“You ever meet anybody better’n you, Virgil?”
“Guess I haven’t,” Cole said. “I’m still here.”
“Guess that’s true,” Ring said. “How ’bout him?”
He nodded at me.
“He’ll do,” Cole said.
“He as good as us?” Ring said. “Me and Mackie?”
“He’ll do,” Cole said.
I was looking at Ring’s hands. With his thick shoulders and his bowed legs, Ring looked like a cowboy. But his hands on the tabletop were clean and flexible, and the nails were trimmed. I thought they looked like the kind of hands you might see on a painter.
“What are you and Mackie doing in town?” Cole said.
“Everybody got to be somewhere, don’t they, Mackie?”
Mackie nodded. Where his brother had sort of wide eyes that bulged a little, Mackie’s looked heavy-lidded and half open all the time.
“Gonna be here long?” Cole said.
“Can’t say. Heard there was a big trial comin’ up, might want to take that in. I like a good trial,” Ring said. “Mackie, too.”
“Well,” Cole said. “You been in some of my towns before. You know the rules.”
“I surely do,” Ring said. “You know the rules, don’t you, Mackie?”
Mackie had a mouthful of whiskey. He swallowed.
“I know them rules,” he said.
His voice was a kind of hoarse whisper. It sounded as if it was an effort to speak. Across the room, Allie French came in wearing a pink dress and came straight up behind Cole and kissed him on the top of his head, and stood with her arms draped over his shoulders.
“This here is Mrs. French,” Cole said.
They all said hello. Ring and Mackie both looked at her steadily. She looked back at them without flinching. The king’s lady. Let them stare. Cole didn’t like it much. But he hadn’t made any laws about looking at Allie French. He stood.
“Mrs. French and me are going perambuling in a buggy,” he said.
He put his hand on Allie’s arm and turned her, and they walked out of the saloon through the lobby door. As they left, she glanced back over her shoulder at our table.
“Virgil’s woman,” Ring said to me.
“Yep.”
“I’ll be damned,” Ring said.
“Is sort of surprising,” I said.
“I always figured Virgil for whores and squaws.”
“She’s neither one of them,” I said.
“I’ll be damned.”
“You known Virgil for a time?” I said.
“Oh, hell, yes, me, and then when Mackie got old enough, me and Mackie both. Knew him in Wichita. Was with him in Lincoln County. Did some business with him in Bisbee. Up along the Platte.”
“Deputy work?”
“Some.”
“Not deputy work?”
Ring grinned. I noticed he had a couple of teeth gone in front.
“Some,” he said.
He and Mackie both drank some more whiskey. It didn’t seem to affect them.
“After the trial, you gonna hang this fella here?” Ring said.
“Ain’t mine to say.”
“No, course not,” Ring said. “I hope it’s here. Me and Mackie like hangings. Still there ain’t no gallows, and nobody building one. It’s messy if you hang ’em from a rafter or something.”
I nodded. I knew that if he was convicted, they’d take Bragg to Yaqui and hang him in the prison courtyard. But I didn’t see any reason to tell the Sheltons. Keeping quiet never caused me no trouble. I stood.
“Nice meetin’ you boys,” I said.
“Likewise,” Ring said.
Mackie nodded. None of us offered to shake hands. There was no advantage to letting somebody get hold of you.
27
“Tell me about those men, Virgil,” she said.
“Shelton brothers?”
“Yes. The ones in the Boston House Saloon.”
“They’re just gunmen,” Cole said.
“But they seem different than other gunmen.”
“They ain’t,” Cole said. “They’re just real good gunmen.”
“No,” she said, “they are different. Even from Mr. Bragg. You treat them different.”
“Known ’em a long time,” Cole said.
“Longer than you’ve known Everett.”
“Yep.”
“Have you and they been friends?”
“Ain’t been enemies.”
“But you don’t act like they’re friends now.”
“Never were friends,” Cole said. “Done some work with them.”
“Shooting work?”
“Yep.”
“Can they shoot as good as you?”
“Ain’t never been put to the test,” Cole said.
“I never seen anyone, Allie,” I said, “good as Virgil with a gun.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Cole said. “Ain’t but one way to know. And knowing ain’t the point.”
“I know, Virgil, I was just trying to answer Allie’s question.”
“Ain’t no answer. Ain’t a question to ask,” Cole said. “Ain’t like we’re racing horses.”
Allie was watching us both, her eyes shifting back and forth between us. She seemed sort of excited. Her eyes were shiny.
“Don’t be careless with them boys, Everett,” Cole said. “They are quick and they hit what they shoot at.”
“One of them more than the other?” I said.
“No.”
“What happened to the younger one’s voice?” Allie said.
“Took a bullet in the throat,” Cole said. “Up in Cheyenne, I believe.”
“Are they going to cause trouble?” Allie said.
Her eyes were even shinier. Her face looked sort of hot. There was a reddish smudge over her cheekbones.
“Might,” Cole said. “Often do.”
“Are you afraid of them?” Allie said.
Her voice sounded a bit scratchy, like she might need to clear her throat. Cole listened to the question and was quiet like he always was when he was thinking about a question. He turned it around in his head, looked at it from all its various sides, and decided.
“No,” he said. “I ain’t.”
28
“You and Allie going to get married?” I said.
“If she’ll have me,” Cole said.
“I figure you and her building that house together,” I said, “means something.”
Cole nodded.
“Anything happens to me, Everett,” he said, “I’d appreciate you lookin’ out for her.”
“You expecting anything special?” I said.
“This is uncertain kind of work we do,” Cole said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Allie’s better if she’s with someone,” Cole said.
“She needs help,” I said, “I’ll help her.”
“She’s not good bein’ alone,” Cole said.
I nodded. A hawk was circling low over the town, looking for rats maybe, or mice, or ground squirrels, or whatever it could find out back of Cafe Paris.
“She seems like a pretty strong woman to me, Virgil.”
“She’s stronger with a man,” Cole said.
No matter how much time I’d spent with Cole, he still surprised me. He appeared to understand Allie a lot better than I would have said he could. We both watched the hawk for a time as it wheeled on the low wind currents.
“Shelton brothers bothering you?” I said.
“I’m thinking about ’em,” Cole said.
“You figure they are here because of Bragg?”
“Seems sort of coinciding,” Cole said, “them boys should drift in here just before Bragg’s trial.”
“You think they got hired to bust him out?”
“Might’ve.”
“Or kill Whitfield? They kill Whitfield, there’s no need to bust Bragg out, because we can’t convict him.”
“Deputies took Whitfield over to Fort Beale,” Cole said. “They’ll keep him there till the trial.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Mine.”
“So you did think maybe they was here to kill Whitfield,” I said.
“Couldn’t say they wasn’t.”
“Who’s going to bring him in to testify?”
“Stringer and the other deputies.”
“Sheltons know where Whitfield is?”
“Nobody does, except me, and now you.”
“He testifies, and they’ll convict Bragg,” I said.
“I’d say so.”
“So if the Sheltons are here about Bragg,” I said, “they got to bust him out afterwards.”
“Yep.”
“ ’Course, they may not be here for that,” I said.
“Nope.”
“On the other hand, there’s Mr. Clausewitz.”
“Yep.”
“So we got to prepare for it.”
Cole nodded.
“We got you and me and four deputies, Virgil,” I said. “Sounds like enough to me.”
Cole tilted his head back against the top of the chair as if he was looking at the sky, except his eyes were closed. He sat like that for a pretty long time.
Then he said, “Four deputies won’t count for much if it happens.”
“They look like pretty good gun hands,” I said. “ ’Specially Stringer.”
“They are pretty good gun hands,” Cole said.
“But not good enough?”
“Everett,” Cole said. “Neither you or me ain’t never been up against nobody like Ring and Mackie Shelton.”
We were both quiet as the hawk swooped and soared on the wind.
“We been up against pretty good,” I said.
Cole shook his head without remark.
“You ain’t sure we can beat them,” I said after a while.
“When it comes right down to her,” Cole said. “No, I ain’t.”
I thought about it.
“Well,” I said after a time. “It’s not like you ever know for sure, before the shooting starts.”
“So this time won’t be much different,” Cole said.
“Be different if we lose,” I said.
“Won’t matter to us,” Cole said. “ ’Cept for Allie.”
29
There was no prosecutor. The judge asked Whitfield questions, and then Mueller, Bragg’s lawyer, cross-examined. You could see his heart wasn’t in it. He knew Bragg was guilty, and he knew that Judge Callison knew it. Whitfield was the only witness against Bragg. Mueller called Bragg’s foreman. Vince said he didn’t see who shot Bell and the deputy, but it wasn’t Bragg. Mueller brought three more of Bragg’s hands to the stand. They all said the same thing. When Mueller brought the fourth, the judge stopped him.
“You gonna say anything different?” the judge said to the hand.
“Nope.”
The judge addressed the room.
“Anybody in the court got anything different to say other than Bragg didn’t shoot anyone and you don’t know who did?”
No one stirred. Judge Callison nodded to himself.
“That’ll do then; no reason to waste time saying the same thing over and over.”
“My client has a right to testify in his own defense,” Mueller said.
“ ’Course he does,” the judge said. “Swear him in, Eaton.”
Eaton took the Bible to Bragg. Bragg looked at it without comment.
“Put your hand on the Bible,” Eaton said.
Bragg didn’t move. Cole reached over and picked up one of Bragg’s hands and slapped it onto the Bible, and held it in place. Bragg didn’t resist. Eaton said the words. Bragg didn’t answer.
“He so swears,” Judge Callison said. “What have you got to say for yourself, Mr. Bragg.”
Bragg stood slowly.
“Fred Whitfield is a goddamned liar. I didn’t shoot Jack Bell or them other fellas. I don’t know what happened to them.”
He sat down. Judge Callison looked at him for a moment and half smiled.
“Eloquent, Mr. Bragg. But unconvincing,” he said. “I find you guilty of these charges and sentence you to hang at Yaqui Prison at a time to be decided by the prison warden.”
He banged his gavel and said, “Court’s adjourned.”
And that was Bragg’s trial. Stringer and Cole and I and the other deputies took him back to his cell.
30
The conductor came through. Stringer gave him a county voucher for all of us.
“Be about seven hours to Yaqui,” the conductor said. “Be stopping for water at Chester.”
Cole nodded.
Stringer said, “I know. I’ve done this before.”
The conductor looked at Bragg.
“He ain’t going to be no trouble, is he?” the conductor said.
“If he is, it won’t be for long,” Cole said.
Bragg stared out the window as the train slowly began to move, and he kept looking as we picked up speed. I had not heard him say anything since the trial. Cole ignored him.
“Anything gonna happen,” Cole said to me, “it’ll be at Chester. Takes ’em a while to fill that boiler, and we’re pretty much sitting ducks while they do.”
“That why we’re along?” I said. “Because you think something might happen.”
“Yep. Usually, I’d just let them boys take him over to Yaqui.”
“You think it’ll be the Sheltons?”
“Yep.”
I looked at the four deputies.
“These are four pretty good boys, Virgil.”
“They are,” Virgil said.
The train moved heavily along the tracks that ran beside the river, across Bragg’s ranch. We could see the ranch house and some of the outbuildings off to the right side of the train. I thought for a minute what it might be like to sit in shackles on your way to hang and look out at your home and not be able to go there. I decided there was nothing to be gained thinking about that, so I stopped. A few of Bragg’s steers stood near the tracks, staring at us as we went by.
We stayed in the flatlands pretty much, following the course of the river, the tracks snaking along around the hills. Out the left side, at a distance, I could see the Appaloosa stallion herding his mares toward a draw. The sun was higher now, and the train was getting warm. One of the deputies opened the windows that would open and let the air move in as we chugged along. A couple of antelope stood on one of the hills above us as we went west, and on another hill, among the rock outcroppings, six or eight coyotes sat staring down at us, and we bumped and rattled past them. One of the train hands came through after a while and gave us coffee. Bragg, too. All of us took it.
“Be some sandwiches at Chester,” the train hand said.
“How soon?” one of the deputies said.
“Chester? Hell,” he said. “I dunno, ask the conductor.”
The deputy nodded as if he’d expected the answer. A half hour later, the conductor strolled through and took out a big watch and studied it for a minute and told us we’d be in Chester in one hour and thirty-six minutes.
“When we start the upgrade,” the conductor said, “you’ll feel us slow down. It ain’t a hell of a grade, but it’s a long one, and the locomotive labors a little.”