Literature / Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch

Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are the protagonists of a series of books in the Western genre created by Robert B. Parker. Set in the American South-West in the 1880s, the series follows the adventures of two gunslingers who travel the area, alternately serving as town tamers, bouncers, and lawmen.

The first book in the series, Appaloosa, was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name, starring Ed Harris as Cole and Viggo Mortensen as Hitch.

After Parker’s death in 2010, the series was continued by Robert Knott. His first installment was 2013’s Ironhorse.

Works in the Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch series:

By Robert B. Parker:

Appaloosa (2005)

Resolution (2008)

Brimstone (2009)

Blue-Eyed Devil (2010)

By Robert Knott:

Ironhorse (2013)

Bull River (2014)

The Bridge (2014)

Blackjack (2016)

Revelation (2017)

Buckskin (2019)

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This series provides examples of:

• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Allie has a need to be with the the alpha male; when Cole is around that’s usually him, but whenever they’re separated (or if she perceives that someone else has the upper hand) she gravitates toward whomever is currently on top.
• Action Duo: Apart from Cole and Hitch there are Ring and Mackie Shelton, and Cato and Rose.
• Action Fashionista: Both Chauncey Teagarden and Frank Rose are described as wearing fancier clothes than most other characters. Both also carry fancy matched double pistols, Teagarden’s with ivory handles and Rose’s with pearl handles. This is lampshaded when they finally meet in Blue-Eyed Devil:
  “Like your shirt,” Rose said.
  Chauncey nodded.
  “Like yours, too,” he said.
• Alcoholic Parent: Mary Beth, whose addiction is due to the severe trauma she's received. She neglects her daughter as a result of her drinking.
• Army Scout: Both Pony Flores and Hitch have done scouting for the army on a freelance basis.
• Badass Boast: Cole is honest about how good he is:
  • A shooting competition against The Gunfighter Wannabe leads to this exchange:
    When it was over, the former deputy from Lincoln County walked over to Virgil.
    "That's the best shooting I ever seen," he said.
    Virgil nodded and smiled at him.
    "Yeah," he said. "I know."
  • When Mary Beth expresses concern that the man who kidnapped and raped her and her daughter will come back to take her again:
    “We’ll kill him, too,” Virgil said.
    “You don’t know what he’s like,” Mary Beth said.
    “No,” Virgil said.
    He smiled at her.
    “But I know what I’m like,” Virgil said.
• Badass Native: Half-Apache Pony Flores is one of the few characters on a similar skill level to the main protagonists.
• Badges and Dog Tags: This trope applies whenever Hitch is working as a lawman, as he attended the military academy at West Point and served in the army before going freelance.
• BFG: Hitch carries a double-barrelled 8 gauge he kept from his days riding shotgun with Wells Fargo. Many people remark on its size, including the observation that its barrel looks large enough to drive a train through.^note The diameter of an 8 gauge is .835 inches, or 21.2 mm.
  “Christ. Pellets must look like billiard balls.”
• Body-Count Competition: Averted; after a gunfight when a first-timer claims to have killed someone, the experienced gunfighters just look at each other and one comments that it’s not “sportin’” counting up who shot whom, equating it to counting your money while you’re playing poker.
• Boom, Headshot!: Koy Wickman’s fate, courtesy of Hitch’s eight gauge.
  I hit him in the face with both barrels. It turned him completely around and propelled him about three steps before he went down. It didn’t blow his head off like I’d said it would. But it was an awful mess.
• Braids, Beads and Buckskins: Largely averted, as the narration recognizes the differences between various indigenous tribes and their customs. For example, a group of natives are identified as being Kiowa due to the fact that they are carrying medicine shields.
• Bringing in the Expert: Whenever Cole and Hitch are hired, the opposing faction will often try to hire similarly skilled gunmen to counter them:
  • Resolution: After Wolfson hires Hitch and Cole, Eamon Malley hires Cato and Rose.
  • Blue-Eyed Devil: General Laird hires Chauncey Teagarden after Cole kills his son.
  • Appaloosa: Bragg hires the Shelton brothers after his own men prove inadequate to deal with Cole and Hitch.
• Camping a Crapper: Faced with the dilemma of taking Bragg into custody while he’s isolated on a ranch with a couple dozen gunmen, Cole and Hitch sneak in at night and waylay him during a trip to the outhouse. They make it a point to grab him after he’s emptied his bladder so they don’t get pissed on while transporting him.
• Cattle Baron:
  • In Appaloosa, Bragg has aspirations to be one of these, with plans to import Angus cattle as breeding stock.
  • Blue Eyed Devil has a former confederate general turned cattle baron. Although he has some conflict with the protagonists for personal reasons, he is much more reasonable and less villainous than is generally seen with this trope.
  • Invoked in Resolution when a group of struggling homesteaders decide to pool their resources to become a sort of collective “cattle baron’’, knowing it’s the only way they can get enough influence to improve their situation.
    “Just like we can pool our cows, we want to pool ourselves. We ain’t big ranchers, but we could be like a big ranch, if we all associated. Then we could broker our own cattle, and maybe establish our own store, and maybe make a living.”
• Cavalry Officer: Lujack is a former cavalry officer who massacred a village of women and children, then tried to court-martial his men who refused to participate. This was too much for the army, but they gave him a promotion and an honorable discharge to cover it up.
• Chinese Laborer: Present in some of the towns, where they do everything from cook in the saloons to dispose of bodies. It’s mentioned in ‘’Resolution’’ that they sleep 8 to a tent and live on pennies while sending most of their earnings back to China.
• Clean Up the Town: What Virgil and Everett have been doing together for 15 years at the start of Appaloosa, although Everett rejects the title “town tamers” as being from the dime novels.
  Everett: Virgil gets hired to settle things down in towns that need settling, and I go with him, and after the town gets settled, then we move on and find another town that needs settling.
• *Click* Hello: A favorite trick the protagonists use is to sit on opposite sides of the room. When Cole is confronted and the situation starts to escalate, Hitch will audibly cock his shotgun from behind the antagonists. This sudden realization that they are surrounded will often lead them to back down, defusing the situation.
• Code of Honour:
  • Cole and Hitch have theirs that basically boils down to the fact that if they sign on for a job, they can’t be bought off for more money.
    “I wish you well,” I said. “But you need to understand. Fella like me got nothing much that’s worth anything, ‘cept his gun and his word. When I hired on with Wolfson it’s like I sort of gave him my word I wouldn’t hire on against him first chance I got.”
    “I just want the gun” Redmond said.
    “Sort of goes with the word,” I said.
  • In Resolution, a subplot in the book is Cole’s moral dilemma because while working as a lawman, he killed someone outside of the law in violation of his code.
• Company Town: The titular town in Resolution. Although it’s really just run by one man rather than a company, the principle is the same. He is the cattle broker for the area, so he can artificially manipulate cattle prices to bring down the homesteaders’ income. They then have to borrow from the store that he owns until they owe enough that he can seize their land.
• Cool Horse: In Appaloosa, Cole and Hitch repeatedly ride out of town and observe a herd of wild horses, including an Appaloosa stallion.
• Crazy-Prepared: A running theme is an idea from Carl von Clausewitz’ book ‘’On War’’ that you don’t just prepare for what you think your enemy will do, you prepare for anything he could be capable of doing.
• Cultured Badass: Hitch received his education from the U.S. Military Academy and often quotes various authors.
• Deliberately Jumping the Gun: Due to their status as lawmen, Cole and Hitch usually have to wait for the other person to make the first move before they can draw and shoot. They’re fast enough that it doesn’t matter.
• Determined Homesteader: A group of them in Resolution, led by Bob Redmond. Despite living in a Company Town, they dream of joining together to make a kind of co-op ranch that is big enough to be self-sustaining.
• Disposable Sex Worker: This is generally the attitude towards the sex workers in the books. Hitch is a notable exception; in Resolution, Wolfson calls him “Saint Everett of the Whores” and gets upset when he sides with a prostitute over the politically connected man who abused her.
• Domestic Abuse: Bob Redmond is abusive towards his wife Beth. She makes excuses for him, but the gunmen take a pretty dim view of a man who would hit a woman.
• Double Agent: Brother Percival is literally the only person who doesn’t realize that his Dragon, Choctaw Brown, is actually working for Pike.
• Due to the Dead: After Cole kills Buffalo Calf, Pony shoots his horse as well so that he will have something to ride in the afterlife. Cole and Hitch debate whether Pony believes that, but decide that Buffalo Calf probably did. They also prevent Pike and his posse from scalping the body.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Appaloosa: When Cole and Hitch catch up with the Sheltons, they are almost immediately attacked by hostile Native Americans. They agree to put aside their differences and fight together until they reach safety.
  • Blue Eyed Devil: When the renegade Apaches attack, Cole enlists Chauncey Teagarden, who has specifically been hired into town to kill him, to help participate in the town’s defenses.
• Fastest Gun in the West: Virgil Cole until proven otherwise.
  ”One of the odd things about seeing Virgil Cole shoot was that he never looked fast; everything looked sort of comfortable and relaxed. But I, who had seen him shoot for real many times, knew that however slow he looked he was always just a little faster than the man he was shooting against.”
• First-Person Perspective: The story is told from Hitch's perspective.
• Friendly Enemy:
  • Resolution: Cole and Hitch and Cato and Rose. Despite the fact that the two pairs have been hired by opposing factions in the town with the understanding that they will likely fight each other at some point, they are on very friendly terms and spend much of their free time together.
  • Blue-Eyed Devil: Chauncey Teagarden. Originally hired by General Laird to kill Cole, they nonetheless fight together and drink together even knowing that a showdown could be coming.
• The Gunfighter Wannabe: These show up in a few of the books.
  • Koy Wickman in the town of Resolution. He was the top gunfighter in a town of meek townsfolk, but doesn't stand a chance when he goes up against real talent.
  • Nicky Laird. He's the son of a powerful cattle baron/retired Confederate general who has taught him that power come from a gun. It does, but it's not his gun.
  • Henry Boyle, who claims to be "as good as anybody" and acts surprised when people haven't heard of him. In a competition, Cole draws and shoots five cans before Henry can even get a shot off.
  • The concept is discussed in Resolution:
    “Seen a lot of kids like that,” Virgil said. “Killed some. They grow up scared and they think if they had a gun maybe they wouldn’t be scared. So they get a gun and they half learn to use it, and maybe they shoot a couple of drunks more scared than they are, and they think they are gunmen. They ain’t. What they are is still scared.”
• Guns Akimbo: Averted; as Hitch says, “I always thought two guns were for show.” When Cole carries two guns into a fight, the second is positioned so he can quickly draw it after emptying the first, rather than using both simultaneously.
• The Gunslinger: Cole and Hitch both qualify, using their skill at gunplay to make a living as guns-for-hire. If the main antagonists don’t fit this trope, they’ll usually either have an employee who does or hire on some outside help.
• Handshake Refusal: Cole as a rule doesn’t shake hands since there’s no sense tactically in letting a potential adversary get a hold of you. When he does shake someone’s hand, it’s a sign that he trusts and respects them completely.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Having worked together for over 15 years, Cole and Hitch are about as close as people can be without being romantic partners.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Hitch will sometimes enter into a relationship with a local prostitute who will provide him with information or insight:
  • Appaloosa: Katie Goode provides insight into Allie’s psychology and even correctly predicts that Allie will falsely tell Cole that Hitch propositioned her.
  • Brimstone: Frisco provides Hitch with information on Pike’s operation, and allows Allie and Laurel to hide in her room during the climactic gunfight.
• I Own This Town: Generally in each book, there's someone with ambitions to take over whatever town the story takes place:
  • Appaloosa has Randall Bragg, who starts out as an outlaw but returns with a presidential pardon and plans to (ostensibly) legitimately take over the town.
  • Resolution has saloon owner Wolfson and mine owner O'Malley competing to take over the titular town.
    "I'm going to own everything in this town," Wolfson Said. "Simple as that...lumber, mining, bank, general store, saloons, hotel, everything."
  • Brimstone has Pike, a Retired Outlaw and saloon owner, who wants to take over and works with the local Sinister Minister to get the competition shut down.
  • Blue Eyed Devil brings the action back to Appaloosa, where police chief Callico has much broader political ambitions, but plans to start with the town.
• Lethal Chef: Allie is a terrible cook, unable to even make coffee properly, and Cole and Hitch take every chance they can to avoid her cooking.
  If we stayed around the house in the morning until Allie got up, she set right in cooking us breakfast. So we tried to get out before she woke up, and went to eat at Café Paris.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Cole is very logical when it comes to everything except Allie. The fact that he’s completely aware of it doesn’t make a difference.
  Things didn’t make much impression on Virgil Cole. He just went on being Virgil Cole . . . except about Allie.
• Make an Example of Them: One of Cole's strategies is to go fast and hard at the first person who tests you. Even if you probably could have talked them down, it will embolden others who will think you're soft and come for you later.
  You gotta kill someone, do it quick. Don't look like you got pushed into it. Look like you couldn't wait to do it. . . . Sometimes you got to kill one person early, to save killing four or five later.
• Malaproper: A Running Gag is Cole trying out new words, but not getting them quite right and needing the more educated Hitch to clarify what he’s trying to say.
• Meek Townsman: Often the type that enlist the services of the protagonists, because Cole and Hitch can do what they themselves aren’t capable of.
• Native Guide: Half-Apache Pony Flores first meets Cole and Hitch when he helps them track down a Comanche who kidnapped two women.
• The Natives Are Restless:
  • Resolution: A minor subplot involves a group of Shoshone who escape the rez and wreak some havoc. They are quickly subdued.
  • Blue Eyed Devils: A major event of the novel is an attempt by renegade Apaches to burn down the town.
• No Badass to His Valet: Inverted; after having ridden with him for 15 years, Hitch knows better than anybody just how badass Cole is.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Koy Wickman is The Gunfighter Wannabe who has no problem being the top dog when there are only meek townsfolk around; once some real gunslingers show up, it doesn't go well for him.
• Not Big Enough for the Two of Us: This is the situation between Cole and Bragg towards the end of Appaloosa. Hitch challenges Bragg to a duel and kills him before the situation can come to a head.
• The Piano Player: Allie is sometimes hired on to play the piano in saloons, although she’s pretty terrible at it.
  Mrs. French played the piano very badly, but she played loud, and she was pretty, and she smiled nice and wore dresses with a low neck and generated considerable heat and mostly nobody noticed.
• Pistol-Whipping: Used by Cole in Appaloosa.
  With an easy movement, Cole pulled the big Colt from its holster and hit the rider in the face with it. It knocked the rider out of his saddle, and by the time he hit the ground, the gun was back in its holster and Cole was leaning easily with his forearms resting on the horn of his saddle.
  “You fucking broke my teeth,” the rider said, his hands to his face.
  “Colt makes a heavy firearm,” Cole said. “That’s a fact.”
• Posse: Formed by Pike to chase down Buffalo Calf in Brimstone, and by Callico to fight against the renegade Apaches in ‘’Blue Eyed Devil’’. Cole and Hitch are against the idea, reasoning that a bunch of untrained men will just slow down and impede those who actually know what they’re doing.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Averted when Hitch shoots Koy Wickman with his 8 gauge.
  “It didn’t blow his head off like I’d said it would. But it was an awful mess.”
• Properly Paranoid: Cole does things like avoiding shaking hands to keep potential adversaries at arms length and, every time he fires his weapons, reloads before holstering again so he’s never caught with anything less than a full revolver. Given his profession and the caliber of opponent he goes up against, anything he can do that will give him a slight edge can mean the difference between life and death.
• Protection Racket: Police chief Amos Callico charges the local businesses a substantial "safeguard fee"; if they don't pay, his men won't show up if there's trouble.
• Quick Draw: Cole is almost supernaturally fast; going up against an aspiring gunslinger in a practice session, he is able to draw and shoot five cans off of a barrel before his opponent even clears his holster. Discussed as well; Everett points out that the first thing you want to focus on is hitting your target, because it doesn’t matter how quick you are if you’re not accurate.
• Rape as Drama:
  • In the prologue to Appaloosa, Bragg’s men rape a woman after killing her husband, showing us exactly what kind of people the protagonists are dealing with.
  • Mary Beth and Laurel are kidnapped and raped by a man, who then sells them to other men who rape them as well. After rescue, they are again raped by the Sinister Minister who is providing them with counseling.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: A bleak look at the psychological effects of rape. Mary Beth and Laurel are kidnapped by a man who rapes them, sold to other men who rape them, then, after being rescued, are continuously raped by a Sinister Minister who is ostensibly giving them “pastoral counseling” to help them through their trauma. Mary Beth spirals into depression and alcoholism and eventually kills herself. Laurel is unable to be left alone and refuses to talk to anyone besides Cole, and only in a whisper to him. She does eventually show some improvement, but progress is slow as, true to the setting, There Are No Therapists.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Discussed and deconstructed — Cole and Hitch acknowledge that not everybody can do what they do, but being able to kill isn’t in itself a good or a bad thing — that’s just the way they are.
  “You ain’t like that. Most people aren’t. No reason to be. But we are, and what you need right now is people like us.”
• Retired Outlaw:
  • In Appaloosa, Bragg returns to town with a presidential pardon for his previous crimes and big plans to be a legitimate business man.
  • In Brimstone, this is how Pike presents himself; after moving to a state where he’s not a wanted man, he uses the proceeds from his life of crime to set up a legitimate hotel/saloon. However, it soon becomes apparent his outlaw days aren’t really behind him.
• Running Gag:
  • Cole’s tendency to misuse words.
  • Allie’s incompetence at both cooking and playing the piano.
  • People being taken aback by the sheer size of Hitch’s 8 gauge shotgun.
• Scarily Competent Tracker: Hitch is pretty good, but Pony Flores is very, very good.
  “Pony can track a butterfly two days after.”
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Bragg ultimately avoids punishment for his misdeeds, returning to Appaloosa with a presidential pardon. Hitch surmises that in order to obtain the pardon, Bragg must have come into some money.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: They’re both pretty manly men, but Cole mentions that the reason that Hitch is maybe a notch below him and some other gunslingers is because Hitch has feelings; not that it’s a bad thing, that’s just how he is.
• Sexy Priest: Although Brother Percival is raping Mary Beth and Laurel, he is also described as being an impressive physical specimen, and Allie sleeps with him willingly.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: A double-barreled 8 gauge is Hitch’s preferred weapon. Although he’s very skilled, he often points out that you don’t need to be with a shotgun as its wide spread makes it forgiving as far as accuracy goes.
  ”If she could pick it up,” Cole said, “my aunt Liza could be good with an eight-gauge.”
  I agreed it was hard to miss with an eight-gauge.
• Shout-Out: A gunslinging duo, Cato and Rose, bear a striking resemblance to Penn & Teller. One is tall, one is short; the tall one is verbose, the short one rarely speaks; one goes by his first name and the other goes by his last name. Also counts as Meaningful Name, as both Penn and Teller are fellows at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.
• Showdown at High Noon: Averted in Appaloosa; Cole and Hitch have a truce with the Sheltons that ends at a certain time, with the understanding that their inevitable showdown will occur as soon as the truce is over. However, Cole specifically doesn’t want to arrive early because he’d rather show up and start shooting immediately rather than stand around staring at each other waiting around for a cue. Generally speaking, the gun fights in the series develop much more organically.
• Sinister Minister: Brother Percival mostly uses his position as leader of his church to have all the sex he can. His targets include Allie, as well as a woman and her 15 year old daughter to whom he’s supposedly giving “pastoral counseling” due to their trauma at being previously captured and raped by another man. He also is in league with a saloon owner in town, protesting the other saloons in town on moral grounds to shut down the competition.
• Straight for the Commander: This is Cole’s strategy when facing down a mob — figure out who the leader is, then make it clear that if anything goes down, he dies first. If you can get him to back down, the rest will follow.
• Suicide by Cop: Buffalo Calf commits a version of this, rushing at Cole with a knife to avoid being tried in the white man’s court.
• Taking You with Me:
  Virgil said, “Anybody puts a hand on a weapon, Pike, and I’ll kill you.”
  “You think you can kill us all?” Pike said.
  “Be some of you left when we go down, “ Virgil said. “But you won’t be one of ‘em.”
• Trauma Conga Line: Laurel and her mother. Their husband/father is killed, and they are abducted and repeatedly raped in front of each other. They are eventually rescued, but live in fear of the kidnapper coming back. They are again repeatedly raped by a Sinister Minister who is supposedly counselling them through the trauma of their previous experience. The mother becomes alcoholic and eventually kills herself; Laurel is neglected due the alcoholism and left an orphan due to the suicide.
• Universal Ammunition: Justified; at one point Everett mentions that he has both his rifle and sidearm in .45 caliber specifically so that he can load them both from the same belt of ammunition.
• Wife-Basher Basher: Cato casually offers to kill Bob Redmond after Bob's wife reveals that Bob has been hitting her.
• The Wild West: The series takes place in the American South-West in the 1880s