The Bridge

33

Gains got us some hot food; it was a venison chili the camp cook made up, and we ate at a long table in the office.

In the following hour Cox drifted off to sleep on a cot near the heater stove and Virgil and I sat on the opposite side of the room with Gains. We were drinking coffee with a tip of whiskey. Gip lay curled up at Gains’s feet.

“Know anything about the man that bid against Cox for this project?” Virgil said.

“Swickey?”

Virgil nodded.

“Not really,” Gains said. “I know he’s a honcho cattleman.”

“He been here?” Virgil said. “To the bridge?”

“Not that I know of,” Gains said. “No.”

“You know where his place is?” I said.

Gains shook his head.

“I don’t.”

Virgil nodded to Cox sleeping on the cot.

“You ever hear there was bad blood between Cox and Swickey?”

“Had to be some,” Gains said quietly. “Mr. Cox getting the bid and all but I don’t know... You think Swickey did this?”

“Somebody did it,” Virgil said.

“They damn sure did,” Gains said.

“Any ideas?” Virgil said.

Gains shook his head.

“All I know is I damn sure didn’t do it,” Gains said.

Gip growled.

“Quiet, Gip,” Gains said.

Gip rolled over and Gains rubbed his belly with the heel of his boot.

“Not saying you did,” Virgil said.

“No, I know,” Gains said. “Just making it clear, I’m a bridge builder, proud to be one, that’s all. I hope to hell whoever the hell did do this gets their due.”

Virgil nodded to Cox.

“He make a good boss?” he said.

Gains tilted his head a little, followed by a slight nod.

“Late on paying bills and payroll these last two months,” Gains said, “but I don’t think it was any fault of his. I think it was just the territory with bureaucrats acting as bankers.”

Virgil looked over to Cox sleeping on the cot.

“What will happen now?” Gains said.

“After I finish this coffee, Everett and me are gonna ride to the way station,” Virgil said. “Maybe send us a wire or two.”

We sat for a while longer, discussing the cleanup operations with Gains, then Virgil and I left him and Cox. We got our horses from the stable, mounted up, and rode off to the telegraph way station on the road to Fletcher Flats.

The snow was still falling and there was a good eight inches that had built up. We rode awhile without talking, then Virgil asked me the question I was expecting.

“Tell me about this fortune-teller woman?” Virgil said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Where she come from?”

“Not sure just where, but like I told you, she’s part of the traveling show.”

We rounded a mess of hillside spindly fir saplings that were sagging over the road from the weight of the snow.

“She come up with the name Cotter,” Virgil said.

“She did,” I said.

“Think she’s got something to do with this?” Virgil said.

“Don’t,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Sure as I can be, Virgil.”

“How then did she know?”

We rode for a bit before I answered.

“Well, Virgil, I don’t know.”

Virgil nodded a little.

“So you believe this,” Virgil said. “She knows shit that she sees in her head?”

“I don’t know what to believe right now. Damnedest thing. Before I didn’t think much of her talk at all. Hell, I just enjoyed her female company and thought she was just full of her own musings and now this.”

We rode for a bit.

“What do you think?” I said.

Virgil shook his head a little.

“What all she tell you again?” Virgil said.

“Said she saw men running. Someone or something called Codder or Cotter. And that my life was in danger.”

“Goddamn,” Virgil said. “Win. Place. Show.”

I didn’t say anything and we rode on for a while more before Virgil said anything else.

“That all the fortune-tellin’ business she offered?”

“No.”

“What else?”

“She said that my life being in danger was not the shoot-out with Bolger that she saw.”

“What was it?”

“Said the life-in-danger business wasn’t in Appaloosa.”

Virgil turned in his saddle a little, looking at me.

“Not in Appaloosa?”

“Yep.”

“Where?” Virgil said.

“Didn’t say.”

“So it’s just a show-and-place ticket,” Virgil said.