“Yep.”
“Virgil,” Callico said. “Everett. You boys know this town never elected a mayor before.”
“Yep.”
“I’m not sure it’s ready.”
Virgil and I said nothing.
“You seen what it was today. I’m trying to tell the truth and my opponent is talking ’bout shooting me.”
“Or you him,” I said.
“It’s barbaric,” Callico said. “We cannot have an election when one candidate threatens the life of the other.”
“So, what do you do?” I said.
“I may have to cancel the election.”
“And who’d run the town?” Virgil said.
“I would,” Callico said.
Virgil looked at me and smiled.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Where’d you get all that information on the general being a coward and a baby killer?” I said.
“Very reliable person,” he said.
“That being?” I said.
Callico paused, thinking about it.
“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.
