They were where Cole said they’d be. Four of them, Bragg closest to the shed. The wind was at our backs, blowing the rain hard at them. The steers huddled together in the pens.
“We pass that corner,” Cole said. “We start shooting and go fast, straight at them.”
I didn’t say anything. My mouth was dry. Most of the shootouts we’d been in had sort of erupted, and you didn’t have much time to think about it. This one had moved forward for days with the formality of a procession. And now here it was, in the blowing rain.
We turned the corner, and Cole shot Ring Shelton in the chest, and everyone else started shooting at the same time. Something slammed into my left side and tried to knock me down as I cut loose with the eight-gauge. Both barrels. It knocked Mackie Shelton over backward. To my left, Cole was down. Another bullet hit me in my right leg, and I felt it give under me. Cole squirmed sideways in the mud, working the lever on the Winchester. He fired three times, pumping the lever as fast as he fired. Russell staggered and took two steps forward to right himself and raised his Colt and fell face-forward into the mud. I dropped the eight-gauge as I went down and jerked the Colt. Sitting in the mud, I looked for Bragg. He was gone. With Cole on his stomach and me on my backside, we kept our aim on the shed. After a minute or so, we heard the sound of a horse running in the mud, and then, too far to shoot, we saw Bragg ride off.
It was over.
I tried to stand. I couldn’t. One shot had broken some ribs on my left side. The other had got me in the top of the right thigh. The thigh was bleeding steadily. The ribs made it painful to move, but I knew I had to cut down on the bleeding. I took my jacket off, and my shirt, and folded the shirt and got the belt off my pants and made a big, clumsy pressure bandage on the thigh.
“Virgil?” I said.
Cole still lay on his stomach in the mud, his rifle cocked, looking at the men strewn in front of us in the mud.
“Both legs,” he said. “The right one’s broke.”
“Took about a minute,” I said.
“Everybody could shoot,” Cole said.
His voice sounded strained. So did mine. The clerk from the train station came out and looked at us from the edge of the station. The two stockyard hands stood with him. I yelled to them.
“There a doctor in town?”
“Railroad doc,” the clerk shouted. “Lives at the hotel.”
“Get him,” I said.
Hollering made my ribs hurt. So did breathing. The clerk spoke to one of the stock hands, and he set off at a run toward the hotel. I clenched my teeth and let myself fall backward onto the cold mud. The rain came down cold and steady on my face. I felt hot. I breathed as shallowly as I could.
“Virgil?” I said.
“I’m still here,” Virgil said.
“Well,” I said. “Doctor’ll either save us or he won’t.”
And I closed my eyes and let the rain fall on me, and the feel of it began to dwindle and then it was gone and I didn’t know anything else.
We gave the horses and the mule to the doctor for his fee. He got us wrapped and bandaged and splinted, and supplied us enough laudanum so we could stand to ride the train to Yaqui and take another one to Appaloosa. We used up most of the laudanum by the time we got there. And when we got off the train in Appaloosa, cooked well done on tincture of opium, Cole on crutches and me with a cane, and Allie fluttering around us, I don’t think anyone in Appaloosa felt safer. We was laid up for longer than either of us could stand. Through it, Allie nursed Cole like he was made of hammered gold. And, now and then, she would stop in on me.
While we were gone, Stringer had come down from the sheriff’s office to fill in, and he stayed while we recuperated.
Cole was out of pain and could move around on crutches in a few days. There were two ribs broken on my left side, and they took a while. But eventually we were both able to taper off the laudanum and sit outside on the porch at the Boston House and look at whatever was happening in front of us.
It was a hell of a lot more than the Sheltons could do.
Stringer came down from the marshal’s office one morning and sat with us for a while.
“Got a posse up and went back to Chester, but we lost your trail once you left that arroyo.”
“Figured you would,” Cole said.
“Get a posse or lose your trail?” Stringer said.
“Both.”
Stringer nodded. He got out a cigar, didn’t offer one to either of us, bit off the end, and lit it. When he had it burning right, he leaned back with one foot up on the railing of the porch and his hat tilted forward over his eyes.
“You know you killed a peace officer, duly appointed and sworn,” Stringer said, “up there in Beauville.”
“Had to,” Cole said.
Stringer watched a woman in a big hat walk along on the shady side of the street. He smiled.
“Sure,” he said.
We all watched the woman as she paused and looked in the window of the dry goods store past the Silver Spur Saloon. After a moment, she went inside.
“You killed all three of ’em,” Stringer said.
“Yep.”
“I knew you were good, Virgil,” Stringer said. “Everett, too.”
I was an afterthought.
“But I’d a said that nobody could beat the Sheltons, two against three.”
“Four,” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Stringer said. “Bragg. What about Bragg?”
“Can’t chase him all over the country,” Cole said.
“ ’Course not,” Stringer said. “Kinda funny, ain’t it. You kill three men and get shot half to pieces yourselves to get Bragg back, and you don’t get him back.”
“That is funny,” I said. “If my ribs didn’t hurt, I’d be laughing every morning.”
“Ribs take a while,” Stringer said.
It was a bright, warm day with a few small, high, white clouds and a mild breeze that smelled faintly of grass and sage. The lady in the big hat came out of the dry goods store and headed farther up the street. When she reached the corner, she turned and was out of sight.
“Sheriff ain’t planning to press matters on you boys about the killings in Beauville, even Russell.”
“You have anything to do with that?” Cole said.
“I tole the sheriff how things were.”
“Kind of you,” Cole said.
Stringer grinned again.
“I didn’t want to be the one had to bring you in,” he said.
“Wouldn’t be too hard right now,” Cole said.
“Well, it ain’t going to be necessary. You boys going to stick around here when you’re on your feet?”
I looked at Cole.
“Sure,” he said. “Got a house here.”
“Gonna move in with Allie?” Stringer said.
“I surely am,” Cole said.