“You ever meet anybody better’n you, Virgil?”
“Guess I haven’t,” Cole said. “I’m still here.”
“Guess that’s true,” Ring said. “How ’bout him?”
He nodded at me.
“He’ll do,” Cole said.
“He as good as us?” Ring said. “Me and Mackie?”
“He’ll do,” Cole said.
I was looking at Ring’s hands. With his thick shoulders and his bowed legs, Ring looked like a cowboy. But his hands on the tabletop were clean and flexible, and the nails were trimmed. I thought they looked like the kind of hands you might see on a painter.
“What are you and Mackie doing in town?” Cole said.
“Everybody got to be somewhere, don’t they, Mackie?”
Mackie nodded. Where his brother had sort of wide eyes that bulged a little, Mackie’s looked heavy-lidded and half open all the time.
“Gonna be here long?” Cole said.
“Can’t say. Heard there was a big trial comin’ up, might want to take that in. I like a good trial,” Ring said. “Mackie, too.”
“Well,” Cole said. “You been in some of my towns before. You know the rules.”
“I surely do,” Ring said. “You know the rules, don’t you, Mackie?”
Mackie had a mouthful of whiskey. He swallowed.
“I know them rules,” he said.
His voice was a kind of hoarse whisper. It sounded as if it was an effort to speak. Across the room, Allie French came in wearing a pink dress and came straight up behind Cole and kissed him on the top of his head, and stood with her arms draped over his shoulders.
“This here is Mrs. French,” Cole said.
They all said hello. Ring and Mackie both looked at her steadily. She looked back at them without flinching. The king’s lady. Let them stare. Cole didn’t like it much. But he hadn’t made any laws about looking at Allie French. He stood.
“Mrs. French and me are going perambuling in a buggy,” he said.
He put his hand on Allie’s arm and turned her, and they walked out of the saloon through the lobby door. As they left, she glanced back over her shoulder at our table.
“Virgil’s woman,” Ring said to me.
“Yep.”
“I’ll be damned,” Ring said.
“Is sort of surprising,” I said.
“I always figured Virgil for whores and squaws.”
“She’s neither one of them,” I said.
“I’ll be damned.”
“You known Virgil for a time?” I said.
“Oh, hell, yes, me, and then when Mackie got old enough, me and Mackie both. Knew him in Wichita. Was with him in Lincoln County. Did some business with him in Bisbee. Up along the Platte.”
“Deputy work?”
“Some.”
“Not deputy work?”
Ring grinned. I noticed he had a couple of teeth gone in front.
“Some,” he said.
He and Mackie both drank some more whiskey. It didn’t seem to affect them.
“After the trial, you gonna hang this fella here?” Ring said.
“Ain’t mine to say.”
“No, course not,” Ring said. “I hope it’s here. Me and Mackie like hangings. Still there ain’t no gallows, and nobody building one. It’s messy if you hang ’em from a rafter or something.”
I nodded. I knew that if he was convicted, they’d take Bragg to Yaqui and hang him in the prison courtyard. But I didn’t see any reason to tell the Sheltons. Keeping quiet never caused me no trouble. I stood.
“Nice meetin’ you boys,” I said.
“Likewise,” Ring said.
Mackie nodded. None of us offered to shake hands. There was no advantage to letting somebody get hold of you.
It was the night before the trial. Stringer and his deputies were in the jail with Bragg and Whitfield. Cole and I were walking, one on each side of Allie, to look at the latest developments on the house. Allie had her arm though Cole’s. She showed no sign that anything had gone on there, or anywhere else, between me and her.
“Tell me about those men, Virgil,” she said.
“Shelton brothers?”
“Yes. The ones in the Boston House Saloon.”
“They’re just gunmen,” Cole said.
“But they seem different than other gunmen.”
“They ain’t,” Cole said. “They’re just real good gunmen.”
“No,” she said, “they are different. Even from Mr. Bragg. You treat them different.”
“Known ’em a long time,” Cole said.
“Longer than you’ve known Everett.”
“Yep.”
“Have you and they been friends?”
“Ain’t been enemies.”
“But you don’t act like they’re friends now.”
“Never were friends,” Cole said. “Done some work with them.”
“Shooting work?”
“Yep.”
“Can they shoot as good as you?”
“Ain’t never been put to the test,” Cole said.
“I never seen anyone, Allie,” I said, “good as Virgil with a gun.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Cole said. “Ain’t but one way to know. And knowing ain’t the point.”
“I know, Virgil, I was just trying to answer Allie’s question.”
“Ain’t no answer. Ain’t a question to ask,” Cole said. “Ain’t like we’re racing horses.”
Allie was watching us both, her eyes shifting back and forth between us. She seemed sort of excited. Her eyes were shiny.
“Don’t be careless with them boys, Everett,” Cole said. “They are quick and they hit what they shoot at.”
“One of them more than the other?” I said.
“No.”
“What happened to the younger one’s voice?” Allie said.
“Took a bullet in the throat,” Cole said. “Up in Cheyenne, I believe.”
“Are they going to cause trouble?” Allie said.
Her eyes were even shinier. Her face looked sort of hot. There was a reddish smudge over her cheekbones.
“Might,” Cole said. “Often do.”
“Are you afraid of them?” Allie said.
Her voice sounded a bit scratchy, like she might need to clear her throat. Cole listened to the question and was quiet like he always was when he was thinking about a question. He turned it around in his head, looked at it from all its various sides, and decided.
“No,” he said. “I ain’t.”
Cole and I were sitting outside the office with the door open so we could hear if Bragg tried to gnaw through the bars. It was a warm day with no clouds and a bright sun.
“You and Allie going to get married?” I said.
“If she’ll have me,” Cole said.
“I figure you and her building that house together,” I said, “means something.”
Cole nodded.
“Anything happens to me, Everett,” he said, “I’d appreciate you lookin’ out for her.”
“You expecting anything special?” I said.
“This is uncertain kind of work we do,” Cole said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Allie’s better if she’s with someone,” Cole said.
“She needs help,” I said, “I’ll help her.”
“She’s not good bein’ alone,” Cole said.
I nodded. A hawk was circling low over the town, looking for rats maybe, or mice, or ground squirrels, or whatever it could find out back of Cafe Paris.
“She seems like a pretty strong woman to me, Virgil.”
“She’s stronger with a man,” Cole said.
No matter how much time I’d spent with Cole, he still surprised me. He appeared to understand Allie a lot better than I would have said he could. We both watched the hawk for a time as it wheeled on the low wind currents.
“Shelton brothers bothering you?” I said.
“I’m thinking about ’em,” Cole said.
“You figure they are here because of Bragg?”
“Seems sort of coinciding,” Cole said, “them boys should drift in here just before Bragg’s trial.”
“You think they got hired to bust him out?”
“Might’ve.”
“Or kill Whitfield? They kill Whitfield, there’s no need to bust Bragg out, because we can’t convict him.”
“Deputies took Whitfield over to Fort Beale,” Cole said. “They’ll keep him there till the trial.”
“Whose idea was that?”
