Blue-Eyed Devil (14 page)

57

I
HAD A BEER with Chauncey Teagarden in a small saloon called Rabbit’s, near the new red-light section of town.

“You’re from New Orleans,” I said.

“Ah surely am,” he said, broadening the accent.

“Did you know that Callico’s wife is from New Orleans?”

Chauncey grinned.

“Amelia,” he said.

“You do know her,” I said.

“Know her,” Chauncey said. “She don’t know me.”

“Tell me ’bout her,” I said.

“Queen of Storyville,” Chauncey said. “Worked three, four cribs there, ’fore she met Callico and gave up honest labor.”

“Ever go to one of her establishments?”

“Hell, when she was first starting out she used to work the bedrooms herself,” Chauncey said. “I been to her.”

“Callico know that?” I said.

“No, she don’t even know that. She was a busy girl when I was going to her. And I didn’t shave yet.”

“But he knew she was a whore?”

“Oh, sure,” Chauncey said. “He went to her, too. Called herself the Countess. That was her trick, always wore a fancy dress. Nothing under it.”

“How’d she meet Callico?”

“Don’t know,” Chauncey said. “Don’t know too much about Callico. For a while, I know, he was a trick shooter at a carnival, used to play around New Orleans. Saw him once. Man, could he shoot.”

“Clay pigeons?” I said.

“Yep. Fancy ones sometimes. Made of glass.”

“Pigeons ever shoot back?”

“Nope.”

“Unlikely to,” I said.

“God, he was fast, though. And accurate.”

“She work the carnival?” I said.

“Doubt it,” Teagarden said. “Mighta been a bouncer in one’a her joints and then something clicked and they went off together. ’Cept I heard she took up with a fella by that name, I never thought anything about either one of them until I got here. I recognized her. And when I seen him, I remember him shooting. Ain’t all so many fellas named Callico you’re gonna run into.”

The doors to the saloon were open, and outside the sky was low and dark and there was a sense of something coming. Most people were off the street.

“Something coming,” Chauncey said, looking out at the dark street.

“A lot of it,” I said.

We carried our beer glasses to the doorway and stood, looking out at the empty street where the wind was beginning to kick a little trash around.

“This thing between Callico and the general is going to turn into something bad,” Chauncey said.

“If it does, you’re with the general,” I said.

“I am,” he said.

“You and the general against Callico and his policemen,” I said. “He’s got a fair number of hands.”

“Yeah, but mostly cowhands,” Chauncey said.

“You’re not a cowhand,” I said.

“No,” Chauncey said. “I am not.”

“So, he needs you to run the tactical command, so to speak.”

“I’d say so.”

“You didn’t come here to fight a war,” I said.

“Things change,” Chauncey said.

“Forever?” I said.

“Till after the war.”

“Then?”

“I do what the general hired me to do, if he still wants it done.”

“He don’t seem like a man changes his mind much,” I said.

“No.”

“General’s kid required it of Virgil,” I said.

“I’m sure he did,” Chauncey said. “Virgil Cole don’t go around shooting people ’cause he can.”

The wind was picking up as we stood, watching in the doorway. It pushed tumbleweed up the street past us. Far to the west, lightning flashed, and in a moment the sound of thunder came to us. No rain yet, but the tension of its pending arrival filled the air.

“Soon,” I said.

“I have to go against Virgil,” Chauncey said. “I assume that includes you.”

“Does,” I said.

“Still got that eight-gauge?” Chauncey said.

I smiled.

“Do,” I said.

“Won’t make it easier,” Chauncey said.

“I’ll come straight at you,” I said. “I don’t back-shoot.”

“Well, never lost yet,” Chauncey said.

“Neither has Virgil,” I said.

A single raindrop splattered into the still-dusty street in front of us.

“I know,” Chauncey said. “Sorta what makes it worth trying.”

58

T
HE RAIN when it arrived was everything it promised to be. It came down, slanted by the wind, hard and cold and steady. The Callico election rally that had been scheduled for Main Street was moved inside the saloon at the Boston House, with Callico standing on a chair near the bar and half the Appaloosa police department ranged along the outside walls.

“I promise you safe streets in Appaloosa, and open saloons, and more of the same kind of money and development that has been flowing in through my efforts these last months.”

Wearing a slicker buttoned to his neck and a confederate cavalry hat pulled down over his eyes, General Laird pushed into the saloon. Chauncey Teagarden came behind wearing a slicker, too. He kept his unbuttoned, holding it closed with his left hand until he got out of the rain. The two men stood in the crowd toward the front of the room.

“My opponent, who, incidentally, has just arrived in the room,” Callico said, “will tell you he is qualified to lead because he has been a military man, a commander. Albeit of a rebel power? Don’t we then have the right to ask what he commanded his soldiers to do? Would that not tell us what kind of civic leader he might make? Recently some of my supporters spoke publicly of his pusillanimity at Ralesberg. Of his brutality toward woman and innocent children, as he fled the field of battle.”

Beside me, Virgil said, “‘Pusillanimity’?”

“Cowardice,” I said.

“My supporters,” Callico said, “decent, honest men, both of them, were confronted by General Laird’s hired gunman in an attempt to repress the truth.”

“Ain’t that ‘suppress’?” Virgil said.

“I’d use ‘suppress,’” I said.

“And you went to the U.S. Military Academy,” Virgil said.

“So I must be right,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“But the truth will not be repressed,” Callico said. His voice was loud now, and up a pitch. His face was red.

“The commander was a coward at Ralesberg,” he shouted,

“and a coward at Tyler Creek. His victories were against unarmed women and children who had the misfortune to be in the path of his retreat.”

As Callico talked, the general worked his way through the crowd until he stood right in front of Callico. He’d taken off his gloves and held them in his right hand.

“You lie,” he said.

His voice sounded like the crack of a bullwhip.

He stepped one step closer and reached up and slapped Callico across the face with the gloves in his right hand. It almost knocked Callico off the chair he stood on. He made a move toward his shoulder holster and stopped himself and got stabilized on the chair.

“Mr. Teagarden is my second,” the general said. “I will meet you anywhere. Pistols or sword.”

“A duel?” Callico said. “You’re challenging me to a fucking duel?”

“I am,” the general said.

“A goddamned duel,” Virgil murmured to me. “The general’s got some sand.”

Callico glanced across the room.

“Sergeant Sullivan,” he said. “Take this man into custody. Use any requisite force.”

Virgil looked at me.

“ ‘Requisite’ means necessary,” I said. “Required.” Virgil nodded. Sergeant Sullivan and five policemen assembled in a small squad and pushed through the crowd to General Laird, standing in front of Callico. Chauncey Teagarden moved slightly to the side of the group and looked at General Laird.

“Chauncey takes them on,” I said. “We gonna help?”

Virgil stared at the scene silently.

Then he said, “Yes.”

I had begun to carry the eight-gauge again as tension had begun to develop in town. I nodded, picked up the eight-gauge from where it leaned against the wall, and moved slowly along the wall to get myself opposite Virgil, so we’d have a nice crossfire if we needed to shoot.

Chauncey saw me move. He nodded his head slightly and looked at General Laird.

“General?” he said.

Laird shook his head.

“Not yet, Chauncey,” he said. “It may come to that. But not yet.”

I think Callico saw me move, too. He looked at me for a moment and then at Virgil for a moment.

“You are charged with assaulting a police officer,” Callico said. “You will be taken to jail and held for hearing.”

I saw Chauncey move his shoulders slightly, as if to loosen them.

“My lawyer will bail me out in the morning,” the general said. “Not yet, Chauncey.”

59

C
ALLICO SENT one of his many policemen to invite us to come to his office in Reclamation Hall. With its ornate furniture and its dim light, the office had a solemn quality. Callico had lit no lamps, and the rain streaking the big windows filtered what light had made its way through the dark overhead. He sat behind a big desk in the arched bay that looked out over the length of Main Street. At the other end of the long office, two on either side of the door, sat four policemen.

“How many law officers you got now, Amos?” Virgil said.

“We have grown to twenty-five,” Callico said. “Including my personal team.”

“Palace guard,” I said.

Callico shook his head with a smile.

“You don’t see the chief of police in Chicago or New York strolling about without escort,” Callico said.

Virgil nodded slowly.

“What was it you wanted to see us about?” he said.

“Seen you at the saloon today,” Callico said.

“Yep.”

“Virgil,” Callico said. “Everett. You boys know this town never elected a mayor before.”

“Yep.”

“I’m not sure it’s ready.”

Virgil and I said nothing.

“You seen what it was today. I’m trying to tell the truth and my opponent is talking ’bout shooting me.”

“Or you him,” I said.

“It’s barbaric,” Callico said. “We cannot have an election when one candidate threatens the life of the other.”

“So, what do you do?” I said.

“I may have to cancel the election.”

“And who’d run the town?” Virgil said.

“I would,” Callico said.

Virgil looked at me and smiled.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Where’d you get all that information on the general being a coward and a baby killer?” I said.

“Very reliable person,” he said.

“That being?” I said.

Callico paused, thinking about it.

“I can’t tell you,” he said.

“Figured you couldn’t,” Virgil said. “What was it you wanted from us?”

“Looked to me this morning, when the balloon was sort of getting ready to go up, that you boys was getting ready to side with Laird.”

“We was going to side with anybody, be Teagarden,” Virgil said. “He helped us out with your Indians.”

Callico stared at Virgil.

“For crissake, Virgil,” he said. “He’s here to kill you.”

“I know,” Virgil said.

Callico stared at Virgil some more. He didn’t get it. I did. We owed Chauncey for the Indians. And he wasn’t here to kill Virgil yet. But I’d been with Virgil a long time. Like so many others before him. Callico had never met anybody like Virgil Cole. No one said anything.

“I think this is going to get pretty bad,” Callico said finally.

“Sounds like it to me,” Virgil said.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “I’m prepared to make you boys special deputies reporting only to me. I’ll give the same deal to your friend Teagarden.”

“Everett?” Virgil said.

“Don’t want to be a special deputy,” I said.

“Me, either,” Virgil said. “Can’t speak for Chauncey, but it don’t seem probable.”

“Will you side with Laird?” Callico said.

“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “You know, Everett?”

“I don’t,” I said.

“He’ll lose,” Callico said. “I got twenty-five men. I’ll close Appaloosa down and run it like conquered territory until the town is mine and knows it.”

“Then what?” Virgil said.

“Then we move on.”

“What happens to Appaloosa?”

“Don’t know,” Callico said. “Won’t care. I won’t be moving on to something worse.”

Callico looked at both of us and shook his head slowly for a while.

“It’s sad, really,” he said finally. “You boys had a chance to get on board something important here, and you’re too dumb to see it.”

“Maybe it ain’t dumb,” Virgil said.

Callico gave a humorless laugh.

“What else could it be.”

“Aw, hell, I dunno,” Virgil said. “Probably dumb.”

He stood. I stood, and we walked down the long office past the palace guard and out the front door.

60

W
HEN WE CAME back to Virgil’s house in the late afternoon, Chauncey Teagarden was sipping whiskey on the front porch and watching Allie flirt with him.

“Mr. Teagarden has been entertaining me with tales of New Orleans,” Allie said when we sat down.

“Entertaining fella,” Virgil said, and poured himself a little whiskey.

“He says he knew Mrs. Callico in New Orleans,” Allie said.

“The Countess,” I said.

“Did you know her, too, Everett?”

“Nope, just what Chauncey has told me.”

“Was she really a countess?”

Chauncey glanced at Virgil. Virgil shrugged faintly. And nodded even more faintly.

“Was a whore,” Chauncey said.

“A whore?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Allie said. “Just because you’ve been a whore doesn’t mean you’re always a whore.”

“No,” Chauncey said.

“People can change. They can grow. And they do,” Allie said. “She’s turned into a fine lady.”

“Surely has,” Virgil said. “Also the one that says Laird ran from combat.”

“Amelia?” Chauncey said. “How the hell would she know.”

“Probably don’t,” Virgil said.

“You think she made it up?” Chauncey said.

“I do,” Virgil said.

“You think Amelia Callico is telling lies about the general?” Allie said.

“Yep.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Get her husband elected mayor,” Virgil said.

“You and Everett gonna have to take a side here ’fore it’s over. Too much shooting gonna be done, and you boys are too good at it not to get pulled in.”

“Callico’s got twenty-five policemen,” I said. “You got how many?”

“Me and Laird’s hands,” Chauncey said.

“How many gun hands?”

“Me.”

“What do you think, Everett?”

“Never liked Callico,” I said.

“Hard to like,” Virgil said.

“Pony’s in Buffalo Springs,” I said. “I could ride down and get him.”

“That’d be three of you,” Chauncey said. “And me makes all we need.”

I looked at Virgil. He nodded.

“I’ll ride on down and get Pony Flores,” I said.

Allie was listening to this as if a new universe was opening up. She poured herself some whiskey and drank it.

“Bring Laurel back, too,” she said. “For a visit.”

“No,” Virgil said. “He’ll bring you down there to stay with Laurel. I don’t want either of you around town for a time.”

“Just like that?” Allie said. “Go gallivanting off with Everett for a two-day trip.”

“You can make it in a day,” Virgil said. “And keep your hands off Everett.”

Allie blushed.

“Virgil,” I said. “You spoil everything.”