ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

“Oh, Everett,” she said, and blushed brightly.

Cole smiled a little.

“Well, you started talkin’ about it,” he said.

“I know,” Allie said. “It’s just that I’m so grateful. I know that you did it for me. Rode all that way. Went through all that danger. For me.”

“Well, you sure are worth it,” I said.

“Point of fact,” Cole said, “wasn’t just you. We was after Bragg, too.”

“Virgil, I know you killed those men because of me.”

Cole leaned back and looked at me, and then at Allie.

“We did what we needed to do,” he said finally.

“And Everett, too. I will always be grateful to you. You didn’t abandon me.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “But, you know, I am the deputy city marshal here, and it was sort of what I was hired to do, to find escaped prisoners, to save kidnapped women. That sort of thing.”

“Oh, go ahead,” Allie said, “the both of you. Be modest. Pretend you were just doing what any lawman would have done. In my heart I know it, and I treasure it. That you did what you did for me.”

Cole looked at me again. But he didn’t say anything more. I knew what was bothering him. It was bothering me, too. If Allie was right, and we tracked down the Sheltons and killed them because they had mistreated Cole’s girlfriend, then we might be good men. And we might have done the right thing. But we didn’t do it as lawmen. And we hadn’t done the legal thing.

And where did that leave us?

Two nights later, I lay in bed in my room at the Boston House with Katie Goode, after we’d done our business, and talked about Allie.

“Don’t you see what she’s doing?” Katie said.

“Being nice to her husband’s friend,” I said.

“Husband? They got married?”

“I don’t think so. But that’s what they call each other.”

Katie shrugged.

“What is it they call it in a war,” she said, “when a general doesn’t use all his troops but holds some out.”

“The troops are in reserve?”

“Yes. That’s what I was trying to say. Allie has you in reserve.”

“Reserve? Reserve for what?”

“In case Virgil gets killed.”

“She has me standing by to replace Virgil?”

“Virgil dies, you replace him. Then you’re the stud horse. That’s why she’s so nice to you. That’s why there’s no more talk of how you molested her that day, at the house before it was finished.”

“Praise be,” I said.

“And she reminded you how you saw her naked.”

“Yeah,” I said, “she did.”

“That was a kind of flirting, you dumb man.”

“Right in front of Virgil?”

Katie smiled. “He’s a dumb man, too.”

“So why is she so set that everything we did was for her?”

“Oh, Everett,” Katie said. “You ain’t that stupid.”

“I ain’t?”

“ ’Course you ain’t. Just think a minute.”

I was quiet while I thought about it.

“Makes her feel important,” I said, after a time.

“Um-hm,” Katie said.

“You learn all this stuff being a whore?” I said.

Katie smiled.

“I spend my working time with men,” she said. “But my social time is with women.”

“All women know things like this?” I said.

“Most of us understand Allie French,” Katie said.

“What do you all understand?”

“She ain’t no different,” Katie said, “from any of us working girls. She’s willing to fuck who she got to fuck, so she can get what she needs to get.”

“How ’bout love?” I said. “Love got anything to do with it?”

“Out here, love’s pretty hard for a woman,” Katie said. “Mostly it’s the men worry about love. You know how many miners and cowboys told me they loved me just before they, ah, emptied their chamber?”

“Tell you the truth, Katie,” I said, “I guess I don’t want to know that.”

“Men maybe can worry ’bout love,” Katie said. “Most women out here got to think ’bout other things.”

“Ever been in love?” I said.

Katie laughed.

“I don’t love you, Everett,” she said. “But you’re as close as I come.”

“So what do you feel?”

“I like you,” she said. “You’re not mean. And you got some education. I’m always glad when it’s you that hires me, and I’m always glad when you pay for the night.”

“You think that’s how Allie feels about Virgil?”

“I don’t know what she feels,” Katie said. “She probably don’t know how she feels, either. She just knows he’s the top hand, and she’ll stay with him till he ain’t.”

“Well, what I know is I paid for the night, and I don’t want us wasting time.”

“Just passing time while you recovered,” Katie said.

She put her hand under the covers.

“And I do believe you have,” she said.

Ihad a scar across the top of my right thigh that looked like someone had laid a hot poker on there. But it didn’t hurt, and neither did my ribs. Cole was healed up, too, except for a little limp. Stringer went back to Yaqui, and we went back to the marshal’s office.

One morning I went out to look at the town, got back to the marshal’s office just before lunchtime, and found an aldermen’s meeting going on. Cole was at his desk, smoking a cigar. Abner Raines was standing in front of him. Earl May was sitting on the edge of my desk, and Phil Olson was sitting in my chair. I looked at Cole.

“Come in, Everett,” Cole said. “Aldermen got something to say.”

All three of them looked nervous. I looked at Olson, sitting in my chair. He saw me look at him, and got up quickly and moved over to the wall beside the door, and leaned against it. I sat at my desk and put one foot up on the edge, and then the other, to take off my spurs. May stood and went over to stand beside Olson.

“First of all,” Raines said, “town’s grateful to you, the way you stood up to Bragg.”

“What you hired us for,” Cole said.

“Well, we’re not forgetting it,” Raines said. “You arrested him, got him tried and convicted.”

Nobody said anything. Raines shifted a little on his feet.

“And I know, we know, that when he escaped, you had to go after him.”

Cole looked interested but neutral. I wondered what the but would be.

“And certainly you had to rescue Mrs. French.”

Cole nodded.

“And we’re proud of you, both of you, for that as well. And we’re very pleased that you have recovered so well from your wounds.”

“You boys thinking ’bout giving us a medal or something?” Cole said.

They didn’t seem too happy, but they all laughed.

“You used to be a soldier boy, Everett,” Cole said. “You like a nice medal?”

“Had one,” I said. “Traded it for something in Nogales. Be goddamned, though, if I can recall what.”

“Guess Everett don’t endear a medal like me,” Cole said.

No one seemed to know what to say next. It was Olson who finally took the jump.

“Virgil,” he said, “we all agree with what Abner said, but…”

There it was.

“… things change, and we got to talk about that.”

Cole nodded and looked at me and grinned.

“No medal?” he said.

“Probably not,” I said.

Olson’s fair cheeks had become pink.

“We hired you and Everett to protect us from Bragg and his outfit,” Olson said. “And you done it so good that he’s gone, and so is his outfit.”

Cole puffed quietly on his cigar, rolling it in his mouth now and then with his thumb and three fingers, and taking it out occasionally to admire the glowing end of it.