Cole shrugged and drank coffee.
“The man who runs the hotel told me that the Shelton brothers were famous gunmen.”
“Got to get things back in balance,” Cole said.
“If you’ll take me back to Appaloosa with you, I’ll love you all my life. I’ll never make you mad. I’ll never do anything you don’t like.”
“That’ll be fine, Allie,” Cole said. “Soon’s Everett and me get things straightened out with Ring.”
“And Mackie,” I said, “and Russell and Bragg.”
“Sure,” Cole said.
“If they kill you, what’ll happen to me?” Allie said.
“Ring’ll look out for you,” Cole said.
Allie put her face in her hands and hunched over the table.
“Oh, God,” she said, and began to cry into her hands. “Oh, my dear God.”
43
“It’ll be just the same,” I said. “ ’Cept for them trying to shoot us.”
“I’m hopin’ to shoot them first,” Cole said.
“Me, too.”
“But remember,” Cole said. “Steady’s more important than fast.”
“Virgil,” I said, “you’ve told me that before every fight we ever had.”
“Anything you want to go over?” Cole said.
“Nope.”
Cole nodded and looked at his watch.
“Don’t want to get there too soon,” he said. “Want to have sort of a flow, you understand, some kind of rhythm, like dancing or something. Just walk down there and arrive on time and start shooting without never breaking stride.”
I nodded like I hadn’t heard it before. I could feel the feeling beginning to build. The little hard clutch in my stomach getting tighter, my throat closing so it was hard to swallow. My mouth was dry. I wanted to breathe in more air than I had capacity for. I could feel my heart.
“Okay,” Virgil said. “Here we go.”
The rain that I had tasted earlier had arrived. It was hard and slanted by the wind. The street was muddy with it. I yanked my hat down tighter.
“Distance we’re shooting at,” Cole said, “wind won’t be an issue.”
It was behind us as we walked, which meant at the end of the walk, if it didn’t shift, the rain would be blowing at them.
“Won’t do no harm to keep an eye out for Bragg,” Cole said. “I think he’ll stick with Ring. I don’t think he’s got the stuff to go it alone, but if he does, he’s a certain sure back shooter.”
We passed the bank. There was no one on the street. Everything was buttoned up against the rain. I thought about Allie’s questions.
“You feel it?” I said to Cole.
“Dry mouth? Thing in the stomach? Not enough air?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, I feel it. You don’t feel nothing, there’s not much point in doing a thing.”
“You like the feeling?” I said.
Cole didn’t speak for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to. He, too, had his hat yanked down low over his forehead to keep it on. We slogged through the thickening mud toward the stock pens.
“After,” Cole said.
“And if you didn’t have the feeling before, the feeling after wouldn’t be so good,” I said.
“I guess,” Cole said.
44
“We pass that corner,” Cole said. “We start shooting and go fast, straight at them.”
I didn’t say anything. My mouth was dry. Most of the shootouts we’d been in had sort of erupted, and you didn’t have much time to think about it. This one had moved forward for days with the formality of a procession. And now here it was, in the blowing rain.
We turned the corner, and Cole shot Ring Shelton in the chest, and everyone else started shooting at the same time. Something slammed into my left side and tried to knock me down as I cut loose with the eight-gauge. Both barrels. It knocked Mackie Shelton over backward. To my left, Cole was down. Another bullet hit me in my right leg, and I felt it give under me. Cole squirmed sideways in the mud, working the lever on the Winchester. He fired three times, pumping the lever as fast as he fired. Russell staggered and took two steps forward to right himself and raised his Colt and fell face-forward into the mud. I dropped the eight-gauge as I went down and jerked the Colt. Sitting in the mud, I looked for Bragg. He was gone. With Cole on his stomach and me on my backside, we kept our aim on the shed. After a minute or so, we heard the sound of a horse running in the mud, and then, too far to shoot, we saw Bragg ride off.
It was over.
I tried to stand. I couldn’t. One shot had broken some ribs on my left side. The other had got me in the top of the right thigh. The thigh was bleeding steadily. The ribs made it painful to move, but I knew I had to cut down on the bleeding. I took my jacket off, and my shirt, and folded the shirt and got the belt off my pants and made a big, clumsy pressure bandage on the thigh.
“Virgil?” I said.
Cole still lay on his stomach in the mud, his rifle cocked, looking at the men strewn in front of us in the mud.
“Both legs,” he said. “The right one’s broke.”
“Took about a minute,” I said.
“Everybody could shoot,” Cole said.
His voice sounded strained. So did mine. The clerk from the train station came out and looked at us from the edge of the station. The two stockyard hands stood with him. I yelled to them.
“There a doctor in town?”
“Railroad doc,” the clerk shouted. “Lives at the hotel.”
“Get him,” I said.
Hollering made my ribs hurt. So did breathing. The clerk spoke to one of the stock hands, and he set off at a run toward the hotel. I clenched my teeth and let myself fall backward onto the cold mud. The rain came down cold and steady on my face. I felt hot. I breathed as shallowly as I could.
“Virgil?” I said.
“I’m still here,” Virgil said.
“Well,” I said. “Doctor’ll either save us or he won’t.”
And I closed my eyes and let the rain fall on me, and the feel of it began to dwindle and then it was gone and I didn’t know anything else.
45
While we were gone, Stringer had come down from the sheriff’s office to fill in, and he stayed while we recuperated.
Cole was out of pain and could move around on crutches in a few days. There were two ribs broken on my left side, and they took a while. But eventually we were both able to taper off the laudanum and sit outside on the porch at the Boston House and look at whatever was happening in front of us.
It was a hell of a lot more than the Sheltons could do.
Stringer came down from the marshal’s office one morning and sat with us for a while.
“Got a posse up and went back to Chester, but we lost your trail once you left that arroyo.”
“Figured you would,” Cole said.
“Get a posse or lose your trail?” Stringer said.
“Both.”
Stringer nodded. He got out a cigar, didn’t offer one to either of us, bit off the end, and lit it. When he had it burning right, he leaned back with one foot up on the railing of the porch and his hat tilted forward over his eyes.
“You know you killed a peace officer, duly appointed and sworn,” Stringer said, “up there in Beauville.”
“Had to,” Cole said.
Stringer watched a woman in a big hat walk along on the shady side of the street. He smiled.
“Sure,” he said.
We all watched the woman as she paused and looked in the window of the dry goods store past the Silver Spur Saloon. After a moment, she went inside.
“You killed all three of ’em,” Stringer said.
“Yep.”
“I knew you were good, Virgil,” Stringer said. “Everett, too.”
I was an afterthought.
“But I’d a said that nobody could beat the Sheltons, two against three.”
“Four,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Stringer said. “Bragg. What about Bragg?”
“Can’t chase him all over the country,” Cole said.
“ ’Course not,” Stringer said. “Kinda funny, ain’t it. You kill three men and get shot half to pieces yourselves to get Bragg back, and you don’t get him back.”
“That is funny,” I said. “If my ribs didn’t hurt, I’d be laughing every morning.”
“Ribs take a while,” Stringer said.
It was a bright, warm day with a few small, high, white clouds and a mild breeze that smelled faintly of grass and sage. The lady in the big hat came out of the dry goods store and headed farther up the street. When she reached the corner, she turned and was out of sight.
“Sheriff ain’t planning to press matters on you boys about the killings in Beauville, even Russell.”
“You have anything to do with that?” Cole said.
“I tole the sheriff how things were.”
“Kind of you,” Cole said.
Stringer grinned again.
“I didn’t want to be the one had to bring you in,” he said.
“Wouldn’t be too hard right now,” Cole said.
“Well, it ain’t going to be necessary. You boys going to stick around here when you’re on your feet?”
I looked at Cole.
“Sure,” he said. “Got a house here.”
“Gonna move in with Allie?” Stringer said.
“I surely am,” Cole said.
46
“Everett,” Allie said. “I don’t think I’ve ever said enough to you about how you rescued me from everyone.”
“Virgil did most of that,” I said. “I just trailed along.”
“You did a lot. I’ll never forget you riding out all alone and that Indian coming and touching you and riding off.”
“It didn’t do me no harm,” I said. “And he got to count coup on me and be a hero.”
“I never did understand that,” Allie said. “What was all that about? Why didn’t he try to kill you? Why did they all ride off?”
“He gets close enough to his enemy to touch him, and then ride away, he’s a bigger hero than if he killed me,” I said. “And he didn’t just do it with a coup stick. He done it with his hand. And held it on me. And with the other braves watching. Man’s a great hero now.”
“And it let ’em off the hook,” Cole said. “They knew there was six men, with a lot of guns, dug in at a good place to defend, plenty of food and water.”
“So him counting coup on me let them ride off without dishonor,” I said.
“Oh, God,” Allie said. “Dishonor. Don’t seem to make much difference, Indian or white. Men are so silly.”
She shook her head.
“Dishonor!” she said again.
Cole was quiet, sipping his wine. I could tell he didn’t like it, either. I didn’t know enough about wine to say. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t very good wine.
“Well, I just wanted to be sure I said thank you proper.”
“No need,” I said.
“And,” she said. “I want you to know how embarrassed I am that you saw me… you know… with Ring Shelton.”
“You did what you had to do,” I said.
Cole seemed mildly interested.
“And I’m mortified,” she said, “that you saw me with no clothes on.”
“Allie,” I said. “It was a pleasure.”
“Oh, Everett,” she said, and blushed brightly.
Cole smiled a little.
“Well, you started talkin’ about it,” he said.
“I know,” Allie said. “It’s just that I’m so grateful. I know that you did it for me. Rode all that way. Went through all that danger. For me.”
“Well, you sure are worth it,” I said.
“Point of fact,” Cole said, “wasn’t just you. We was after Bragg, too.”
“Virgil, I know you killed those men because of me.”
Cole leaned back and looked at me, and then at Allie.
“We did what we needed to do,” he said finally.
“And Everett, too. I will always be grateful to you. You didn’t abandon me.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “But, you know, I am the deputy city marshal here, and it was sort of what I was hired to do, to find escaped prisoners, to save kidnapped women. That sort of thing.”
“Oh, go ahead,” Allie said, “the both of you. Be modest. Pretend you were just doing what any lawman would have done. In my heart I know it, and I treasure it. That you did what you did for me.”
Cole looked at me again. But he didn’t say anything more. I knew what was bothering him. It was bothering me, too. If Allie was right, and we tracked down the Sheltons and killed them because they had mistreated Cole’s girlfriend, then we might be good men. And we might have done the right thing. But we didn’t do it as lawmen. And we hadn’t done the legal thing.
And where did that leave us?