Cole was silent for a time, looking at Bragg with no expression.
Finally he said, “Not ’less you give me cause.”
Bragg smiled widely.
“That’s very fine,” he said. “I’m coming back to Appaloosa. I needed to clear things up with you first.”
Cole didn’t answer.
Bragg took a tan leather cigar case out of his inside coat pocket. He offered a cigar to Cole and to me. We declined. He took one out for himself and got it lit and puffed on it till it was going good.
“I come into some money,” Bragg said, “and I got plans for coming into more.”
Bragg put out his hand.
“Bygones be bygones?” he said.
Cole ignored him and walked past him into the office. Bragg watched him for a moment. Then he looked at me.
“I’m the right side to be on,” Bragg said. “I’m going to do some things in Appaloosa.”
I shook my head.
Now that he’d been reassured that Cole wouldn’t shoot him dead, Bragg seemed pretty full of himself. He wasn’t a dangerous rancher with a fast gun who hired fast gun hands. Now he was a man of means and position. He looked and talked like a politician. He offered cigars and talked of big plans. He wore a suit with a vest. I didn’t like this Bragg any better than the other one.
“I won’t shake your hand, either,” I said.
Bragg stood and buttoned up his raincoat.
“Things are likely to change in Appaloosa,” Bragg said. “You could benefit from the changes, or you could get left behind.”
He turned up his collar and adjusted his hat and stepped off the front porch into the rain. I watched him as he walked on down the street, trailing the smell of a pretty good cigar behind him.
It wasn’t until the middle of May that I rode up in the early morning to take a look-see at Bragg’s ranch. I could smell the smoke and bacon smell from the cookshack long before I topped the rise and looked down at the place. There were horses in the corral and, as best I could make out, more in the barn. The weeds were gone from the front porch. The place looked somehow clean and busy, although I only saw two hands loafing by the corral, where they had slung their saddles on the top rail. Between the ones in the barn and those in the corral, there were horses for a considerable number of hands. I saw no sign of cattle. The two boys leaning on the fence weren’t dressed for cattle work. I sat my horse for a time, looking down. Some other hands came and went: to and from the privy, in and out of the bunkhouse, back and forth to the cookshack. None of them seemed dressed for herding cows. I got bored looking at them, so I turned my horse and rode back to town.
Cole was drinking coffee in the Boston House Saloon and studying an illustrated book about King Arthur. I stopped for a minute and watched him. He read slowly, like he always did, sometimes forming words silently with his lips, sometimes running his forefinger along under an especially hard sentence.
Without looking up he said, “Come on and set, Everett.”
I did. Tilda came and gave me coffee.
“Bragg’s back into his ranch,” I said.
Cole put the book aside.
“I know.”
“Got quite a number of hands,” I said.
“And no cows,” Cole said.
“You been up there, too,” I said.
“ ’Course I have.”
“What do you think is happening?”
“I know he bought both of Earl May’s saloons.”
“Really?” I said. “What’s Earl going to do.”
“Says he’s going to retire, go live with his daughter in Denver.”
“Maybe we should do that,” I said.
“You got a daughter someplace?” Cole said.
“No.”
“Me, either.”
“Might as well stay here then,” I said. “Where you suppose Bragg’s getting this money?”
“Heard different things,” Cole said. “Fella told me Bragg had a big silver strike in Nevada. ’Nother fella told me that Bragg and some other boys robbed a train in Mexico that was carrying gold.”
“I heard he was down along the Rio Grande with some fellas, stealing cows and horses from Mexico,” I said. “Bringing them back here and selling them to the Army.”
“Hard to get rich doing that,” Cole said.
“But easy to get killed.”
Cole nodded.
“Doesn’t sound like Bragg,” he said.
“Hard work, too,” I said.
Cole grinned.
“Doesn’t sound like Bragg,” he said.
“I heard he won a pile of nuggets from some drunken miner in a poker game in Abilene,” I said. “And I heard he took a fortune off a Wells Fargo stage in Clovis.”
Tilda came by and filled our coffee cups. Cole drank some. Then he grinned.
“Maybe he worked hard and honest for it,” Cole said.
“That’s probably it,” I said.
“What we do know,” Cole said, “is he’s got a big payroll up at that ranch for a lot of riders that so far’s I can see, don’t do nothing.”
“And he bought two saloons,” I said. “Earl get a good price?”
“Seemed happy with it.”
“Any chance Bragg run him off?”
“Don’t think so,” Cole said. “You might ask him.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why do you think he came back here?”
“Got land here,” Cole said.
“Easy enough to sell.”
“He’s got us here, too,” Cole said.
“Think it’s got something to do with us?”
“Might. Bragg was the big dog ’round here till we showed up.”
“You think it’s got something to do with pride?”
“Pride’s a funny thing,” Cole said.
I drank some more coffee and looked at Cole for a time.
“How would you know that?” I said.
Appaloosa had two town meetings every year: one on the first of June, before it got too hot to have a meeting, the other on the first of December, before the real winter hit. The meetings took place in the church at the end of Second Street. They usually lasted all day, and me or Cole always went, to see to it there was no fistfights broke out over ticklish points.
I was there for the June meeting, in the back of the church, by the door, sitting on a saloon lookout chair that was brought in special for the meeting. The aldermen sat in a row up front, beside the pulpit where the pastor stood, moderating the meeting. As always, after the lunch break there was a clean smell of whiskey in the room. While the latecomers were sitting down, Randall Bragg came in and walked alone down the center aisle and sat in the front row. He was dressed in a dark suit. He had a gold watch chain across his vest. He took his hat off as he came into the church and placed it carefully in his lap when he sat down.
Nobody had a gavel in town, so when it was time for the meeting to start for the afternoon, the pastor came out and stood silently at the pulpit until things got quiet. I was always surprised that it worked. But it always did.
“Before we begin this afternoon’s session,” the pastor said, “we have had a special request from a member of the community to address the members of the meeting.”
The pastor was a strapping man who obviously considered himself a sure bet for heaven.
“With the concurrence of our Board of Aldermen,” the pastor said, “I have agreed to the request. Mr. Bragg?”
Bragg stood, laid his hat on his chair, and stepped to the pulpit. He was clean-shaven, freshly barbered, and, probably, if the room smelled less of whiskey, he would have smelled of bay rum. He glanced toward the ceiling for a moment and then turned to the audience.
“I was fearing maybe there’d be a lightning bolt when I stepped to the pulpit,” he said.
The audience laughed politely.
“And if the Lord had chosen to send one,” Bragg said, “who could have blamed him.”
The audience laughed again. Bragg smiled at them.
