ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

“Don’t pay no attention to the house,” she said. “Hell, Everett. He don’t pay no attention to me. Just sits up there in the jail with his gun, being marshal.”

“Well,” I said. “Been sorta lively of late.”

“It’s his job,” Allie said. “It’s not his damn life.”

“Well,” I said, “show me around. I’ll tell him about it.”

She had, as we talked, moved closer to me. Now she took my hand and began to lead me around the various rooms that had been studded off.

“We’ll have our parlor here,” she said, “where we can look out and see who’s coming to call. And this will be the kitchen.”

There’s always something sort of dreamish about being sheltered on a rainy day. The rain drummed pleasantly on the roof. And, as it fell outside, it formed a kind of silvery curtain around the open sides of the unfinished building. There was coziness inside under the roof, even though there were no walls. Allie still held the hand with which she’d led me through the small framing. Her shoulder touched my arm.

“You think it will be nice, Everett?”

“It’ll be elegant,” I said.

She rubbed her cheek against my shoulder.

“Will you come often and visit us?”

“Every time I’m invited.”

“I can cook, you know,” Allie said.

She had put her hand on my back and was beginning to move it up and down my spine.

“I never thought you couldn’t,” I said.

She turned in toward me and put both arms around my waist. She looked up at me, and her eyes looked sort of dazed, as if she wasn’t focusing too well.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Yes.”

I sounded hoarse. I felt as if my throat had closed up a little. She tightened her arms around my waist and pressed herself against me, arching her back a little to look up at me. The movement made her pelvis press against me, and caused me some excitement.

“Allie,” I said.

“I want you to kiss me, Everett.”

“Allie,” I said again. “I think we ought to stop here.”

She slid her hands up my back and behind my neck and pulled herself up on tiptoes and bent my head down toward her a little and kissed me hard with her mouth open. She smelled good. I kissed her back. Then I forced her away from me and held her there at arm’s length.

“I’m with Virgil,” I said. “And so are you.”

“Virgil’s not here,” she said. “Mostly, Virgil’s never here.”

She was trying to press back against me.

“Ain’t true, Allie,” I said. “But even if it was, we ain’t with each other. We’re both with him.”

She was silent; her face had turned white. She was pressing hard against my hands as I held her away.

“Allie,” I said. “For Christ’s sake, we’re right out in the open here.”

“Let me go,” she said.

Her voice was harsh and unlovely.

“Let me go, goddamn you,” she said.

“I’m leaving, Allie,” I said.

“You bastard,” she said. “You sonova bitch.”

The words came out slurred and almost hissing with rage. Her face was perfectly white and twisted with anger. There were tears in her eyes, though she wasn’t crying yet. I gave her a little shove that set her back for a moment and turned and ran.

“You prick,” she screamed after me.

I ran through the sucking mud and got up on the dry boardwalk and walked fast up Front Street toward Second.

“You fucking prick,” she screamed.

I hunched my shoulders a little and kept walking through the hard rain.

Vince came back with twenty riders on a hot, still day with no clouds and a hard sun. I was sitting out front with Whitfield when they turned the corner at Second Street and started down toward us at a slow walk, nobody saying anything.

“God, Jesus,” Whitfield said and stood up.

“There’s a loaded gun in the table drawer,” I said to him. “If they rush us, shoot Bragg.”

Whitfield went inside the office. I took out my Colt and fired two shots in the air and reloaded and holstered. A couple of the horses in Vince’s party shied at the gunfire. No one else reacted. I picked up the eight-gauge and stood. There were people on the sidewalks on Main Street. As the riders approached, the people disappeared into the nearest doors. The riders fanned out across the street behind Vince three rows deep, halted in front of the office, and turned their horses toward me. The riders in the second and third rows moved slowly sideways to form a big single-file circle in front of me. Some of them had Winchesters.

“Morning, Hitch,” Vince said to me.

“Vince,” I said.

“We come for Mr. Bragg,” Vince said.

“Can’t have him,” I said.

“We’ll take him if we have to.”

The rider on the far right end of the circle had a riderless saddle horse on a lead. To my right, Virgil Cole came walking on the boardwalk toward us. He didn’t seem to raise his voice, but everyone heard him clear.

“If you do, he’ll be dead.”

No one said anything.

“Everett,” Cole said, “you step on into the office with that eight-gauge and first thing, anything happens, you blow Mr. Bragg’s head off.”

I wanted to say that Whitfield had that assignment and I could do him more good out here. But I didn’t. I did what he told me. I always did what he told me, because in a lot of towns over a lot of years, I’d learned that in a tight crease, you’d best do what Virgil Cole told you. No questions. Virgil always knew the situation better than you did, and he always knew what he was doing better than anyone did. I reached behind me and pushed open the office door and went inside.

Behind me, I heard Cole say, “You boys best wheel them animals around and shoo.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Bragg.

Bragg was standing in his cell, close to the bars, looking at me.

“We come for Bragg,” Vince said.

I glanced at Whitfield. There was no Whitfield. Past the two cells was a door that led down a little hall to the store behind us that sold dry goods and hardware. The door was open.

“Can’t have him,” Cole said.

I went and closed it and slid the bolt. Bragg smiled at me.

“We know you’re good, Cole,” I heard Vince say. “But you ain’t as good as twenty of us.”

“You know the arrangement, boys,” Cole said pleasantly.

I went to the table drawer and opened it. The gun Whitfield was supposed to use was still there.

“First time one of you does an ineluctable thing…” Cole said.

He didn’t finish the sentence. But I knew, because I’d seen him do this before, that he had pointed at the office and pretended to shoot Bragg with his thumb and forefinger.

“You can’t just shoot a prisoner,” Vince said. “You’re a fucking lawman.”

I smiled. Cole already had them backing up a little. He didn’t need me out there with the shotgun.

It ain’t firepower , he’d always said. It was firepower, we’d lose most of the time, because most of the time it’s just you and me against a whole passel.

“Prisoner tries to escape, I’m supposed to shoot him,” Cole said.

“You shoot him, you think we’ll ride off?”

“Nope.”

“We’ll kill you and Hitch,” Vince said.

“You’ll try.”

“There’s twenty of us, for God’s sake,” Vince said. “You willing to die to keep us from taking him?”

“Sure,” Cole said.

Everyone was silent. I could see Vince staring hard at Cole. Vince was a hard case. Jack Bell had been a hard case. But Vince was looking at something Vince had never seen before.

“Hitch?” Vince raised his voice. “You willing to die, too?”

I stood near the corner of the two cells, against the wall, where I wouldn’t get shot right away, and where I could get a clear shot at Bragg if they came. I could see Vince and some of the riders through the window. I couldn’t see Cole.