ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

“Coffee be good,” Whitfield said.

Whitfield took his hat off and put it on the table. He looked at Allie.

“This the missus?” he said.

Cole’s face colored a little.

“No,” Cole said. “This is Mrs. French.”

The cowboy said, “Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Allie said. “I’m sure.”

Tilda brought some more coffee. Nobody said anything. Allie waited, interested. Whitfield was silent. Finally, Cole said, “Allie, I got to talk to this fella alone.”

“Oh? Well, certainly, Virgil. I’ve got to do my piano exercises anyway.”

She stood.

“Nice meeting you,” she said to Whitfield.

“My pleasure, ma’am,” Whitfield said.

Allie walked off toward the piano beyond the bar, and sat at it. She opened the cover and began to play some sort of musical exercises that didn’t sound much different than when she really played.

“I used to be a deputy here,” Whitfield said.

Cole was quiet.

“Worked with Jack Bell.”

Cole nodded.

“I knew Jack,” Cole said.

“Went up to Bragg’s place with him one day to arrest coupl’a Bragg’s men.”

Cole nodded.

“Bragg wouldn’t give ’em up,” Whitfield said. “They was too many, but Jack, he…”

“I know what happened,” Cole said.

“Was me,” Whitfield said. “And Dave Long, and Jack.”

Cole nodded.

“They was too many,” Whitfield said.

“I know,” Cole said. “And they shot Bell and the other deputy and you skedaddled.”

Whitfield nodded.

“You know it happened,” he said.

“Know it, can’t prove it,” Cole said.

“No witnesses,” Whitfield said.

“Un-huh.”

“I run off like a yellow dog,” Whitfield said.

“No reason to die for nothing,” Cole said.

“But I come back.”

Cole nodded.

“And I’ll be your witness.”

“Good,” Cole said. “Care to go with us?”

“Go with you?”

“When we go to apprehend Mr. Bragg,” Cole said.

Whitfield shook his head.

“Can’t,” he said. “I… I dunno, it busted me up inside when Jack got killed and I run. I… can’t do gun work no more.”

“But you’ll testify,” Cole said.

“I will.”

“With Bragg looking right at you,” Cole said.

“I will.”

“I don’t want to go up there,” Cole said, “and shoot up a lotta people, and get Bragg into court, and have you dry up and blow away.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t relinquish on your testimony.”

“I’ll say what I seen,” Whitfield said.

Cole was silent. He looked at me. I nodded. Whitfield saw the nod.

“That’s right,” he said. “I’ll stand. I can’t do gun work no more, but I can say what I seen, and I’ll stand and say it.”

“I got your word on that?” Cole said.

“You do.”

“All right,” Cole said. “Everett and me will go up and apprehend him.”

" A lone?” Raines said.

“Me and Everett,” Cole said.

“But that’s all?” Raines said. “You two alone?”

“Me and Everett,” Cole said again.

“Bragg’s got forty gun hands up there.”

“Twenty-five,” Cole said.

“You say that like it made a difference.”

“Makes a difference of, ah, how much, Everett?”

“Fifteen,” I said.

“It’s still so many,” Raines said.

“Specimens I’ve seen so far don’t enliven me much,” Cole said.

“We could get a posse up, deputize a bunch of us.”

“Coulda done that ’fore you hired us, Abner,” Cole said.

“You don’t want help?”

“No. I got help, I gotta worry about them. They get in trouble, I got to get them out. Better just me and Everett.”

I thought Raines looked relieved.

“Well, you say so, Virgil. It’s your kinda work, I guess.”

“It is,” Cole said.

Raines stood and walked out of the marshal’s office. He turned left on the boardwalk and disappeared.

“You got a plan?” I said to Cole.

“Well, we ain’t going to go riding in there bold as brass,” Cole said. “Like Jack Bell done.”

“I hear Bell was good,” I said.

“He was. He was good with a gun. Worked a lot of tough towns.”

“Overconfident?” I said.

“Be my surmise,” Cole said. “Thought he could back Bragg down. Thought they wouldn’t shoot lawmen.”

“You think you could back Bragg down?” I said.

“Just me and him?” Cole said. “Just the two of us? I could back him a ways. And then he wouldn’t back no farther.”

“You know this?”

“Sure.”

“How?”

“Been doing this a long time, Everett. Ain’t just gun work. Gotta think about men, too.”

“Which would, I guess, be one reason you’re here and Jack Bell ain’t,” I said.

“Yep,” Cole said and nodded his head. “That’d be a reason. You’d be another.”

I opened my mouth and closed it and sat. I didn’t know what to say. Cole had never been quite so straight with me about what I was worth. I sort of smiled to myself.

“What you smilin’ about,” Cole said.

“I caught myself thinking,” I said. “And what I was thinking was that you was right.”

Cole didn’t comment.

“So,” he said. “What we got to do next is drift on up there and look at Bragg’s layout.”

Bragg’s ranch was on an upland meadow with a stream. There were some trees along the stream, and a small herd of beef cattle grazed in the grass under their shade.

“Pretty place,” Cole said.

We were sitting our horses behind the ranch, on a hill that looked over it. We could see across it to Appaloosa in the sere valley below. Someone spotted us there, and several men gathered on the porch of the big ranch house and looked up at us. I saw Bragg was taller than anyone else.

“No cover,” I said.

“Nope, nothin’ much,” Cole said. “Maybe a little among them trees.”

“For how long?” I said.

“Long as it would take them to send some people around behind us,” Cole said.

“No real way to slide in on them without them knowing it,” I said.

“Depends how hard they sleep,” Cole said.

“Don’t think they got a nighthawk?” I said.

“If they did, depend on how hard he listened.”

“There’s a way to find out,” I said.

“Un-huh.”

“ ’Cept now they seen us,” I said. “Makes it likely they’ll be more careful.”

“Don’t matter,” Cole said. “We’ll expedite us a way.”

“ ’Spose we will,” I said.

Cole was silent, looking down at the gray, weathered ranch buildings. There was a barn with a corral. Some horses stood quietly in the corral, the way horses do, heads down, doing nothing. There was a bunkhouse on the other side of the barn, with a cookshack angling off it. There were two outhouses: a big one near the bunkhouse, and another smaller one near the ranch house.

“We’ll ride on back to town,” Cole said. “Give them time to relax a little, and maybe two, three nights from now, we’ll ride on back up and see what happens at night.”

The horses knew the way back, and they moved almost without guidance. Behind us, as we moved downhill toward Appaloosa in the punch bowl, half a dozen riders from Bragg’s outfit sat their horses on the hilltop where we’d been and watched us go.

I said, “Law’s a little thin on this, Virgil.”

“Don’t see why. Bragg killed the marshal. Now I’m the marshal and I can prove he done it.”

“There’ll be twenty of them all swear he didn’t.”

“That ain’t up to me,” Cole said. “That’s for the trial.”