“How ’bout the stew?” Cole said.
“Been simmerin’ ’bout six years,” the woman said. “Just keep dishing it out and addin’ in stuff.”
We ordered some.
“What are we going to do?” Allie said.
“We’ll wait until tomorrow afternoon,” Cole said. “Then we’ll take Bragg back.”
“I meant us, Virgil,” she said.
I started to get up.
“I’ll have a drink at the bar,” I said.
Cole put his hand on my arm.
“Sit,” he said.
“Does Everett have to be here, Virgil?” Allie said.
“Yep.”
I wasn’t comfortable with it. But staying might not be a bad idea. If Allie started talking about us at her half-constructed house that rainy day, I would want to be around to see that the story got told adequately.
“Ring forced me to do that with him,” Allie said.
“Nope,” Cole said.
“He did, Virgil, I swear he did.”
Cole shook his head.
“I seen what I seen,” he said.
“I was afraid,” Allie said. “I was doing what I had to do to stay alive.”
“He wouldn’ta killed you,” Cole said. “He’d just trail you along with him till he didn’t need you no more.”
“Maybe you know that,” Allie said. “But I didn’t know it, Virgil. And the other men. I was a woman alone with four terrible men.”
Cole drank some whiskey and stared into the glass and didn’t say anything for a while.
Then he said to me, “Tomorrow this time we’ll have settled things with the Sheltons. If Ring kills me, you think she’ll go off with him, Everett?”
“I think Allie needs to be with a man,” I said.
“You bastard,” Allie said. “Don’t listen to him, Virgil. The sonova bitch tried to put his hands on me one day when I was showing him our house.”
Cole looked at me.
“No, Virgil,” I said. “I didn’t.”
Cole looked at me for a moment longer. I looked back. Then he looked back into his whiskey glass.
“No, Allie,” he said. “Everett didn’t do that.”
“He’s lying, Virgil. You believe him and not me?”
Cole studied the surface of his drink. He nodded his head slowly.
“That is correct,” he said.
“You men. You always stick together, don’t you. What chance has a woman got, alone?”
Cole finished his drink and poured himself another. The hotelkeeper’s wife brought us food. We all ate some and were quiet while we did. It was better than fried salt pork and hardtack.
“Well, if it’ll help you feel easy,” Cole said after a time, “nobody’s killed me yet, and I don’t think Ring can do it, either.”
“Why do you have to face him?”
“He’s got my prisoner.”
“Can’t you get the local marshal or whoever to help you?”
“Maybe,” Cole said. “Either way, he’s got my lawful prisoner.”
“And you just have to get him back,” Allie said.
“He’s my lawful prisoner,” Cole said.
“And that’s all there is to it?”
“I’m a lawman,” Cole said.
“And that’s all you are?” Allie said.
“Mostly,” Cole said.
40
“What happened at the house?” Cole said to me.
“I didn’t make no advance at Allie,” I said.
“I believe it. I tole you that already. But I’d like to know what transacted.”
I told him. He nodded slowly as he listened. If he felt anything, he didn’t show it. He sat with his chair tilted back, looking up through the clear night at the stars. After a while, he shook his head as if answering a question no one had asked.
“I never met no woman like her,” he said.
I was quiet.
“Mostly, I been with whores, and some squaws.”
Cole took out a cigar and lit it, turning it in the match flame, and got it going good and even.
“She talks good and dresses nice, and she’s good-looking,” Cole said.
He took in some cigar smoke and blew it out and watched it thin out and disappear in the night air.
“She can play the piano, and she cooks nice, and she’s very clean.”
Cole’s voice was quiet in the near darkness. He was listing assets, I thought, deciding whether to buy.
“But,” Cole said, “it appears she’ll fuck anything ain’t gelded.”
I shook my head.
“I ain’t sure that’s quite right,” I said.
“What do you think’s right?”
“I think she wants to be with the boss stallion,” I said.
“Ain’t but one stallion in a herd,” Cole said.
“At a time,” I said.
Cole smoked his cigar quietly for a time.
“So when I’m around she loves me,” Cole said.
“I think so,” I said.
“But I ain’t around and you are, she loves you.”
“Probably ain’t love,” I said.
“And when neither one of us is around, she loves Ring.”
“Again, I ain’t sure I’d say love.”
“She love me?” Cole said.
“I can’t say that she don’t,” I said. “You?”
Cole’s voice sounded a little hoarse to me. Maybe he was embarrassed. I wasn’t sure. I’d never seen him embarrassed.
“I think she does,” he said.
“You’re the one should know,” I said.
He smoked some more of his cigar, holding the tip up and exhaling past it so he could see the smoke.
“That thing with Ring,” Cole said. “It sticks in my throat, Everett. I can’t seem to swallow it.”
“Sticks in mine, too,” I said.
He puffed his cigar.
“You know she takes a bath every evenin’?” he said. “ ’Fore she goes to bed.”
It was very dark, and I could only see Cole’s face a little in the coal-oil light that came out of the hotel.
“I like bein’ with her,” he said.
“Nothin’ against it,” I said.
“No. I just got to get past the Ring business.”
“Might not be the last time,” I said.
“Be the last time with Ring,” Cole said.
A single horse and rider walked down the street in front of us, the horse’s hooves making a kind of slurred sound in the dirt, the saddle creaking gently, a quiet sound of harness metal.
“Gonna talk with the town marshal tomorrow?” I said.
“Yep. Got no objection to help.”
“And if he’s no help?”
“We done it by ourselves before,” Cole said.
“We’re going up against Ring because of Bragg,” I said.
“Can’t be a lawman and let somebody come take your prisoner,” Cole said.
“Nothin’ personal.”
“Nope. Business.”
“We done pretty good over time, Virgil, ’cause it’s never been personal. Always just a job.”
“It’s always been the law, Everett. It’s got to be the law. People like us got to have the law and got to do it by the law. You understand that, Everett. Otherwise you’re just a damn shooter. Nothin’ to prevent you from killin’ anybody.”
“And that’s how it is this time, too,” I said.
“That’s how it is every time,” Cole said.
41
“Got no prisoners here, Virgil.”
Cole nodded.
“I’m guessing you ain’t gonna aid us in apprehending him,” he said, “neither.”
“You really ain’t a marshal here,” Russell said. “You’re only a marshal in Appaloosa.”
“You know where I can find Bragg?”
“He’s with Ring,” Russell said, “and Mackie.”
“And where would they be?” Cole said.
“I got to tell you boys,” Russell said. “I got nothin’ against either one of you. And I got a good feelin’ about how you helped us out with them Kiowas.”
“Where’s Bragg?” Cole said.
“I’m gonna be with Ring and Mackie,” Russell said. “We’re family. We grew up like brothers.”
“Yep. Where are they?”
“Ring says he don’t want this thing to drag on. Him and Mackie and Bragg’ll be at the stockyards at two forty-one today by the depot clock. I’ll be there, too.”
“See you there,” Cole said, and turned and walked out of the office.
I stayed a minute.
“You got them boots for Allie,” I said.
Russell nodded. I reached over the desk and we shook hands.
“Be better you boys went on back to Appaloosa,” Russell said.
“I know,” I said, and followed Cole out of the office.
He was leaning his backside against a hitching rail, looking at the street. The sky was dark with clouds.
“Might as well walk down there, get the lay of the land,” he said.
“Might as well.”
We walked the dirt street toward the stockyards. It was a shabby town, shacks mostly, some tents. Only real buildings were the hotel and the railroad station. Even the bank looked kind of flimsy.
“They could put some people behind some of these shacks,” I said. “Try to pick us off while we’re walking to the yards.”
Cole shook his head.
“Sheltons’ll come straight at us,” he said.
“Bragg?” I said.
“We’ll need to keep an eye out for Bragg,” Cole said.
The stock pens were mostly empty. A couple dozen white-faced steers jostled each other in the pen nearest the station. There were two stockmen leaning on a rail, chewing tobacco and watching them. A windmill turned at the far end of the yards, pumping water into the drinking troughs. Beside it was a weathered, gap-sided feed shed, raw boards nailed up and bleached by sun.
“We’ll be coming from here,” Cole said. “Sheltons’ll be there, by the shed.”
“How do you know,” I said.
“Where I’d be. If they don’t knock us down with the first volley, they can get behind it,” Cole said.
He looked at the sky.
“Sun ain’t gonna be an issue,” he said.
“Probably gonna rain,” I said.
Cole paid no attention.
“They’ll all have Colts,” he said, “and long guns. There’ll be a shotgun, probably Mackie.”
We walked past the stock pens. There was some wind to go with the dark sky. It spun the windmill hard and stirred little dust whirls in front of us as we walked. We stopped at the stock pens. The two stockmen paid us no attention. They kept on talking, staring at the cattle, spitting tobacco juice carefully downwind.
“We come at ’em this way,” Cole said, “we can keep the cattle between us and them until we’re close.”
The wind had picked up. It was whirling the dust now up past eye level, and pushing the tumbleweed along pretty briskly.
“Today be a good day to die?” I said.
“We ain’t gonna die,” Cole said.
“Good to know,” I said.
Cole didn’t say anything. He was looking at everything, walking through the fight as if he had already seen the rehearsal. He stopped.
“We’ll be here when it starts,” he said. “They’ll be there. They’ll be spread out. When it happens, I’ll look for Ring. You look for Mackie. I don’t know how good Russell is, but I do know how good the other two are.”
“Bragg?” I said.
“We shoot him last,” Cole said. “Bragg’s probably a good shooter. Probably killed some people. But I don’t know if he can stand his ground.”
“You ’n me are gonna kill four men,” I said.
“If Bragg stands. Otherwise, three.”
“Well, I guess if we don’t,” I said, “we’ll never know it.”
“Probably not,” Cole said.
“So I guess it don’t matter too much,” I said.
“Probably doesn’t,” Cole said.
The wind pushed a tumbleweed past us toward the shed. It bounced a little as it moved across the wagon ruts. I could taste rain on the wind, though none had fallen.
“We’ll get to here,” Cole said, “without nobody’s fired, ’cause the cows are in the way. So from here, just past this corner post, we go right at ’em and we go fast. I’ll take Ring first, you look for Mackie. And we’ll see what develops.”
I looked at the clock on the train station steeple. It read 12:23.
“I could use some coffee,” Cole said.
And we walked back toward the hotel, with the wind whipping around us, trying to take our hats.
42
“We’re the law in our town,” Cole said.
Cole held his coffee cup in both hands, his elbows on the table.
“Probably deputize Ring and Mackie.”
“Probably,” Cole said.
We were quiet. Cole sipped his coffee, still with his elbows on the table, still with the cup in both hands. He didn’t look at Allie.
“Makes the law thing a little confusin’,” I said.
Cole nodded and didn’t answer.
“Guess it’s best not to worry about that right now,” I said.
“He took my prisoner. He broke the law in my town,” Cole said.
Allie sat very still, like a child allowed to sit with the adults. Her hands were folded in her lap. She sat straight in her chair, her feet close together. The hotelkeeper’s wife came and poured us some more. Cole had laid his big pocket watch on the table. It showed one o’clock.
“Aren’t either of you afraid?” Allie said.
Cole looked startled.
“Afraid?”
“Yes.” Allie’s voice seemed as small as she did. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be killed?”
Cole frowned a little and stared out past Allie through the hotel door at the street for a little while.
“I don’t know, Allie,” he said after a while. “I been doing this a long time. Maybe I am. But I guess I don’t think about it much.”
He looked at me.
“You ever think about it, Everett?”
“Sure.”
“You scared?”
“Sure.”
“Probably a good thing,” Cole said. “Makes you a little quicker.”
I nodded.
“I’m scared all the time,” Allie said.
“Of what?” Cole said.
“Everything.”
“Like what?”
“Like being alone, or being with the wrong man, having no money, no place to live. If I don’t have a man, what am I supposed to do?”
“You got an answer for that, Everett?”
“You could play the piano at the Boston House,” I said.
“For the rest of my life?”
“I’ll look out for you,” Cole said.
“For how long?”
“Long as you need.”
“Virgil, you could be dead in an hour.”
Cole shook his head.
“Let’s go back to Appaloosa right now,” Allie said.
“Got to finish this thing up with Ring Shelton,” Cole said.
“There’s four of them.”