Appaloosa / Resolution / Brimstone / Blue-Eyed Devil

by Robert B. Parker

  “You shot three of my hands,” Bragg said.

  He wasn’t looking at Cole when he said it. He was carefully pouring more whiskey into his near-empty glass.

  “Matter of fact,” Cole said, “I only shot two. Hitch shot the other one.”

  I smiled and shrugged.

  “Point is,” Bragg said, “I can’t keep having my hands come in here and you boys shooting them.”

  “I can see how you’d feel that way,” Cole said.

  “So we need to make an arrangement,” Bragg said.

  “We do.”

  Bragg smiled slightly and nodded. Everyone was looking at Cole and Bragg. While they were looking, I picked my shotgun up off the floor under my table and held it in my lap just below the tabletop.

  “You have a suggestion, Marshal?”

  “There’s a set of town bylaws posted right outside the door of this here very saloon,” Cole said. “Your boys do like the bylaws say, and everything will be muy bueno.”

  Bragg’s face pinched a little.

  “And if they don’t?” he said.

  “Then I arrest them.”

  “And if they don’t go along?”

  “I shoot them.”

  Cole smiled sort of happily at Bragg. He nodded toward me.

  “Or Everett does.”

  I had moved the shotgun onto the tabletop. As Bragg looked over at me, I cocked it.

  “That’s your idea of an arrangement?” Bragg said after a moment.

  “The law is all the arrangement there is,” Cole said.

  “Your law,” Bragg said.

  “Same thing,” Cole said.

  The men along the bar were looking at Bragg and looking at the shotgun. Bragg sat silently for a moment, looking at Cole. Deep in thought, maybe.

  Then he said, “This town belongs to me. I was here first.”

  “Can’t file no claim on a town, Bragg.”

  “I was here first.”

  Cole didn’t say anything. He sat perfectly still with his hands relaxed on the top of the table.

  Leaning forward toward him, Bragg said, “I got near thirty hands, Cole.”

  “So far,” Cole said.

  “You proposin’ to kill us all?”

  “That’d be up to you boys,” Cole said.

  “Maybe you ain’t good enough,” Bragg said.

  I could see it in the way he sat, in the way he held his head and hands. He was trying to decide. Could he beat Cole? Should he try?

  “Don’t be so sure you’re quicker than me,” Bragg said.

  He was trying to talk himself into it.

  “So far I been quick enough,” Cole said.

  Bragg was silent for a moment. Then I could see him give up. He stood carefully with his hands apart and flat on the tabletop.

  “This ain’t the time,” he said.

  “Um-hm.”

  “Don’t mean there won’t be a time,” Bragg said.

  “I see you are heeled and your boys there are heeled. I know you haven’t had a chance to read the bylaws yet, so I’m gonna let it pass. But the bylaws say that it’s illegal to carry guns inside town limits, so next time I’ll have to disarm you and lock you up for a bit.”

  Bragg’s body stiffened. His shoulders seemed to hunch. He opened his mouth and closed it and stood for another moment. Then he turned without a word and walked out of the saloon. His ranch hands straggled after him.

  6

  The woman got off the train in the morning carrying a big carpetbag, and walked slowly up the main street and into Café Paris, where Cole and I were having breakfast. I’d never been to Paris, but I’d read about it, and I was pretty sure there were no cafés there like this one. One of the Chinamen who cooked there kept some chickens, so now and then they had some eggs on the menu. But today, like a lot of days, we were eating pinto beans and fried salt pork along with coffee and some sourdough biscuits. The biscuits were pretty tasty. The woman sat at a table near us and looked at the menu for a long time and finally ordered coffee and a biscuit.

  “No sell,” the Chinaboy said.

  “But they’re on the menu,” she said.

  “With breakfast.”

  “But all I want is a biscuit.”

  “No sell.”

  Cole was wiping his plate with half a biscuit.

  Without looking up, he said, “Chin, sell her a biscuit.”

  The Chinaboy looked at Cole for a moment, outraged at the impropriety of it.

  “Boss say . . .”

  “Sell her a biscuit,” Cole said again and looked up from his plate. The Chinaboy looked quickly away from Cole and went and brought the woman coffee and two biscuits on a plate. He added a pitcher of sorghum, to show that there was no ill will. The woman gave him twenty-five cents and looked across at Cole.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Cole smiled at her.

  “It was my pleasure,” he said.

  She was a little travel-worn, but still good-looking, with a strong young body that her dress didn’t hide. I could see her looking at the star on Cole’s chest.

  “Are you the sheriff here?” she said.

  “City marshal,” Cole said. “Virgil Cole. Big blond fella here is my deputy, Everett Hitch.”

  “How do you do,” she said. “Could you direct me to a clean, inexpensive hotel?”

  “We only got one,” Cole said.

  “Is it expensive?”

  “Probably more than it should be, there being no other choices.”

  “I only have a dollar,” she said.

  Cole nodded.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Mrs. French,” she said. “Allison French.”

  “You have a husband, Mrs. French.”

  “He died.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Cole said. “You do any kind of work.”

  “I play the organ,” she said. “And the piano.”

  “You’re not a whore.”

  “Don’t be crude,” she said. “No, I am not what you said.”

  “No need fluffing your feathers about it,” Cole said. “Don’t see a lot of single women here that ain’t whores.”

  “Well, I’m one.”

  “Sprightly thing,” Cole said to me.

  I nodded. Cole was always improving himself, reading books, making lists of words, which he usually misused slightly.

  “Will the hotel let me stay for a dollar?” Mrs. French said.

  Cole grinned.

  “For as long as you’d like, Mrs. French.”

  She frowned.

  “How can that be?” she said.

  “Might hire you to play the piano, too,” Cole said. “You think so, Everett?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “When you finish your breakfast,” Cole said, “Everett here will escort you down and help you get settled.”

  “Be my pleasure,” I said.

  She finished her biscuit and slipped the other one into her carpetbag. Then she smiled and stood.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Cole, for your kindness.”

  “No trouble at all, Mrs. French,” he said. “Everett, you will speak with Mr. Raines.”

  “I will.”

  Cole stood. Like all his movements, he seemed to go from sitting to standing without effort.

  “Good,” Cole said. “I hope to see you again, Mrs. French.”

  “Yes, Mr. Cole, that would be nice.”

  I picked up her carpetbag, and we walked down Main Street toward the hotel.

  “You have freckles,” Mrs. French said. “Sandy hair and freckles.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I think that’s so cute in a man.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  I was more aware than I had been of the way her body moved under her skirts.

  “How can Mr. Cole be so sure that they will give me a room,” she said as we walked along the plank sidewalk.

  I smiled. “Because I’m going to tell the man who o
wns the place that Mr. Cole wants them to.”

  “Does Mr. Cole always get what he wants?” she said.

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  7

  Mrs. French played the piano very badly, but she played loud, and she was pretty and she smiled nice and wore dresses with a low neck and generated considerable heat and mostly nobody noticed. During her break she came over and sat at a table with me. I was drinking coffee.

  I said, “Care for a drink, Mrs. French?”

  “No, but I’ll have some coffee with you,” she said. “And, please, call me Allie.”

  I nodded at Tilda and she came over with coffee for Allie, and a second cup for me.

  “Have you known Mr. Cole for long, Mr. Hitch?”

  “Call me Everett, and I’m pretty sure you should call Mr. Cole Virgil.”

  She smiled and looked down. The gesture looked practiced. Probably was.

  “Have you known Virgil long, Everett?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And have you and he always been marshals here?”

  “No. We just arrived couple weeks ago,” I said.

  “Where were you before?”

  “We been all over out here,” I said. “Virgil gets hired to settle things down in towns that need settling, and I go with him, and after the town gets settled, then we move on and find another town that needs settling.”

  “Are you what they call ‘town tamers’?” she said.

  “If you read those dime novels.”

  “What do you call yourselves?” she said.

  “Don’t know as we ever have,” I said.

  “Do you kill people?”

  “Now and then,” I said.

  “Many?”

  Her eyes were up now and on me. It was always about the killing. I’d met a lot of women who were fascinated with the killing. They were horrified, too, but it was more than that.

  “A few,” I said.

  “And Virgil?”

  “More than a few,” I said.

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s like driving a nail,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Driving a nail, splitting firewood. It’s work. It’s quick.”

  “No more than that?”

  “Not after you’ve done it a couple times.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Well, it’s kind of clean and complete,” I said. “You got him, he didn’t get you.”

  “But, if you feel that way,” she was frowning, thinking about it, interested, “what’s to prevent you from just killing anyone you feel like?”

  “The law,” I said. “Virgil always says, people obey the law, you don’t have a reason to kill them.”

  “Any law?”

  “Don’t get to complicating it,” I said.

  “You know which law,” she said.

  “We do.”

  I liked how she was interested. How she hadn’t decided what she thought before we started talking.

  “How about the other people, the people you shoot?”

  “Virgil always posts the laws,” I said. “In any town we work.”

  She drank her coffee, looking at me while she did.

  “What if they kill you?”

  “Hard thing to plan for,” I said.

  “Do you think about it?”

  “Try not to,” I said.

  Neither of us said anything for a while. Tilda came over and poured us more coffee.

  “I guess I disapprove,” Allie said.

  I nodded.

  “But I know I don’t know enough about it, really,” she said. “You seem like a nice man, and so does Mr. Cole, Virgil.”

  “I’m pretty nice,” I said. “I’m not so sure ’bout Virgil.”

  “Are either of you married?”

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “And, Mr. . . . Virgil?”

  “Not that I know about.”

  “But you’re his closest friend—wouldn’t you know?”

  “Virgil don’t tell you much,” I said.

  “Really? He seemed so talkative in the restaurant,” Allie said.

  “Oh, he’s talkative. Talks a lot of the time. He just don’t tell you much.”

  “Well,” she said. “I’m going to ask him.”

  8

  Appaloosa sat in a short valley. There were hills east and west, allowing the wind to funnel in from the north and rip through the town, swirling dust as high as the rooftops. From where Cole and I sat, drinking coffee on the front porch of the jail on a nice Sunday morning, we could see the valley rim to the west. Along the rim, two riders moved in slow silhouette.

  “So,” Cole said, “you been talking with Mrs. French.”

  “I have, Virgil.”

  The riders on the rim paused and sat motionless, facing the town. It was a little far to see exactly who they were.

  “What’s she like to talk about?” Cole said.

  “She was asking me a lot about you, Virgil.”

  “She was. Was she asking in a liking way?”

  “Wanted to know if you were married,” I said.

  On the rim of the western slope, one of the horses nosed the flank of the other.

  “She did, did she. By God. What’d you tell her.”

  “Said I didn’t know.”

  “Well, hell, Everett,” Cole said. “You see a wife around here?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then why the hell you tell her you didn’t know.”

  “Might have a wife in Silver City,” I said. “Or Nogales, or Bisbee.”

  “Had an Apache woman, lived with me once. Kinda like a wife, I guess. But there was never any words spoke over us or anything, and one day when I come home, she was gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You ever look for her?”

  “I was going to,” Cole said. “But then I got a job up in Durango, and I went up there. Never did know where she went. Back to the tribe, is most probable.”

  The horsemen on the hill pulled their horses around and started off again, south, at a slow walk. One of them had rolled a cigarette, and even though they were a piece off, I could smell the tobacco.

  “Well, Allie says she’s going to ask you, so you might want to have an answer ready.”

  He looked at me and frowned a little.

  “She’s going to ask me if I been married?”

  “I think she’s more interested in if you are presently married.”

  “Hell, no, I’m not presently married.”

  “She’ll be pleased,” I said.

  Cole nodded. He was looking at the horsemen on the rim.

  “Been there since dawn,” Cole said.

  “The riders?”

  “Yep. Riding back and forth, looking at the town. There’s two on the hill east of us.”

  “Whaddya think?” I said.

  “I think Mrs. French might become exclusively interesting,” Cole said.

  “Whaddya think about the men in the hills?” I said.

  “I think you and me might want to ride up and see what they’re doing up there.”

  “Can I finish my coffee first?”

  “You surely may,” Cole said.

  9

  Cole and I fell in on each side of one of the ridge riders. The sun was behind us and made our three shadows stretch out long on the shaley trail.

  “Howdy,” Cole said to the rider.

  Without looking at either of us, the rider said, “The town don’t come out this far, Marshal.”

  “By God,” Cole said, “I believe you’re right. I believe it ends just down there at the foot of the hill where that little wash runs.”

  “So up here,” the rider said, “you’re just another cowboy with a gun.”

  “You think that’s right, Everett,” Cole said.

  “I think no matter where you are, Cole, that you ain’t just another cowboy with a gun.”

  “That’d be
my thought,” Cole said. “So what are you doing riding round and round up here.”

  “We ain’t doing nothing wrong,” the rider said. “And you ain’t got no jurdiction up here.”

  “ ‘Jurdiction’?” Cole said and looked at me.

  “I believe he means jurisdiction,” I said.

  “I believe he does. And he’s, by God, right about it.”

  Cole smiled at the rider.

  “So what are you doing riding round and round up here?”

  The rider smirked a little.

  “Just keepin’ an eye on things.”

  “On the town?” Cole said.

  “Yeah.”

  “For who?”

  The rider shrugged. With an easy movement, Cole pulled the big Colt from its holster and hit the rider in the face with it. It knocked the rider out of his saddle, and by the time he hit the ground, the gun was back in its holster and Cole was leaning easily with his forearms resting on the horn of his saddle.

  “You fucking broke my teeth,” the rider said, his hands to his face.

  “Colt makes a heavy firearm,” Cole said. “That’s a fact. Who you riding for?”

  The rider’s nose was bleeding, and there was blood on his mouth.

  “Bragg,” he said.

  “And why’s he want you riding round and round?”

  “I don’t know. He just told me to do it. Mr. Bragg don’t tell you why.”

  “Think Bragg’s attempting to frighten us, Everett?” Cole said.

  “Be my guess,” I said.

  “What’s your name?” Cole said to the rider.

  “Dean.”

  “Well, Dean, you may as well head back to Mr. Bragg and report that we ain’t too frightened.”

  “Mr. Bragg ain’t gonna like it that you hit me,” Dean said.

  “I don’t guess that you liked it all that much, yourself, Dean,” Cole said.

  “That’s right.”

  “So you and Mr. Bragg can, ah, co- . . . Everett, what word am I trying for?”

  “Commiserate,” I said.

  “Commiserate,” Cole said. “That’s the word. You and Bragg can commiserate each other.”

  Riding downhill toward town, I said to Cole, “That fella wasn’t actually doing nothing illegal.”

  “He was annoying the hell out me,” Cole said.

  “That’s not illegal, Virgil.”

  “No,” Cole said. “It’s personal.”