Doc wasn't exactly riding the sober train himself. In the illustrious comedy of errors that had become his life in the last few days, the Hotel, or that strange new four-eyed fellow in the office (assuming he was not a figment of the Hotel's imagination,) decided it was a wise idea to provide him with only whiskey as a means for sustaining himself. Granted, he had filled his belly on the first day, thanks to Miss Dolores Abernathy and her delicious peach cobbler. But now it was Tuesday and Doc was sailing the scotch seas.
Of course, he was well accustomed to long bouts of drinking. Excess was not a word he liked to use in his vocabulary. He was not a drunk, but neither did he limit himself to social drinking. Though, if the Hotel were to have its way, he would no doubt be a raging alcoholic before the end of the week. It was a not so pleasant reminder of those final days before he took the witch's cure, when he was dying of the big TB and wasting away to a fragile sickly figure of a man. He spent many of those days lying in bed with a bottle under the blankets.
And where does a man who is only offered whiskey go to spend his waking hours and forget his weekly troubles? Why, the lounge, of course.
Doc sauntered into the room, holsters hung heavy by the weight of two revolvers (the third was under his pillow) at his hips, his hat casting a shadow on his face. In his right hand was breakfast, the bottle already half empty. In his left was a book, Close Range by Annie Proulx, he had borrowed from the library to help him pass the time. He was reading it as he walked, carefully watching his steps through his peripheral vision. Every now and again he would shake his head at something in the text or laugh or raise an eyebrow.
Literature had definitely become more progressive since his day. And in the last few hours he had gained an entirely new perspective of Wyoming.
It was the clinking and clamoring of the young man in the lounge that drew his attention away. He stepped over to the bar, setting the book and bottle on the counter, and then glanced over the other man's disheveled appearance.
"Well, you don't look like a dime's worth of dog meat. If you don't mind me saying."