Роберт Паркер - The Bridge

“We’ll get this report filed with the DA’s office first thing,” Virgil said. “In the meantime, you boys find someplace to stay where you won’t be expected to stay. Don’t want this brother of his showing up to fuck with you.”

Grant looked to Elliott. His face twisted up. He started to cry. Virgil glanced to me and I followed him out the door.

The rain was still coming down and it seemed that it was getting a little colder. We stood under the overhang for a bit, watching the rain.

“Allie heard when Hal came and told me what went down in front of his café,” Virgil said. “She damn near bawled just thinking about the notion of something happening to you. Said she wouldn’t know what to do without you.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

“She gets scared,” Virgil said, “thinking about what we do.”

“You and me been at this line of work for a long time, Virgil,” I said. “It’s what we do.”

“Is,” Virgil said.

“She’s just never got used to it,” I said.

“No,” Virgil said. “She ain’t.”

“It’s not just gun work,” I said. “Lots of circumstances and incidents can be attributed to not being here on this Earth anymore.”

“The unexpected is always more expectant with gun work, though, Everett, you know that.”

“Is,” I said. “Of course it is.”

We watched the rain for a bit.

“Old Salt was right,” I said.

“’Bout?”

“Weather getting worse before it gets better.”

Virgil nodded and pulled his watch. He flipped open the lid and checked the time.

“Allie was thrilled to know you was okay,” Virgil said. “She was appreciative as well she wouldn’t have to cancel her ladies’ social shindig on account of something bad happening.”

“Appreciative?” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“What shindig?”

“For the traveling troupe,” he said, as he shut the lid on his timepiece and put it back in his pocket. “The mayor’s gonna formally welcome them.”

“Now?”

“’Bout an hour from,” Virgil said.

I thought about that for a moment as I watched the rain pour off the porch roof, making a trench line in the street between the boardwalk and hitch.

“You expected at this shindig?” I said.

“Seeing how you are upright and alive,” Virgil said. “We are.”

“How about we get a beer first?” I said.

“How ’bout it,” Virgil said with a nod.

We walked a bit, listening to the rain on the metal roof covering the boardwalk. We came to Grove’s Place, a lively saloon where cattlemen from the stockyards gathered.

We entered Grove’s and the saloon was more spirited than usual with stockyard hands and cowboys off work because of the nasty conditions.

Virgil and I got us a beer and stood next to a tall table by the window and watched it rain.

“Calm’s over,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“Outlaw racket come back in business today,” I said.

“Did,” Virgil said.

“Weather comes woes,” I said.

We sipped our beer and didn’t say anything for a while.

“This Ballard fella,” I said. “Sounds like he might have a bone or two to pick.”

“Does,” Virgil said. “Don’t seem like he’s going to appreciate you shooting his brother, Bolger, none.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t, either.”

“Might be a good idea if we locate him before he locates you,” Virgil said.

I nodded and we watched the rain for a bit as we sipped our beers.

“Damn monsoon,” I said.

“Happens once and a while,” Virgil said.

A group of young cowhands across the room burst into laughter after one of them told the punch line to a joke.

Virgil looked over to them and smiled a little.

“You notice when the Beauchamp group come into town,” I said, “the good-looking woman sitting in one of the trailers?”

Virgil shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Didn’t.”

“I met her,” I said. “She’s the fortune-teller.”

Virgil looked at me.

I sipped my beer for a moment before I said anything else.

“After I left your place last night, I stopped in and drank some whiskey with Wallis at the Boston House and in she walked.”

Virgil turned his head slightly and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“Goddamn good-looking lady,” I said.

“Good,” Virgil said.

“She told me my life was in danger.”

Virgil leaned his elbow on the tall table and smiled a bit.

“She know you’re a lawman?”

“Does,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“That’d be like telling a farrier he’d get kicked,” Virgil said. “Or a banker would be receiving a large sum of money.”

“True,” I said.

“Same concerns Allie’s got for us,” Virgil said. “More bullets move around us than move around most people.”

“She calls herself Madame Leroux,” I said. “Funny thing was, some of Madame Leroux’s hocus-pocus foretold what I encountered today.”

Virgil looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

“She didn’t get all of it just right,” I said.

Virgil grinned.

“What’d she allow?” he said.

“Said she saw men running, scared,” I said. “That’s what happened when I left Hal’s, those two dandies, Grant and Elliott, came running right by me. Damn near run over me.”

Virgil grinned, wider this time.

“Hell,” Virgil said. “Most men are scared of their own shadow and they run all the time.”

“Something about her,” I said.

“Always something about a woman, Everett,” Virgil said. “Fortune-teller or not.”

“There is,” I said.

“What’d she not get right?” he said.

“She asked me if I knew someone or something of some such named Codder or Cotter.”

“Codder or Cotter?”

“None of those boys involved in the scuffle in front of Hal’s was named Codder or Cotter,” I said.

“Well,” Virgil said with a chuckle. “That’s a goddamn good thing, Everett.”

“It is,” I said. “Be a bit unsettling to think she really knew what she was talking about.”

“Reckon she can’t be right all the time,” Virgil said.

“No,” I said. “Reckon not.”

Virgil smiled again.

“Figure she weren’t completely shy on the hocus-pocus fiddle-faddle, neither,” Virgil said with a smile, “what with them two running an’ all?”

“No,” I said. “Not completely.”

By the time we got over to the town hall in the newly constructed Rains Civic Building on Main Street, the shindig was under way. Virgil and I stood at the back of the large room that served as a courtroom when the judge was in town and a town hall meeting room when community business needed to be discussed.

Appaloosa’s mayor, Ashley Epps, was standing behind the small lectern, speaking to the good-sized crowd that Allie and the ladies’ social had rallied up.

“Considering the weather,” I said, “they got a good turnout, it appears.”

“They do,” Virgil said.

Ashley was a young family man who was fairly new to Appaloosa. Besides being the mayor, he was also the minister of the Baptist church, with ambitions of becoming the territorial governor.

He was small but mighty, a well-spoken man with a genuine Baptist conviction he wore on his shirt cuff. He had a flashy smile, golden skin, and wheat-colored hair.

Behind Ashley was the majority of the Extravaganza troupe. There were about thirty people in all. Most were outfitted in some kind of colorful costume, including the band members with their instruments, and a pair of jugglers dressed like jokers on a deck of cards.

“Colorful lot,” Virgil said.