Cole and I were sitting outside the office with the door open so we could hear if Bragg tried to gnaw through the bars. It was a warm day with no clouds and a bright sun.
“You and Allie going to get married?” I said.
“If she’ll have me,” Cole said.
“I figure you and her building that house together,” I said, “means something.”
Cole nodded.
“Anything happens to me, Everett,” he said, “I’d appreciate you lookin’ out for her.”
“You expecting anything special?” I said.
“This is uncertain kind of work we do,” Cole said.
“Yes, it is.”
“Allie’s better if she’s with someone,” Cole said.
“She needs help,” I said, “I’ll help her.”
“She’s not good bein’ alone,” Cole said.
I nodded. A hawk was circling low over the town, looking for rats maybe, or mice, or ground squirrels, or whatever it could find out back of Café Paris.
“She seems like a pretty strong woman to me, Virgil.”
“She’s stronger with a man,” Cole said.
No matter how much time I’d spent with Cole, he still surprised me. He appeared to understand Allie a lot better than I would have said he could. We both watched the hawk for a time as it wheeled on the low wind currents.
“Shelton brothers bothering you?” I said.
“I’m thinking about ’em,” Cole said.
“You figure they are here because of Bragg?”
“Seems sort of coinciding,” Cole said, “them boys should drift in here just before Bragg’s trial.”
“You think they got hired to bust him out?”
“Might’ve.”
“Or kill Whitfield? They kill Whitfield, there’s no need to bust Bragg out, because we can’t convict him.”
“Deputies took Whitfield over to Fort Beale,” Cole said. “They’ll keep him there till the trial.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Mine.”
“So you did think maybe they was here to kill Whitfield,” I said.
“Couldn’t say they wasn’t.”
“Who’s going to bring him in to testify?”
“Stringer and the other deputies.”
“Sheltons know where Whitfield is?”
“Nobody does, except me, and now you.”
“He testifies, and they’ll convict Bragg,” I said.
“I’d say so.”
“So if the Sheltons are here about Bragg,” I said, “they got to bust him out afterwards.”
“Yep.”
“ ’Course, they may not be here for that,” I said.
“Nope.”
“On the other hand, there’s Mr. Clausewitz.”
“Yep.”
“So we got to prepare for it.”
Cole nodded.
“We got you and me and four deputies, Virgil,” I said. “Sounds like enough to me.”
Cole tilted his head back against the top of the chair as if he was looking at the sky, except his eyes were closed. He sat like that for a pretty long time.
Then he said, “Four deputies won’t count for much if it happens.”
“They look like pretty good gun hands,” I said. “ ’Specially Stringer.”
“They are pretty good gun hands,” Cole said.
“But not good enough?”
“Everett,” Cole said. “Neither you or me ain’t never been up against nobody like Ring and Mackie Shelton.”
We were both quiet as the hawk swooped and soared on the wind.
“We been up against pretty good,” I said.
Cole shook his head without remark.
“You ain’t sure we can beat them,” I said after a while.
“When it comes right down to her,” Cole said. “No, I ain’t.”
I thought about it.
“Well,” I said after a time. “It’s not like you ever know for sure, before the shooting starts.”
“So this time won’t be much different,” Cole said.
“Be different if we lose,” I said.
“Won’t matter to us,” Cole said. “ ’Cept for Allie.”