ROBERT PARKER - Appaloosa

I picked up her carpetbag, and we walked down Main Street toward the hotel.

“You have freckles,” Mrs. French said. “Sandy hair and freckles.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I think that’s so cute in a man.”

“Me, too,” I said.

I was more aware than I had been of the way her body moved under her skirts.

“How can Mr. Cole be so sure that they will give me a room,” she said as we walked along the plank sidewalk.

I smiled. “Because I’m going to tell the man who owns the place that Mr. Cole wants them to.”

“Does Mr. Cole always get what he wants?” she said.

“Pretty much,” I said.

Mrs. French played the piano very badly, but she played loud, and she was pretty and she smiled nice and wore dresses with a low neck and generated considerable heat and mostly nobody noticed. During her break she came over and sat at a table with me. I was drinking coffee.

I said, “Care for a drink, Mrs. French?”

“No, but I’ll have some coffee with you,” she said. “And, please, call me Allie.”

I nodded at Tilda and she came over with coffee for Allie, and a second cup for me.

“Have you known Mr. Cole for long, Mr. Hitch?”

“Call me Everett, and I’m pretty sure you should call Mr. Cole Virgil.”

She smiled and looked down. The gesture looked practiced. Probably was.

“Have you known Virgil long, Everett?” she said.

“Yes.”

“And have you and he always been marshals here?”

“No. We just arrived couple weeks ago,” I said.

“Where were you before?”

“We been all over out here,” I said. “Virgil gets hired to settle things down in towns that need settling, and I go with him, and after the town gets settled, then we move on and find another town that needs settling.”

“Are you what they call ‘town tamers’?” she said.

“If you read those dime novels.”

“What do you call yourselves?” she said.

“Don’t know as we ever have,” I said.

“Do you kill people?”

“Now and then,” I said.

“Many?”

Her eyes were up now and on me. It was always about the killing. I’d met a lot of women who were fascinated with the killing. They were horrified, too, but it was more than that.

“A few,” I said.

“And Virgil?”

“More than a few,” I said.

“What’s it like?”

“It’s like driving a nail,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Driving a nail, splitting firewood. It’s work. It’s quick.”

“No more than that?”

“Not after you’ve done it a couple times.”

“Do you like it?”

“Well, it’s kind of clean and complete,” I said. “You got him, he didn’t get you.”

“But, if you feel that way,” she was frowning, thinking about it, interested, “what’s to prevent you from just killing anyone you feel like?”

“The law,” I said. “Virgil always says, people obey the law, you don’t have a reason to kill them.”

“Any law?”

“Don’t get to complicating it,” I said.

“You know which law,” she said.

“We do.”

I liked how she was interested. How she hadn’t decided what she thought before we started talking.

“How about the other people, the people you shoot?”

“Virgil always posts the laws,” I said. “In any town we work.”

She drank her coffee, looking at me while she did.

“What if they kill you?”

“Hard thing to plan for,” I said.

“Do you think about it?”

“Try not to,” I said.

Neither of us said anything for a while. Tilda came over and poured us more coffee.

“I guess I disapprove,” Allie said.

I nodded.

“But I know I don’t know enough about it, really,” she said. “You seem like a nice man, and so does Mr. Cole, Virgil.”

“I’m pretty nice,” I said. “I’m not so sure ’bout Virgil.”

“Are either of you married?”

“I’m not,” I said.

“And, Mr… Virgil?”

“Not that I know about.”

“But you’re his closest friend-wouldn’t you know?”

“Virgil don’t tell you much,” I said.

“Really? He seemed so talkative in the restaurant,” Allie said.

“Oh, he’s talkative. Talks a lot of the time. He just don’t tell you much.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m going to ask him.”

Appaloosa sat in a short valley. There were hills east and west, allowing the wind to funnel in from the north and rip through the town, swirling dust as high as the rooftops. From where Cole and I sat, drinking coffee on the front porch of the jail on a nice Sunday morning, we could see the valley rim to the west. Along the rim, two riders moved in slow silhouette.

“So,” Cole said, “you been talking with Mrs. French.”

“I have, Virgil.”

The riders on the rim paused and sat motionless, facing the town. It was a little far to see exactly who they were.

“What’s she like to talk about?” Cole said.

“She was asking me a lot about you, Virgil.”

“She was. Was she asking in a liking way?”

“Wanted to know if you were married,” I said.

On the rim of the western slope, one of the horses nosed the flank of the other.

“She did, did she. By God. What’d you tell her.”

“Said I didn’t know.”

“Well, hell, Everett,” Cole said. “You see a wife around here?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why the hell you tell her you didn’t know.”

“Might have a wife in Silver City,” I said. “Or Nogales, or Bisbee.”

“Had an Apache woman, lived with me once. Kinda like a wife, I guess. But there was never any words spoke over us or anything, and one day when I come home, she was gone.”

“Where?”

“Don’t know.”

“You ever look for her?”

“I was going to,” Cole said. “But then I got a job up in Durango, and I went up there. Never did know where she went. Back to the tribe, is most probable.”

The horsemen on the hill pulled their horses around and started off again, south, at a slow walk. One of them had rolled a cigarette, and even though they were a piece off, I could smell the tobacco.

“Well, Allie says she’s going to ask you, so you might want to have an answer ready.”

He looked at me and frowned a little.

“She’s going to ask me if I been married?”

“I think she’s more interested in if you are presently married.”

“Hell, no, I’m not presently married.”

“She’ll be pleased,” I said.

Cole nodded. He was looking at the horsemen on the rim.

“Been there since dawn,” Cole said.

“The riders?”

“Yep. Riding back and forth, looking at the town. There’s two on the hill east of us.”

“Whaddya think?” I said.

“I think Mrs. French might become exclusively interesting,” Cole said.

“Whaddya think about the men in the hills?” I said.

“I think you and me might want to ride up and see what they’re doing up there.”

“Can I finish my coffee first?”

“You surely may,” Cole said.

Cole and I fell in on each side of one of the ridge riders. The sun was behind us and made our three shadows stretch out long on the shaley trail.

“Howdy,” Cole said to the rider.

Without looking at either of us, the rider said, “The town don’t come out this far, Marshal.”

“By God,” Cole said, “I believe you’re right. I believe it ends just down there at the foot of the hill where that little wash runs.”

“So up here,” the rider said, “you’re just another cowboy with a gun.”