Appaloosa

“Don’t go no further than you have to,” Cole said. “I can cover you about halfway there. All we need to know is that they didn’t keep the hill between us and skedaddle.”

I nodded. Cole picked up his rifle and settled in on his stomach with his Winchester. Ring did the same thing.

“We’ll do what we can,” Ring said.

“Minute you see an Indian,” Cole said, “you turn and run for the woods.”

I nodded again. Then I turned my horse’s head and clucked and nudged him with my knee and we rode out of the woods and onto the short-grass open land. The sun was high and steady. I could smell the river and the grass. The horse was frisky from standing around in the woods. He capered a couple of times as we moved into the sun. I held him to a walk. There was no reason to hurry. Nothing was moving but me. The only sound was the horse walking. I had the shotgun resting across my saddle in front of me. It was cocked. As we walked toward the hill, the horse kicked up some grasshoppers and they jumped frantically in front of us. The horse tossed his head and blew a couple of times. I knew he wanted to run. I smiled a little to myself. Hell, so did I. We were almost out of range of the woods. At this distance, even for Cole, hitting what you were aiming at would be mostly luck. I kept riding slowly toward the hill. Nothing moved. Some more grasshoppers jumped around in front of us as we walked. The grass smell was strong. I didn’t smell the river anymore. I could feel the hard sun on my back. We were almost to the foot of the hill. Out of rifle range. I was on my own. I stopped the horse for a moment and looked up the easy slope. Nothing moved. Then it did.

A young Indian was sitting his horse on the top of the hill. He was bare-chested, wearing leggings and moccasins. There were eagle feathers in his long hair. Not much of a war bo

In a moment, the other Indians came up behind him on the top of the hill and stopped and sat silently in a row maybe a horse’s length behind him. My horse swished his tail at a fly. I waited. The young Indian began to ride slowly down the hill toward me. He sat his horse bareback. There was no bridle, merely a length of rope tied to the buckskin’s jaw. I sat. The Indian came slowly. He was looking at me, and I at him. In his right hand he carried a Winchester. There were bullets in a looped belt around his waist. He carried a knife on the same belt. His eyes were dark brown and full of energy. I could see that the Winchester was cocked. He could see that the shotgun was cocked. My shotgun, resting on my saddle horn, was pointing to my left. He moved his horse to my right. I turned the shotgun. He seemed almost to smile. He shifted the Winchester to his left hand, holding it with the butt on his thigh and the barrel pointing up. I nodded and did the same with the shotgun. Again, he might have smiled. We were almost side by side now, headed in opposite directions. Then we were side by side, our horses standing head to tail. The Indian reached out carefully and put his right hand on my right shoulder. We sat for a fraction, as if all of time had come to a point on that contact.

Then he took his hand away and whirled his horse and whooped something in Kiowa and set the horse at a hard gallop up the hill. As he came toward them, the other Indians yelled and whooped and waved their weapons. When the young Indian reached the top of the hill, he spun his horse, making him rear and paw the air with his front feet as he did so. Then he set the horse back down on solid ground and looked down at me once more. A second Indian rode out beside him and planted a lance in the ground. It was the one with Allie’s undergarment tied to it. Several of the Indians shouted in Kiowa, and then there was laughter. The young Indian with the vermillion jaw turned his horse and disappeared over the crest of the hill, and the other Indians followed him. I could hear their hooves going down the other side.

I nudged my horse forward and we went up the hill, my shotgun still pointing up, the butt still resting on my thigh. At the top of the hill, I looked down at a flat prairie that stretched to the horizon. Below me, the Kiowas were riding away at a comfortable pace.

39

Beauville wasn’t much. It wasn’t even Appaloosa. But it was a railhead, where cattle driven up from Texas could load onto trains that would bring them to Omaha or Chicago. And being a railhead, it was livelier than it had any right to be otherwise.

We dragged into Beauville two days after my coup had been counted by the buck with the vermillion chin; we were tired, out of coffee, and short of most everything else. The horses were tired. The mule was tired. And we were tired. Allie, straggle-haired and badly dressed, dusty and sweat-streaked like the rest of us, looked especially tired. There was a hotel on the one street, and a bank, and a restaurant in a tent, and six saloons. At the far end of the street, there were a few small, unpainted houses. The train station, surrounded by cattle pens, was the grandest building in town. There was even a little steeple on it, with a big clock. According to the clock, it was 2:41. Behind the station was the city marshal’s office and jail. “This time tomorrow,” Ring said.

“This time,” Cole said.

“We’ll ride on down to the station,” Ring said. “You, too, Bragg. If the money’s there, our deal is up. If the money’s not there, we go

“It’ll be there,” Bragg said. He nodded at us. “What about them?”

“Our deal covers them,” Ring said. He looked at Cole.

“That go

“Might be,” Cole said.

Ring nodded.

“How about the woman?” he said. “She a problem?”

“Might be,” Cole said.

“Well,” Ring said. “Won’t be a problem till tomorrow afternoon.”

He nudged his horse forward. His brother followed. Bragg trailed along, and Russell behind him. Allie sat uncertainly on her horse, near me.

“Let’s head down to the hotel, Allie,” I said. “Get you a room.”

“How about you two?” she said.

“I’ll bunk in with Everett,” Cole said.

It was between cattle drives, and the hotel was nearly empty. We washed and slept and sent our clothes to the Chinaman. It was after dark when Cole and I went down to the saloon and Allie joined us. The hotelkeeper’s wife had found her some clothes, probably from one of the whores who worked in the hotel, and Allie looked pretty good again.

It wasn’t much of a saloon, two long planks set on whiskey barrels. The whiskey sat in bottles on a table behind. We had a drink, including Allie, who drank hers in very small sips.

“Will the Sheltons stick to the truce?” I said.

“Ring’s word is good,” Cole said.

“And so is ours,” I said.

“Yes.”

We were quiet. The hotelkeeper’s wife came to the table.

“You folks hungry, we got some stew and some fresh bread,” she said. “I baked it today.”