ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

“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.”

Cole and I were sitting outside the office with the door open so we could hear if Bragg tried to gnaw through the bars. It was a warm day with no clouds and a bright sun.

“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 Café 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.”

Whitfield testified, with the bar closed in the Boston House Saloon, and Cole beside him, and me in a lookout chair with a shotgun, and two country deputies with Winchesters at the saloon doors. He stood up, and Eaton swore him in, and the judge asked him what he seen when Jack Bell was shot, and Whitfield looked right at Bragg and said Bragg done it. The tables had been pushed to the walls for the trial, and the chairs had been set up in rows. Most of the town was there. The Sheltons sat near the lobby door, in the back.

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.”