Ironhorse

2

After our shoot-out with Sheriff Amos Callico and his clan in Appaloosa, Virgil was appointed territory marshal, and I was appointed his deputy marshal. The position was better suited for Virgil and me. It was better than being town sheriffs or city police. The job didn’t restrict us to one town. Our duties were to oversee everything within our territorial jurisdiction.

On the third day after our new commission, we got orders to carry out the assignment we were on.

Before we departed on this mission, Virgil selected Chauncey Teagarden and Pony Flores as interim deputies of Appaloosa. Chauncey and Pony were good gunmen. They had helped us in the altercation with Sheriff Callico and proved to be trusted allies.

Our job was to collect two Mexican Wall Street con artists and deliver them to Mexican authorities in Nuevo Laredo. The job was a simple matter of transporting top-priority criminals. This was not something Virgil and I were accustomed to doing, but it was part of our new marshaling duties, and we did just that, transported criminals.

Though there was a considerable amount of train travel involved, the journey was less than formidable, and Virgil and I got along with our prisoners.

Virgil figured any man who could make money from people who stole the money in the first place couldn’t be all bad.

The Mexicans spoke good English, were polite, and knew nothing about firearms. We played cards and even shared a bit of whiskey.

Virgil intended to ride horseback on the return to Appaloosa, seeing the country, as he preferred to see it, from the view of the saddle, but a telegram he received the day we dropped off our prisoners to the federales in Nuevo Laredo changed our plans.

I was not privy to the details regarding the telegram or who it was even from, but I figured the content of the telegram wasn’t good, and it had everything to do with Allison French. The devil is always in the details, or, better put, the devil is in Allison French.

We had barely made it to the train station in Nuevo Laredo before we received word our prisoners had been placed in front of a firing squad and shot. Mexicans have a swift way of dealing with other Mexicans.

It had been four full days on the rail before we were close to getting out of Texas. We had traveled up through San Antonio and Austin City, crossed the Brazos, changed to the Texas Pacific, and stopped for a spell in Dallas. There, we got a big T-bone dinner near the Trinity River, walked the horses a good bit, and hoteled for the evening. In the morning, we got a plateful of food at a Hungarian café near the depot and boarded the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas line heading north into Indian territory.

We had been within roping distance of the Chickasaw Nation and were leaving Texas behind before we got detoured just south of the Red River. The MK&T track running north from Sherman was under repair, so we had to catch the Pacific Transcontinental line, a sixty-mile jaunt east to Paris, Texas. We made a final stop in Paris. It took a while to make the changeover there, so I walked the horses again before we transferred to the St. Louis & San Fran Express and headed back north.

Currently, the Express was struggling a bit up a steep grade.

Virgil slid a cigar from his breast pocket, bit off the tip and spat it out the window. He fished out a match, dragged the tip of it on the iron frame of the seat in front of him, and lit the cigar. After he got it going good, he repeated what he’d previously said.

“I do,” he said. “I love her.”

“Except for the unfortunate stint of whoring, you or me have killed all the men she has been with,” I said encouragingly.

“Got no guarantee,” Virgil said.

I thought about that for a moment.

“No,” I said. “I suppose you’re right about that.”

Virgil shook his head slightly and turned, looking out the window.

“Been enough, though,” Virgil said.

“There has.”

“Can’t say there might not be more.”

“No, we can’t.”

Virgil got quiet. After a moment or two of silence I leaned forward a bit, looking at him.

“That what this is about?”

Virgil looked at me.

“You thinking she’s fucking Chauncey Teagarden?” I said.