Resolution vcaeh-2 Read online

  Maybe Wolfson was right.

  It was a Thursday night, raining hard outside, when two wet whores from Polly Patterson’s house came into the Blackfoot and sat down at a table near my end of the bar. Wolfson didn’t allow any whores but his own in the saloon, so after a minute I took my shotgun, barrels toward the floor, and went and sat down with them.

  “Sorry, ladies,” I said. “Unaffiliated whores ain’t allowed in this establishment.”

  “You’re Everett,” one of them said.

  I nodded. It was hard to guess age in a whore, but this one looked to be in her forties, and kind of fat. The other girl was younger but no slimmer.

  “We heard about you,” the older whore said.

  I nodded again.

  “All good things, I’m sure,” I said. “But unaffiliated whores are still not allowed in the Blackfoot.”

  “We got trouble, Everett,” she said. “We need to stay here.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I said.

  Four men in hats and slickers came into the saloon. They stood inside the door, looking around. A couple of them took off their hats and shook the rain off them. Then all four looked at us. I nodded my head at them.

  “That kind?” I said.

  “Oh, Jesus,” the younger whore said.

  “The one in front,” the older whore said. “With the beard, he paid for one hour with me and Roxanne. We gave him everything he paid for, and when he was through, his friends came in and used us and nobody paid nothing.”

  “Unaffiliated whores are also not allowed to bring their troubles into this establishment. You steal something to get even?”

  Roxanne nodded.

  “I got his watch,” the older one answered. “And I ain’t givin’ it back. He owes us more then that.”

  I nodded. The four men walked over to us.

  The guy with the beard said, “These whores with you?”

  He didn’t look like he washed the beard much.

  “They are,” I said.

  “They don’t work here,” he said.

  “No.”

  “I thought whores had to work here to be in the saloon.”

  “I was just discussing that with them,” I said. “They been put on notice.”

  “You throwing them out?” the man said.

  He was a thick fella, miner probably, had the sort of overmuscled bow in his back that pick and shovel work can give you.

  “I told them I would,” I said. “If they ain’t out of here by Monday.”

  “Monday?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Don’t tolerate rule-breaking,” I said.

  The bearded man looked at the shotgun across my lap.

  “You Hitch?” he said.

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  He looked at the shotgun again.

  “That an eight-gauge?” he said.

  “Yes, sir, it is,” I said.

  One of the other men said, “Christ. Pellets must look like billiard balls.”

  “These whores got something belongs to me,” the bearded one said.

  “You owe us,” the older whore said. “You owe us a lot more than we took, don’t he, Roxanne?”

  Roxanne nodded silently.

  “See,” the bearded one said. “See, she even admits she took something.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  “She give it back and there won’t be no trouble,” the bearded one said.

  I stood up.

  “Or if she don’t,” I said.

  The bearded man didn’t seem to know what to say. His three companions shifted uneasily. The whores sat perfectly still.

  “You ladies sit right there, where I can see you, make sure you’re not stealing any business from our girls,” I said. “You gentlemen step to the bar and I’ll buy you all a drink ’fore you leave.”

  The men sort of looked at one another, then at me. Then the bearded man nodded.

  “I could use a drink,” he said. “Night like this.”

  11.

  Place has turned into a fucking sanctuary,” Wolfson said.

  I shrugged.

  “It’s not just whores now,” he said. “Anybody got trouble comes running into my saloon and waits for you to protect them.”

  Wolfson was leaning on the bar near my chair, sipping whiskey. He usually drank whiskey through the evening, but it didn’t appear to make him drunk. Maybe it was how slow he sipped it.

  “For crissake, some guy made a pass at Harley Porter’s wife on the street the other day and she hustles right in here to tell you.”

  “I know,” I said. “Maybe if there was a sheriff or something. ”

  “You’re turning into the fucking sheriff,” Wolfson said.

  “Except I ain’t,” I said.

  “No, you ain’t,” Wolfson said. “You work for me.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Keep that clear in your mind,” Wolfson said.

  I nodded, watching the room. It was full and lively, the card tables were busy, the bar was crowded. Everything was in good working order. Wolfson sipped his whiskey and looked at the room, too.

  “Nice and busy,” he said.

  He snorted or laughed or something like that. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.

  “Thing makes me laugh,” he said, “is my saloon, a sanctuary, like a fucking church or something. People come to my saloon because they feel safe.”

  “That’s not bad for business,” I said.

  “No,” Wolfson said, and made the laugh sound again. “That’s what’s so funny. I’m busier than I ever been.”

  At a card table in the middle of the room somebody lost a hand he thought he had won, and got mad and slammed his open hand down on the table. The impact knocked over a bottle of whiskey that rolled off the table and shattered on the floor. The card player whirled toward me and put both hands, palms out, in front of his chest.

  “No trouble, Everett. An accident. I’ll buy a new bottle.”

  “That’ll be good,” I said.

  The card player walked to the bar to buy a new bottle. A Chinese man with a broom came from someplace and cleaned up the broken glass.

  “Ain’t it grand how they love you, Everett,” Wolfson said.

  “Ever hear of a man named Machiavelli?” I said.

  “No.”

  “When I was at West Point,” I said, “they made us read some things he wrote.”

  “I’m not much for reading,” Wolfson said.

  “One thing he said sort of stayed with me,” I said. “It’s better to be feared than loved. Because you can’t make them love you. But you can make them fear you.”

  “Pretty smart fella,” Wolfson said. “So what?”

  I grinned at him.

  “Koy Wickman,” I said, “did not die in vain.”

  12.

  It was payday at Fort Rucker, and the Blackfoot had a lot more soldiers than usual. They were noisy but peaceful, except for one fight, which I convinced the fighters to take outside. I watched them for a little while as they flailed away drunkenly until one of them threw up and the other walked away in disgust.

  I was back in my chair when two men came into the Blackfoot who were not soldiers, or ranch hands, or miners, or lumberjacks, or drummers, or wandering preachers. They had on town clothes and smallish town hats, and they wore guns. In fact, one of them wore two. I always thought two guns were for show. And the fact that his were adorned with bright pearl handles didn’t cause me to reconsider. He was as tall as I was, but not as thick, and he wore a big mustache. His partner was shorter and smaller. Kind of scrawny-looking, he was shaved clean, and carried one walnut-handled Colt.

  They took a table near the bar and ordered coffee.

  We looked at one another.

  After a while I said, “You gents new in town?”

  The tall one said, “Yes.”

  We looked at one another some more.

  “Passing through?” I said. “Or you planning to
stay?”

  “We came to do some work for Eamon O’Malley,” the tall one said.

  “That so,” I said. “What kind of work you fellas do?”

  The tall one looked at the small one and smiled.

  “Hear that, Cato,” he said. “Gentleman wants to know what kind of work we do.”

  The little guy nodded.

  “A little of this,” he said, “a little of that.”

  I nodded back, friendly.

  “Cato,” I said. “Cato Tillson?”

  The little guy nodded again. His eyes were sort of narrow, and the upper lids drooped so that the eyes seemed hooded.

  “And you’d be Frank Rose?” I said to the tall one.

  “You heard of us,” he said.

  “Cato and Rose,” I said.

  Rose seemed pleased.

  “That’s what they call us,” he said. “His first name, my last. Kind of funny, huh? How that worked out? Guess people just like the way it sounds.”

  He sipped some coffee.

  “Cato and Rose,” he said, enjoying the phrase.

  “What’s your name?” Cato said.

  “Hitch,” I said. “Everett Hitch.”

  “With Virgil Cole awhile, wasn’t you?” Cato said.

  “I was.”

  “Never had a chance to go against Cole,” Rose said.

  “Why you’re still here,” I said.

  Rose laughed.

  “I heard he was pretty good,” Rose said.

  “Best,” I said.

  “’Course you ain’t seen me and Cato work,” Rose said.

  “Nope.”

  “Well,” Rose said, “maybe you’ll get the chance.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Either way, we’re grateful to you, I guess, for helping us get this job with Eamon.”

  “By shooting Koy Wickman?”

  “Opened up a nice slot for us,” Rose said.

  “Two of you to replace Koy Wickman?” I said.

  Rose grinned some more.

  “We’re a matched pair,” he said. “Both or neither.”

  He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back a little in his chair. The boots were pretty fancy. Like him. He took a cigar from his vest pocket and bit off the tip and lit it, turning it in the flame until it was burning even.

  “You know,” I said, “I could never figure out why O’Malley needed a gun hand at all, let alone two, let alone two like you.”

  Rose took a long pull on the cigar and let out the smoke slowly.

  “Maybe he figured since Wolfson had you, maybe he should get us,” Rose said.

  “I’m just a saloon bouncer,” I said. “Why’s he worried about me?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Don’t make any sense,” I said.

  “Not much does,” Rose said.

  I looked at Cato. He appeared to have no view on the matter.

  “Ever hear from Cole?” Rose said.

  “No.”

  “Heard he killed a man a little while ago,” Rose said.

  “Virgil does that sometimes,” I said.

  “Heard it was over a woman,” Rose said.

  “In Appaloosa?” I said.

  “Yep,” Rose said. “Heard he left town right after.”

  “So he’s not marshaling there no more?” I said.

  “Don’t know,” Rose said. “All I heard.”

  I nodded. Rose and Cato finished their coffee and stood.

  “Nice meeting you boys,” I said.

  “Same here,” Rose said.

  Cato didn’t speak, but he nodded. And the two of them left the saloon. Allie, I thought. Goddamned Allie.

  13.

  Wolfson and I sat in wicker rockers on the front porch of the hotel next to the saloon and soaked up some early-afternoon sun. At the general store a tired-looking guy with a tired-looking wife and three small kids was loading things onto the back of a buckboard.

  “Money in the till,” I said, watching the ranch family.

  “Sodbusters,” Wolfson said. “Probably running a tab, won’t be able to pay it, tab gets big enough and I’ll own his ranch.”

  “Why do you want his ranch?” I said.

  “Why not,” Wolfson said. “Better it should belong to me than him.”

  “He probably don’t feel that way,” I said.

  “He don’t matter,” Wolfson said.

  I nodded. The three kids were looking at us, staring at my gun. I pretended to draw and shoot at them with my forefinger. They didn’t react. Their mother said something and the three of them got up on the back of the buckboard with the groceries. The mother and father got up on the front seat. The father tapped the two mules with the reins, and they moved off south along Main Street.

  “You know anything about the two new gun hands Eamon has hired?” Wolfson said.

  “Cato and Rose,” I said.

  “Sounds like a damn circus act,” Wolfson said.

  “It ain’t,” I said.

  “They good?”

  “Very,” I said.

  “Better than Wickman?”

  “Much.”

  “Better than you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And there’s two of them,” Wolfson said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They always work together?”

  “Far as I know,” I said.

  “How about Cole?” Wolfson said.

  “What about him?”

  “How they stack up against him?”

  “Never seen nobody stacked up against Virgil Cole,” I said.

  “Including you?”

  “Including me,” I said.

  “Have you seen Cato and Rose?”

  “Not till yesterday,” I said.

  “So you don’t know for sure about them?”

  “Never know for sure,” I said.

  “Maybe we should get Cole up here,” Wolfson said.

  “You expecting trouble?” I said.

  “Why are they here?” Wolfson said.

  “Somebody’s expecting trouble.”

  “Or expecting to cause it,” Wolfson said.

  “What would O’Malley want to cause trouble about?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Wolfson said.

  I didn’t quite believe that he didn’t know, but I saw no reason to say so.

  “Can you get Cole?” Wolfson said.

  “Don’t know where he is,” I said.

  “He’s not in Appaloosa anymore?”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “How can we find him,” Wolfson said.

  “Don’t think you’ll have to,” I said. “I expect he might come drifting in here, next few days.”

  “Here?” Wolfson said. “Why?”

  “See me,” I said. “Sometimes he likes to talk with me about things.”

  Wolfson looked like he wanted to ask more, but he didn’t quite know what to ask, and I didn’t help him out. So he didn’t.

  Instead, he said, “What are we going to do about Cato and Rose?”

  “How about they don’t bother us, we don’t bother them?” I said.

  “They’ll bother us,” Wolfson said.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “Eamon wants to be the studhorse around here,” Wolfson said.

  “And you’re in his way?”

  “I guess,” Wolfson said.

  “He runs a mine,” I said. “You run this place. How does that put you in his way?”

  “Don’t know,” Wolfson said.

  “How about the lumber operation?” I said. “Who’s way is that in?”

  “Got no idea,” Wolfson said.

  I didn’t believe that, either, but I could see that Wolfson had said all he was going to say on the subject, so I didn’t pursue it.

  14.

  I was about to get in my chair in the late afternoon on a Friday, when one of the clerks from the general store came into the saloon.

  “Mr. Wol
fson wants you in the store,” he said. “Bring the shotgun.”

  The saloon was next to the hotel, and the store was on the other side of the hotel. We walked through the lobby of the hotel to get there. In the store were six men, sodbusters probably, gathered in front of the counter, behind which Wolfson stood with a second clerk. Everybody looked at me when I came in.

  One of them said, “And we ain’t gonna get scared off by your bully boy, neither.”

  The speaker was a small, dark, wiry man, with a kind of sharp angularity about him, like a farming tool. I stopped inside the door and stood against the wall with the shotgun beside my leg, pointing at the floor.

  “Make your point, Redmond,” Wolfson said.

  “You got no right takin’ our property,” Redmond said.

  “I ain’t taken your property, Redmond.”

  “We’re all in this together,” Redmond said. “You take Pete Simpson’s land, it’s like takin’ mine.”

  “Simpson owed me money, and he couldn’t pay. What am I supposed to do, just give it to him?”

  “Give him time. He’ll pay,” Redmond said. “Thing is, and we all know it here, you don’t want him to pay. You want his land. You want all our land.”

  “I’ve already made an arrangement for Pete Simpson to stay on his land.”

  “Sure,” Redmond said. “Except now it won’t be his land. It’ll be your land. And he’ll pay you rent.”

  “Nobody made him run up a bill he couldn’t pay,” Wolfson said.

  I looked at the other sodbusters as Wolfson talked. I wondered which one was Pete Simpson.

  “So how’s he supposed to feed his cattle, or plant crops, or feed his kids?” Redmond said.

  “You know, Bob,” Wolfson said, “when you come right on down to it, that ain’t my concern. Simpson and I made a business deal and he couldn’t hold up his end of it.”

  “You knew he couldn’t when you went into it with him,” Redmond said.

  He was a fierce little duck, with small, hard eyes on either side of his big plow-blade nose. Wolfson shook his head.

  “We’re done here, Bob,” he said. “This is getting us nowhere.”

  “We ain’t leaving till we get some justice,” Redmond said.

  Without looking at me, Wolfson said, “Everett.”

  I nodded and stood away from the wall I’d been leaning on.

  “Time to go,” I said.