“I didn’t enjoy it,” he said.
She sat frozen for a moment, then turned toward me.
“Everett,” she said. “You ever lie?”
Her voice sounded stretched.
“All the time, Allie,” I said. “All the time.”
“Well,” she said. “Then I
Virgil was quiet. There was no color in his face. Across the room, two men at the bar were in a contest to see who could drink a beer faster. I knew one of them, a pale man with soft hands who worked in a feed store. The other one was a teamster with a teamster’s build: big belly from sitting all day on a wagon seat, and big muscles in his arms and shoulders from sawing on the reins of a six-mule rig over bad roads. The feed-store clerk was winning.
“You scrawny little bastard,” the teamster said in a loud voice. “Where you putting it all? You ain’t even pissed yet.”
The feed clerk laughed.
“Can’t always tell somethin’,” the clerk said, “just by looking.”
“Goddamn,” the teamster said in his big voice. “Two more, Willis. No fucking feed-store clerk is gonna back me down.”
Cole turned his head to look at them.
McDonough drew two glasses of beer. The men faced each other and each put a hand on his beer glass.
“Say when, Willis.”
“Now,” McDonough said, and the two men drank.
The feed clerk finished first.
“Shit!” the teamster said. “Shit!”
Cole stood suddenly and walked to the bar.
“Shut up,” he said to the teamster.
The teamster looked startled.
“What’s that, Marshal?”
“Shut your mouth and get out of here.”
“I ain’t done nothing.” he said. “Hell, Marshal, we’re just drinking beer.”
Cole kicked him in the groin, and the teamster grunted and doubled over. The feed clerk ducked away as Cole hit the man. Cole was only middle-sized, and the teamster was big, but it was a slaughter. Cole hit him with both fists, one fist, then the other. He caught hold of the teamster’s hair and slammed his face against the bar, and pulled it up and slammed it down again.
“Virgil,” I said.
The teamster was defenseless. Cole held him propped against the bar with his left shoulder while he hit him methodically with his right fist. Allie was watching. She seemed interested. I stepped over to them. The teamster’s head lolled back. I could see that his eyes had rolled back. Blood and spittle trickled from his slack mouth. I got my arms around Cole’s waist and picked him up off the ground and walked backward with him. He was still pumping his fist.
“Virgil,” I said. “Virgil.”
He didn’t fight me. He seemed unaware of me, as if his focus on the teamster was so enveloping that nothing else was real.
“Virgil,” I said.
He stopped moving his fist and held it, still cocked but still. I held on to him, listening to his breath snarl in and out of him. It felt as if there were something popping inside him, at his center.
“Virgil.”
His breath slowed. The popping eased.
“You can let go,” he said to me.
I relaxed a little but kept my arms around his waist.
“You can let go,” Virgil said.
I let go. He stood silently, his fist still cocked. Without Cole’s shoulder to hold him, the teamster had sagged to the floor, his head twisted against the foot rail of the bar, his face covered with blood. Cole gazed at him steadily. I stood waiting. Willis McDonough had backed away down the bar and was polishing glasses at the far end. The feed clerk had disappeared. Everyone else in the room was motionless and silent. The only sound was Cole’s breathing. Then I heard something else. It wasn’t just Cole’s breathing. Behind me. It was Allison French. She was breathing hard, too. We all held that way for a time that was probably much shorter then it seemed. Cole’s breathing slowed. He still stared at the teamster.
“Loudmouthed bastard,” he said and walked out of the bar.
The room stayed silent. I went back and sat down at the table with Allison. Her face was flushed, but her breathing, too, had slowed.
“My God,” she said.
“Virgil gets fractious when he’s annoyed,” I said.
“But he let you pull him away.”
“Part of my duties.”
“He’ll let you do that?”
“He wants me to,” I said.
“They didn’t do anything,” Allison said. “They were just drinking beer and having a good time. Why did he get so mad at the fat man?”
“He was mad at you,” I said.
I was keeping company with a clean, dark-haired young whore named Katie Goode, who was a quarter Kiowa, a quarter Mex, and half some sort of travelin’ Yankee. She and two other girls had a small house at the north end of town where they lived and conducted business. Katie had just finished conducting it with me, and we were lying in her bed in the back room.
“I heard the marshal almost killed Tub Gillis yesterday,” Katie said.
“Hit him a lot,” I said.
“I heard he done it for no reason,” Katie said.
“He had his reasons,” I said.
“I heard Tub wasn’t doin’ nothin’ but drinking some beer with Bertie Frye.”
“Virgil was annoyed,” I said.
“At Tub?”
“Mrs. French was raggin’ him a little,” I said.
“Her,” Katie said.
“Her?”
“You heard me. You think she’s such a sweet thing,” Katie said. “All you men. Girls know better. She should move up to the north end with the rest of us.”
“You think she’s a whore?”
“She’s wiggling her sweet ass for money just like the rest of us.”
“Except you,” I said. “With me.”
“Of course, Everett.”
“How do you know about Mrs. French?”
“I go in there. She sees me, she looks like she’s looking at a bug. But I see the way she is. She’s looking to get those hooks of hers into some man. Might be Marshal Cole.”
“He’s taken with her,” I said.
