“That’s like you,” Mrs. Redmond said.
“Some,” Virgil said.
“Would he have really shot my husband that day in the saloon?” she said. “When he offered?”
“Oh, absolutely,” I said.
The rain picked up a little so that it drummed hard on the shed roof of the porch, and the runoff formed almost a curtain between us and the street. We drank our coffee.
“I wish you could help him,” Mrs. Redmond said after a time.
Neither Virgil nor I answered her. Across the street, Frank Rose was smoking a cigar, and the homey smell of it drifted through the rain to our porch.
“You still care about him,” I said.
“Yes.”
I nodded slowly.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking I’m with Virgil and…”
I nodded. She looked at Virgil. He didn’t say anything.
“My husband was hurting me. I was alone, no money, no place to go. I was terrified. I couldn’t see my children. Then Virgil come along and made all that go away. I am so grateful.”
“Good reasons,” I said.
She still looked at Virgil.
“Do you understand?” she said. “It ain’t just all that. I care about you, but… do you understand?”
Virgil nodded slowly.
“I do,” he said.
47.
It was a little after noon, with the sun out again, when a Cavalry lieutenant and a master sergeant showed up in front of the Blackfoot. They stopped their horses in front of where Virgil and I were taking in the sun. The lieutenant nodded at us, and the sergeant spoke.
“This town got a mayor?” he said.
“Nope,” I said.
The sergeant looked at the lieutenant. The lieutenant took over.
“Town council?” he said.
“Nope.”
“Sheriff?”
“Nope.”
The lieutenant was annoyed.
“Marshal?”
I shook my head.
“So who the fuck is in charge around here?” the lieutenant said.
I thought about it for a minute.
“Well,” I said, “fella named Wolfson owns the bank, the store, the hotel, the saloon, and the saloon across the street. I suppose he might be the one.”
“Where do I find him?” the lieutenant said.
“Usually eats breakfast,” I said, “’bout this time. In the saloon.”
The lieutenant glanced up at the sun.
“Breakfast?” he said.
“Works late hours,” I said.
The lieutenant nodded.
“Canavan,” he said to the sergeant.
“Sir.”
“See if you can find him and get him out here.”
The sergeant swung down and went into the saloon. The lieutenant was quiet, looking around the town. Then he looked back at us.
“You work for this fella, Wolfson?” he said.
I nodded.
“You ain’t bartenders,” he said.
“No,” I said.
“My name’s Mulcahey,” he said. “What’s yours.”
“Everett Hitch,” I said. “This here’s Virgil Cole.”
Mulcahey looked at Virgil for a silent moment.
Then he said, “Heard of you.”
Virgil nodded modestly.
“Any other gun hands in town?” Mulcahey said.
“Why do you ask?” Virgil said.
“Might need ’em,” Mulcahey said.
“Couple of boys across the street,” Virgil said, and nodded at the Excelsior. “Cato and Rose.”
“They any good?” Mulcahey said.
He was talking to Virgil now instead of to me.
“Yes,” Virgil said.
Sergeant Canavan came out of the Blackfoot with Wolfson.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant,” Wolfson said.
“You get things done in this town?” Mulcahey said.
“I like to think so,” Wolfson said.
“A group of Shoshones jumped the reservation last night,” Mulcahey said. “The rest of my platoon is rounding up the settlers south of town and herded them in here.”
“Here? In town?”
“Yep, we need to make some arrangements to put them up until we get the Shoshones back where they belong,” Mulcahey said. “How many can you put up here?”
“Here? In the hotel?”
“Hotel, livery stable, saloon, wherever we have to,” Mulcahey said. “We leave them out there alone and the Shoshones can have them, one at a time.”
“Who pays for this?” Wolfson said.
“Sergeant Canavan will give you a voucher,” Mulcahey said. “We’ll have them all in here by nightfall.”
“You boys going to stick around?” Wolfson said.
“Nope, can’t guard these people and chase the Shoshones, ” Mulcahey said.
“How many bucks,” Virgil said.
“Maybe twenty,” Mulcahey said.
“I didn’t sign no contract,” Wolfson said, “that I gotta protect every shitkicker that homesteads near me.”
“I’m not asking you to do it,” Mulcahey said. “I’m telling you you’re going to.”
48.
Wolfson assembled most of the men in the Blackfoot Saloon. Almost everybody had a weapon, mostly Winchesters, a few shotguns, and an occasional breech-loading Sharps.
“You all know why we’re here,” he said, “and why I volunteered to house and feed you all.”
The women and children were housed in the hotel. The men were mostly sleeping on the floor in the Blackfoot and the Excelsior. In the hotel, the wives and the whores were a little uneasy with one another. And in the saloons the homesteader men were quite uneasy with those of us who worked for Wolfson. Beth and Bob Redmond moved around each other stiffly. And Stark and his lumberjacks were unhappy with everything. So was Wolfson. He’d had to hire another Chinaman to help in the kitchen cooking enough biscuits, beans, and salt meat for everybody. The Army vouchers would probably cover the cost, but there was unlikely to be any profit.
“The Army has asked me to take charge of the town defense until them red niggers is back where they belong,” Wolfson said.
Virgil looked at me. I grinned and shrugged.
“Army says the bastards aren’t in this area yet, but just to be sure,” Wolfson said, “I got a couple lookouts up on the roof of the hotel right now ready to fire off a warning shot the minute they see anything.”
Cato and Rose were drinking coffee at the bar near us. There were no liquor sales yet because of the meeting, but Frank Rose went behind the bar and got a bottle and poured a shot into his coffee, and left the bottle handy. Wolfson saw it and didn’t like it but said nothing of it.
“First thing we got to do is to block off both ends of Main Street,” Wolfson said. “Keep the buggers from getting in here and doing damage.”
Cato and Rose both looked at Virgil. Virgil looked at me. I shook my head.
“’Scuse me, Amos,” Virgil said.
Wolfson didn’t like that, either, but he forced a smile.
"Y’all know Virgil Cole,” Wolfson said, “one of the fellas works for me.”
“Thing is, Amos,” Virgil said, “if they was stupid enough to come charging up the main street, I wouldn’t want to discourage them. We could catch ’em in a crossfire and cut ’em in pieces.”
“I don’t want them in this town shooting up my property, ” Wolfson said.
“They ain’t coming in the main street,” Virgil said.
“They been fighting the Crows and the Arapaho for generations, ” I said. “They know how to fight. They ain’t going to ride into a shooting gallery.”
“So you’re saying don’t block the street.”
Virgil nodded.
“Everett’s right,” he said. “They ain’t going to ride in and let us catch them in a crossfire, but there’s no reason to make it difficult, case they want to.”
Redmond was standing in front of Wolfson.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Redmond said.
“Everett here is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York,” Virgil said. “He’s done some Indian fighting in his time.”
He made a gesture with his head that said, You tell them.
“Lookouts on the roof are good,” I said, to make Wolfson feel good. “And we need to organize our manpower, break down into squads, for instance, so that we can mobilize quickly if we have to.”
I looked at Fritz Stark.
“You take care of that with your people?”
“We’re already in crews,” Stark said.
“Good,” I said. “Redmond, you want to organize yours?”
“How many people in a squad?” Redmond said.
“Depends how many people you got,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
Redmond nodded.
“We’re ready to do what has to be done,” he said.
Virgil smiled slightly.
Frank Rose murmured, “Hooray!”
“Wolfson can manage the miners and the town folks,” I said. “And we’ll need some pickets.”
“Outside the town?” Redmond said.
“Wouldn’t be much use inside the town, now would they,” Wolfson said.
“That’ll be us,” Virgil said.
“Us?” Redmond said.
“Me and Everett,” Virgil said. “Cato and Rose.”
Everybody in the room, that I could see, looked relieved.
49.
It was a bright night. Lot of stars. Moon nearly full. Virgil and I were riding as soft as we could along the tree line uphill from the town.
“Think they’ll do what we told ’em?” I said. “If the Shoshones actually make a run at them?”
“Probably not,” Virgil said.
“On the other hand, the Shoshones probably won’t make a run at them. There’s what, twenty of them, Mulcahey said?”
“Yep.”
A night bird whistled in the woods. Both of us reined in and sat silently. The bird whistled again.
“Bird,” I said.
“Yep,” Virgil said.
We started the horses again.
“And maybe a hundred men with guns in the town?”
“At least,” Virgil said.
“So the Shoshones aren’t going to make a run at them.”
“Probably not,” Virgil said.
“They might come by the homesteads,” I said, “thinking they might pick off a homesteader or two, burn a couple ranches, run off some stock.”
“That’s right,” Virgil said. “Same for the lumber company. ”
“So we come across them doing this,” I said, “we do anything?
“We got four fighters,” Virgil said.
“We got a hundred men,” I said.
“And four fighters,” Virgil said.
I nodded.
“So we head back to town and keep the people safe,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Hard for a lot of them to come back,” I said, “they get burned out.”
“Harder to come back from getting killed,” Virgil said.
“And it’s worth remembering that unless the Shoshones split up, there’s twenty of them and two of us, at any given time.”
“Shoshones won’t split up,” Virgil said.
“No,” I said.
“And if they get past us and into the town and we’re not there, and Cato and Rose aren’t there, it’ll be a bloodbath.”
“You don’t think Wolfson can rally the troops?”
“Redmond, either,” Virgil said. “Stark maybe, but… he’s not a gunman.”
“And Wolfson and Redmond would be fighting so hard to be in charge that they’d get in his way even if he was,” I said.
Virgil held his horse suddenly. I stopped with him. Virgil listened hard. I hadn’t heard anything, and I still didn’t. After a little bit, Virgil nodded to himself and moved his horse forward again. I went with him.
“Hear something?” I said.
“Nothing that matters,” Virgil said.
We rode on.
“How are things going with you and Mrs. Redmond?” I said.
“Her children are with her,” Virgil said.
“And her husband’s downstairs,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“So things ain’t going at all,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Things change,” Virgil said.
“Ever think about Allie?” I said.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say about that, so I moved to a different subject.
“Funny thing about Wolfson and Redmond,” I said. “First I thought they just wanted to get ahead in their own way.”
“Probably do,” Virgil said.
“Redmond’s stuck,” I said. “But Wolfson ain’t. He got ahead. He runs the damn town, and he still ain’t happy.”
“He don’t run the town,” Virgil said.
“Who does?”
“We do,” Virgil said.
50.
The Shoshones came in, south of town, about twelve hours ahead of the Army and set fire to the settlements. The smoke hovered over the town, and one of the lookouts fired off a warning shot, claiming Indians were upon us. Everyone with a weapon grabbed it and rushed to find a place to shoot from.
“They ain’t much of a threat to the Shoshones,” Frank Rose said. “But they’re likely to inflict considerable casualties on each other.”
“Guess we better take a look,” Virgil said.
“If the farmers don’t shoot at us,” Rose said.
“If they do, they’ll probably miss,” I said.
There was no sign of anyone in the area where the lookout had seen the hostiles. On horseback we slowly began to circle the town. The smoke from the burning settlements was plain enough, and the smell of it was strong. At the top of a small rise between the town and the settlements we saw two bucks. One had what looked like an old Army-issue Sharps. The other wore a Cavalry campaign hat and carried a button-flap holster that had probably been taken from a soldier someplace. We stopped. The Indians stopped. We looked at one another.
“There’s more of us than them,” Rose said.
“That we can see,” Virgil said.
“True,” Rose said.
“Don’t want to go charging after them and run right into eighteen more of them behind the rise,” I said.
We continued to sit with the smoke billowing up behind the Indians, and the pleasant breeze blowing it toward us. The Indians rode back and forth in front of us. The one with the Sharps brandished it at us. The guy with the campaign hat waved it at us.
“They think they’re out of our range,” Virgil said.
“They ain’t,” Cato said.
“You want to do it?” Virgil said.
“Sure.”
Cato handed the reins to Rose and slid off his horse. He took his rifle from the saddle and stepped away from his horse. He cocked the hammer, raised the rifle, let his breath out softly, and squeezed the trigger. The Indian with the Sharps slumped and then fell from his saddle. The other Indian gazed at him for a minute and then spun his horse. The gaze cost him. Cato hit him in the back between the shoulder blades as the Indian kicked his horse into a run. The Indian tossed forward over the horse’s neck and onto the ground. The two horses trotted a few feet and stopped and looked at the dead Indians, and began to crop the grass. Cato put two fresh rounds in his rifle, slid it back in the scabbard, and remounted.
We sat some more. No Indians came boiling over the rise. The horses continued to graze. The smoke continued overhead darkly. Virgil nudged his horse forward, and the rest of us followed. We rode slowly up to the two Indians. Both were dead. Neither was very old.
There was no sign of anyone downslope. Virgil dismounted and walked to the two horses. They looked at him. He took the primitive rope bridles off both horses. The horses went back to eating. Virgil left the rope on the ground and got back on his horse.
“Two kids,” he said, “showin’ off.”
“Whoever,” Rose said. “We just improved the odds a little.”
“We did,” Virgil said. And we turned our horses back to town.