Cole was a half hour off the night train ride back from Yaqui. Allie wasn’t home. He and I were eating a late breakfast at Café Paris. Actually, for Cole it was a late breakfast. For me it was a second. But that was okay. I liked breakfast.
“How’d you get into this work, Virgil?” I said.
“I was always good with a gun,” Cole said. “I guess I practiced some, but most of it sort of came natural.”
“You ever kill a man not legal?” I said.
“Meaning what?” Cole said.
“You ever shoot a man because he done you wrong? Or you didn’t like him? Or he made you mad?”
“Depends what you mean by legal,” Cole said. “First time was self-defense. Fella started up with me in a bar in Las Cruces. He wanted to take it outside, so we did, and I killed him.”
He smiled.
“It’s how I started,” he said. “Marshal offered me a job.”
“Did it bother you?”
“The first time,” Cole said. “No. You?”
“Nope,” I said. “Ever bother you since?”
“I knew right off, when I took to marshaling, that there needed to be rules. I never killed nobody outside the rules.”
“Never?”
“Nope. I would arrest anyone broke the law. If they wouldn’t submit to arrest, I’d kill them, but I never killed them first.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “you probably knew they wouldn’t submit.”
“That would be their choice,” Cole said.
“Even though you might have pushed them into a corner?”
“They always had the chance to be arrested and go to jail,” Cole said. “You know that, Everett. What the hell are we talking about?”
“Just thinking about it,” I said.
“Don’t think about it too much,” Cole said. “Keep it simple. You represent the law.”
“Even if it’s law you wrote up.”
“As long as it’s the law,” Cole said. “And you stand by it.”
I nodded.
“Otherwise, what the hell are you?” I said.
“Otherwise, you’re Ring Shelton,” Cole said.
“His word was good,” I said.
“It was,” Cole said. “And he wasn’t a back shooter. But he weren’t a lawman. He’d kill anybody, long as somebody hired him to do it.”
“Maybe that was his law,” I said.
Cole gestured the Chinaboy for more coffee.
“Ain’t enough,” Cole said.
“I always kind of figured boys like you and me, Virgil, we done gun work because we could. We was better at it than most, and we didn’t mind. It’s better than punching cows, or digging copper, or soldiering. And if you do it as a peace officer, you get paid regular, and you sort of know when to do it and how.”
“Sounds right,” Cole said.
“But I never took the legal stuff too serious. It was just a way to feel easier about being a gun man.”
“I take it serious,” Cole said. “Who the hell am I if I don’t?”
“What if you had to go against the law someday?” I said.
“Goddamn it, Everett,” Cole said. “Is this about something, or are you just trying to bore me to death?”
“Just musing,” I said.
“Well, muse about fucking or something,” Cole said.
“Sure,” I said.