2
VIRGIL’S HOUSE hadn’t changed much in the time we’d been away. Allie and Laurel cleaned it up as soon as we arrived back in Appaloosa, and we moved right in. I bunked with Virgil in one bedroom, and Allie slept with Laurel in the second.
All four of us were sitting on the front porch sipping whiskey in the early evening while it was still light, when a tall, thin man with a big mustache walked up the front path. It was Stringer, the chief sheriff’s deputy.
“Ev’nin,” he said.
“Stringer,” Virgil said.
“I’m down to pick up a prisoner, heard you folks was back in town. Thought you might be drinking whiskey.”
“Sit,” I said. “Have some.”
Stringer adjusted his gun belt a little and sat.
“Allie,” Virgil said. “You remember Deputy Stringer.”
“I don’t recall us meeting,” Allie said.
“You was with the Shelton brothers,” Virgil said. “Probably thinking ’bout other things.”
Allie nodded.
“At the train,” she said.
“That’s me,” Stringer said.
“How do you do,” she said to Stringer, and made a small curtsy.
“Glad you’re well,” Stringer said. “Who’s this young lady?”
“Her name’s Laurel,” Virgil said. “She don’t say much. Laurel, this here is Deputy Stringer.”
Laurel looked at Stringer and nodded slowly and made her small curtsy. Then she went to Virgil and whispered to him. He whispered back. She whispered again.
“Well, sure, sort of like Pony Flores,” Virgil said.
“She shy?” Stringer said.
“Indian took her,” Virgil said. “She had a pretty bad time till we got her back.”
“Her folks are dead,” Allie said. “I’m looking out for her.”
“Since we got her back,” I said, “won’t talk to nobody ’cept Virgil.”
Stringer sipped some whiskey.
“Who’s Pony Flores?” Stringer said.
“Tracker,” Virgil said. “Helped us get her back.”
Laurel whispered again to Virgil. He listened and nodded.
“He gave her a gun,” Virgil said. “She wants to show it to you.”
Stringer nodded. Laurel took the derringer out of the pocket of her pinafore and held it out in the palm of her hand. Stringer looked at it carefully.
“That’s a very fine derringer,” he said.
He looked at Virgil.
“Loaded,” he said.
“She knows how to use it,” Virgil said. “Makes her feel safer.”
Stringer nodded.
“What are you boys gonna do here?” Stringer said.
“We’re posturing that,” Virgil said.
“Or pondering,” I said.
“Pondering,” Virgil said. “That’s what we’re doing. Everett went to the Military Academy.”
“Could speak to the sheriff for you,” Stringer said.
“Foraged up some money in Brimstone,” Virgil said. “We figure to take some time and look around.”
“You boys good at anything but gun work?” Stringer said.
“Might be,” Virgil said.
“Like what?” Stringer said.
“We’re ponderin’ that, too,” Virgil said.
“Meet the new chief of police?” Stringer said.
His voice was neutral, but there was something in the way he said “chief of police.”
“Yep,” Virgil said.
“And?” Stringer said.
“Offered us a job,” Virgil said.
“Which you turned down,” Stringer said.
“Everett and me don’t like him,” Virgil said.
Stringer studied the surface of his whiskey for a moment and then drank some.
“How come?” Stringer said.
Virgil looked at me.
“He annoyed Virgil,” I said. “Kinda full of himself.”
Stringer nodded.
“Don’t make no mistake with him,” Stringer said. “He’s a horse’s ass, okay, but he knows what he wants. He’ll do what he needs to get it. He can shoot, and he will. Got some people working for him can shoot.”
“Twelve people working for him,” I said.
“Town got big fast,” Stringer said.
“Virgil and me ran it with two,” I said. “It get six times bigger?”
“More people work for you, more power you got,” Stringer said. “Callico’s ambitious.”
“He want to be sheriff?” I said.
“It’s the next step,” Stringer said.
“To what?” Virgil said.
“Governor.”
“Why’s he want to be governor,” Virgil said.
“Probably ’cause it’s the next step to senator,” Stringer said. “I don’t know what Callico wants.”
“What kind of lawman is he?” Virgil said.
“Tough, strict, fair enough, I think,” Stringer said. “But he got no heart.”
“Heart don’t do you much good,” Virgil said.
Stringer smiled.
“ ’ Course it doesn’t,” he said. “Makes you soft.”
“Get you killed,” Virgil said.
Stringer said, “You think Virgil Cole got heart, Laurel.”
Laurel was sitting next to Virgil with Allie on her other side. She showed no sign of having heard Stringer’s question.
“She hear me?” Stringer said.
“She don’t much talk with anybody but Virgil,” I said.
“Hell,” Stringer said.
Laurel leaned in close to Virgil and whispered to him. Virgil smiled. He looked at me for a moment, then at Stringer.
“Laurel claims I got the most heart in the world,” he said.
3
THE BOSTON HOUSE had changed hands twice since I had killed Randall Bragg. But Willis McDonough in his starched white shirt was still the head bartender. And he bought us each a drink when Virgil and I went in to say hello.
