“I stay,” Pony said.
“How you want to play it with your brother?” Virgil said.
“Get him away, before he killed,” Pony said.
“How you want us to play it?” Virgil said.
“Same, if you can. If you can’t, you have to do what you do.”
“Everett,” Virgil said. “Time for you to ride on up to General Laird’s and collect Chauncey Teagarden. Tell the general he might want to put some pickets out, too.”
40
THEY FOUND the woman lying naked in the south stage road. She had been badly beaten, but she was alive, the blood drying dark on her pale body. The shotgun messenger put his coat around her and held her half across his lap while the driver pushed the tired team hard into Appaloosa.
Virgil and I watched from in front of the Boston House as they took her up the outside stairs to Dr. Peloquin’s office above the Cafe Paris. A crowd gathered outside. Callico showed up promptly, pushed through the crowd, up the stairs, and into Peloquin’s office. The saloons began to empty out. The crowd got bigger.
With his hat tilted down over his forehead and his arms folded across his chest, Virgil leaned against one of the roof’s support posts.
“Here we go,” he said.
“Callico got down there quick,” I said.
“Would you wager against him making a speech from the top step when he comes out?” Virgil said.
“No bet,” I said.
Chauncey Teagarden came out of the Boston House wearing a black bowler hat, a pink-striped white shirt, and a black string tie. He was carrying a big cup of coffee.
“Amos won’t have much trouble working ’em up,” Teagarden said. “Half of them are drunk already.”
“Tend to be out front,” Virgil said. “While the booze is working.”
Teagarden grinned.
“Tell who’s sobering up the quickest,” he said. “By who’s dropping back the fastest.”
“If they’re lucky,” Virgil said. “Otherwise they the first ones killed when the balloon goes up.”
“Virgil,” Teagarden said. “You and me’ve made a good living shooting fellas like that.”
“When I had to,” Virgil said.
“Why else,” Teagarden said. “Ain’t much glory in it.”
“Here he comes,” Virgil said.
Callico stepped out of Peloquin’s office and looked down at the crowd from the top step. He waited. Someone shouted, “We’re with you, Amos.” Someone else shouted, “Kill the heathen bastards.” Callico waited.
Teagarden looked at us and grinned.
“You notice nobody has shouted, ‘How’s the woman?’” he said.
“They don’t care,” Virgil said.
“Nope,” Teagarden said. “They don’t. She’s served her purpose.”
From the crowd in front of Callico, someone started to chant, “Posse, posse.”
Others took it up. Callico waited a little longer as the chant built. Then he put a hand up like he was going to turn stones into loaves of bread. The crowd quieted.
“Dr. Peloquin,” he said, “tells me she won’t die.”
The crowd cheered. Callico waited for them to quiet.
“Though surely she must have wished to die, these last hours. Her husband is dead. Her father-in-law, her brother-in-law. All murdered by the red niggers,” Callico said. “She herself abused in extent and manner I cannot speak of in a public forum.”
The crowd’s sound was indecipherable. It was now simply massive communal noise. Callico let it subside.
“I have been warned,” Callico said, “that to pursue these heathen beast is to put the town at risk.”
The crowd was suddenly silent. Something real was about to be discussed.
“Are we men?” Callico said softly.
The crowd listened. I could almost feel it lean forward.
“Are we white Christian men?” Callico roared.
The crowd screamed that we were.
“Is there a man among us who will not join us?” Callico shouted.
The crowd screamed that, no, there were no men who would not join him.
“Even the great Virgil Cole,” Callico said. “I can see him from here, in front of the Boston House.”
He raised his voice as if he had to make himself heard that far away.
“Will you be joining us, Virgil?”
Virgil stood as he had during the entire performance, hat down, arms folded. He gave no sign that he had heard Callico.
“Of course he will,” Callico said. “And his friends.”
The mob cheered.
“I’ll have my full police force armed and ready for the field,” Callico said. “Right here, in the street, mounted and ready to ride, in one hour. I want every man jack of you that owns a gun to join us here with it and lots of bullets, ready to ride.”
The mob made its guttural scream. Callico came down the stairs and pushed through the idolatrous crowd toward the police station. Some of the crowd followed him a ways and then began to break up and go home to get ready.
Chauncey Teagarden watched them move away.
“Be like bossing a fucking cattle drive,” he said.
“It will,” I said.
“He won’t get within ten miles of the Indians.”
“’Less they let him,” I said.
“In which case they massacre his posse,” Teagarden said.
“Half of them haven’t shot anything bigger than a jackrabbit in their life. They’ll probably be drunk. If he does catch them, what’s he gonna do, trample ’em to death?”
“He knows all that,” Virgil said.
“And he’s gonna do it anyway?”
“Ain’t about the Indians,” Virgil said. “Or the posse. Or the dead men. Or the woman got hurt.”
“He wants to be president of the United States of America,” I said.
“It’s about Callico,” Virgil said.
41
WE SAT OUR HORSES with Pony Flores behind Red Castle Rock. Chauncey Teagarden was with us. Pony raised his hand and then put his finger on his lips. The horses stood quietly. There was no wind. We listened.
Then Virgil said, “Callico.”
Pony nodded. The sound was very faint. A low murmur of hoofbeats. Virgil scanned the horizon.
Then he said, “From the northeast.”
And there it was, a faint drift of dust, kicked up by the faint beat of hooves.
“Kah-to-nay leave big trail toward river,” Pony said.
“Over there.”
We looked west, where, in the distance, the river ran straight north to south in the deep trench it had dug itself.
