clamped his jaw, took out a pen, and signed the sheet. Cole picked it up, looked at the signature, waved it a minute to dry the ink, then folded it and put it inside his shirt. With no change of expression, he nodded toward the door and I went out. The bar was to the right of the lobby. You could enter it from the lobby, but most people went in through the street entrance on the opposite side. It was the kind of thing I’d learned to notice without even thinking about it.
I went straight through the lobby to the street, and turned right and walked to the corner and went in through the swinging mahogany doors of the saloon. The late-afternoon sun, slanting through the doorway, made the smoky air look sort of blue. I let the doors swing shut behind me and moved to the left of the door while my eyes adjusted.
The center of the room had cleared, tables had been pushed aside, and most of the people in the saloon were standing against the walls. Four men, all wearing guns, were drinking whiskey at the bar. Behind the bar, the strapping, red-faced bartender stood stiffly, not looking at anything. There was a big, brass spittoon in the center of the cleared space, and two of the men at the bar were trying to piss in it from that distance. Neither was having much success. Cole came into the saloon through the lobby door, and watched for a moment.
“Button them up,” he said in his light, clear voice.
One of the men faltered in his stream and looked at Cole.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
“Virgil Cole.”
“Virgil Cole? No shit? Hey, Chalk,” he said to his partner in piss. “Virgil Cole wants us to stop.”
Chalk turned toward Virgil, his equipment still fully exposed, like his partner’s.
“Step a little closer, Virgil Cole,” he said. “And I’ll piss in your pocket.”
Chalk was a skinny guy with a hard little potbelly that pushed out over his gun belt. He had a meager, shabby beard, and it looked, from where I stood, like he needed to trim his fingernails. His pal was tall and thick and had long hair like Bill Hickok, except Hickok’s was clean.
“I am the new city marshal,” Cole said. “Put it away or lose it.”
“Hey, Bronc,” Chalk said. “They got a new marshal.”
The other two men, who’d been leaning on the bar, straightened a little and moved slightly apart.
“Didn’t they have another marshal, ’while ago?” Bronc said.
“They did.”
“Keep using them fuckers up, don’t they?” Bronc said.
“Got no use for them anyway,” Chalk said.
Cole didn’t seem to mind the small talk. He seemed entirely relaxed, almost friendly, as he stood just inside the doorway from the lobby.
“Put them ugly little contraptions away,” he said. “I’m going to walk you down to the jail, and I don’t want to scare the horses.”
No one stirred in the room. It was like one of those high-plains days in the summer, when it’s hot and still and a storm is coming and you feel the tension of its coming long before it gets there. Both men buttoned up their pants. It’s easier to be dangerous with your breeding equipment stowed.
“You ain’t walking us nowhere, Virgil Cole,” Bronc said.
He was squat and muscular, wearing a little short-brimmed hat. His gun was butt-forward on the left side, almost in the middle. The walnut handle looked worn. Chalk stepped a little way from Bronc and loosened his shoulders. His Colt was in a low holster, tied to his thigh. It had a silvery finish with curlicue engravings. Chalk thought he was a fast-draw gunman.
“You pull on me, either one, and I’ll kill you both,” Cole said.
At the other end of the room, behind Cole, a thin man with no beard and limp, black hair took out a short revolver and held it on the tabletop.
Chalk and Bronc stared at Cole. Then Chalk laughed.
“Bullshit,” he said and dropped his hand.
Thoughtfully, Cole shot him before his hand ever touched the gun’s butt, and he was already beginning to fold as the man at the back table raised his gun. I shot him. Bronc had his gun just clear of the holster when Cole’s second shot hit him in the face and he fell backward against the bar and slid to the ground next to Chalk. The noise of the gunfire still rang in my ears. Cole was looking slowly around the room. No one moved. The fourth man held his hands high in the air; his face was pale, so the web of broken veins showed clear.
“I ain’t shootin’,” he said. “I ain’t shootin’.”
I walked over and took his gun out of its holster and handed it to the big, red-faced bartender.
“I warned them,” Cole said, and opened the cylinder on his Colt, replaced the two expended shells, closed the cylinder, and put the gun away. It was one of Cole’s rules: Reload as soon as the shooting is over. I put a fresh bullet in my own piece and put it back in its holster. Cole walked to each of the three down men and felt for a pulse. None had one.
Cole and I rode up north of town one morning to look at the wild horses in the hills, a little west of where Randall Bragg had his ranch. They were there for the same reason Bragg was, because of the water. We sat our animals on top of a low hill and watched the herd graze in the sun on the eastern flank of the next hill. Seven mares, two foals, and a gray leopard Appaloosa stallion that looked to be maybe sixteen hands. The stallion raised his head and stared at us. His nostrils were flared, trying to catch more scent. His tail was up. His skin twitched. He pranced a couple of steps toward us, putting himself between us and the mares. We didn’t move. The stallion arched his neck a little.
“They hate the geldings,” I said.
“Stallions don’t like much,” Cole said.
“They like mares,” I said.
The stallion went back to grazing, but always between us and the mares.
“Virgil,” I said. “I’m not minding it, but why are we up here, looking at these horses?”
“I like wild horses,” Cole said.
“Well, that’s nice, Virgil.”
Cole nodded. The horses moved across the hillside, grazing, their tails flicking occasionally to brush away a fly, the stallion now and then raising his head, sniffing the wind, looking at us. There was no breeze. Occasionally, one of the mares would snort and toss her head, and the stallion would look at her rigidly for a moment, until she went back to grazing.
“Easy life,” Cole said. “They get through here, there’s another hill.”
“Stallion looks a little tense,” I said.
“He’s watchful,” Cole said.
“Don’t you suppose he gets worn down,” I said, “all the time watchful? For wolves and coyotes and people and other stallions?”
“He’s free,” Cole said. “He’s alive. He does what he wants. He goes where he wants. He’s got what he wants. And all he got to do is fight for it.”
“Guess he’s won all the fights,” I said.
In a cluster of rocks on top of one of the hills west of us and the horses, several coyotes sat silently, watching the herd with yellow eyes.
“Foals better not stray,” I said to Cole.
“The stud knows about them,” Cole said. “See how he looks over there. Foals are all right long as they stay with the herd.”
The sun was quite high now. Maybe eleven in the morning. Our own horses stood silently, heads dropped, waiting.
“Virgil,” I said after a time, “these are very nice horses, but shouldn’t somebody be upholding the law in Appaloosa?”
