“Tall,” Stringer said.
“Fella in the other cell is Whitfield, the witness.”
“How come he’s in jail?”
“Fears for his life,” Cole said. “So me ’n Everett here are lookin’ after him until we finish with Bragg.”
Stringer nodded slowly. He was a tall, thin man with a big moustache and the sort of leatherish look of a man who had spent a lot of time in the saddle. Whitfield’s cell door was ajar, and Whitfield was sitting on his bunk, reading his Bible, his lips moving slowly as he puzzled it out. Stringer left Bragg and looked in at him.
“You gonna testify?” Stringer asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“If he don’t die a’ fright first,” Bragg said from his cell.
“I’ll testify,” Whitfield said.
Stringer nodded.
“I know you will,” he said.
“Bragg got a lawyer?” Eaton asked.
“Nope.”
“He needs a lawyer,” Eaton said.
He was short and plump with a round face. He didn’t look like he rode horses much.
“Surely does,” Cole said.
“No, I mean we ain’t going to just ride over here and convict him,” Eaton said. “Judge Callison’s a real bear on the law. Got to be a fair trial. He’s got to have a lawyer, and there’s got to be evidence.”
Cole stared at him as if he’d never heard such a thing in his life, which wasn’t true. He probably knew more about trials than Eaton did.
“Hear that, Bragg,” Cole said. “You gotta get you a lawyer.”
“I don’t know no lawyers,” Bragg said.
“There’s a justice of the peace,” I said. “Name of Mueller. Over in Little Springs. I can ride over there, see if he’ll do it.”
“I ain’t paying no damn lawyer to help you hang me,” Bragg said.
“What do we do about that?” I said to Eaton.
“County’ll pay for it,” Eaton said.
“I ain’t talking to no fucking lawyer,” Bragg said.
“Doesn’t matter, Mr. Bragg,” Eaton said. “County’ll give you one. Up to you if you talk or listen.”
“Whyn’t you ride on over there,” Cole said to me.
“We’ll help with Bragg and Whitfield,” Stringer said. “Sooner that JP gets here, the sooner we have the trial. And the sooner I take him down to Yaqui Prison and watch him hanged.”
“You know what he done,” Cole said.
Stringer nodded.
“I know what he done.”
26
I brought Mueller back from Little Springs, and Judge Callison set a trial date in one week, so counsel could prepare a defense. The judge also ordered the deputies to take charge of the prisoner until then. Since there wasn’t no place to take charge of him except where he was, the deputies sort of moved into the marshal’s office, so Cole and me spent more of our time sitting around in the Boston House in the saloon, or watching them doing the finish work on Cole’s house.
We were drinking coffee in the saloon one morning when I saw Cole sit up a little straighter and drop one hand lightly into his lap near his gun’s butt. I looked where he was looking and saw two men who looked like each other leaning on the bar. One of them nodded at Cole. He nodded back. The other one grinned.
“You know them?” I said.
“Shelton brothers,” Cole said.
“Can’t say I know them.”
“ ’Fore you was doing this work,” Cole said.
“They troublesome?” I said.
“Yes.”
“They ain’t packing,” I said. “That I can see.”
“You’ll know when they’re packing,” Cole said.
“Good?”
“Excellent,” Cole said.
“Good as you and me?”
“Might be,” Cole said. “Don’t know that they ain’t.”
“One of ’em shoot better than the other?”
“Can’t say. Ring’s the older brother, on the right. Other one’s name is Mackie.”
“Do look alike,” I said.
“They are alike. And they’re close. Never seen nobody closer. See one, you see ’em both.”
“Fight one?” I said.
Cole nodded.
“Fight ’em both,” he said.
“They do law work?” I said.
“They do gun work,” Cole said.
“So what would they be doing here?”
“Might have something to do with Bragg.”
I looked at the Shelton brothers for a while. Ring had taken his hat off when he had come in, and set it on the bar. He didn’t have much hair, except for a kind of long fringe that looked like it was turning gray. He had a thick neck and longish arms and sloping shoulders that looked strong but not all that wide. His legs were bowed some, and it made him shorter than he might have been otherwise. Mackie had his hat still on. He was taller than Ring, and his legs were straighter. The hair that showed under his hat was sort of reddish. But he had the same thick neck and long arms. There was a bottle of whiskey on the bar between them, and each of them had a glass. Ring picked up the bottle, and he and Mackie came to the table.
“Virgil,” Ring said.
“Ring.”
“You remember my brother,” Ring said.
Virgil nodded.
“Mackie.”
Mackie said, “Virgil.”
“This here is Everett Hitch,” Virgil said.
We all nodded.
“Can we set?” Ring said.
Virgil gestured toward the empty chairs. Ring put the whiskey bottle on the table, and the Shelton brothers sat down.
“Want a taste?” Ring said.
Virgil shook his head and tapped the marshal star on his shirt.
“Still doin’ that,” Ring said.
Virgil nodded.
“Well, we ain’t,” Ring said.
He poured some whiskey into Mackie’s glass and some into his own. He sipped some of his and smiled.
“Good,” he said. “Think it’s corn.”
He looked at me.
“You as good as Virgil with a gun?” he said.
“Never been tested,” I said.
“I hear you been with him for a while.”
“I have.”
“So you seen him work; what would you guess, you and him was to go at it?”
“Never seen no one better than Virgil,” I said.
“But you ain’t saying you’re not as good.”
“I ain’t discussing it, the truth be told,” I said. “How ’bout you?”
“Like you,” Ring said. “Never seen no one better.”
“You ever meet anybody better’n you, Virgil?”
“Guess I haven’t,” Cole said. “I’m still here.”
“Guess that’s true,” Ring said. “How ’bout him?”
He nodded at me.
“He’ll do,” Cole said.
“He as good as us?” Ring said. “Me and Mackie?”
“He’ll do,” Cole said.
I was looking at Ring’s hands. With his thick shoulders and his bowed legs, Ring looked like a cowboy. But his hands on the tabletop were clean and flexible, and the nails were trimmed. I thought they looked like the kind of hands you might see on a painter.
“What are you and Mackie doing in town?” Cole said.
“Everybody got to be somewhere, don’t they, Mackie?”
Mackie nodded. Where his brother had sort of wide eyes that bulged a little, Mackie’s looked heavy-lidded and half open all the time.
“Gonna be here long?” Cole said.
“Can’t say. Heard there was a big trial comin’ up, might want to take that in. I like a good trial,” Ring said. “Mackie, too.”
“Well,” Cole said. “You been in some of my towns before. You know the rules.”
“I surely do,” Ring said. “You know the rules, don’t you, Mackie?”
Mackie had a mouthful of whiskey. He swallowed.
“I know them rules,” he said.
His voice was a kind of hoarse whisper. It sounded as if it was an effort to speak. Across the room, Allie French came in wearing a pink dress and came straight up behind Cole and kissed him on the top of his head, and stood with her arms draped over his shoulders.
“This here is Mrs. French,” Cole said.
They all said hello. Ring and Mackie both looked at her steadily. She looked back at them without flinching. The king’s lady. Let them stare. Cole didn’t like it much. But he hadn’t made any laws about looking at Allie French. He stood.
“Mrs. French and me are going perambuling in a buggy,” he said.
He put his hand on Allie’s arm and turned her, and they walked out of the saloon through the lobby door. As they left, she glanced back over her shoulder at our table.
“Virgil’s woman,” Ring said to me.
“Yep.”
“I’ll be damned,” Ring said.
“Is sort of surprising,” I said.
“I always figured Virgil for whores and squaws.”
“She’s neither one of them,” I said.
“I’ll be damned.”
“You known Virgil for a time?” I said.
“Oh, hell, yes, me, and then when Mackie got old enough, me and Mackie both. Knew him in Wichita. Was with him in Lincoln County. Did some business with him in Bisbee. Up along the Platte.”
“Deputy work?”
“Some.”
“Not deputy work?”
Ring grinned. I noticed he had a couple of teeth gone in front.
“Some,” he said.
He and Mackie both drank some more whiskey. It didn’t seem to affect them.
“After the trial, you gonna hang this fella here?” Ring said.
“Ain’t mine to say.”
“No, course not,” Ring said. “I hope it’s here. Me and Mackie like hangings. Still there ain’t no gallows, and nobody building one. It’s messy if you hang ’em from a rafter or something.”
I nodded. I knew that if he was convicted, they’d take Bragg to Yaqui and hang him in the prison courtyard. But I didn’t see any reason to tell the Sheltons. Keeping quiet never caused me no trouble. I stood.
“Nice meetin’ you boys,” I said.
“Likewise,” Ring said.
Mackie nodded. None of us offered to shake hands. There was no advantage to letting somebody get hold of you.
27
It was the night before the trial. Stringer and his deputies were in the jail with Bragg and Whitfield. Cole and I were walking, one on each side of Allie, to look at the latest developments on the house. Allie had her arm though Cole’s. She showed no sign that anything had gone on there, or anywhere else, between me and her.
“Tell me about those men, Virgil,” she said.
“Shelton brothers?”
“Yes. The ones in the Boston House Saloon.”
“They’re just gunmen,” Cole said.
“But they seem different than other gunmen.”
“They ain’t,” Cole said. “They’re just real good gunmen.”
“No,” she said, “they are different. Even from Mr. Bragg. You treat them different.”
“Known ’em a long time,” Cole said.
“Longer than you’ve known Everett.”
“Yep.”
“Have you and they been friends?”
“Ain’t been enemies.”
“But you don’t act like they’re friends now.”
“Never were friends,” Cole said. “Done some work with them.”
“Shooting work?”
“Yep.”
“Can they shoot as good as you?”
“Ain’t never been put to the test,” Cole said.
“I never seen anyone, Allie,” I said, “good as Virgil with a gun.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Cole said. “Ain’t but one way to know. And knowing ain’t the point.”
“I know, Virgil, I was just trying to answer Allie’s question.”
“Ain’t no answer. Ain’t a question to ask,” Cole said. “Ain’t like we’re racing horses.”
Allie was watching us both, her eyes shifting back and forth between us. She seemed sort of excited. Her eyes were shiny.
“Don’t be careless with them boys, Everett,” Cole said. “They are quick and they hit what they shoot at.”
“One of them more than the other?” I said.
“No.”
“What happened to the younger one’s voice?” Allie said.
“Took a bullet in the throat,” Cole said. “Up in Cheyenne, I believe.”
“Are they going to cause trouble?” Allie said.
Her eyes were even shinier. Her face looked sort of hot. There was a reddish smudge over her cheekbones.
“Might,” Cole said. “Often do.”
“Are you afraid of them?” Allie said.
Her voice sounded a bit scratchy, like she might need to clear her throat. Cole listened to the question and was quiet like he always was when he was thinking about a question. He turned it around in his head, looked at it from all its various sides, and decided.
“No,” he said. “I ain’t.”
28
Cole and I were sitting outside the office with the door open so we could hear if Bragg tried to gnaw through the bars. It was a warm day with no clouds and a bright sun.
“You and Allie going to get married?” I said.
“If she’ll have me,” Cole said.
“I figure you and her building that house together,” I said, “means something.”
Cole nodded.
“Anything happens to me, Everett,” he said, “I’d appreciate you lookin’ out for her.”
“You expecting anything special?” I said.
“This is uncertain kind of work we do,” Cole said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Allie’s better if she’s with someone,” Cole said.
“She needs help,” I said, “I’ll help her.”
“She’s not good bein’ alone,” Cole said.
I nodded. A hawk was circling low over the town, looking for rats maybe, or mice, or ground squirrels, or whatever it could find out back of Café Paris.
“She seems like a pretty strong woman to me, Virgil.”
“She’s stronger with a man,” Cole said.
No matter how much time I’d spent with Cole, he still surprised me. He appeared to understand Allie a lot better than I would have said he could. We both watched the hawk for a time as it wheeled on the low wind currents.
“Shelton brothers bothering you?” I said.
“I’m thinking about ’em,” Cole said.
“You figure they are here because of Bragg?”
“Seems sort of coinciding,” Cole said, “them boys should drift in here just before Bragg’s trial.”
“You think they got hired to bust him out?”
“Might’ve.”
“Or kill Whitfield? They kill Whitfield, there’s no need to bust Bragg out, because we can’t convict him.”
“Deputies took Whitfield over to Fort Beale,” Cole said. “They’ll keep him there till the trial.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Mine.”
“So you did think maybe they was here to kill Whitfield,” I said.
“Couldn’t say they wasn’t.”
“Who’s going to bring him in to testify?”
“Stringer and the other deputies.”
“Sheltons know where Whitfield is?”
“Nobody does, except me, and now you.”
“He testifies, and they’ll convict Bragg,” I said.
“I’d say so.”
“So if the Sheltons are here about Bragg,” I said, “they got to bust him out afterwards.”
“Yep.”
“ ’Course, they may not be here for that,” I said.
“Nope.”
“On the other hand, there’s Mr. Clausewitz.
”
“Yep.”
“So we got to prepare for it.”
Cole nodded.
“We got you and me and four deputies, Virgil,” I said. “Sounds like enough to me.”
Cole tilted his head back against the top of the chair as if he was looking at the sky, except his eyes were closed. He sat like that for a pretty long time.
Then he said, “Four deputies won’t count for much if it happens.”
“They look like pretty good gun hands,” I said. “ ’Specially Stringer.”
“They are pretty good gun hands,” Cole said.
“But not good enough?”
“Everett,” Cole said. “Neither you or me ain’t never been up against nobody like Ring and Mackie Shelton.”
We were both quiet as the hawk swooped and soared on the wind.
“We been up against pretty good,” I said.
Cole shook his head without remark.
“You ain’t sure we can beat them,” I said after a while.
“When it comes right down to her,” Cole said. “No, I ain’t.”
I thought about it.
“Well,” I said after a time. “It’s not like you ever know for sure, before the shooting starts.”
“So this time won’t be much different,” Cole said.
“Be different if we lose,” I said.
“Won’t matter to us,” Cole said. “ ’Cept for Allie.”
29
Whitfield testified, with the bar closed in the Boston House Saloon, and Cole beside him, and me in a lookout chair with a shotgun, and two country deputies with Winchesters at the saloon doors. He stood up, and Eaton swore him in, and the judge asked him what he seen when Jack Bell was shot, and Whitfield looked right at Bragg and said Bragg done it. The tables had been pushed to the walls for the trial, and the chairs had been set up in rows. Most of the town was there. The Sheltons sat near the lobby door, in the back.
There was no prosecutor. The judge asked Whitfield questions, and then Mueller, Bragg’s lawyer, cross-examined. You could see his heart wasn’t in it. He knew Bragg was guilty, and he knew that Judge Callison knew it. Whitfield was the only witness against Bragg. Mueller called Bragg’s foreman. Vince said he didn’t see who shot Bell and the deputy, but it wasn’t Bragg. Mueller brought three more of Bragg’s hands to the stand. They all said the same thing. When Mueller brought the fourth, the judge stopped him.
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