ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

“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.”

The next morning Whitfield came into the marshal’s office looking bad.

“I slept in the feed loft,” he said, “at the livery stable.”

“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 can do, not what you think he might do.”

“Clausewitz?”

“What I’m saying is splitting our forces ain’t to our advantage.”

“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.”

Judge Elias Callison came to town on an early-evening train with his law clerk and four sheriff’s deputies. And after they got settled into the Boston House, the law clerk, whose name was Eaton, and the lead deputy, fella named Stringer, came down to the marshal’s office to talk with Cole. Stringer had a deputy’s star on his shirt and wore a long-barreled Colt butt-forward on the left.

“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.”

Ibrought Mueller back from Little Springs, and Judge Callison set a trial date in one week, so counsel could prepare a defense. The judge also ordered the deputies to take charge of the prisoner until then. Since there wasn’t no place to take charge of him except where he was, the deputies sort of moved into the marshal’s office, so Cole and me spent more of our time sitting around in the Boston House in the saloon, or watching them doing the finish work on Cole’s house.