A bolt of lightning briefly lit the interior of Hal’s Café, and within a moment the thundering sound of the bolt cracked so loudly it rattled the café’s front windows.
“Lord have mercy,” Hal said. “Damn.”
“Yeah,” I said, looking out the window. “This is a good one.”
Hal nodded and rubbed his hands together a bit as if he was thinking about the best way to say to us what he had to say. For some time all he had to allow was how hard the rain was coming down.
“What is it?” Virgil said.
“Yeah, I know you is wondering why I think it so important for me to come get y’all at this time of night, on a night like this,” Hal said. “Why two busy and famous marshals like y’all need to be summoned by the likes of me. I know it ain’t what you was planning for y’all’s evening.”
“Get on with it,” Virgil said.
It was late in the evening and Virgil and I had just shaken the rain off our slickers and sat down to drink some freshly brewed coffee with Hal.
“Y’all want some food?”
“No,” Virgil said.
“We’ve had supper,” I said.
Hal’s Café was a place where Virgil and I would go to have some good basic grub. It was a fixture in Appaloosa mainly because Hal was always a friendly fella with a good disposition, but, most important, because Hal could cook better than most.
He was a large ex-slave who had worked in plantation kitchens for his owner for many years and in the process developed skills that were second nature, and in our opinion he was one of the best cooks in town. There were plenty of fancier places with expensive good food to be found in Appaloosa these days, but Hal’s was a comfortable stopover for us. At this particular moment in time, however, Hal was not cooking and serving up food. It was well past suppertime now, and Hal was agitated and nervous about something. He’d sent his young nephew, Felix, to fetch us. Once we were seated with coffee, Hal looked to Felix.
“Go on back and wash some dishes, Felix,” he said.
“Done washed all the dishes.”
“Wash ’em again then.”
“But I did what you asked following them fellas, then fetching Marshal Cole and . . .” Felix stopped talking for a moment when he registered the steaming look Hal was giving him. “Do I got to?”
“You don’t got to, but you don’t I will tan your dark hide, hear? . . . Get on, like I say.”
“Here I go,” he said.
Felix dropped his head a bit and sauntered off through the door to the rear of the café. Hal watched the door work back and forth on the hinges before he looked to us.
“I got a problem,” he said.
“Go,” Virgil said.
Hal looked out the window nervously.
“Someone is trying to take over my business.”
“What do you mean?” Virgil said.
“I can see the writing on the shit house wall,” he said. “I was not born yesterday.”
Virgil looked to me.
“What are you saying, Hal,” I said.
“Some boys a’been coming by here,” he said.
“Boys?” Virgil said.
“Men is what they are, one young, one old . . . They is goddamn mean, though, both big overgrown fuckers, too. Offering me protection.”
Virgil sipped his coffee, glanced to me, then looked back to Hal.
“Protection from what?” he said.
“They said someone was here to do me harm.”
“Who?”
Hal looked back and forth between Virgil and me.
“From them?” I said, before Hal spoke. “They were the ‘someones’ that meant to do you harm?”
“Seems so,” Hal said.
“They wanting money?” Virgil said.
“They is.”
Virgil looked to me.
“They told me to give them money or they’d make sure they’d close me down.”
Virgil looked to me, then looked to Hal.
“They say how they was planning to close you down?”
“They threatened to burn me down.”
“You talk to Sheriff Chastain about this?”
Hal shook his head some.
“They told me if I said anything, if I go to Sheriff Chastain or any of his deputies they’d say that I lied. They said to me, who Sheriff Chastain gonna believe, white man or a nigger man . . . They said they’d burn my place down.”
“What’d you do?”
“I gave them some money,” he said.
“How much?”
“At first it was not a lot.”
“At first?” Virgil said. “How long have you been paying them?”
“Three months.”
Virgil glanced to me, then looked back to Hal.
“Do you know who these men are?” he said.
“Not by name I don’t.”
“You seen them around?” I said.
He shook his head.
“Only when they come in here.”
“Do you know or got an idea where they are?” I said.
“I do now,” he said, looking back and forth between Virgil and me. “That’s why I sent for you.”
“Where?” Virgil said.
Hal got to his feet and paced a few times.
“Here’s the deal,” he said. “I come to y’all cause y’all ain’t necessarily who they told me not to talk to. They said Sheriff Chastain and his deputies, don’t say nothing to them, but they never said nothing about no marshals, don’t know they even know you live here in Appaloosa.”
“We been in here four or five times since this has been going on,” I said. “Why haven’t you said nothing to us before now?”
“I figured this would go away, plumb blow over. What I was hoping for, anyway.”
“But it ain’t,” Virgil said.
“Nope. They come tonight, and they’d been drinking, I could tell. They demanded double what I gave them before.”
“You pay ’em?”
He frowned.
“I did.”
“Where are they?” Virgil said.
Hal twisted his big hands together.
“They down at a gambling place, over on the north end of town.”
“There’s more than one,” I said.
“I know which one and they there now,” he said. “I had Felix follow them. That’s what he was talking ’bout. He said they looked to be holed up there just doing what white men do.”