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  Resolution

  ( Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch - 2 )

  Robert B. Parker

  The New York Times'"bestselling author's richly imagined work of historical fiction: a powerful tale of the Old West from the acknowledged master of crime fiction.

  I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I'd taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn't take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook . . . .'

  After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It's the kind of town that doesn't have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as lookout at Amos Wolfson's Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the backrooms - as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O'Malley copper mine.

  Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O'Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution's few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O'Malley's men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order don't exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.

  Robert B. Parker

  Resolution

  As always, for Joan, the girl of the golden west…

  and east… and north… and south

  1.

  I was in the Blackfoot Saloon in a town called Resolution, talking with the man who owned the saloon about a job. The owner was wearing a brocade vest. His name was Wolfson. He was tall and thin and sort of spooky-looking, with a walleye.

  “What’s your name?” Wolfson said.

  “Hitch,” I said. “Everett Hitch.”

  “How long you been in Resolution?” Wolfson said.

  We were at the far end of the big mahogany bar, sipping whiskey that I had bought us.

  “’Bout two hours,” I said.

  “And you come straight here?” Wolfson said.

  “Ain’t that many choices in Resolution,” I said.

  “There’s some others,” Wolfson said. “But they ain’t as nice. Tell me about yourself. What can you do?”

  “Went to West Point,” I said. “Soldiered awhile, scouted awhile, shotgun for Wells Fargo, did some marshaling with Virgil Cole.”

  “Cole?”

  “Yep.”

  “You worked with Virgil Cole?” Wolfson said. “Where?”

  “Lotta towns, last one was Appaloosa.”

  “And you were doing gun work,” Wolfson said.

  “Some.”

  “Virgil Cole,” Wolfson said.

  I nodded and sipped some of the whiskey.

  “We got no marshal in this town,” Wolfson said. “Sheriff’s deputy rides over once in a while from Liberty. But mostly we’re on our own.”

  I nodded.

  “Got a mayor?” I said. “Town council? Anything like that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “In town? Nobody. In here? Me,” Wolfson said.

  I glanced around the saloon. It was half full in the middle of the afternoon. Nobody looked dangerous. The lookout chair at the other end of the bar was empty. I nodded at it.

  “Could use a lookout,” Wolfson said. “Last one got hoorahed out of town.”

  “What are you paying?” I said.

  He told me.

  “Plus a room upstairs,” Wolfson said.

  “Meals?”

  “If you eat them here,” Wolfson said.

  “Anyplace else in town to eat?” I said.

  Wolfson shrugged.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  “It’s kind of a tradition,” Wolfson said. “Some of the boys like to test the new lookout.”

  I nodded.

  “Fact is I’ve had trouble keeping a lookout.”

  I nodded again, and drank a little more. The whiskey was pretty good.

  “I got a big capital investment here,” Wolfson said. “I don’t want it wrecked.”

  “Don’t blame you,” I said.

  “Think you can stick?” Wolfson said.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Some tough people here,” Wolfson said.

  “Tough people everywhere,” I said.

  “Any chance you could get Virgil Cole to come up here, too?” Wolfson said.

  “No,” I said.

  “You fellas on the outs?” Wolfson said.

  “No,” I said.

  “There’s a shotgun behind the bar,” Wolfson said.

  “Got my own,” I said.

  “When you want to start?”

  “Tonight,” I said. “Gimme time to stow my gear, clean up, take a nap.”

  “It can get rough,” Wolfson said.

  “Any backup?” I said. “Bartenders?”

  Wolfson shook his head.

  “They serve drinks,” Wolfson said. “Ain’t got no interest in getting killed.”

  “You?” I said.

  “I’m a businessman,” Wolfson said.

  “You’re heeled,” I said.

  Wolfson opened his coat and showed me a Colt in a shoulder holster.

  “Self-defense,” he said. “Only.”

  “So I’m on my own,” I said.

  Wolfson nodded.

  “Still interested?” he said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Sure. Just getting the way it lays out.”

  “And you ain’t scared,” Wolfson said.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  2.

  I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different.

  I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook as people came into the saloon after work. There were more than usual of them and they seemed sort of excited and expectant. In addition to trouble, the saloon smelled of coal oil, and sweat, and booze, and tobacco, and food cooking, and the loud perfume of the whores. There were six men who had arrived early, sitting at a table near me, drinking whiskey. The trouble would come from them. And it would start with a sort of weaselly-looking fella in a bowler hat, wearing a gun. Everyone at the table was looking at me, and around the room, trying to look nonchalant, the rest of the customers had situated themselves where they could watch.

  “Hey Lookout,” the Weasel said. “What’s your name?”

  “Hitch,” I said. “Everett Hitch.”

  He was wearing a dark shirt with vertical stripes, buttoned up tight at the collar. The buttons were big.

  “Any good with that shotgun?” the Weasel said.

  The room was quiet now, and everyone was watching. The Weasel liked that. He lounged back a little in his chair, his bowler hat tipped forward over his forehead. The gun he carried was a Colt, probably a.44, probably single-action. He had cut the holster down for a fast draw. And wore it tied to his thigh. Probably the local gunny.

  “Don’t need to be all that good with a double-barreled eight-gauge,” I said.

  “And I bet you ain’t,” the Weasel said.

  “Wouldn’t make much difference to you,” I said.

  “Why’s that?” the Weasel said.

  “I was to give you both b
arrels, from here,” I said, “blow your head off and part of your upper body.”

  “You think,” the Weasel said.

  He was enjoying this less.

  “Yep, probably kill some folks near you, too,” I said. “With the scatter.”

  I cocked both barrels. The sound of them cocking was very loud in the room. Virgil Cole always used to say, Yougotta kill someone, do it quick. Don’t look like you got pushed into it. Look like you couldn’t wait to do it. It was as if I could hear his voice as I looked at the men in front of me: Sometimes you got to kill one person early, to save killing four or five later.

  I leveled the shotgun straight at the Weasel.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice much softer than it had been. “What the hell are you doing. I ain’t looking for trouble. None of us looking for trouble, are we, boys?”

  Nobody at the table was looking for trouble.

  “I’ll be damned,” I said. “I thought you were.”

  “No, no,” the Weasel said. “Just getting to know you.”

  He finished his drink and stood.

  “Gonna drift,” he said. “See how loose things are down the street.”

  I nodded.

  “See you again, Hitch,” the Weasel said.

  “I imagine you will,” I said.

  The Weasel sauntered out, followed, maybe less jauntily, by the rest of his party. The silence hung for a minute in the room, the sounds of the saloon reemerged. Wolfson came down the bar and stopped by my chair.

  “That went well,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Who’s he?” I said.

  “Name’s Wickman, works for O’Malley out at the mine.”

  “He’s not a miner,” I said.

  “No, gun hand. Got kind of a reputation around here,” Wolfson said. “He won’t like that you backed him down.”

  “Don’t blame him,” I said.

  “He’ll likely come at you again,” Wolfson said.

  “Likely,” I said.

  “What’ll you do then?” Wolfson said.

  “Kill him,” I said.

  3.

  In the saloon kitchen, the Chinaman made me biscuits and fried sowbelly for breakfast. I had two cups of coffee with it, and drank the second one on the front porch of the saloon. The sun was coming up behind me, and the weather was clear. I could see most of Resolution from where I stood. It was a raw town. Newer than Appaloosa, raw lumber, mostly unpainted, boards warping as they dried. Flat-front, mostly one-story buildings, with long, low front porches, covered by a roof. The saloons generally had second floors. And sometimes a second-floor porch.

  I finished the coffee and put the cup down and strolled Main Street. There were three saloons besides the Blackfoot. There was an unpainted one-story shack with a sign in the front window that read Genuine Chicago Cooking. There were no customers yet. A Chinaman with a long pigtail was outside, sweeping down the porch. He kept his head down as I passed. I stopped in to the livery stable to visit my horse. There was a bucket of water in his stall, and some oats in another bucket. He seemed sort of glad to see me. He nudged at my shoulder and I gave him a piece of sugar that I’d taken from the saloon.

  Past the livery stable were a couple of independent whorehouses where the girls lived and worked. No gambling, no food, just short sessions for a dollar. No one appeared to be awake in the whorehouses yet. Beyond, a little away from the wooden buildings, were a few tents where the Chinamen lived, maybe ten to a tent. They cooked in the saloons, and washed floors, and washed dishes, and emptied spittoons and chamber pots and slop buckets. They laundered clothes, and ironed and sewed. They mucked out the livery stables. And I knew they stepped aside when any white man encountered them in the street. I had heard someplace that they sent all their money back to China and lived on a few pennies a month.

  Where I was standing, the main street petered out into a trail that led slowly downhill toward the south. Out a ways on the trail was a small ranch. Homesteader, probably. Beyond that further out, another one, and on the horizon, a couple more. I looked at the plains for a while, stretching out wide and, to my eye, empty, to the horizon. Behind me, Main Street stretched the length of the ugly little town. At the north end it became a two-wagon rut road that went up into the hills and wound out of sight among the bull pines.

  I walked back along the main street. The sun was above the low buildings now and shone hard on me from the right. I passed the Blackfoot Saloon. It was the largest building in town. Besides the saloon, there was the hotel, the hotel dining room, a small bank, and the big general store. Past the Blackfoot was a blacksmith shop. The smith was there in his undershirt, loading charcoal into his forge. We nodded as I passed him.

  I reached the north end of the main street. I looked at the pines. There were bird sounds, and the rustle of a light and occasional wind in the trees. Nothing else moved. The walk the length of the town had taken maybe ten minutes. Town was pretty small. Lotta space around it.

  A whore I knew back in Appaloosa had asked me once if I got lonely, moving around in all this empty space, stopping in little towns with nothing much there. I told her I didn’t. I’m not hard to get along with, but I’m not convivial. I like my own company, and I like space.

  A bullet clipped one of the pine trees’ branches five feet to my right. The sound of the shot was behind me. I drew, spun, and went flat on the ground. Nothing moved in the town. I waited. No second shot. After a time I stood and holstered my Colt. I walked back to the blacksmith shop.

  “Hear a gunshot?” I said.

  “Yep,” he said. “I did.”

  “Know where it came from?” I said.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  We both stood and looked musingly back along the street toward where I had been standing.

  “There’s a fella, name of Wickman,” I said. “Kind of sharp face, little eyes. Wears one of them round bowler hats. Carries a gun in a fast-draw rig.”

  “Koy Wickman,” the smith said. “You think he shot at you?”

  “Just speculatin’,” I said. “Seen him around this morning?”

  “Nope. It was Koy shot at you, though, he wouldn’ta missed.”

  “’Less he was bein’ playful,” I said.

  “You need to walk sorta careful around Koy Wickman,” the blacksmith said. “He’s pretty quick.”

  “I’ll be sorta careful,” I said.

  And I was. I walked sort of careful the rest of the way back to the Blackfoot.

  4.

  I was sitting lookout, with the shotgun in my lap. Wolfson was sipping whiskey and leaning on the wall next to my chair.

  “Northwest of town,” he said, “there’s a big lumbering operation. Fella named Fritz Stark. Other side of the hill, on the east slope, is the O’Malley mine. Eamon O’Malley. Open-pit copper mining. There’s a rail spur shuttles through the valley, back of the hill. Picks up lumber from Fritzie Stark, copper from Eamon, and heads on east to the main line at Mandan junction.”

  “Wickman works for the copper mine,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  "Why does a copper mine need a gunny?” I said. “Or is it just a hobby?”

  Wolfson sampled his whiskey, rolled it over his tongue a little, nodded approval to himself.

  “Pretty good,” he said. “Got it from a new drummer.”

  He sampled it again.

  “Koy Wickman’s a real gun hand,” he said. “Good at it, likes it. Most folks in Resolution walk around him pretty light.”

  “What’s he do for the mine?” I said.

  “I think mostly he walks around with Eamon, intimidates folks.”

  “Eamon need that?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Wolfson said.

  All the time we talked, Wolfson surveyed the saloon. It was kind of hard to see what he was looking at, because of the walleye.

  “This is a new town,” Wolfson said. “We’re sort of just starting to figure out what
we want to do here, you know?”

  “And who’ll be in charge of doing it?” I said.

  “Well, it ain’t come to that yet,” Wolfson said. “But you got the mine, you got the lumber company, you got us here in town, and you got a few sodbusters out in the flats below town.”

  I nodded.

  “They much trouble?” I said.

  “Nope, ain’t that many of them,” Wolfson said. “Yet.”

  “Other lookouts,” I said. “Wickman involved in running them off?”

  “Yes,” Wolfson said. “Killed one of them.”

  “Which you didn’t mention when you hired me,” I said.

  Wolfson shrugged.

  “Figured you might not take the job,” he said.

  “Guys like Wickman weren’t around, there wouldn’t be work for guys like me,” I said.

  “So you gonna stick?” Wolfson said.

  “Sure,” I said. “But I may have to kill him in your saloon.”

  “You think he’ll keep pushing?” Wolfson said.

  “I think he needs to be the only rooster in the barnyard,” I said. “Or his boss does.”

  Wolfson continued to look around the room for a time.

  Then he said, “It’s a nice business I’m growing here. The store, the hotel, the restaurant, the saloon. Nice business.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Can’t keep hiring lookouts,” he said.

  I nodded. He looked around some more.

  “You do what you gotta do,” he said.

  5.

  Wickman came in late in the evening, wearing his fast-draw rig and his bowler hat. The hat was tipped down over his forehead.

  “Hey,” he said, “Hitch. I heard you was up the north end of town this morning, looking at the pine trees.”

  I looked straight at him and didn’t say anything.

  “Heard somebody took a shot at your ass,” he said.

  I kept looking.

  “I was you I might not go walking around,” he said. “You know? I might stay right here in the saloon and hide behind my shotgun.”