Blue-Eyed Devil

55

BUSINESS WAS GOOD in Appaloosa. Virgil and I kept busy buffaloing drunks, and occasionally a little more, in the saloons we serviced. When we weren’t busy we spent our time watching the mayoral election unfold in virgin territory.

The rain was meager today. Enough drizzle to keep the streets mucky but not to drive the voters away, and they stood in a damp cluster around the stairs to Reclamation Hall, where General Laird was explaining to them why they would be wise to vote him in as mayor.

“I have led men all my life,” he said. “I understand how to run an organization.”

“You understand how to run,” someone said loudly in the front row.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Laird said.

“Whyn’t you tell ’em how you flat-out run away at Ralesberg,” the loud voice said.

“I did no such thing. We won at Ralesberg.”

“While you was running, you burned out a refugee camp and slaughtered a bunch of women and children,” another voice said just as loudly.

“Sir, that is a lie,” Laird said.

He stood very erect in a slightly shabby gray CSA general officer’s coat, the light rain drizzling down onto his bare head.

The two voices separated themselves from the front row. One belonged to a tall, raw-boned red-haired man with a weak and unimpressive beard. The other was shorter and thicker, with a dense black beard, wearing a Colt on a gun belt over bib overalls.

“You callin’ us liars?” the red-haired man said.

He carried a short-barreled breech-loading cavalry carbine. The people immediately around them moved away.

“Watch Chauncey,” Virgil murmured.

Chauncey had been leaning against the frame of the big front door, sheltered from the rain, watching the a ctivity.

“What you are saying, sir, is untrue,” Laird said.

“I say you are a back-shooting, barn-burning, gray-bellied coward,” the red-haired man said. “Anybody gonna tell me no?”

“I am,” Chauncey said.

“Who the hell are you?”

“General Laird is a gentleman,” Chauncey said. “He is not a murderous thug. He is not going to descend to a street fight with you.”

“And you?” the man with the black beard said.

Chauncey straightened lazily from the door frame and ambled out to stand maybe five feet in front of the two men.

“I am a murderous thug,” Chauncey said.

There was silence. Chauncey’s ivory-handled Colt, sprinkled slightly with raindrops, seemed to gleam in the low, gray light.

“If you’d like,” Chauncey said, “you get to pick where I shoot you.”

“Chauncey,” General Laird said. “I appreciate your support. But this is a democratic process. We cannot have people killed.”

“I’m not running for anything, General,” Chauncey said.

“You are with me,” General Laird said.

“Yessir,” Chauncey said. “I am.”

He smiled at the two hecklers.

“’Nother reason to vote for General Laird,” Chauncey said. “He just saved your lives.”