Ironhorse
Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch [5]
Parker, Robert B.
Putnam Adult (2013)
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Tags: Virgil Cole Everett Hitch, Robert Knott
Virgil Cole Everett Hitchttt Robert Knottttt
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Itinerant lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch return in a brilliant new addition
to the New York Times-bestselling series.
For years, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch have ridden roughshod over rabble-
rousers and gun hands in troubled towns like Appaloosa, Resolution, and
Brimstone. Now, newly appointed as Territorial Marshalls, they find themselves
traveling by train through the Indian Territories. Their first marshaling duty
starts out as a simple mission to escort Mexican prisoners to the border, but
when the Governor of Texas, his wife and daughters climb aboard with their
bodyguards and $500,000 in tow, their journey suddenly becomes a lot more
complicated.
The problem is Bloody Bob Brandice. He and Virgil have had it out before, an
encounter that left Brandice face-down in the street with two .44 slugs lodged in
him. Now, twelve years later on a night train struggling uphill in a
thunderstorm, Brandice is back — and he's not alone. Cole and Hitch find
themselves in the midst of a heist with a horde of very bad men, two beautiful
young hostages, and a man with a vendetta he's determined to carry out.
NOVELS BY ROBERT B. PARKER
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
THE VIRGIL COLE NOVELS
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa), Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa • Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2013 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN 978-1-101-61716-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
FOR JULIE
Contents
Also by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Ch
apter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Acknowledgments
1
VIRGIL WAS SULLEN. Other than “yep” and “nope,” he hadn’t said much in the last few days. We crossed the Red River and entered the Indian Territories aboard the St. Louis & San Francisco Express out of Paris, Texas. At just past five o’clock in the afternoon, Virgil broke the silence.
“A good pointer don’t run through a covey,” Virgil said.
I tipped my hat back and looked at him. He was gazing out the window, watching a line of thunderclouds spreading across the western skies.
The St. Louis & San Fran Express was a new breed of train. It was the nicest we’d been on since we traveled up from Mexico, with automatic couplers, Westinghouse air brakes, and a powerful Baldwin ten-wheel engine capable of pulling twice as many cars as other locomotives. The fourth and fifth cars back were first-class Pullman sleepers with goose-down beds and leaded-glass transom windows. The coaches were fancy, too, with luminous pressure lamps, mahogany luggage racks, tufted seats, velvet curtains, and silver-plated ashtrays. Virgil and I sat at the back of the last passenger car. Behind us was a walk-through freight car followed by a stock car that carried livestock, including Virgil’s stud and my lazy roan.
After near twenty years doing law work with Virgil Cole, I knew well enough he wasn’t talking about hunting, but I obliged.
“No, a good pointer takes it slow. Moves steady,” I said.
Virgil continued looking out the window and nodded slowly.
“They do, don’t they,” he said.
“They do if they’re trained right.”
Virgil watched the clouds for a moment longer, then looked back to me.
“What was the name of the philosopher we were reading about in the Dallas newspaper the other day?” Virgil thought some, then answered his question: “Peirce?”
“Charles Peirce.”
“Charles. That’s right,” Virgil said. “What was it they called him the father of?”
“Pragmatism . . . He’s a pragmatist.”
“That’s right. Pragmatist . . . Hell, Everett, that’s you, too. You’re a pragmatist.”
“Charles Peirce is a pragmatist,” I said.
“You went to West Point, Everett. You’re educated.”
“About some things.”
Virgil glanced back out the window again.
“You never said nothing.”
“Said nothing about what?”
A dark thundercloud in the far distance flashed a hint of white and silver lightning, and for a brief moment, the western horizon lit up some.
“We’re talking about Allie; this is about Allie?”
“Of course it is.”
“What are you getting at?”
“What I’m getting at is, you might have apprised me not to run through it over a woman who’s got the disposition to do the things she does.”
“Could happen to any man.”
“Not Charlie Peirce.”
Virgil hadn’t talked about Allie since Appaloosa, and his comment took me by surprise. Not so much by the elapsed time since he’d last talked about her, but by the comment itself. Virgil never asked, needed, or took advice from anybody, including me.
“Better to pull up short than to run through it like a pup, you know that, Everett.”
“I do.”
“You never said anything.”
“I did not.”
“Why not?”
“Not my place.”
Virgil narrowed his eyes at me as if he’d eaten something that didn’t taste so good. He focused his attention back out the window.
Virgil Cole was always steady—never rattled, never bothered, and incapable of confusion—but at the moment, something was sitting sideways with him.
He shook his head a little.
“I love that woman,” Virgil said.
2
AFTER OUR SHOOT-OUT with Sheriff Amos Callico and his clan in Appaloosa, Virgil was appointed territory marshal, and I was appointed his deputy marshal. The position was better suited for Virgil and me. It was better than being town sheriffs or city police. The job didn’t restrict us to one town. Our duties were to oversee everything within our territorial jurisdiction.
On the third day after our new commission, we got orders to carry out the assignment we were on.
Before we departed on this mission, Virgil selected Chauncey Teagarden and Pony Flores as interim deputies of Appaloosa. Chauncey and Pony were good gunmen. They had helped us in the altercation with Sheriff Callico and proved to be trusted allies.
Our job was to collect two Mexican Wall Street con artists and deliver them to Mexican authorities in Nuevo Laredo. The job was a simple matter of transporting top-priority criminals. This was not something Virgil and I were accustomed to doing, but it was part of our new marshaling duties, and we did just that, transported criminals.
Though there was a considerable amount of train travel involved, the journey was less than formidable, and Virgil and I got along with our prisoners.
Virgil figured any man who could make money from people who stole the money in the first place couldn’t be all bad.
The Mexicans spoke good English, were polite, and knew nothing about firearms. We played cards and even shared a bit of whiskey.
Virgil intended to ride horseback on the return to Appaloosa, seeing the country, as he preferred to see it, from the view of the saddle, but a telegram he received the day we dropped off our prisoners to the federales in Nuevo Laredo changed our plans.
I was not privy to the details regarding the telegram or who it was even from, but I figured the content of the telegram wasn’t good, and it had everything to do with Allison French. The devil is always in the details, or, better put, the devil is in Allison French.
We had barely made it to the train station in Nuevo Laredo before we received word our prisoners had been placed in front of a firing squad and shot. Mexicans have a swift way of dealing with other Mexicans.
It had been four full days on the rail before we were close to getting out of Texas. We had traveled up through San Antonio and Austin City, crossed the Brazos, changed to the Texas Pacific, and stopped for a spell in Dallas. There, we got a big T-bone dinner near the Trinity River, walked the horses a good bit, and hoteled for the evening. In the morning, we got a plateful of food at a Hungarian café near the depot and boarded the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas line heading north into Indian territory.
We had been within roping distance of the Chickasaw Nation and were leaving Texas behind before we got detoured just south of the Red River. The MK&T track running north from Sherman was under repair, so we had to catch the Pacific Transc
ontinental line, a sixty-mile jaunt east to Paris, Texas. We made a final stop in Paris. It took a while to make the changeover there, so I walked the horses again before we transferred to the St. Louis & San Fran Express and headed back north.
—
Currently, the Express was struggling a bit up a steep grade.
Virgil slid a cigar from his breast pocket, bit off the tip and spat it out the window. He fished out a match, dragged the tip of it on the iron frame of the seat in front of him, and lit the cigar. After he got it going good, he repeated what he’d previously said.
“I do,” he said. “I love her.”
“Except for the unfortunate stint of whoring, you or me have killed all the men she has been with,” I said encouragingly.
“Got no guarantee,” Virgil said.
I thought about that for a moment.
“No,” I said. “I suppose you’re right about that.”
Virgil shook his head slightly and turned, looking out the window.
“Been enough, though,” Virgil said.
“There has.”
“Can’t say there might not be more.”
“No, we can’t.”
Virgil got quiet. After a moment or two of silence I leaned forward a bit, looking at him.
“That what this is about?”
Virgil looked at me.
“You thinking she’s fucking Chauncey Teagarden?” I said.
3
VIRGIL DIDN’T ANSWER my question. He focused on the cigar in his hand and rolled it back and forth between his fingers and thumb. Then he looked out the window at the rocky terrain passing by.
Besides the rail we were riding—the St. Louis & San Fran—the Atchison/Topeka, Santa Fe/Burlington, Rock Island & Pacific, and the MK&T railways connected all the Five Civilized Tribes that made up the majority of the territories: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. The sixty-mile detour east had us crossing the river and entering the Indian Territories into the Choctaw Nation, as opposed to the Chickasaw Nation. Other than the additional sixty miles of travel, the only real notable difference for us taking the St. Louis instead of the MK&T and entering the Choctaw Nation was the wooded and rough terrain ahead. The rail leaving Texas and heading north was a treacherous winding rise up, up, and up, following the swift waters of the Kiamichi River.
“We’ve been gone a good while,” Virgil said.
“We have.”
“Just how long have we been gone?”
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