so began backing out of the saloon, saying, "Thanks." When I got through the door, I turned and walked very quickly down to the corner and around’it. After a moment, I stopped, went back to the corner, and peered into the street that bar was in, but the woman had not come out. When I thought about it, I couldn’t imagine what she might do even if she did recognize my sex. Proclaim it to the world? A man of the west, especially a Missourian, certainly would do so. In K.T., there had been regular stories of humiliations: a man wouldn’t take a drink, and so the other men in the saloon bullied him until he either