The Bridge (22 page)

When we got to the Boston House we saw the transportation belonging to Swickey and the three others. Two horses and an enclosed buggy, hitched to two sturdy horses, with their heads in muzzle feeders.

We stopped shy of the hotel and tied our horses to a hitch in front of the lumberyard.

“Skinny Jack,” Virgil said, as he pulled his Winchester from its scabbard. “Don’t really know what to expect. I don’t think they got any intentions, but just in case, you just stay out on the porch over here. Everett and me will go inside and see what is what. If for some reason they do have intentions and things get lit up in there, and we don’t come out for some reason, maybe one of them does, you hang back here with this Winchester and kill him.”

Skinny Jack took the Winchester from Virgil. His Adam’s apple went up, then down, as he nodded.

Virgil and I walked up the boardwalk to the hotel.

“You take the side entrance, Everett,” Virgil said. “I’ll come in from the lobby. Give me ten.”

I nodded, and started counting ten seconds so to give Virgil time to come in through the front entrance. When I got to ten I pushed
open the side door just as Virgil came through the pocket doors leading into the lobby.

Wallis wasn’t in. His second barkeep, a young Irishman named O’Malley, was behind the bar and the saloon was empty except for the four men sitting near the bar at the big round eight-player table, drinking coffee.

They looked first to me standing with my eight-gauge and then to Virgil with his frock pulled behind his bone-handle.

A big man leaned back in his chair, looking back and forth between Virgil and me.

“Which one of you is Virgil Cole?” he said in a huge, commanding voice.

“Who’s asking?” Virgil said.

The man took his hat off and stood.

“I’m guessing that’d be you,” he said to Virgil.

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“I’m Walton Wayne Swickey,” he said.

Swickey was well over six feet tall. He was clean-shaven and powerful-looking. His hair was cut tight to the sides of his head but the top was a thick crop of dark gray. His face was weathered but strong. He had high cheekbones and deep-set pale blue eyes. He wore a dark pin-striped wool suit with a vest and a string tie. Like Book said, he was heeled. He had a butt-forward pearl-handled Colt in a black leather holster.

The three men with him scooted back from the table a bit. The three were younger than Swickey, but all were tough-looking, and they, too, were heeled. One of them looked familiar. I was thinking back, curious if maybe this was one of the dressers I saw ride by Hal’s Café.

“You Cole?” Swickey said to Virgil.

“I am,” Virgil said.

“I understand you’ve been looking for me,” Swickey said.

“Deputies said it’s you who has come here to Appaloosa, looking for me,” Virgil said.

“I damn sure did,” Swickey said. “Fifty miles in the cold.”

“’Bout?” Virgil said.

“’Bout the bridge,” Swickey said.

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57
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V
irgil took a few steps toward Swickey.

“What about it?” Virgil said.

“You think I had a hand in it,” Swickey said.

Virgil didn’t say anything.

Swickey moved a little closer to Virgil with his shoulders squared and relaxed.

“Don’t you?” Swickey said.

Virgil remained quiet, letting Swickey show as many cards as he was willing to turn over.

“You think I did it,” Swickey said. “You think I blew the sonofabitch up?”

“Who said it was blown up?” Virgil said.

Swickey looked at Virgil for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“I know it was, for certain,” Swickey said.

“You do it?” Virgil said.

“No,” Swickey said.

“Then what makes you certain?” Virgil said.

Swickey looked to one of the men at the table.

“Me,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Virgil said.

“David Daniels,” he said.

David slid back in his chair a bit more. He was a slender, strong-looking man. He wore a flat-crown wide-brim hat with rawhide straps hanging from its sides that funneled through a .45 casing just below his chin.

“Go on?”

“I saw it,” David said.

“You were there?”

He shook his head.

“Rode up on it,” David said. “We was gathering cattle and come up on it, I seen it.”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“I heard you were looking for me,” Swickey said. “Inquiring about me, so I figured I’d save you the looking and pay you a visit.”

“You didn’t come all the way over here,” Virgil said. “’Cause you wanted to pay me a visit.”

“Not really,” Swickey said.

“Then why?” Virgil said.

“For a few reasons,” Swickey said.

“Which are?” Virgil said.

“You think I had a hand in this?” Swickey said. “Because of Cox?”

“What about him?” Virgil said.

“I don’t like the sonofabitch,” Swickey said. “Everybody knows that.”

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“But I damn sure didn’t blow up his bridge because I don’t like him,” Swickey said.

“Who did?” Virgil said.

“Hell,” Swickey said. “I don’t know.”

“What do you know?” Virgil said.

“That bridge was going to bring me prosperity,” Swickey said.

“What kind of prosperity?” Virgil said.

“I’m no goddamn bridge builder,” Swickey said. “But I wanted that bridge, that’s why I even put in a bid on it in the first place. I wanted to see it built.”

“That the prosperity you’re talking about?” Virgil said.

Swickey shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I damn sure could have made money on the contract. Good goddamn money. But that bridge was a goddamn gateway for me.”

“How so?” Virgil said.

“The money I would save on moving my cattle alone is one hell of a reason I wanted more than anyone to see that bridge built. The bridge would have connected the Southern Pacific to my back door, allowing me to move my cattle by rail. It would double my operation.”

“You said a few reasons,” Virgil said. “What’s the other reason?”

“Got my suspicions about who did this,” Swickey said.

“Who?” Virgil said.

Swickey looked to his chair behind him.

“Mind if we sit?” Swickey said, extending his hand to the open chairs at the table. “Goddamn trip, riding in that damn buggy wore my ass out.”

Virgil glanced to me, then the chair, then nodded slightly to Swickey.

Swickey nodded and smiled some. “Knees and back aren’t as friendly as they used to be. Hell, nothing is,” he said, as he sat slowly back in the chair.

Virgil and I moved to the table. Virgil pulled a chair back away from the table a few feet and sat with an empty chair on each side of him. I sat in a chair at a table just next to them.

Swickey looked back to O’Malley behind the bar. He’d been standing the whole time, watching Virgil and Swickey talk as he wiped down a rack of beer mugs.

“Young fella,” Swickey said, as he picked up the coffeepot off the table. “Could we get some more coffee here, please?”

“Certainly,” O’Malley said.

O’Malley came around the corner of the bar. Swickey handed off the pot to him, then turned and faced Virgil with one elbow on the table and one on the back of his chair.

“There’s a good number of cow-calf operations over here on this side of the bridge that goddamn sure didn’t want to see that bridge built.”

“There one in particular?” Virgil said.

“There are a few, I’d suspect. But considering another aspect of all this, Eddie Winslow here,” Swickey said, looking to the man sitting just to the right of him, “has other information I feel is something you will want to hear.”

“What’s that?” Virgil said.

“Eddie had some bad dealings with someone he thinks had a hand in this,” Swickey said.

“Who?” Virgil said.

“Cotters,” Eddie said. “Two fellas, name Cotter.”

Virgil looked and me and shook his head a little.

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58
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W
hat sort of bad dealings?” Virgil said.

Eddie Winslow wasn’t a big fella, but he looked to be as tough as they come. He was an angular, rawboned cowboy with a dark complexion and steely eyes.

“Tell him, Eddie,” Swickey said.

Eddie swiveled in his chair a little, facing Virgil, and placed his strong hands on the table in front of him.

“Me and my partner, Jim Lee, we was working for an outfit up on the north fork of the Red,” Eddie said. “Things petered out for us, and we come down this way. Jim was from this part of the country. We hired on with an outfit between Yaqui and here, pretty good-size outfit.”

“What outfit?” Virgil said.

“Rancher’s name is Westmorland,” Eddie said.

Swickey shook his head.

“Don’t think Westmorland is any part of this,” Swickey said. “I don’t know him, but I know of him. He’s a second-generation rancher and he’s a family man, always had a good reputation. I’d be surprised if he had any part in this, but of course you never know.”

Eddie nodded.

“He was fair; seemed so, anyway,” Eddie said. “He was good to us, fed us good, paid us regular and treated us good. He had some good hands, too, but then these two fellas hired on, them Cotters. They seemed nice enough to me, but I’m a dumbass. Jim was the one that said they was up to no good, and sure enough he was right.”

Eddie stopped talking for a moment. He looked down at his hands clasped on the table in front of him, then looked back up to Virgil and continued.

“Jim come back one night and told me them two asked him if he’d consider throwing in with them, doing a job with them.”

“What kind of job?” Virgil said.

Eddie glanced to Swickey, then looked back to Virgil.

“Jim didn’t spell it all out, exactly,” Eddie said. “Had to do with shutting down the bridge that was being built over the Rio Blanco, though. Said there’d be good money involved.”

Eddie stopped talking when O’Malley came to the table with a pot of coffee and two extra cups.

“Here ya go,” O’Malley said.

Eddie watched O’Malley walk away, then started talking again.

“See, my friend Jim was a rough sonofabitch and all the hands knew he spent time in Brigham’s Hole in Salt Lake for holding up a bank and killing a teller. These two Cotter hands figured Jim was a good pick for doing something dirty. But Jim had given up his wicked ways. He told them to fuck off, that he didn’t want no part of nothing that would put him back behind bars.”

“Where is Jim?”

Eddie looked to his hands again, then looked back up to Virgil, shaking his head.

“Dead,” Eddie said. “That following day was Jim’s last day on God’s green Earth.”

Virgil looked to me.

“What happened?” I said.

Eddie took his time before saying anything.

“Them two killed him is what happened,” Eddie said, looking intently at Virgil. “He didn’t go along with their shit and they for sure killed him. They did their lying best to pin it on Mexican rustlers. Mexican rustlers, shit . . . They had Jim’s horse when they come back, too. I knew damn good what happened.”

“What’d you do?”

“While they were spinning their bullshit yarn,” Eddie said, “telling the day boss what went down, I got on my horse and got the hell outta there.”

“You never saw them again?” Virgil said.

“No,” Eddie said. “I got out of there and didn’t look back. I was owed money, too, but I just got out of there while the getting was good. They knew Jim and me was good friends and I figured it’d be just a matter of time ’fore they did the same thing to me they done to Jim. I just run off.”

Eddie looked to me, then back to Virgil.

“I knew where they’d been working that day,” Eddie said. “I rode out and found Jim’s body.”

“Where?” Virgil said.

“He was hanging from a goddamn scrub oak,” Eddie said. “They strung him up.”

Eddie stopped talking for a moment. He looked away, then back at Virgil with a fierce expression on his face.

“They tortured Jim,” Eddie said, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “It was like they enjoyed it or something. His face was all swollen and . . . his trousers was down . . . it was . . .”

—
59
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C
otters done it?” Virgil said. “You’re certain?”

Eddie nodded.

“Hell, yes, they did,” Eddie said. “Jim saw something in them the first day. He told me to stay away from them. He told me they was no good and he was right.”

“Tell me everything else you know about them,” Virgil said.

“Don’t know nothing, really,” Eddie said.

“What’d they look like?” I said.

“They kind of looked alike,” Eddie said. “Twenty-eight, thirty maybe, one was a little older, bigger, they both are good-size fellas, beards . . . I don’t know.”

“Any idea where they are, or where they could be?” Virgil said.

Eddie shook his head.

“I don’t,” Eddie said. “But Jim’s handle for them was ‘them boys from the brakes.’”

“The brakes?” I said.

Eddie nodded.

“Yaqui Brakes?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. “Jim knew this country. I guess he was
talking about the Yaqui Brakes, I don’t know. Jim said they bragged they had their own whorehouse or some shit, and that they’d supply him with all the ax he could handle.”

“Whorehouse?” I said.

Eddie nodded.

“You sure about that?”

“That’s what Jim said,” Eddie said.

“We been through there, Virgil,” I said.

“We have,” he said.

“Where is this,” Swickey said. “The Yaqui Brakes?”

“Brush country,” I said. “Off the tracks in bottomland between here and Yaqui.”

Virgil nodded.

“Rough holdout place,” Virgil said.

“It is,” I said. “Scrawny creek through there. Summer was sixty, seventy transient tenters, campers, when we was through there. Winter now, won’t be as many down there, I’d say. Southern no-good holdouts, mostly.”