ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

“I could use some coffee,” Cole said.

And we walked back toward the hotel, with the wind whipping around us, trying to take our hats.

Cole and I were drinking coffee at the hotel. Allie came and sat with us. She didn’t have much to say. She seemed somehow smaller than she usually was.

“We go up against Russell,” I said to Cole, “we’re going up against the law in this town.”

“We’re the law in our town,” Cole said.

Cole held his coffee cup in both hands, his elbows on the table.

“Probably deputize Ring and Mackie.”

“Probably,” Cole said.

We were quiet. Cole sipped his coffee, still with his elbows on the table, still with the cup in both hands. He didn’t look at Allie.

“Makes the law thing a little confusin’,” I said.

Cole nodded and didn’t answer.

“Guess it’s best not to worry about that right now,” I said.

“He took my prisoner. He broke the law in my town,” Cole said.

Allie sat very still, like a child allowed to sit with the adults. Her hands were folded in her lap. She sat straight in her chair, her feet close together. The hotelkeeper’s wife came and poured us some more. Cole had laid his big pocket watch on the table. It showed one o’clock.

“Aren’t either of you afraid?” Allie said.

Cole looked startled.

“Afraid?”

“Yes.” Allie’s voice seemed as small as she did. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be killed?”

Cole frowned a little and stared out past Allie through the hotel door at the street for a little while.

“I don’t know, Allie,” he said after a while. “I been doing this a long time. Maybe I am. But I guess I don’t think about it much.”

He looked at me.

“You ever think about it, Everett?”

“Sure.”

“You scared?”

“Sure.”

“Probably a good thing,” Cole said. “Makes you a little quicker.”

I nodded.

“I’m scared all the time,” Allie said.

“Of what?” Cole said.

“Everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like being alone, or being with the wrong man, having no money, no place to live. If I don’t have a man, what am I supposed to do?”

“You got an answer for that, Everett?”

“You could play the piano at the Boston House,” I said.

“For the rest of my life?”

“I’ll look out for you,” Cole said.

“For how long?”

“Long as you need.”

“Virgil, you could be dead in an hour.”

Cole shook his head.

“Let’s go back to Appaloosa right now,” Allie said.

“Got to finish this thing up with Ring Shelton,” Cole said.

“There’s four of them.”

Cole shrugged and drank coffee.

“The man who runs the hotel told me that the Shelton brothers were famous gunmen.”

“Got to get things back in balance,” Cole said.

“If you’ll take me back to Appaloosa with you, I’ll love you all my life. I’ll never make you mad. I’ll never do anything you don’t like.”

“That’ll be fine, Allie,” Cole said. “Soon’s Everett and me get things straightened out with Ring.”

“And Mackie,” I said, “and Russell and Bragg.”

“Sure,” Cole said.

“If they kill you, what’ll happen to me?” Allie said.

“Ring’ll look out for you,” Cole said.

Allie put her face in her hands and hunched over the table.

“Oh, God,” she said, and began to cry into her hands. “Oh, my dear God.”

At ten minutes past two o’clock, we went up to our rooms and got ready. I put on a jacket so I could use the pockets. I slipped a five-shot, .32, hammerless pocket pistol in the left-hand pocket. I put twenty eight-gauge shells in the right. I wore a Colt .45 on my gun belt. I checked the load in the shotgun. Cole wore two Colts on belts with cartridge loops. The Colt on his left side was butt-forward. He carried a .45 Winchester. He checked both Colts and made sure there was a round in the chamber of the Winchester. He left the Winchester cocked. It was 2:25. We both put on our hats. “Remember,” Cole said. “We walked through this already.”

“It’ll be just the same,” I said. “ ’Cept for them trying to shoot us.”

“I’m hopin’ to shoot them first,” Cole said.

“Me, too.”

“But remember,” Cole said. “Steady’s more important than fast.”

“Virgil,” I said, “you’ve told me that before every fight we ever had.”

“Anything you want to go over?” Cole said.

“Nope.”

Cole nodded and looked at his watch.

“Don’t want to get there too soon,” he said. “Want to have sort of a flow, you understand, some kind of rhythm, like dancing or something. Just walk down there and arrive on time and start shooting without never breaking stride.”

I nodded like I hadn’t heard it before. I could feel the feeling beginning to build. The little hard clutch in my stomach getting tighter, my throat closing so it was hard to swallow. My mouth was dry. I wanted to breathe in more air than I had capacity for. I could feel my heart.

“Okay,” Virgil said. “Here we go.”

The rain that I had tasted earlier had arrived. It was hard and slanted by the wind. The street was muddy with it. I yanked my hat down tighter.

“Distance we’re shooting at,” Cole said, “wind won’t be an issue.”

It was behind us as we walked, which meant at the end of the walk, if it didn’t shift, the rain would be blowing at them.

“Won’t do no harm to keep an eye out for Bragg,” Cole said. “I think he’ll stick with Ring. I don’t think he’s got the stuff to go it alone, but if he does, he’s a certain sure back shooter.”

We passed the bank. There was no one on the street. Everything was buttoned up against the rain. I thought about Allie’s questions.

“You feel it?” I said to Cole.

“Dry mouth? Thing in the stomach? Not enough air?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure, I feel it. You don’t feel nothing, there’s not much point in doing a thing.”

“You like the feeling?” I said.

Cole didn’t speak for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to. He, too, had his hat yanked down low over his forehead to keep it on. We slogged through the thickening mud toward the stock pens.

“After,” Cole said.

“And if you didn’t have the feeling before, the feeling after wouldn’t be so good,” I said.

“I guess,” Cole said.

They were where Cole said they’d be. Four of them, Bragg closest to the shed. The wind was at our backs, blowing the rain hard at them. The steers huddled together in the pens.

“We pass that corner,” Cole said. “We start shooting and go fast, straight at them.”

I didn’t say anything. My mouth was dry. Most of the shootouts we’d been in had sort of erupted, and you didn’t have much time to think about it. This one had moved forward for days with the formality of a procession. And now here it was, in the blowing rain.

We turned the corner, and Cole shot Ring Shelton in the chest, and everyone else started shooting at the same time. Something slammed into my left side and tried to knock me down as I cut loose with the eight-gauge. Both barrels. It knocked Mackie Shelton over backward. To my left, Cole was down. Another bullet hit me in my right leg, and I felt it give under me. Cole squirmed sideways in the mud, working the lever on the Winchester. He fired three times, pumping the lever as fast as he fired. Russell staggered and took two steps forward to right himself and raised his Colt and fell face-forward into the mud. I dropped the eight-gauge as I went down and jerked the Colt. Sitting in the mud, I looked for Bragg. He was gone. With Cole on his stomach and me on my backside, we kept our aim on the shed. After a minute or so, we heard the sound of a horse running in the mud, and then, too far to shoot, we saw Bragg ride off.