Summary
A sun-scorched outpost called Thirsty Center clings to the lip of an Arizona inferno; its pulse is the Brass Rail, a bone-dry saloon where the piano is always slightly out of tune and the proprietor’s grin is a nickel-plated threat. That proprietor—“Selfish” Yates, a man whose spurs jingle like loose coins on a card-sharp’s table—has turned inhospitality into high art: he waters the whiskey, short-changes the drifters, and keeps the local law docile with rot-gut and roulette. Into this moral dust-devil arrive Mary and Betty Adams, orphaned when the desert devoured their father’s bones. Their hope is a single, tattered petition for mercy; Yates answers with a leer and a job offer that smells of rouge and second-hand satin. Mary recoils, choosing instead the scullery’s scalding anonymity, scraping grease from pots while her sister’s lungs rattle with every desert night. Yet the kitchen’s steam becomes baptismal: each dawn Mary emerges soot-streaked, eyes bright as struck matches, quietly mapping the geography of Yates’s cruelties. She withholds forgiveness the way cacti hoard water, but her mere presence is a hairline fracture in the man’s granite selfishness. A lame colt, a starving mongrel, a widow’s overdue mortgage—tiny fissures widen until the day the saloon’s roulette wheel lands on blood: a gambler’s accusation, a drawn derringer, a child caught in the cross-fire. In that crucible Yates discovers the arithmetic of the human heart: one act of decency multiplies, one betrayal subtracts forever. He rides into the night carrying the wounded child, a parched wind erasing his footprints and the last syllable of his nickname.
"Selfish" Yates operates a disreputable saloon on the desert's edge in Arizona. Sisters Mary and Betty Adams, who lost their father crossing the desert, arrive in the town of Thirsty Center and appeal to Yates for help and work. Yates is none too helpful, suggesting dance-hall work for Mary. She refuses, instead taking a menial job assisting Yates' cook. Yates is a hard case, but little by little Mary's influence works a renewal of humanity in him, until at last he finds himself tested by crisis.
