Appaloosa vcaeh-1

by Robert B. Parker

  And I closed my eyes and let the rain fall on me, and the feel of it began to dwindle and then it was gone and I didn’t know anything else.

  45

  We gave the horses and the mule to the doctor for his fee. He got us wrapped and bandaged and splinted, and supplied us enough laudanum so we could stand to ride the train to Yaqui and take another one to Appaloosa. We used up most of the laudanum by the time we got there. And when we got off the train in Appaloosa, cooked well done on tincture of opium, Cole on crutches and me with a cane, and Allie fluttering around us, I don’t think anyone in Appaloosa felt safer. We was laid up for longer than either of us could stand. Through it, Allie nursed Cole like he was made of hammered gold. And, now and then, she would stop in on me.

  While we were gone, Stringer had come down from the sheriff’s office to fill in, and he stayed while we recuperated.

  Cole was out of pain and could move around on crutches in a few days. There were two ribs broken on my left side, and they took a while. But eventually we were both able to taper off the laudanum and sit outside on the porch at the Boston House and look at whatever was happening in front of us.

  It was a hell of a lot more than the Sheltons could do.

  Stringer came down from the marshal’s office one morning and sat with us for a while.

  “Got a posse up and went back to Chester, but we lost your trail once you left that arroyo.”

  “Figured you would,” Cole said.

  “Get a posse or lose your trail?” Stringer said.

  “Both.”

  Stringer nodded. He got out a cigar, didn’t offer one to either of us, bit off the end, and lit it. When he had it burning right, he leaned back with one foot up on the railing of the porch and his hat tilted forward over his eyes.

  “You know you killed a peace officer, duly appointed and sworn,” Stringer said, “up there in Beauville.”

  “Had to,” Cole said.

  Stringer watched a woman in a big hat walk along on the shady side of the street. He smiled.

  “Sure,” he said.

  We all watched the woman as she paused and looked in the window of the dry goods store past the Silver Spur Saloon. After a moment, she went inside.

  “You killed all three of ’em,” Stringer said.

  “Yep.”

  “I knew you were good, Virgil,” Stringer said. “Everett, too.”

  I was an afterthought.

  “But I’d a said that nobody could beat the Sheltons, two against three.”

  “Four,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Stringer said. “Bragg. What about Bragg?”

  “Can’t chase him all over the country,” Cole said.

  “ ’Course not,” Stringer said. “Kinda funny, ain’t it. You kill three men and get shot half to pieces yourselves to get Bragg back, and you don’t get him back.”

  “That is funny,” I said. “If my ribs didn’t hurt, I’d be laughing every morning.”

  “Ribs take a while,” Stringer said.

  It was a bright, warm day with a few small, high, white clouds and a mild breeze that smelled faintly of grass and sage. The lady in the big hat came out of the dry goods store and headed farther up the street. When she reached the corner, she turned and was out of sight.

  “Sheriff ain’t planning to press matters on you boys about the killings in Beauville, even Russell.”

  “You have anything to do with that?” Cole said.

  “I tole the sheriff how things were.”

  “Kind of you,” Cole said.

  Stringer grinned again.

  “I didn’t want to be the one had to bring you in,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t be too hard right now,” Cole said.

  “Well, it ain’t going to be necessary. You boys going to stick around here when you’re on your feet?”

  I looked at Cole.

  “Sure,” he said. “Got a house here.”

  “Gonna move in with Allie?” Stringer said.

  “I surely am,” Cole said.

  46

  After we healed up, and Cole’s house was finished, I went there to eat supper with him and Allie. It was Allie’s first time having somebody in to eat, and she had a tablecloth out and a full set of good china with only a couple of pieces that didn’t match. We had some soup and some sort of meat pie, and some wine. I didn’t like the wine much, but I drank some to be polite. For dessert, there was dried apple pie, which I liked.

  “Everett,” Allie said. “I don’t think I’ve ever said enough to you about how you rescued me from everyone.”

  “Virgil did most of that,” I said. “I just trailed along.”

  “You did a lot. I’ll never forget you riding out all alone and that Indian coming and touching you and riding off.”

  “It didn’t do me no harm,” I said. “And he got to count coup on me and be a hero.”

  “I never did understand that,” Allie said. “What was all that about? Why didn’t he try to kill you? Why did they all ride off?”

  “He gets close enough to his enemy to touch him, and then ride away, he’s a bigger hero than if he killed me,” I said. “And he didn’t just do it with a coup stick. He done it with his hand. And held it on me. And with the other braves watching. Man’s a great hero now.”

  “And it let ’em off the hook,” Cole said. “They knew there was six men, with a lot of guns, dug in at a good place to defend, plenty of food and water.”

  “So him counting coup on me let them ride off without dishonor,” I said.

  “Oh, God,” Allie said. “Dishonor. Don’t seem to make much difference, Indian or white. Men are so silly.”

  She shook her head.

  “Dishonor!” she said again.

  Cole was quiet, sipping his wine. I could tell he didn’t like it, either. I didn’t know enough about wine to say. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t very good wine.

  “Well, I just wanted to be sure I said thank you proper.”

  “No need,” I said.

  “And,” she said. “I want you to know how embarrassed I am that you saw me… you know… with Ring Shelton.”

  “You did what you had to do,” I said.

  Cole seemed mildly interested.

  “And I’m mortified,” she said, “that you saw me with no clothes on.”

  Christ!

  I looked at Cole. He showed no change of expression.

  “Allie,” I said. “It was a pleasure.”

  “Oh, Everett,” she said, and blushed brightly.

  Cole smiled a little.

  “Well, you started talkin’ about it,” he said.

  “I know,” Allie said. “It’s just that I’m so grateful. I know that you did it for me. Rode all that way. Went through all that danger. For me.”

  “Well, you sure are worth it,” I said.

  “Point of fact,” Cole said, “wasn’t just you. We was after Bragg, too.”

  “Virgil, I know you killed those men because of me.”

  Cole leaned back and looked at me, and then at Allie.

  “We did what we needed to do,” he said finally.

  “And Everett, too. I will always be grateful to you. You didn’t abandon me.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “But, you know, I am the deputy city marshal here, and it was sort of what I was hired to do, to find escaped prisoners, to save kidnapped women. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, go ahead,” Allie said, “the both of you. Be modest. Pretend you were just doing what any lawman would have done. In my heart I know it, and I treasure it. That you did what you did for me.”

  Cole looked at me again. But he didn’t say anything more. I knew what was bothering him. It was bothering me, too. If Allie was right, and we tracked down the Sheltons and killed them because they had mistreated Cole’s girlfriend, then we might be good men. And we might have done the right thing. But we didn’t do it as lawmen. And we hadn’t done the legal thing.

  And where did that leave us?


  47

  Two nights later, I lay in bed in my room at the Boston House with Katie Goode, after we’d done our business, and talked about Allie.

  “Don’t you see what she’s doing?” Katie said.

  “Being nice to her husband’s friend,” I said.

  “Husband? They got married?”

  “I don’t think so. But that’s what they call each other.”

  Katie shrugged.

  “What is it they call it in a war,” she said, “when a general doesn’t use all his troops but holds some out.”

  “The troops are in reserve?”

  “Yes. That’s what I was trying to say. Allie has you in reserve.”

  “Reserve? Reserve for what?”

  “In case Virgil gets killed.”

  “She has me standing by to replace Virgil?”

  “Virgil dies, you replace him. Then you’re the stud horse. That’s why she’s so nice to you. That’s why there’s no more talk of how you molested her that day, at the house before it was finished.”

  “Praise be,” I said.

  “And she reminded you how you saw her naked.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “she did.”

  “That was a kind of flirting, you dumb man.”

  “Right in front of Virgil?”

  Katie smiled. “He’s a dumb man, too.”

  “So why is she so set that everything we did was for her?”

  “Oh, Everett,” Katie said. “You ain’t that stupid.”

  “I ain’t?”

  “ ’Course you ain’t. Just think a minute.”

  I was quiet while I thought about it.

  “Makes her feel important,” I said, after a time.

  “Um-hm,” Katie said.

  “You learn all this stuff being a whore?” I said.

  Katie smiled.

  “I spend my working time with men,” she said. “But my social time is with women.”

  “All women know things like this?” I said.

  “Most of us understand Allie French,” Katie said.

  “What do you all understand?”

  “She ain’t no different,” Katie said, “from any of us working girls. She’s willing to fuck who she got to fuck, so she can get what she needs to get.”

  “How ’bout love?” I said. “Love got anything to do with it?”

  “Out here, love’s pretty hard for a woman,” Katie said. “Mostly it’s the men worry about love. You know how many miners and cowboys told me they loved me just before they, ah, emptied their chamber?”

  “Tell you the truth, Katie,” I said, “I guess I don’t want to know that.”

  “Men maybe can worry ’bout love,” Katie said. “Most women out here got to think ’bout other things.”

  “Ever been in love?” I said.

  Katie laughed.

  “I don’t love you, Everett,” she said. “But you’re as close as I come.”

  “So what do you feel?”

  “I like you,” she said. “You’re not mean. And you got some education. I’m always glad when it’s you that hires me, and I’m always glad when you pay for the night.”

  “You think that’s how Allie feels about Virgil?”

  “I don’t know what she feels,” Katie said. “She probably don’t know how she feels, either. She just knows he’s the top hand, and she’ll stay with him till he ain’t.”

  “Well, what I know is I paid for the night, and I don’t want us wasting time.”

  “Just passing time while you recovered,” Katie said.

  She put her hand under the covers.

  “And I do believe you have,” she said.

  48

  I had a scar across the top of my right thigh that looked like someone had laid a hot poker on there. But it didn’t hurt, and neither did my ribs. Cole was healed up, too, except for a little limp. Stringer went back to Yaqui, and we went back to the marshal’s office.

  One morning I went out to look at the town, got back to the marshal’s office just before lunchtime, and found an aldermen’s meeting going on. Cole was at his desk, smoking a cigar. Abner Raines was standing in front of him. Earl May was sitting on the edge of my desk, and Phil Olson was sitting in my chair. I looked at Cole.

  “Come in, Everett,” Cole said. “Aldermen got something to say.”

  All three of them looked nervous. I looked at Olson, sitting in my chair. He saw me look at him, and got up quickly and moved over to the wall beside the door, and leaned against it. I sat at my desk and put one foot up on the edge, and then the other, to take off my spurs. May stood and went over to stand beside Olson.

  “First of all,” Raines said, “town’s grateful to you, the way you stood up to Bragg.”

  “What you hired us for,” Cole said.

  “Well, we’re not forgetting it,” Raines said. “You arrested him, got him tried and convicted.”

  Nobody said anything. Raines shifted a little on his feet.

  “And I know, we know, that when he escaped, you had to go after him.”

  Cole looked interested but neutral. I wondered what the but would be.

  “And certainly you had to rescue Mrs. French.”

  Cole nodded.

  “And we’re proud of you, both of you, for that as well. And we’re very pleased that you have recovered so well from your wounds.”

  “You boys thinking ’bout giving us a medal or something?” Cole said.

  They didn’t seem too happy, but they all laughed.

  “You used to be a soldier boy, Everett,” Cole said. “You like a nice medal?”

  “Had one,” I said. “Traded it for something in Nogales. Be goddamned, though, if I can recall what.”

  “Guess Everett don’t endear a medal like me,” Cole said.

  No one seemed to know what to say next. It was Olson who finally took the jump.

  “Virgil,” he said, “we all agree with what Abner said, but…”

  There it was.

  “… things change, and we got to talk about that.”

  Cole nodded and looked at me and grinned.

  “No medal?” he said.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  Olson’s fair cheeks had become pink.

  “We hired you and Everett to protect us from Bragg and his outfit,” Olson said. “And you done it so good that he’s gone, and so is his outfit.”

  Cole puffed quietly on his cigar, rolling it in his mouth now and then with his thumb and three fingers, and taking it out occasionally to admire the glowing end of it.

  “And I, we, know you had to go off like you did. But it left the town without any peace officer. We had to get hold of the sheriff’s office and have them send somebody down, and that was pretty costly.”

  “Plus all them bullets we fired off,” Cole said. “I’ll bet they cost a pretty damn penny.”

  “I don’t mean it that way,” Olson said. “We don’t. But we got to try to run the town businesslike, being as we’re the aldermen.”

  Cole didn’t comment. I folded my hands on my stomach and put my right foot back up against the edge of my desk and rocked my chair back, and looked at the ceiling.

  “And you killed a lot of people,” May said.

  It was the first sound he’d made since I came in.

  “Probably had to do it,” he said. “But it makes some of the people in town a little, ah, sort of, ah, uneasy, I guess. One of those men in Beauville was, you know, the town marshal.”

  Cole smoked his cigar and made no comment. The aldermen were all silent. Cole and I were silent. The room was full of silence. Once again, it was Olson who spoke.

  “We were wondering if maybe we don’t need two men in the marshal’s office,” he said.

  “Both or none,” Cole said.

  “We was thinking maybe you’d want to make more money, now that you and Allie have moved in. We was thinking of offering the job to Everett.”

  “Both or none,” I said.

 
Olson buckled.

  “Sure,” he said. “I understand. No offense. We’ll go back home and think on it a little.”

  Cole didn’t say anything. The aldermen looked at each other.

  “Well, we appreciate everything you boys done,” Raines said. “Just want to be sure you know that.”

  The aldermen turned to go.

  “You boys sure Bragg won’t come back?” I said.

  None of them answered. And the subject didn’t come up again.

  49

  Allie and Cole and I rode up into the hills in back of Bragg’s old place, to look for the Appaloosa.

  “I want Allie to see him,” Cole said.

  “I don’t know why, Everett,” Allie said. “It’s not like I’ve never seen a stallion.”

  “That’s for certain,” I said.

  Cole grinned. Allie lowered her eyes.

  “Everett, don’t you talk to me like I’m one of your nighttime ladies.”

  “Hell, Allie, I was just speakin’ well of Virgil.”

  Bragg’s ranch was empty. No stock. No hands. No cook smoke. Stock probably got sold off to pay the Sheltons. Hands had drifted. Things that had started here had gotten people killed. It was sort of hard to remember what they were and how it had spun out. Time had passed. Grass had grown in the empty corral. Some weeds pushed up between the boards on the front porch of the house. The Sheltons were in the ground. Bragg hadn’t been heard from. Cole still had a slight limp, but everything else had healed over.

  “Been a while,” I said to Cole.

  He nodded.

  “Do you think we’ll see the horse soon?” Allie said.

  “Soon,” Cole said.

  We rode up the next hillside above the ranch, slow, so Allie wouldn’t have trouble staying with us. At the top, we sat our horses and looked west. He was there, not very far from where we’d seen him last. He was moving his mares along the crest of the hill, his ears pricked forward, head tossing, sniffing the air. He was keeping his mares in a tight herd, moving around them, nipping at their flanks to keep them close. Occasionally, he would stop and turn and look around him, his head up, trying to find a scent.