Роберт Паркер - The Bridge

Skinny Jack took the Winchester from Virgil. His Adam’s apple went up, then down, as he nodded.

Virgil and I walked up the boardwalk to the hotel.

“You take the side entrance, Everett,” Virgil said. “I’ll come in from the lobby. Give me ten.”

I nodded, and started counting ten seconds so to give Virgil time to come in through the front entrance. When I got to ten I pushed open the side door just as Virgil came through the pocket doors leading into the lobby.

Wallis wasn’t in. His second barkeep, a young Irishman named O’Malley, was behind the bar and the saloon was empty except for the four men sitting near the bar at the big round eight-player table, drinking coffee.

They looked first to me standing with my eight-gauge and then to Virgil with his frock pulled behind his bone-handle.

A big man leaned back in his chair, looking back and forth between Virgil and me.

“Which one of you is Virgil Cole?” he said in a huge, commanding voice.

“Who’s asking?” Virgil said.

The man took his hat off and stood.

“I’m guessing that’d be you,” he said to Virgil.

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“I’m Walton Wayne Swickey,” he said.

Swickey was well over six feet tall. He was clean-shaven and powerful-looking. His hair was cut tight to the sides of his head but the top was a thick crop of dark gray. His face was weathered but strong. He had high cheekbones and deep-set pale blue eyes. He wore a dark pin-striped wool suit with a vest and a string tie. Like Book said, he was heeled. He had a butt-forward pearl-handled Colt in a black leather holster.

The three men with him scooted back from the table a bit. The three were younger than Swickey, but all were tough-looking, and they, too, were heeled. One of them looked familiar. I was thinking back, curious if maybe this was one of the dressers I saw ride by Hal’s Café.

“You Cole?” Swickey said to Virgil.

“I am,” Virgil said.

“I understand you’ve been looking for me,” Swickey said.

“Deputies said it’s you who has come here to Appaloosa, looking for me,” Virgil said.

“I damn sure did,” Swickey said. “Fifty miles in the cold.”

“’Bout?” Virgil said.

“’Bout the bridge,” Swickey said.

Virgil took a few steps toward Swickey.

“What about it?” Virgil said.

“You think I had a hand in it,” Swickey said.

Virgil didn’t say anything.

Swickey moved a little closer to Virgil with his shoulders squared and relaxed.

“Don’t you?” Swickey said.

Virgil remained quiet, letting Swickey show as many cards as he was willing to turn over.

“You think I did it,” Swickey said. “You think I blew the sonofabitch up?”

“Who said it was blown up?” Virgil said.

Swickey looked at Virgil for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“I know it was, for certain,” Swickey said.

“You do it?” Virgil said.

“No,” Swickey said.

“Then what makes you certain?” Virgil said.

Swickey looked to one of the men at the table.

“Me,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Virgil said.

“David Daniels,” he said.

David slid back in his chair a bit more. He was a slender, strong-looking man. He wore a flat-crown wide-brim hat with rawhide straps hanging from its sides that funneled through a.45 casing just below his chin.

“Go on?”

“I saw it,” David said.

“You were there?”

He shook his head.

“Rode up on it,” David said. “We was gathering cattle and come up on it, I seen it.”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“I heard you were looking for me,” Swickey said. “Inquiring about me, so I figured I’d save you the looking and pay you a visit.”

“You didn’t come all the way over here,” Virgil said. “’Cause you wanted to pay me a visit.”

“Not really,” Swickey said.

“Then why?” Virgil said.

“For a few reasons,” Swickey said.

“Which are?” Virgil said.

“You think I had a hand in this?” Swickey said. “Because of Cox?”

“What about him?” Virgil said.

“I don’t like the sonofabitch,” Swickey said. “Everybody knows that.”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“But I damn sure didn’t blow up his bridge because I don’t like him,” Swickey said.

“Who did?” Virgil said.

“Hell,” Swickey said. “I don’t know.”

“What do you know?” Virgil said.

“That bridge was going to bring me prosperity,” Swickey said.

“What kind of prosperity?” Virgil said.

“I’m no goddamn bridge builder,” Swickey said. “But I wanted that bridge, that’s why I even put in a bid on it in the first place. I wanted to see it built.”

“That the prosperity you’re talking about?” Virgil said.

Swickey shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I damn sure could have made money on the contract. Good goddamn money. But that bridge was a goddamn gateway for me.”

“How so?” Virgil said.

“The money I would save on moving my cattle alone is one hell of a reason I wanted more than anyone to see that bridge built. The bridge would have connected the Southern Pacific to my back door, allowing me to move my cattle by rail. It would double my operation.”

“You said a few reasons,” Virgil said. “What’s the other reason?”

“Got my suspicions about who did this,” Swickey said.

“Who?” Virgil said.

Swickey looked to his chair behind him.

“Mind if we sit?” Swickey said, extending his hand to the open chairs at the table. “Goddamn trip, riding in that damn buggy wore my ass out.”

Virgil glanced to me, then the chair, then nodded slightly to Swickey.

Swickey nodded and smiled some. “Knees and back aren’t as friendly as they used to be. Hell, nothing is,” he said, as he sat slowly back in the chair.

Virgil and I moved to the table. Virgil pulled a chair back away from the table a few feet and sat with an empty chair on each side of him. I sat in a chair at a table just next to them.

Swickey looked back to O’Malley behind the bar. He’d been standing the whole time, watching Virgil and Swickey talk as he wiped down a rack of beer mugs.

“Young fella,” Swickey said, as he picked up the coffeepot off the table. “Could we get some more coffee here, please?”

“Certainly,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley came around the corner of the bar. Swickey handed off the pot to him, then turned and faced Virgil with one elbow on the table and one on the back of his chair.

“There’s a good number of cow-calf operations over here on this side of the bridge that goddamn sure didn’t want to see that bridge built.”

“There one in particular?” Virgil said.

“There are a few, I’d suspect. But considering another aspect of all this, Eddie Winslow here,” Swickey said, looking to the man sitting just to the right of him, “has other information I feel is something you will want to hear.”

“What’s that?” Virgil said.

“Eddie had some bad dealings with someone he thinks had a hand in this,” Swickey said.

“Who?” Virgil said.

“Cotters,” Eddie said. “Two fellas, name Cotter.”

Virgil looked and me and shook his head a little.

“What sort of bad dealings?” Virgil said.

Eddie Winslow wasn’t a big fella, but he looked to be as tough as they come. He was an angular, rawboned cowboy with a dark complexion and steely eyes.

“Tell him, Eddie,” Swickey said.

Eddie swiveled in his chair a little, facing Virgil, and placed his strong hands on the table in front of him.

“Me and my partner, Jim Lee, we was working for an outfit up on the north fork of the Red,” Eddie said. “Things petered out for us, and we come down this way. Jim was from this part of the country. We hired on with an outfit between Yaqui and here, pretty good-size outfit.”