Appaloosa

17

We looked at Bragg’s spread for half of a brightly moonlit night. We rode up there in the afternoon another day. Always we sat, looking down at the ranch in plain sight. One day we rode up real early, while it was still dark.

Dawn was just starting to streak the eastern sky when we got there and held up on the hill above the ranch, where they could see us.

“Might be more clever,” I said to Cole, “if we was to sneak a little.”

“No need to sneak,” Cole said. “We’re the law.”

“Might be more clever if we got him to come into town and jumped him there.”

“I’m going to take him out here at his ranch and bring him in like Jack Bell was going to do.”

“Because?”

Cole didn’t answer. He sat his horse, looking at the ranch.

“You close with Bell?” I said.

“Not so much,” Cole said.

“But he was city marshal and now you’re city marshal.”

Cole nodded.

“And this is all about the law?”

“Killing a city marshal ain’t legal,” Cole said.

“Ralph philosopher fella say that?”

Cole gri

“Virgil Cole,” he said.

We sat some more. I had looked at the ranch so much that I felt as though I’d worked there. Smoke began to wisp up out of the cookshack. A couple of hands stumbled down to the big outhouse. Somebody lit a lamp in the main house, and then Bragg came out shirtless with his pants on and walked to the small outhouse.

“Now, you see that,” Cole said. “They got them a big privy down there, probably a four-holer, for the hands. And Bragg got his own personal one, nearer the house.”

I nodded. Cole never talked just to be talking, though when he did talk, he seemed to ramble. That was mostly he wasn’t talking, he was thinking out loud and new thoughts occurred to him in the process. For actual talking, if it wasn’t for me prodding him, he might not talk at all.

“All we got to do,” Cole said, “is get hold of him. Once we got him, it don’t matter how many gun hands he got.”

I nodded.

“See how them orange Osage come off at a angle from the cottonwoods along the stream?”

I nodded just to be doing something. Cole wasn’t really talking to me.

“Probably ran it up there for a windbreak in the winter,” Cole said. “Ain’t enough of it planted to fence off cattle.”

“Too short a span,” I said, just to be saying something.

“If we was to set in there behind that Osage orange, with an extra saddle horse, and maybe we be there before the sun’s up. Then we wait, and when Bragg comes down to use the privy, we move in close and take him.”

“What about the night rider?” I said.

“He’ll be looking for us up on the hill,” Cole said.

“That’s why we let them see us up there all that time,” I said. “That’s where they’ll expect us to be.”

Cole paid no attention to me.

“Before or after?” I said.

“Before or after what?”

“Before he goes into the privy, or after he comes out.”

“After,” Cole said. “I don’t want to get pissed on.”

18

There was a night rider. I couldn’t see him, but I heard his horse blow from the direction of the hill. We had a livery horse, saddled, on a lead. We were on foot, leading the horses as we went in the darkness down along the row of trees. We stopped fifty feet away from the privy. It was still too dark to see, but we could smell it. I took the shotgun off my saddle. We tied the horses loosely to one of the hedge apples. And we stood. Somewhere far off, some prairie chickens boomed. The sky in the east began to lighten. A rooster crowed. We stood. I smelled wood smoke. The sky was pale now in the east. We could see the outhouse on the other side of the trees. Uphill toward where we always sat and watched, I could see the night rider moving across the slope halfway up.

In back of us, I could hear the bunkhouse’s door open, as some of the hands went to their privy. I smelled coffee mixed with the wood smoke. Then bacon. Beside me, Cole murmured.

“Here he comes.”

I didn’t hear anything. But I was used to that. Cole always heard things sooner than I did and saw things sooner. I heard his footsteps. I heard the door to the privy open and swing shut. Then nothing.

Cole gestured toward the privy. I slipped through the trees and along one side of it. Cole went around the back to the other side. And we waited. When Bragg came out, we were on either side of him. Cole took a handful of Bragg’s hair in his left hand and pressed the barrel of his Colt against Bragg’s temple.

“Not a fucking sound,” he said softly.

I pressed the two barrels of the eight-gauge up under Bragg’s chin. And packed close together, we walked back behind the Osage orange trees toward the horses. When we reached the horses, Cole let go of Bragg’s hair.

“Mount up,” Cole said.

I eased off on the shotgun so Bragg could climb into the saddle. It made him a little braver.

“You can’t do this,” he said.

“Can or can’t,” Cole said. “Won’t make no difference to you. First time there’s trouble, we kill you.”

Bragg’s mount had no reins. The horse was on a lead, tethered to my saddle horn.

“Ride,” Cole said.

We moved down the line of trees, walking the horses. Cole rode on one side of Bragg and I rode on the other with the eight-gauge resting across my saddle, pointing at Bragg. As we cleared the trees near the stream, the nighthawk spotted us and came down the hill at a gallop, shouting.

“Pull the horses in tight as we can,” Cole said. “Make it hard to shoot us without shooting Bragg.”

We kept walking. By the time we neared the river, there were half a dozen horsemen coming toward us on the run.

“Put that brush cutter right up against him, if you would, Everett,” Cole said. “Being sure that it’s cocked.”

It was too hard to ride tight and keep the gun under Bragg’s chin. I settled for pressing it into his side. We reached the river and moved toward the ford. At the ford, there were maybe twelve riders with guns.

“Tell them to let us pass,” Cole said.

Bragg was silent. We kept walking toward the ford. Holding the reins in his left hand, Cole drew his Colt, cocked it, and placed it carefully against Bragg’s cheekbone. If it began, Bragg didn’t have a prayer. We were bunched together, so we were barely more than a single target. Cole had a gun against Bragg’s face. The two barrels of my shotgun were digging into his side.

“What you want us to do, Mr. Bragg?” one of the riders said.

“Hold off, Vince,” Bragg said.

His voice was hoarse and strained. Vince was hatless, and there was a pale line on his forehead. He was smallish, with big hands and a big blond moustache stained with something. Tobacco juice, maybe. Maybe coffee. He sat on a blue roan gelding that looked like a ru

As we reached them, Bragg’s riders parted, half to one side, half to the other, and the three of us rode slowly between them. No one spoke. I could feel the pressure of the silence all through me. The only sound was the horses’ hooves and their breathing, and the creak of saddle leather. The horses hesitated at the water, but Cole and I kicked ours forward and the three of us went in. The line of riders that had parted to let us through closed ranks behind us and turned toward the river. It was as if I could feel them looking at us. It made the muscles across my back tighten. The water was higher than the stirrups; my boots and the lower half of my pants were wet. The river smelled very fresh in the early morning air. The horses climbed the far bank, and we stood for a moment on the other side. Without lowering his gun, Cole turned in the saddle and looked back across the river.