17
Dawn was just starting to streak the eastern sky when we got there and held up on the hill above the ranch, where they could see us.
“Might be more clever,” I said to Cole, “if we was to sneak a little.”
“No need to sneak,” Cole said. “We’re the law.”
“Might be more clever if we got him to come into town and jumped him there.”
“I’m going to take him out here at his ranch and bring him in like Jack Bell was going to do.”
“Because?”
Cole didn’t answer. He sat his horse, looking at the ranch.
“You close with Bell?” I said.
“Not so much,” Cole said.
“But he was city marshal and now you’re city marshal.”
Cole nodded.
“And this is all about the law?”
“Killing a city marshal ain’t legal,” Cole said.
“Ralph philosopher fella say that?”
Cole grinned.
“Virgil Cole,” he said.
We sat some more. I had looked at the ranch so much that I felt as though I’d worked there. Smoke began to wisp up out of the cookshack. A couple of hands stumbled down to the big outhouse. Somebody lit a lamp in the main house, and then Bragg came out shirtless with his pants on and walked to the small outhouse.
“Now, you see that,” Cole said. “They got them a big privy down there, probably a four-holer, for the hands. And Bragg got his own personal one, nearer the house.”
I nodded. Cole never talked just to be talking, though when he did talk, he seemed to ramble. That was mostly he wasn’t talking, he was thinking out loud and new thoughts occurred to him in the process. For actual talking, if it wasn’t for me prodding him, he might not talk at all.
“All we got to do,” Cole said, “is get hold of him. Once we got him, it don’t matter how many gun hands he got.”
I nodded.
“See how them orange Osage come off at a angle from the cottonwoods along the stream?”
I nodded just to be doing something. Cole wasn’t really talking to me.
“Probably ran it up there for a windbreak in the winter,” Cole said. “Ain’t enough of it planted to fence off cattle.”
“Too short a span,” I said, just to be saying something.
“If we was to set in there behind that Osage orange, with an extra saddle horse, and maybe we be there before the sun’s up. Then we wait, and when Bragg comes down to use the privy, we move in close and take him.”
“What about the night rider?” I said.
“He’ll be looking for us up on the hill,” Cole said.
“That’s why we let them see us up there all that time,” I said. “That’s where they’ll expect us to be.”
Cole paid no attention to me.
“Before or after?” I said.
“Before or after what?”
“Before he goes into the privy, or after he comes out.”
“After,” Cole said. “I don’t want to get pissed on.”
18
In back of us, I could hear the bunkhouse’s door open, as some of the hands went to their privy. I smelled coffee mixed with the wood smoke. Then bacon. Beside me, Cole murmured.
“Here he comes.”
I didn’t hear anything. But I was used to that. Cole always heard things sooner than I did and saw things sooner. I heard his footsteps. I heard the door to the privy open and swing shut. Then nothing.
Cole gestured toward the privy. I slipped through the trees and along one side of it. Cole went around the back to the other side. And we waited. When Bragg came out, we were on either side of him. Cole took a handful of Bragg’s hair in his left hand and pressed the barrel of his Colt against Bragg’s temple.
“Not a fucking sound,” he said softly.
I pressed the two barrels of the eight-gauge up under Bragg’s chin. And packed close together, we walked back behind the Osage orange trees toward the horses. When we reached the horses, Cole let go of Bragg’s hair.
“Mount up,” Cole said.
I eased off on the shotgun so Bragg could climb into the saddle. It made him a little braver.
“You can’t do this,” he said.
“Can or can’t,” Cole said. “Won’t make no difference to you. First time there’s trouble, we kill you.”
Bragg’s mount had no reins. The horse was on a lead, tethered to my saddle horn.
“Ride,” Cole said.
We moved down the line of trees, walking the horses. Cole rode on one side of Bragg and I rode on the other with the eight-gauge resting across my saddle, pointing at Bragg. As we cleared the trees near the stream, the nighthawk spotted us and came down the hill at a gallop, shouting.
“Pull the horses in tight as we can,” Cole said. “Make it hard to shoot us without shooting Bragg.”
We kept walking. By the time we neared the river, there were half a dozen horsemen coming toward us on the run.
“Put that brush cutter right up against him, if you would, Everett,” Cole said. “Being sure that it’s cocked.”
It was too hard to ride tight and keep the gun under Bragg’s chin. I settled for pressing it into his side. We reached the river and moved toward the ford. At the ford, there were maybe twelve riders with guns.
“Tell them to let us pass,” Cole said.
Bragg was silent. We kept walking toward the ford. Holding the reins in his left hand, Cole drew his Colt, cocked it, and placed it carefully against Bragg’s cheekbone. If it began, Bragg didn’t have a prayer. We were bunched together, so we were barely more than a single target. Cole had a gun against Bragg’s face. The two barrels of my shotgun were digging into his side.
“What you want us to do, Mr. Bragg?” one of the riders said.
“Hold off, Vince,” Bragg said.
His voice was hoarse and strained. Vince was hatless, and there was a pale line on his forehead. He was smallish, with big hands and a big blond moustache stained with something. Tobacco juice, maybe. Maybe coffee. He sat on a blue roan gelding that looked like a runner, and he held a Winchester in one hand, the butt resting on his thigh. We kept walking our horses toward the ford. The sun was up now, still low, and the western edge of the sky still dark purple, but everyone could see clearly.
As we reached them, Bragg’s riders parted, half to one side, half to the other, and the three of us rode slowly between them. No one spoke. I could feel the pressure of the silence all through me. The only sound was the horses’ hooves and their breathing, and the creak of saddle leather. The horses hesitated at the water, but Cole and I kicked ours forward and the three of us went in. The line of riders that had parted to let us through closed ranks behind us and turned toward the river. It was as if I could feel them looking at us. It made the muscles across my back tighten. The water was higher than the stirrups; my boots and the lower half of my pants were wet. The river smelled very fresh in the early morning air. The horses climbed the far bank, and we stood for a moment on the other side. Without lowering his gun, Cole turned in the saddle and looked back across the river.
“Tell them not to follow,” he said to Bragg.
Again, Bragg was silent. I could see the flush of redness on his cheekbones.
“I’d like you dead, Bragg,” Cole said quietly. “I’m taking you in legal, like a law officer, but if you attempt to escape or impede me in my duty, I got every right to shoot you dead, and no one will say no.”
“If you kill me,” Bragg said, “then there ain’t no reason for my men not to chase you down and kill you.”
“If they can,” Cole said. “Either way, won’t make no difference to you.”
Bragg was silent. Cole was silent. The horses stood quietly, tossing their heads every once in a while for reasons of their own.
“Tell ’em not follow us,” Cole said to Bragg, “or I’ll shoot you dead right here. Right now.”
Again, there was silence. Cole’s face showed nothing. I could hear Bragg’s breathing. He looked at me.
“You?” he said.
“Both barrels,” I said.
He turned his head slowly away from Cole’s gun and looked back at the line of riders back across the river.
“Vince,” he hollered.
“Yessir, Mr. Bragg.”
“Don’t follow us. You understand.”
“They making you say that, Mr. Bragg?”
“They are. But I mean it. Stay put.”
“You say so, Mr. Bragg.”
We moved the horses forward again. A half mile from the ranch, Cole holstered his Colt, and I slid the shotgun back in the saddle scabbard.
“Do hope you’ll make a run for it,” Cole said to Bragg. “Save us all a lot of time and trouble.”
“I’m riding in with you,” Bragg said.
Which he did.
19
“You prefer one to another?” Cole said when we brought Bragg in.
“Don’t matter,” Bragg said. “I won’t be here long.”
“Circuit judge don’t come through for two and a half weeks, if he’s on time,” Cole said.
“I won’t be here long,” Bragg said again.
He went into the first cell and pulled the door shut behind him. I locked it and took the key. The rest of the office was very plain: a stove for winter, a big old table that Cole used for a desk, two straight chairs against the wall opposite the cells, a spittoon in the corner, and a wooden water bucket and dipper sitting on one of the chairs. Bragg sat on the cot in the cell and looked at us.
“Need to be on him all the time,” Cole said to me. “Round the clock.”
I nodded.
“I’ll stay here,” Cole said. “You go down, get something to eat, and come back. Bring him some.”
“I’ll be at the Chinaman’s,” I said. “Won’t take long.”
Cole sat down at the big table and laid his Winchester on it. I leaned my shotgun against the wall next to Cole and handed him the key to Bragg’s cell. He tossed it on the table, put his feet up, and tilted his chair back. I went to lunch.
When I came back with boiled beef and navy beans on a tin plate for Bragg, Cole was in the same position. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t moved. Except that his eyes were open, I’d have thought he was asleep. There was a small pass-through in the cell door. I passed the food in. Bragg took it silently and sat back down and set it on the cot beside him.
“I’m goin’ to have lunch with Allie,” Cole said. “Be back before suppertime. Any trouble, you fire off a couple of rounds and I’ll hear you.”
“ ’Less you’re riding at a hard gallop,” I said.
Cole stopped at the doorway and turned.
“We known each other a long time, Everett,” Cole said. “But I don’t care for them kinds of remarks, ’bout Allie French.”
“No, and you shouldn’t,” I said. “I apologize.”
Cole nodded.
“Apology accepted,” Cole said. “You meant no harm.”
He paused for a moment on his way out. Then he gestured for me to join him and stepped out onto the boardwalk. I went out with him and left the door open.
“I figure,” he said to me quietly, “that we’re going to need to keep an eye on Whitfield.”
“We’ll need him,” I said, “when the judge gets here.”
“And we have to watch Bragg,” Cole said.
“Maybe we can keep him a secret,” I said.
Cole shook his head.
“Town’s too small,” he said. “Half the people in town already know he’s back.”
“We could put him in the other cell,” I said. “Then one of us could watch them both.”
Cole was quiet for a minute.
“Yes, we’ll do that,” he said. “I’ll bring him down soon as I’ve seen Allie.”
He turned without saying anything else and started toward the hotel. I went back into the office and sat in the chair he’d vacated and turned and looked at Bragg. He looked back. Neither of us said anything. He hadn’t touched the food. After a while I put my feet up on the desk and tilted the chair back the same as Cole had and tilted my hat down and closed my eyes and had a nap.
20
“When’s that judge coming through here, now?” Whitfield said.
“Ten more days.”
“You think they’ll put Bragg in jail?”
“Ain’t my department,” I said.
“What happens to me after the trial.”
“You ride on back to wherever you rode on to the first time,” I said.
“You think they’ll try to get me?”
“You ain’t sleeping in the jail for comfort,” I said.
“Even after the trial?”
“Straight on,” I said. “We’ll ride you out away, give you a head start, and you can disappear. You done it before.”
“Why the hell am I doing this?” Whitfield said.
“The right thing to do?”
“Get my ass shot,” Whitfield said. “That’s what I’ll do.”
From where I sat, I could glance back through the open door and see Bragg’s cell. He was lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling.
“Me ’n Virgil will prevent that,” I said.
“I run off once,” Whitfield said.
Across the street, two women in bonnets and long dresses walked past. One of them walked with a beguiling wiggle. We both watched until she turned into McKenzie’s Store. And then we both watched the store, waiting for her to come out.
“I run off before,” Whitfield said. “I couldn’t stop myself. I seen Jack go down and the other deputy-hell, I don’t even remember his name-and I was running ’fore I even knew it.”
“It can happen,” I said.
“Ever happen to you?”
An eight-horse team pulled a lumber wagon past us, kicking up the dust in the street. I watched them go past.
“Did it?”
“Did it what?” I said.
“Ever happen to you?”
“You mean did I ever run off in the heat of battle?” I said.
“Yeah.”
I shook my head.
“Nope, can’t say I ever did.”
“I done it.”
“I know,” I said. “And I ain’t saying I won’t. Men break when they break, mostly.”
The two women came out of McKenzie’s carrying parcels. They headed back the way they had come. The one with the wiggle was walking closest to the street. Her dress was tight.
“Good-looking ass,” Whitfield said.
“I noticed that, too,” I said.
We watched her move away from us. At the corner of Second Street, she glanced back over her shoulder at us and then turned the corner and disappeared.
“I’m bettin’ Virgil Cole never run.”
“Be a good bet,” I said. “I honestly don’t think Virgil’s ever even been afraid.”