Robert Parker - Blue-Eyed Devil

“And lining up replacements,” I said.

“In case,” Virgil said.

“Something happened to you, I’d look out for her,” I said.

“She knows that,” he said. “She also knows I go down, you’ll probably go, too.”

“Probably,” I said.

“And even if you don’t go down, she knows you won’t…”

Virgil wobbled his hand a little.

“No,” I said. “That’s right. I’d look out for her, but I wouldn’t, ah, be with her.”

“You don’t love her,” Virgil said.

“No.”

Virgil gazed across the street silently.

“I do,” he said.

“I know.”

“Don’t make any sense, does it?” Virgil said.

I exhaled again.

“No,” I said. “But maybe it ain’t supposed to.”

“I want her to feel safe,” Virgil said.

“I’ll see that she does,” I said.

“No,” Virgil said. “You can’t. ’Cause you won’t fuck her and she can’t feel safe with no one ’less she’s fucking him.”

“I know,” I said.

“So, let her find somebody to fuck, if I go,” Virgil said. “And don’t kill him for fucking her.”

I nodded again.

“Work out better all around,” I said, “you don’t die.”

“Would,” Virgil said. “Wouldn’t it.”

AS THE TOWN BLOOMED, the Reclamation Commission bloomed along with it and, in time, was effectively running Appaloosa. Most of the running was done by Laird and Callico, who had come to seem to be almost a single entity. They built a big hall with offices for town government and a big meeting hall on the second floor. They called it Reclamation Hall. Callico moved his offices there from the jail. He and Laird set up offices for the Reclamation Commission there. At the end of a grand mahogany corridor on the first floor, they built a lavish office for the mayor. There was the Reclamation Commission. There was Callico and Laird. The rest of the offices were empty. There was no town government. There was no mayor.

“Bad mistake,” Virgil said, walking through the still-virgin offices.

“Building the office first?” I said.

“Longer it sits here,” Virgil said, “more pressure to have an election and elect a mayor.”

“Which will be either Callico or the general,” I said.

“Running against each other,” Virgil said.

I nodded slowly without saying anything.

“Ain’t ready for that yet,” Virgil said.

“Laird might be,” I said.

“Maybe he is,” Virgil said. “Maybe he ain’t. Callico ain’t.”

“Wants it too bad,” I said.

We walked out of the gleaming new office and down the broad corridor.

“Wants everything too bad,” Virgil said.

“Wants to be more than he is,” I said.

“Not the key to happiness, I’m thinking,” Virgil said.

“You’d settle for being what you are,” I said to Virgil.

“I have,” Virgil said.

“Would you settle for being Callico?” I said.

We opened the heavy front door and went out of the soap-smelling hall and down the stairs. The smell of the town was thick with sawdust and raw wood, horse droppings, and the smell of scorched wood from the steam saw. All drifted across Appaloosa on the easy breeze from the prairie, to which a vestige of sage smell still clung.

“No,” Virgil said.

THE RESTORATION of Appaloosa was complete by the time the fall rains arrived. But the town kept right on building.

On September 1, Amos Callico and General Horatio Laird both announced that they were running for mayor. On September 15, The Appaloosa Argus endorsed General Laird.

“Do you think he’d be the best?” Allie said.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Virgil said. “Hate politics.”

“Well, they’re what’s running,” Allie said. “Who you gonna vote for, Everett?”

“Probably Callico,” I said.

“Even though the newspaper says it should be General Laird?”

“They probably think he looks like a mayor,” I said.

“He was a general, you know,” Allie said.

“Part of the problem,” I said. “He’s used to working inside a set of rules. And he’s used to people doing what he tells them to do.”

“I should think that would be good for a mayor,” Allie said.

Virgil was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking out at the dark rain soaking into his yard. The sound of it was pleasant. The smell of the new rain was fresh. The mud was probably six inches deep already.

“Not for mayor of a town like Appaloosa,” I said. “Never had a mayor before. Never actual like had a government before. Man’s gonna get things done in a town like this, hell, most towns, is a liar and a thief. Like Callico. He won’t keep his word. He won’t honor yours. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t expect you to care about him.”

“That’s a good mayor?”

“He’ll get things done,” I said.

“Maybe that’s not all he should do,” Allie said.

At the open door, Virgil turned and looked for a long moment at Allie.

“By God, Allie,” he said. “Maybe it ain’t.”

BUSINESS WAS GOOD in Appaloosa. Virgil and I kept busy buffaloing drunks, and occasionally a little more, in the saloons we serviced. When we weren’t busy we spent our time watching the mayoral election unfold in virgin territory.

The rain was meager today. Enough drizzle to keep the streets mucky but not to drive the voters away, and they stood in a damp cluster around the stairs to Reclamation Hall, where General Laird was explaining to them why they would be wise to vote him in as mayor.

“I have led men all my life,” he said. “I understand how to run an organization.”

“You understand how to run,” someone said loudly in the front row.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Laird said.

“Whyn’t you tell ’em how you flat-out run away at Ralesberg,” the loud voice said.

“I did no such thing. We won at Ralesberg.”

“While you was running, you burned out a refugee camp and slaughtered a bunch of women and children,” another voice said just as loudly.

“Sir, that is a lie,” Laird said.

He stood very erect in a slightly shabby gray CSA general officer’s coat, the light rain drizzling down onto his bare head.

The two voices separated themselves from the front row. One belonged to a tall, raw-boned red-haired man with a weak and unimpressive beard. The other was shorter and thicker, with a dense black beard, wearing a Colt on a gun belt over bib overalls.

“You callin’ us liars?” the red-haired man said.

He carried a short-barreled breech-loading cavalry carbine. The people immediately around them moved away.

“Watch Chauncey,” Virgil murmured.

Chauncey had been leaning against the frame of the big front door, sheltered from the rain, watching the a ctivity.

“What you are saying, sir, is untrue,” Laird said.

“I say you are a back-shooting, barn-burning, gray-bellied coward,” the red-haired man said. “Anybody gonna tell me no?”

“I am,” Chauncey said.

“Who the hell are you?”

“General Laird is a gentleman,” Chauncey said. “He is not a murderous thug. He is not going to descend to a street fight with you.”

“And you?” the man with the black beard said.

Chauncey straightened lazily from the door frame and ambled out to stand maybe five feet in front of the two men.

“I am a murderous thug,” Chauncey said.

There was silence. Chauncey’s ivory-handled Colt, sprinkled slightly with raindrops, seemed to gleam in the low, gray light.

“If you’d like,” Chauncey said, “you get to pick where I shoot you.”

“Chauncey,” General Laird said. “I appreciate your support. But this is a democratic process. We cannot have people killed.”