“You pull this off,” I said, “and we got the town.”
“I don’t,” Virgil said, “and we’re no worse off than we were.”
“’Cept for you bein’ dead,” I said.
“’Cept for that,” Virgil said.
73.
It was a bright, hot day. The sky was very high. And it was very still, with no wind, the stillness made more intense by the hum of insects. I watched the three riders come out of town and head toward the slope in front of us. They were walking their horses. No one was with them. At the foot of the slope they stopped.
“It’s them,” I said to Virgil. “Swann’s on your right. West end of the line.”
Virgil nodded and clucked to his horse and rode out around the stone outcropping, and started at a slow walk down the long slope. Through the glass, I scanned the area. No sign of deputies. If they were around, they were probably behind the higher ground to the east, where I couldn’t see them. As Virgil rode down the slope, Cato and Rose lay in the rocks on either side of me with rifles. I had one, too, propped in the rocks in front of me while I was spy-glassing.
“You know what’s making that sound?” Rose said. “I been hearing it all my life. I never seen the bug that makes it.”
“I dunno,” I said. “Locust, maybe?”
“Cicadas,” Cato said.
Rose and I looked at each other.
“They make it with their hind legs,” I said.
“What I heard,” Rose said. “Rub ’em together.”
“They make it with their belly,” Cato said.
Rose and I nodded.
“See the funny-looking little bush there, where Virgil is now?” I said.
They did.
“I can hit that with a rifle,” I said. “I tried it last night.”
“I heard you,” Cato said.
Must have been the excitement of the moment, for Cato, he was positively babbling.
“Okay,” Rose said. “So if Virgil makes it back to there, he’s in rifle range, and we can cover him.”
It was long enough after sunrise so that there should have been activity in the lumber camp, but I didn’t hear anything there, either. I don’t know if the camp was laying low, holding its breath, or if I was just so locked on what was going on down the hill that I didn’t hear anything. I noticed that the cicada sound no longer registered, either, so it probably had to do with concentrating.
“Virgil beats Swann,” Cato said. “He may pull it off. I don’t know ’bout Lujack, but Wolfson pretty sure ain’t much.”
“Nobody, far as I know, ever beat Virgil,” I said.
“If they had, he wouldn’t be here,” Rose said.
“True,” I said.
“Swann’s still here, too,” Cato said.
“Also true,” I said.
“So we’ll see,” Cato said.
“And pretty quick,” I said.
Virgil reached the foot of the slope and stopped his horse maybe twenty feet in front of the three men. I looked at Swann through the glass. He was perfectly still on his horse, relaxed, looking at Virgil. Virgil had the same stillness in a fight. He had it now.
I put the glass away so I could see the whole scene.
Apparently, Wolfson said something and Virgil answered. Swann’s gaze never wavered from Virgil. Then it seemed as if nobody said anything, as if everything stopped. Then, with no visible hurry, Virgil drew. Swann was good, he had cleared his holster when Virgil shot him and turned quietly and shot Lujack, as Lujack was still fumbling with his holster. Wolfson didn’t draw. Instead, he raised both hands over his head as high as he could reach. Virgil shot him. There was almost a rhythm to it. As if something in Virgil’s head was counting time. Swann. Lujack. Wolfson. Orderly. Graceful. One bullet each. And three men dead.
Then, with the three men on the ground and their riderless horses starting to browse the short grass, Virgil opened the cylinder, took out the three spent shells, inserted three fresh ones, closed the cylinder, holstered his gun, turned his horse, and headed back up the hill at a dead gallop.
“Swann started things, ’stead of Virgil,” Cato said, “he mighta won.”
“But he didn’t,” I said.
74.
The deputies came boiling up over the hill where they figured to be, and rode hard after Virgil. There might have been ten. They were bunched, and at the distance and speed, it was hard to count for sure. When they came to the dead men, they reined in. Some of their horses were a little spooked about the corpses and shied and danced a little. Some didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened. The horses of the dead men had paid very little attention, and were now eating grass a few feet from the bodies. I guess shooting bothered some horses and not others. Horses were hard to figure. Like people.
The deputies gathered, milling around the deceased as they discussed what to do. Nobody got down and checked on the dead men. They’d all seen it enough to recognize death when they saw it.
Virgil was well up the hill now, past the bush that marked rifle range. The deputies still milled. Virgil’s horse pounded up to the rock outcropping and around it. His hooves clattered where some of the ledge was exposed underfoot, and then he was behind the rocks, breathing in big huffs. Virgil slid off him, took a loop around a tree with the reins, and joined us in the rocks.
“Swann was good,” Virgil said.
Below us, the deputy with the big mustache, who had killed three men in Ellsworth, rode a ways up the hill but stopped a long way short of the rifle-range bush.
“Cole,” he shouted.
Virgil climbed down from the rocks and went out in front of them, and stood. I slid forward a little so I could see him.
“You hear me, Cole?” the deputy shouted.
“Yep.”
“We got no stake in this, we’re hired hands. For us, the job’s over.”
Virgil waited.
“You hear that?” the deputy yelled.
“Yep.”
“We’ll be out of here by tomorrow night,” the deputy shouted.
Virgil didn’t say anything for a minute. He looked up at me looking down from the rocks, and he grinned.
Then he turned back to the deputy down the slope and waved his right hand.
“Hasta la vista,” he shouted.
And the deputy turned his horse and headed back down the slope and joined the other deputies. They left the bodies where they had lain, rounded up the riderless horses, and drove them ahead of them as they went back into town. After maybe an hour or so, someone came from town in a buckboard and gathered up the bodies.
75.
We had a pack mule for supplies, and were saying good-bye to Cato and Rose, when Beth Redmond came out of the hotel that used to belong to Wolfson.
“You’re really going,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll miss you, too, ma’am,” I said. “Won’t we, Virgil.”
“We will,” Virgil said.
“You know, the men got together and elected Mr. Stark mayor of Resolution,” she said.
“Yep,” Virgil said.
“He’s going to run the bank and the store and everything that poor Mr. Wolfson, ah, left behind.”
“Stark knows how to run things,” I said.
“Everybody wanted both of you to stay on, too,” she said.
“These boys’ll make a fine pair of marshals,” Virgil said.
Rose grinned at her.
“Like my new badge?” he said.
“You and Mr. Tillson look very nice,” she said.
No one mentioned that the badges were lifted from the dead bodies of Lujack and Swann.
“You have any problems,” Virgil said, “with anybody, you understand? You see Cato or Rose, they’ll straighten it out.”
She nodded.
“Never know,” Virgil said. “Right now
I got to go to Texas.”
She stood in front of him, looking at him for a moment, then she put her arms around him and kissed him hard on the mouth.
“You’re a good man, Virgil Cole,” she said when she was through. “Thank you.”
Virgil grinned at her.
“You’re welcome,” he said, and patted her on the backside, and swung up onto his horse.
She gave me a little hug, too, and a kiss on the cheek, but with less enthusiasm. I hugged her back gently.
“Good-bye, Beth,” I said, and got on the horse.
Virgil looked down at Beth.
“Remember, he gives you any trouble . . .”
“Come see us,” Rose said.
“He’s changed,” Beth said. “But thank you.”
Beth turned and went back into the hotel. Virgil and I looked at Cato and Rose.
“Never got to fight you,” Virgil said.
“Not this time,” Rose said.
“Probably just as well,” Virgil said.
“Probably,” Cato said.
We nodded. They nodded. Then we started the horses and headed south out of Resolution.
Virgil didn’t say anything the whole day. We were in open country when we camped that night. I took a bottle of whiskey out of my saddlebag, and we had some while we made a fire and cooked some sowbelly and beans under the big, dark sky.
“You think he’ll leave her alone?” Virgil said.
“Redmond?” I said. “Probably not.”
“Be all right for a while,” Virgil said. “Then something’ll go wrong and he’ll be under pressure. . . .”
“And he won’t be man enough to handle it,” I said. “So he’ll convince himself it’s her fault and smack her couple times to make himself feel better.”
“He hurts her,” Virgil said, “Cato will kill him.”
“I know,” I said.
“And it’ll break her heart,” he said.
“Yep.”
“But she’ll be better off,” Virgil said.
“She won’t think so for a while,” I said.
Virgil leaned back against his saddle and drank from the bottle and looked up at the infinite scatter of stars.
“She was a nice clean woman,” he said. “Always took a bath ’fore we done anything.”
I didn’t comment. He handed me the bottle. I had some.
“Smart,” he said. “Good lookin’, good hearted. Hard to figure why she’d love a jackass like Redmond.”
I said, “Uh-huh.”
“But she does,” Virgil said.
“Uh-huh.”
Virgil took another turn on the bottle, then he looked at me and grinned.
“She’s such a dope,” he said. “He ran off to Texas with somebody else, she’d go on down there looking for him.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
I put my hand out for the bottle and Virgil passed it to me.
“And her friend would go with her,” he said.
I drank some whiskey.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Rough Weather
Now and Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Resolution
Appaloosa
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
PUTMAN
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3,
Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,
London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia),
250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia
Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel
Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ
), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North
Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books
(South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2009 by Robert B. Parker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,
or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do
not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation
of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Robert B., date.
Brimstone / Robert B. Parker.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-05049-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party web-sites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Joan: Well worth the pressure
1
IT’S A LONG RIDE SOUTH through New Mexico and Texas, and it seems even longer when you stop in every run-down, aimless little dried-up town, looking for Allie French. By the time we got to Placido, Virgil Cole and I were almost a year out of Resolution.
It was a barren little place, west of Del Rio, near the Rio Grande, which had a railroad station, and one saloon for every man, woman, and child in town. We went into the grandest of them, a place called Los Lobos, and had a beer.
Los Lobos was decorated with wolf hides on the wall and a stuffed wolf behind the bar. Several people looked at Virgil when he came in. He wasn’t special-looking. Sort of tall, wearing a black coat and a white shirt and a Colt with a white bone handle. But there was something about the way he walked and the way the gun seemed so natural. People looked at me sometimes, too, but always after they looked at Virgil.