“I can’t tell you,” he said.
“Figured you couldn’t,” Virgil said. “What was it you wanted from us?”
“Looked to me this morning, when the balloon was sort of getting ready to go up, that you boys was getting ready to side with Laird.”
“We was going to side with anybody, be Teagarden,” Virgil said. “He helped us out with your Indians.”
Callico stared at Virgil.
“For crissake, Virgil,” he said. “He’s here to kill you.”
“I know,” Virgil said.
Callico stared at Virgil some more. He didn’t get it. I did. We owed Chauncey for the Indians. And he wasn’t here to kill Virgil yet. But I’d been with Virgil a long time. Like so many others before him. Callico had never met anybody like Virgil Cole. No one said anything.
“I think this is going to get pretty bad,” Callico said finally.
“Sounds like it to me,” Virgil said.
“Meanwhile,” he said, “I’m prepared to make you boys special deputies reporting only to me. I’ll give the same deal to your friend Teagarden.”
“Everett?” Virgil said.
“Don’t want to be a special deputy,” I said.
“Me, either,” Virgil said. “Can’t speak for Chauncey, but it don’t seem probable.”
“Will you side with Laird?” Callico said.
“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “You know, Everett?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“He’ll lose,” Callico said. “I got twenty-five men. I’ll close Appaloosa down and run it like conquered territory until the town is mine and knows it.”
“Then what?” Virgil said.
“Then we move on.”
“What happens to Appaloosa?”
“Don’t know,” Callico said. “Won’t care. I won’t be moving on to something worse.”
Callico looked at both of us and shook his head slowly for a while.
“It’s sad, really,” he said finally. “You boys had a chance to get on board something important here, and you’re too dumb to see it.”
“Maybe it ain’t dumb,” Virgil said.
Callico gave a humorless laugh.
“What else could it be.”
“Aw, hell, I dunno,” Virgil said. “Probably dumb.”
He stood. I stood, and we walked down the long office past the palace guard and out the front door.
60
WHEN WE CAME back to Virgil’s house in the late afternoon, Chauncey Teagarden was sipping whiskey on the front porch and watching Allie flirt with him.
“Mr. Teagarden has been entertaining me with tales of New Orleans,” Allie said when we sat down.
“Entertaining fella,” Virgil said, and poured himself a little whiskey.
“He says he knew Mrs. Callico in New Orleans,” Allie said.
“The Countess,” I said.
“Did you know her, too, Everett?”
“Nope, just what Chauncey has told me.”
“Was she really a countess?”
Chauncey glanced at Virgil. Virgil shrugged faintly. And nodded even more faintly.
“Was a whore,” Chauncey said.
“A whore?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Allie said. “Just because you’ve been a whore doesn’t mean you’re always a whore.”
“No,” Chauncey said.
“People can change. They can grow. And they do,” Allie said. “She’s turned into a fine lady.”
“Surely has,” Virgil said. “Also the one that says Laird ran from combat.”
“Amelia?” Chauncey said. “How the hell would she know.”
“Probably don’t,” Virgil said.
“You think she made it up?” Chauncey said.
“I do,” Virgil said.
“You think Amelia Callico is telling lies about the general?” Allie said.
“Yep.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Get her husband elected mayor,” Virgil said.
“You and Everett gonna have to take a side here ’fore it’s over. Too much shooting gonna be done, and you boys are too good at it not to get pulled in.”
“Callico’s got twenty-five policemen,” I said. “You got how many?”
“Me and Laird’s hands,” Chauncey said.
“How many gun hands?”
“Me.”
“What do you think, Everett?”
“Never liked Callico,” I said.
“Hard to like,” Virgil said.
“Pony’s in Buffalo Springs,” I said. “I could ride down and get him.”
“That’d be three of you,” Chauncey said. “And me makes all we need.”
I looked at Virgil. He nodded.
“I’ll ride on down and get Pony Flores,” I said.
Allie was listening to this as if a new universe was opening up. She poured herself some whiskey and drank it.
“Bring Laurel back, too,” she said. “For a visit.”
“No,” Virgil said. “He’ll bring you down there to stay with Laurel. I don’t want either of you around town for a time.”
“Just like that?” Allie said. “Go gallivanting off with Everett for a two-day trip.”
“You can make it in a day,” Virgil said. “And keep your hands off Everett.”
Allie blushed.
“Virgil,” I said. “You spoil everything.”
61
I LEFT ALLIE to stay with Laurel in the little shed next to the livery corral, where she and Pony lived while he wrangled the livery string and broke an occasional mustang.
“She talk?” I said.
“Some,” Pony said.
“Enough?” I said.
“Yes.”
It was cloudy and gray riding north, but there was no rain.
“She mind you going?” I said.
“When see you, she know why you here,” Pony said.
“She say she understand.”
“Does she?”
“Yes.”
“Wish Allie did,” I said. “She bitched the whole way down here yesterday.”
“Why she bitch?”
I did a high-voiced imitation of Allie.
“ ‘What if he’s killed? What happens to me? This isn’t his fight… Why is he involved at all… If he loved me, he wouldn’t…’ ”
Pony looked at the dark sky.
“Apache man warrior,” he said. “Apache woman proud.”
“I know,” I said.
Pony grinned.
“In land of Blue-Eyed Devil, not so simple,” he said. “Man can’t always be warrior. Man get to be cowboy and store man and saloon man. And man who sit in office. Not warrior, I just man who saddle horse. Pitch hay. Pick up horse shit. But I go with you and Virgil, I warrior.”
“Not everybody wants to be a warrior,” I said.
“No. But nobody want to be pick-up-horse-shit man, either,” Pony said.
“Some people like it ’cause it’s safe, I guess.”
“Life not lived to be safe. Safe make you weak,” Pony said. “Make you slow. Make you tired.”
We pretty much gave the horses their head, keeping them pointed north but letting them pick the trail. Half a day on the trail and it began to rain again. Not too hard but steady. The horses paid no attention. We put on our slickers and buttoned them up and pulled the brims of our hats down and hunched a little forward over the necks of the horses.
“Things turn out the way they heading,” I said, “you ain’t gonna be tired for a good while.”
62
ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Callico declared a state of martial law to exist in Appaloosa, and called off the election.
The office of the chief of police is now the highest authority in Appaloosa, the proclamation read. It was signed Amos A. Callico, chief of police.
“Ain’t martial law supposed to be the Army?” Virgil said.
“Twenty-five policemen in a town this size is an Army,” I said.
“That’s a fact,” Virgil said.
The rain that had been coming down steadily for more than a week was tapering, and as we sat drinking coffee in Café Paris, it had stopped completely.
“Question is,” I said, “what’s the general going to do?”
“Yep.”
“Which,” I said, “will then lead to the question what are we going to do?”