Роберт Паркер - The Bridge

I looked about the room. It hadn’t changed too much. I walked between the tables. I looked through the doors into the lobby and thought about the day Virgil and I first arrived in Appaloosa and signed up as peacekeepers on the landing by the front windows. I turned back, remembering how within minutes of assuming our roles we had walked into this room and Virgil shot two of Randall Bragg’s hands right where I was standing.

Bragg, I thought. That sonofabitch. I hadn’t thought about Randall Bragg in a long while. I turned and looked to the piano in the corner. I walked over to it and pressed a key.

Bragg. I slapped him down right here, called him out after the no-good sonofabitch lured Allie and had his way with her. Good riddance. I gave the sonofabitch a chance. I gave him a gun, told him to come out and face me or I’d come back in there and kill him. I gave the sonofabitch an opening. At least that’s how I summed it up, anyway, how I tallied it, how I put it together.

For whatever reason the Boston House Hotel saloon seemed to have a dark cloud hanging over it.

“Not seen much of you since you and Virgil have been back in town,” Wallis said, carrying a tray with two glasses and a bottle of whiskey with a fancy label. “Where you been keeping yourself?”

“Virgil’s had me busy working on his new house.”

“I’ve not seen him in here since you been back this time.”

“He’s had his hands full.”

“I’ll leave it at that,” Wallis said. “I saw the house. It’s looking good.”

“It is,” I said.

I took a seat. Wallis set the two glasses on the table and poured us each a few fingers and took a seat next to me.

“Lot of building going on everywhere these days,” Wallis said. “That train keeps a’comin’ and more people keep getting off of it, and as far as I can tell nobody’s getting on. Town’s getting bigger every goddamn day.”

“Damn sure is,” I said.

“Hell, in the last few years you and Virgil have been away doing your territory marshaling, this place has grown from a small chickenshit town to a burgeoning goddamn city.”

“Little too big for my liking, Wallis,” I said. “I kind of liked it the way it was.”

Wallis nodded.

“Business is good, though,” he said. “Hell, it’s tripled with all the mining expansion north of town and the upstart of cow-calf outfits. Place is six square blocks now, can you believe that?”

“I don’t have a choice,” I said.

“Street lamps, boardinghouses, support businesses on every damn street,” Wallis said. “Mining, construction, cattle. Means employment, though. City’s now chock-full of goddamn cowboys, miners, and migrants from every damn where seeking goddamn promise. Damn near two thousand people now, two thousand. Can you believe that?”

Silently, almost ghostlike, a lovely woman appeared in the doorway.

“Excuse me,” she said.

Her accent was foreign. French, maybe.

Wallis looked at me, then back to the woman.

“Yes?” Wallis said.

She was strikingly beautiful. I knew this must be Madame Leroux, the woman with the ivory complexion I saw looking out the window of the fortune-teller’s trailer when the troupe rode into town.

She stood still with her shoulders relaxed and her chin held high. She glanced around, looking at the room some. She took a sure step forward. Her movement was graceful and self-assured, like that of a poised dancer.

She was willowy and her eyes were bright blue. Her dark hair was wavy, parted in the middle and so long it likely had never been cut. She wore bohemian jewelry and clothing. Long strands of colorful beads and shells draped around her slender neck and large gold hoops dangled from her ears. Her dress was black velvet with lace, and hanging on the edge of her sharp bare shoulders was a long tasseled shawl that glimmered in the dim saloon light.

“I need something strong,” she said.

Wallis looked to me, then back to her.

“I’m sorry?” Wallis said.

“Something intoxicating?” she said.

Wallis glanced at me with a slight frown, then got his heavy body up from the chair and moved to her. He looked out the door past her to the boardwalk as if he were looking for someone else.

“Are you by yourself, ma’am?” Wallis said.

She followed his look behind her.

“As is everyone.”

I don’t think Wallis understood her philosophy, and if he did he didn’t particularly appreciate it.

“Well, it’s late and women moving around this time of night by themselves ain’t normal.”

“Well, I don’t suppose I am particularly normal,” she said coyly as she took a step forward past Wallis and looked about the saloon. “At least as is what has been divulged to me on occasion.”

She had not looked at me, not directly. I watched her and she knew I watched her. She was an assured performer, doing what she did best, and she was good. Aside from the fact she was eccentric and beautiful there was something else arresting about her presence. She possessed a strong self-sureness unseen in most women.

“History,” she said, glancing back to Wallis.

“What?” Wallis said.

“Your saloon,” she said, “has history.”

“Yes, well,” Wallis said, “the saloon is kind of closed up here at the moment.”

“I see. Am I interrupting?”

“Just having a nightcap with my old pal,” Wallis said, nodding to me.

She turned her head slowly and leveled her dancing blue eyes on me for the first time. Her look was penetrating. She was looking into me as if she was seeing inside me three long blocks and to the left.

“Bon ami du soir,” she said.

“Give the lady a drink, Wallis,” I said.

“Oh,” Wallis said. “Certainly. What can I get for you?”

“Would you have anything perhaps curative or therapeutic?”

Wallis put his big fists on his hips.

“Therapeutic?” Wallis said. “Well, I don’t have anything to cure what ails ya and I got no absinthe, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’ve got rum, rye, whiskey, beer, brandy, and—”

“Brandy,” she said.

Wallis looked at me. He nodded and moved off to the bar.

I removed a chair from atop the table and placed it upright.

“Here ya go.”

“ Merci ,” she said.

I caught a drift of her sweet scent as I held out her chair.

She sat and I sat next to her.

She remained looking in my eyes. Her dark eyelashes were thick and long and her eyes were penetrating. They were lively, mysterious, haunting, and extremely curious.

“You’re with the troupe,” I said.

“No.”

“I saw you.”

“I saw you, too,” she said.

Her eyes stayed aimed directly at me like she was trying to shoot her thoughts through me. She placed her hands shoulder length apart on the table.

“I’m not with them,” she said.

“You’re new?”

She nodded, smiling wryly.

“I’m temporary,” she said.

“Seems like the wrong time of year to be traipsing around putting on a show.”

She didn’t say anything.

I just looked at her.

She was staring at me.

I stared back at her and I think she smiled.

“Deputy Marshal Everett Hitch,” I said.

“Oui,” she said. “I know who you are, Deputy Marshal.”

“You do?”

“We’ve met.”

I shook my head.

“We’ve not met,” I said.

“On the contrary,” she said.

“Don’t believe so.”

“Now that I’m seeing you close and clearly, I’m certain,” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Where, a long time ago?”

“Bien,” she said with a shrug. “Perhaps I am mistaken.”