23
Up the street, Allie French came out of the Boston House and ran along the boardwalk toward Cole.
“Oh, Virgil,” she said. “Virgil.”
Cole stood and waited.
“Oh, Virgil,” she said again. “Are you all right?”
“I am,” Cole said.
She ran right into him and pressed her face against his chest and put her arms around him.
“That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. Just you and all those men. That was wonderful.”
Cole seemed a little uneasy about what to do. Being Virgil Cole, he didn’t show much. But he stood still with his arms at his sides and didn’t look at anything.
“Everett was with me,” he said.
People had come out of the shops and saloons and housing, where they had earlier taken refuge.
“Oh, pooh on Everett,” Allie said. “He was inside, hiding. It was you out there all alone, Virgil. That was heroic.”
“Everett wasn’t exactly hiding, Allie.”
The people began to gather round, looking at Cole and Allie. I saw Katie Goode in the crowd and nodded at her. Allie lifted her face from Cole’s chest and turned toward the crowd, her arms still holding on to Cole in proud ownership.
“Isn’t that the most heroic thing you folks have ever seen?” she said.
Somebody began to clap, and then pretty soon everyone was clapping. Allie stood, holding on to Cole, smiling at the crowd as if they were clapping for her. I was watching Cole. For maybe the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t quite know what was going on. And he didn’t quite know what to do about it.
“That’ll be fine,” he said to the crowd. “That’ll be fine.”
Then he turned away and steered Allie away, and they walked into the marshal’s office.
As they went by, Cole said softly to me, “Send them home, Everett.”
After I got the crowd moving, I walked with Katie Goode back toward the Boston House.
“You need a drink?” she said.
“Be nice,” I said.
“Yesterday was payday at the mine,” Katie said. “I’ll buy.”
“Be nice,” I said.
We had a table near the bar. I drank some beer. Katie had a whiskey.
“Mr. Raines don’t normally want us to drink in here,” Katie said. “But if I’m with you, he won’t say nothing.”
“So you had more reason than just how good-lookin’ I am,” I said. “To buy me a beer.”
“Good-lookin’s enough,” she said.
Some miners who still had money left were lining the bar. The rainstorm had broken the heat, and it was cool again today, with some air moving in through the street door.
“He really is something,” Katie said. “Isn’t he?”
She had on a flowered dress with puffy shoulders and a bonnet. She could have been a ranch woman, or a miner’s wife, except she looked too good, and she smelled sort of soapy. She told me once that she washed herself all over, every day.
“Virgil?” I said. “I ain’t seen a man like Virgil Cole, ever.”
“Is he really not afraid to die?”
“Never seen no sign of it,” I said.
“Does he feel anything?”
“I don’t know. I believe he’s feeling something for Allie French.”
“Her,” Katie said.
“Don’t know how many women Virgil’s ever actually spent time with. I mean, he has women whenever he wants them, but it’s mostly in and out real quick, without much conversation.”
“Lotta men are like that,” Katie said.
“Yes,” I said. “I imagine. But I ain’t sure Virgil ever had a woman call him heroic, ’cept she was drunk and had her drawers off.”
“Did you like her little performance?” Katie said.
“Not so much,” I said.
“You think Mr. Cole liked it?”
“Hard to say what Virgil likes,” I said. “He wasn’t Virgil Cole, I’d say he might have been embarrassed.”
“Or flattered.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Virgil don’t normally think about things like that.”
“That’s an evil woman, Everett.”
I didn’t say anything.
“She is,” Katie said. “I know about evil women, Everett, and I know about sex. And I know how silly men are about it.”
“Not all of us,” I said.
“No, you seem pretty level, Everett. I got to say that. But I’ll bet you when Mr. Cole’s not around, she flirts with you.”
“How do you know that?” I said.
“She does,” Katie said. “Don’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. “Fact is, she got kind of hot with me when we were looking at the new house Virgil’s building for her.”
Katie smiled, as if she was wise. Which she wasn’t really. But she had Allie’s number.
“What did you do?” Katie said.
“I run off,” I said.
“You say anything to Mr. Cole.”
“No.”
“You going to say anything?”
“No. Virgil couldn’t hear something like that.”
She sipped a little of her whiskey, watching me over the rim of the glass.
“And I don’t want him knowing anything about it from you. I ain’t told anybody else, so if he finds out, I’ll know who couldn’t keep her mouth closed.”
“I won’t tell,” Katie said. “But ain’t it so, Everett, sometimes I been with you, you didn’t want me keeping my mouth closed.”
She looked straight at me and we both laughed.
“There’ll be those times again,” I said.
“Surely,” Katie said, and sipped whiskey. “But you’re his friend, Everett. Don’t you think you ought to tell him?”
“Can’t,” I said. “He couldn’t hear it.”
“What if she tells him?”
“Why would she tell him?” I said.
“I tole you, she’s evil,” Katie said. “What if she tells him and says it was your doing.”
“He’ll kill me,” I said.
Katie frowned and looked down at her whiskey glass, studying the brown surface of the whiskey.
“Sooner or later,” Katie said, “she’s gonna tell him.”
24
“Well,” Cole said, “you come back.”
“I can’t face up to guns no more,” Whitfield said.
“But you’ll testify,” Cole said.
“I will.”
“That’s fine,” Cole said. “Everett and me will face up to the guns.”
Bragg, leaning against the bars of his cell, said, “You gonna get your chance, too, Whitfield.”
It was like I could see the skin tighten on Whitfield’s face, and the fear come in. Cole took his feet off the tabletop and stood and walked over to the cell. He stood close to the bars, an inch or so away from Bragg.
“We been treating you kindly,” Cole said to Bragg. “In return for that, we expect you to speak when spoken to and otherwise stay quiet.”
“I can talk if I want to,” Bragg said.
“And me and Everett can come into that cell and lock the door behind us and beat the sweet Jesus hell right out of you every morning instead of breakfast.”
“You wouldn’t talk that way if I had a gun,” Bragg said.
“Don’t matter if I would or wouldn’t,” Cole said, “fact is you don’t, and I do, so the point appears mute.”
Bragg met Cole’s look for a bit and then couldn’t hold it, and turned away and sat on his bunk. Cole walked back and sat at his desk and put his feet up.
“Don’t pay him too much mind,” he said to Whitfield.
“He’s right, though,” Whitfield said. “What about after the trial?”
“After the trial, Bragg goes to prison, and Everett and me escort you to a faraway place of your choosing,” Cole said.
“And before the trial.”
“You stay right here with us,” Cole said.
“And him,” Whitfield said, and nodded at Bragg.
“He ain’t pleasant,” Cole said. “But he can’t do you no harm.”
“What if his men come back?”
“They won’t come back,” Cole said.
People believed Cole when he talked. He was always clear on what he knew. He never claimed anything he didn’t know, and he always meant what he said.
“Could I maybe stay in the hotel?”
Cole shook his head.
“That splits us up,” he said. “Means one of us got to go with you and the other one got to stay here with Bragg.”
“But if they won’t come back?”
“Maybe somebody else,” Cole said.
“You think they’ll send somebody?”
“Don’t matter what I think. You ever hear of this fella Clausewitz?”
“Who?”
“Clausewitz, German fella, wrote a book about war. This Clausewitz says you got to prepare for what your enemy
“You been reading Clausewitz on war?” I said.
“Certainly. You ever read it?”
“I read it at West Point,” I said.
“Good book,” Cole said.
I nodded. Whitfield looked lost.
“Virgil,” I said, “you are a surprising man.”
25
“That him?” Stringer said.
“That’s Bragg,” Cole said.
Stringer went to the cell and looked in.
“Tall,” Stringer said.
“Fella in the other cell is Whitfield, the witness.”
“How come he’s in jail?”
“Fears for his life,” Cole said. “So me ’n Everett here are lookin’ after him until we finish with Bragg.”
Stringer nodded slowly. He was a tall, thin man with a big moustache and the sort of leatherish look of a man who had spent a lot of time in the saddle. Whitfield’s cell door was ajar, and Whitfield was sitting on his bunk, reading his Bible, his lips moving slowly as he puzzled it out. Stringer left Bragg and looked in at him.
“You gonna testify?” Stringer asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“If he don’t die a’ fright first,” Bragg said from his cell.
“I’ll testify,” Whitfield said.
Stringer nodded.
“I know you will,” he said.
“Bragg got a lawyer?” Eaton asked.
“Nope.”
“He needs a lawyer,” Eaton said.
He was short and plump with a round face. He didn’t look like he rode horses much.
“Surely does,” Cole said.
“No, I mean we ain’t going to just ride over here and convict him,” Eaton said. “Judge Callison’s a real bear on the law. Got to be a fair trial. He’s got to have a lawyer, and there’s got to be evidence.”
Cole stared at him as if he’d never heard such a thing in his life, which wasn’t true. He probably knew more about trials than Eaton did.
“Hear that, Bragg,” Cole said. “You gotta get you a lawyer.”
“I don’t know no lawyers,” Bragg said.
“There’s a justice of the peace,” I said. “Name of Mueller. Over in Little Springs. I can ride over there, see if he’ll do it.”
“I ain’t paying no damn lawyer to help you hang me,” Bragg said.
“What do we do about that?” I said to Eaton.
“County’ll pay for it,” Eaton said.
“I ain’t talking to no fucking lawyer,” Bragg said.
“Doesn’t matter, Mr. Bragg,” Eaton said. “County’ll give you one. Up to you if you talk or listen.”
“Whyn’t you ride on over there,” Cole said to me.
“We’ll help with Bragg and Whitfield,” Stringer said. “Sooner that JP gets here, the sooner we have the trial. And the sooner I take him down to Yaqui Prison and watch him hanged.”
“You know what he done,” Cole said.
Stringer nodded.
“I know what he done.”
26
We were drinking coffee in the saloon one morning when I saw Cole sit up a little straighter and drop one hand lightly into his lap near his gun’s butt. I looked where he was looking and saw two men who looked like each other leaning on the bar. One of them nodded at Cole. He nodded back. The other one grinned.
“You know them?” I said.
“Shelton brothers,” Cole said.
“Can’t say I know them.”
“ ’Fore you was doing this work,” Cole said.
“They troublesome?” I said.
“Yes.”
“They ain’t packing,” I said. “That I can see.”
“You’ll know when they’re packing,” Cole said.
“Good?”
“Excellent,” Cole said.
“Good as you and me?”
“Might be,” Cole said. “Don’t know that they ain’t.”
“One of ’em shoot better than the other?”
“Can’t say. Ring’s the older brother, on the right. Other one’s name is Mackie.”
“Do look alike,” I said.
“They are alike. And they’re close. Never seen nobody closer. See one, you see ’em both.”
“Fight one?” I said.
Cole nodded.
“Fight ’em both,” he said.
“They do law work?” I said.
“They do gun work,” Cole said.
“So what would they be doing here?”
“Might have something to do with Bragg.”
I looked at the Shelton brothers for a while. Ring had taken his hat off when he had come in, and set it on the bar. He didn’t have much hair, except for a kind of long fringe that looked like it was turning gray. He had a thick neck and longish arms and sloping shoulders that looked strong but not all that wide. His legs were bowed some, and it made him shorter than he might have been otherwise. Mackie had his hat still on. He was taller than Ring, and his legs were straighter. The hair that showed under his hat was sort of reddish. But he had the same thick neck and long arms. There was a bottle of whiskey on the bar between them, and each of them had a glass. Ring picked up the bottle, and he and Mackie came to the table.
“Virgil,” Ring said.
“Ring.”
“You remember my brother,” Ring said.
Virgil nodded.
“Mackie.”
Mackie said, “Virgil.”
“This here is Everett Hitch,” Virgil said.
We all nodded.
“Can we set?” Ring said.
Virgil gestured toward the empty chairs. Ring put the whiskey bottle on the table, and the Shelton brothers sat down.
“Want a taste?” Ring said.
Virgil shook his head and tapped the marshal star on his shirt.
“Still doin’ that,” Ring said.
Virgil nodded.
“Well, we ain’t,” Ring said.
He poured some whiskey into Mackie’s glass and some into his own. He sipped some of his and smiled.
“Good,” he said. “Think it’s corn.”
He looked at me.
“You as good as Virgil with a gun?” he said.
“Never been tested,” I said.
“I hear you been with him for a while.”
“I have.”
“So you seen him work; what would you guess, you and him was to go at it?”
“Never seen no one better than Virgil,” I said.
“But you ain’t saying you’re not as good.”
“I ain’t discussing it, the truth be told,” I said. “How ’bout you?”
“Like you,” Ring said. “Never seen no one better.”