I shook my head.
“I ain’t sure that’s quite right,” I said.
“What do you think’s right?”
“I think she wants to be with the boss stallion,” I said.
“Ain’t but one stallion in a herd,” Cole said.
“At a time,” I said.
Cole smoked his cigar quietly for a time.
“So when I’m around she loves me,” Cole said.
“I think so,” I said.
“But I ain’t around and you are, she loves you.”
“Probably ain’t love,” I said.
“And when neither one of us is around, she loves Ring.”
“Again, I ain’t sure I’d say love.”
“She love me?” Cole said.
“I can’t say that she don’t,” I said. “You?”
Cole’s voice sounded a little hoarse to me. Maybe he was embarrassed. I wasn’t sure. I’d never seen him embarrassed.
“I think she does,” he said.
“You’re the one should know,” I said.
He smoked some more of his cigar, holding the tip up and exhaling past it so he could see the smoke.
“That thing with Ring,” Cole said. “It sticks in my throat, Everett. I can’t seem to swallow it.”
“Sticks in mine, too,” I said.
He puffed his cigar.
“You know she takes a bath every evenin’?” he said. “ ’Fore she goes to bed.”
It was very dark, and I could only see Cole’s face a little in the coal-oil light that came out of the hotel.
“I like bein’ with her,” he said.
“Nothin’ against it,” I said.
“No. I just got to get past the Ring business.”
“Might not be the last time,” I said.
“Be the last time with Ring,” Cole said.
A single horse and rider walked down the street in front of us, the horse’s hooves making a kind of slurred sound in the dirt, the saddle creaking gently, a quiet sound of harness metal.
“Gonna talk with the town marshal tomorrow?” I said.
“Yep. Got no objection to help.”
“And if he’s no help?”
“We done it by ourselves before,” Cole said.
“We’re going up against Ring because of Bragg,” I said.
“Can’t be a lawman and let somebody come take your prisoner,” Cole said.
“Nothin’ personal.”
“Nope. Business.”
“We done pretty good over time, Virgil, ’cause it’s never been personal. Always just a job.”
“It’s always been the law, Everett. It’s got to be the law. People like us got to have the law and got to do it by the law. You understand that, Everett. Otherwise you’re just a damn shooter. Nothin’ to prevent you from killin’ anybody.”
“And that’s how it is this time, too,” I said.
“That’s how it is every time,” Cole said.
41
In the morning, Cole and I walked down to the marshal’s office and found Russell Shelton sitting at a desk in front of the single jail cell, wearing a marshal’s badge.
“Russ,” Cole said.
“Virgil,” Russell said, “Everett.”
“Didn’t know you worked here,” I said.
“It’s family,” Russell said. “Ring ’n me ’n Mackie sorta take turns at it.”
“We’re here looking for our prisoner,” Cole said.
“Got no prisoners here, Virgil.”
Cole nodded.
“I’m guessing you ain’t gonna aid us in apprehending him,” he said, “neither.”
“You really ain’t a marshal here,” Russell said. “You’re only a marshal in Appaloosa.”
“You know where I can find Bragg?”
“He’s with Ring,” Russell said, “and Mackie.”
“And where would they be?” Cole said.
“I got to tell you boys,” Russell said. “I got nothin’ against either one of you. And I got a good feelin’ about how you helped us out with them Kiowas.”
“Where’s Bragg?” Cole said.
“I’m gonna be with Ring and Mackie,” Russell said. “We’re family. We grew up like brothers.”
“Yep. Where are they?”
“Ring says he don’t want this thing to drag on. Him and Mackie and Bragg’ll be at the stockyards at two forty-one today by the depot clock. I’ll be there, too.”
“See you there,” Cole said, and turned and walked out of the office.
I stayed a minute.
“You got them boots for Allie,” I said.
Russell nodded. I reached over the desk and we shook hands.
“Be better you boys went on back to Appaloosa,” Russell said.
“I know,” I said, and followed Cole out of the office.
He was leaning his backside against a hitching rail, looking at the street. The sky was dark with clouds.
“Might as well walk down there, get the lay of the land,” he said.
“Might as well.”
We walked the dirt street toward the stockyards. It was a shabby town, shacks mostly, some tents. Only real buildings were the hotel and the railroad station. Even the bank looked kind of flimsy.
“They could put some people behind some of these shacks,” I said. “Try to pick us off while we’re walking to the yards.”
Cole shook his head.
“Sheltons’ll come straight at us,” he said.
“Bragg?” I said.
“We’ll need to keep an eye out for Bragg,” Cole said.
The stock pens were mostly empty. A couple dozen white-faced steers jostled each other in the pen nearest the station. There were two stockmen leaning on a rail, chewing tobacco and watching them. A windmill turned at the far end of the yards, pumping water into the drinking troughs. Beside it was a weathered, gap-sided feed shed, raw boards nailed up and bleached by sun.
“We’ll be coming from here,” Cole said. “Sheltons’ll be there, by the shed.”
“How do you know,” I said.
“Where I’d be. If they don’t knock us down with the first volley, they can get behind it,” Cole said.
He looked at the sky.
“Sun ain’t gonna be an issue,” he said.
“Probably gonna rain,” I said.
Cole paid no attention.
“They’ll all have Colts,” he said, “and long guns. There’ll be a shotgun, probably Mackie.”
We walked past the stock pens. There was some wind to go with the dark sky. It spun the windmill hard and stirred little dust whirls in front of us as we walked. We stopped at the stock pens. The two stockmen paid us no attention. They kept on talking, staring at the cattle, spitting tobacco juice carefully downwind.
“We come at ’em this way,” Cole said, “we can keep the cattle between us and them until we’re close.”
The wind had picked up. It was whirling the dust now up past eye level, and pushing the tumbleweed along pretty briskly.
“Today be a good day to die?” I said.
“We ain’t gonna die,” Cole said.
“Good to know,” I said.
Cole didn’t say anything. He was looking at everything, walking through the fight as if he had already seen the rehearsal. He stopped.
“We’ll be here when it starts,” he said. “They’ll be there. They’ll be spread out. When it happens, I’ll look for Ring. You look for Mackie. I don’t know how good Russell is, but I do know how good the other two are.”
“Bragg?” I said.
“We shoot him last,” Cole said. “Bragg’s probably a good shooter. Probably killed some people. But I don’t know if he can stand his ground.”
“You ’n me are gonna kill four men,” I said.
“If Bragg stands. Otherwise, three.”
“Well, I guess if we don’t,” I said, “we’ll never know it.”
“Probably not,” Cole said.
“So I guess it
don’t matter too much,” I said.
“Probably doesn’t,” Cole said.
The wind pushed a tumbleweed past us toward the shed. It bounced a little as it moved across the wagon ruts. I could taste rain on the wind, though none had fallen.
“We’ll get to here,” Cole said, “without nobody’s fired, ’cause the cows are in the way. So from here, just past this corner post, we go right at ’em and we go fast. I’ll take Ring first, you look for Mackie. And we’ll see what develops.”
I looked at the clock on the train station steeple. It read 12:23.
“I could use some coffee,” Cole said.
And we walked back toward the hotel, with the wind whipping around us, trying to take our hats.
42
Cole and I were drinking coffee at the hotel. Allie came and sat with us. She didn’t have much to say. She seemed somehow smaller than she usually was.
“We go up against Russell,” I said to Cole, “we’re going up against the law in this town.”
“We’re the law in our town,” Cole said.
Cole held his coffee cup in both hands, his elbows on the table.
“Probably deputize Ring and Mackie.”
“Probably,” Cole said.
We were quiet. Cole sipped his coffee, still with his elbows on the table, still with the cup in both hands. He didn’t look at Allie.
“Makes the law thing a little confusin’,” I said.
Cole nodded and didn’t answer.
“Guess it’s best not to worry about that right now,” I said.
“He took my prisoner. He broke the law in my town,” Cole said.
Allie sat very still, like a child allowed to sit with the adults. Her hands were folded in her lap. She sat straight in her chair, her feet close together. The hotelkeeper’s wife came and poured us some more. Cole had laid his big pocket watch on the table. It showed one o’clock.
“Aren’t either of you afraid?” Allie said.
Cole looked startled.
“Afraid?”
“Yes.” Allie’s voice seemed as small as she did. “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be killed?”
Cole frowned a little and stared out past Allie through the hotel door at the street for a little while.
“I don’t know, Allie,” he said after a while. “I been doing this a long time. Maybe I am. But I guess I don’t think about it much.”
He looked at me.
“You ever think about it, Everett?”
“Sure.”
“You scared?”
“Sure.”
“Probably a good thing,” Cole said. “Makes you a little quicker.”
I nodded.
“I’m scared all the time,” Allie said.
“Of what?” Cole said.
“Everything.”
“Like what?”
“Like being alone, or being with the wrong man, having no money, no place to live. If I don’t have a man, what am I supposed to do?”
“You got an answer for that, Everett?”
“You could play the piano at the Boston House,” I said.
“For the rest of my life?”
“I’ll look out for you,” Cole said.
“For how long?”
“Long as you need.”
“Virgil, you could be dead in an hour.”
Cole shook his head.
“Let’s go back to Appaloosa right now,” Allie said.
“Got to finish this thing up with Ring Shelton,” Cole said.
“There’s four of them.”
Cole shrugged and drank coffee.
“The man who runs the hotel told me that the Shelton brothers were famous gunmen.”
“Got to get things back in balance,” Cole said.
“If you’ll take me back to Appaloosa with you, I’ll love you all my life. I’ll never make you mad. I’ll never do anything you don’t like.”
“That’ll be fine, Allie,” Cole said. “Soon’s Everett and me get things straightened out with Ring.”
“And Mackie,” I said, “and Russell and Bragg.”
“Sure,” Cole said.
“If they kill you, what’ll happen to me?” Allie said.
“Ring’ll look out for you,” Cole said.
Allie put her face in her hands and hunched over the table.
“Oh, God,” she said, and began to cry into her hands. “Oh, my dear God.”
43
At ten minutes past two o’clock, we went up to our rooms and got ready. I put on a jacket so I could use the pockets. I slipped a five-shot, .32, hammerless pocket pistol in the left-hand pocket. I put twenty eight-gauge shells in the right. I wore a Colt .45 on my gun belt. I checked the load in the shotgun. Cole wore two Colts on belts with cartridge loops. The Colt on his left side was butt-forward. He carried a .45 Winchester. He checked both Colts and made sure there was a round in the chamber of the Winchester. He left the Winchester cocked. It was 2:25. We both put on our hats. “Remember,” Cole said. “We walked through this already.”
“It’ll be just the same,” I said. “ ’Cept for them trying to shoot us.”
“I’m hopin’ to shoot them first,” Cole said.
“Me, too.”
“But remember,” Cole said. “Steady’s more important than fast.”
“Virgil,” I said, “you’ve told me that before every fight we ever had.”
“Anything you want to go over?” Cole said.
“Nope.”
Cole nodded and looked at his watch.
“Don’t want to get there too soon,” he said. “Want to have sort of a flow, you understand, some kind of rhythm, like dancing or something. Just walk down there and arrive on time and start shooting without never breaking stride.”
I nodded like I hadn’t heard it before. I could feel the feeling beginning to build. The little hard clutch in my stomach getting tighter, my throat closing so it was hard to swallow. My mouth was dry. I wanted to breathe in more air than I had capacity for. I could feel my heart.
“Okay,” Virgil said. “Here we go.”
The rain that I had tasted earlier had arrived. It was hard and slanted by the wind. The street was muddy with it. I yanked my hat down tighter.
“Distance we’re shooting at,” Cole said, “wind won’t be an issue.”
It was behind us as we walked, which meant at the end of the walk, if it didn’t shift, the rain would be blowing at them.
“Won’t do no harm to keep an eye out for Bragg,” Cole said. “I think he’ll stick with Ring. I don’t think he’s got the stuff to go it alone, but if he does, he’s a certain sure back shooter.”
We passed the bank. There was no one on the street. Everything was buttoned up against the rain. I thought about Allie’s questions.
“You feel it?” I said to Cole.
“Dry mouth? Thing in the stomach? Not enough air?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, I feel it. You don’t feel nothing, there’s not much point in doing a thing.”
“You like the feeling?” I said.
Cole didn’t speak for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to. He, too, had his hat yanked down low over his forehead to keep it on. We slogged through the thickening mud toward the stock pens.
“After,” Cole said.
“And if you didn’t have the feeling before, the feeling after wouldn’t be so good,” I said.
“I guess,” Cole said.
44
They were where Cole said they’d be. Four of them, Bragg closest to the shed. The wind was at our backs, blowing the rain hard at them. The steers huddled together in the pens.
“We pass that corner,” Cole said. “We start shooting and go fast, straight at them.”
I didn’t say anything. My mouth was dry. Most of the shootouts we’d been in had sort of erupted, and you didn’t have much time to think about it. This one had moved forward for days with the formality of a procession. And now here it was, in the blowing
rain.
We turned the corner, and Cole shot Ring Shelton in the chest, and everyone else started shooting at the same time. Something slammed into my left side and tried to knock me down as I cut loose with the eight-gauge. Both barrels. It knocked Mackie Shelton over backward. To my left, Cole was down. Another bullet hit me in my right leg, and I felt it give under me. Cole squirmed sideways in the mud, working the lever on the Winchester. He fired three times, pumping the lever as fast as he fired. Russell staggered and took two steps forward to right himself and raised his Colt and fell face-forward into the mud. I dropped the eight-gauge as I went down and jerked the Colt. Sitting in the mud, I looked for Bragg. He was gone. With Cole on his stomach and me on my backside, we kept our aim on the shed. After a minute or so, we heard the sound of a horse running in the mud, and then, too far to shoot, we saw Bragg ride off.
It was over.
I tried to stand. I couldn’t. One shot had broken some ribs on my left side. The other had got me in the top of the right thigh. The thigh was bleeding steadily. The ribs made it painful to move, but I knew I had to cut down on the bleeding. I took my jacket off, and my shirt, and folded the shirt and got the belt off my pants and made a big, clumsy pressure bandage on the thigh.
“Virgil?” I said.
Cole still lay on his stomach in the mud, his rifle cocked, looking at the men strewn in front of us in the mud.
“Both legs,” he said. “The right one’s broke.”
“Took about a minute,” I said.
“Everybody could shoot,” Cole said.
His voice sounded strained. So did mine. The clerk from the train station came out and looked at us from the edge of the station. The two stockyard hands stood with him. I yelled to them.
“There a doctor in town?”
“Railroad doc,” the clerk shouted. “Lives at the hotel.”
“Get him,” I said.
Hollering made my ribs hurt. So did breathing. The clerk spoke to one of the stock hands, and he set off at a run toward the hotel. I clenched my teeth and let myself fall backward onto the cold mud. The rain came down cold and steady on my face. I felt hot. I breathed as shallowly as I could.
“Virgil?” I said.
“I’m still here,” Virgil said.
“Well,” I said. “Doctor’ll either save us or he won’t.”
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