“And he’s not the best,” Billie said.
“Nowhere near,” I said. “And if he ain’t the best, then he ain’t safe. Somebody might kill him.”
“He got embarrassed at target practice the other day. So he got drunk and went off on Frank Rose and Cato Tillson. It coulda got him killed. But instead it got him humiliated again. Now he’ll have to do something else, ’cause he can’t stand feeling the way he does.”
“Why?” Billie said.
“Don’t know,” Virgil said.
“Most of the people start trouble like that are scared,” I said. “Wickman was scared.”
“It’s funny, you know? If you boys are right, then the way you know a guy’s not scared is if he don’t start trouble. And the way you know he is is if he does.”
“Some truth to it,” Virgil said. “You know what you can do, and you know that you’re willing to do it, and you don’t have to show anybody anything. It’s kind of calming.”
“I don’t know, though,” Billie said. “I’m scared. I get humiliated. I don’t start a lot of trouble.”
“Maybe you ain’t as scared as you think,” Virgil said.
“And you ain’t a man,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure you knew that,” Billie said.
"Being a man in these parts can pressure you some,” Virgil said.
31.
Virgil sat alone near the back of the saloon sipping a beer, looking at nothing, and seeing everything, the way he did. Wolfson was eating supper at the bar. He seemed in a hurry to finish. After he finished his supper, Wolfson strolled over to me in the lookout chair.
“Want you to be sure and stay close tonight,” he said. “Cole, too.”
“Can’t speak for Virgil, but I’ll be here.”
“Which means he’ll be here, too,” Wolfson said. “Maybe you could speak to him when we’re through talking here.”
I nodded and said, “You expecting trouble?”
Wolfson smiled and leaned closer to me.
“Sent some boys out to O’Malley’s to hit him tonight,” Wolfson said, “when he ain’t ready for it.”
“And Cato and Rose are at the Excelsior,” I said.
“Yep.”
“And you kept me and Virgil here?” I said.
“Case it doesn’t work, I’ll need protection.”
“What are the boys planning on doing when they get there?” I said.
“Killin’ every last soul,” Wolfson said.
“Who’s leadin’ ’em?”
“Boyle,” Wolfson said.
I didn’t say anything.
“He’s perfect for the job,” Wolfson said. “Couldn’t wait.”
“Bet he couldn’t,” I said.
“I mean, ain’t every man ready to go out and kill twenty people for no reason ’cept I told him,” Wolfson said.
“Probably a good thing,” I said.
“Oh… yeah,” Wolfson said. “Sure. Boyle’s a fucking lizard. But when you’re at war with a bunch of fucking lizards, fella like him is handy.”
“You know Cato Tillson backed him down on the street the other night,” I said.
“Heard about that,” Wolfson said. “Boyle claims he was too drunk to see, let alone fight.”
I nodded.
“Probably so,” I said.
“Okay, stay close,” Wolfson said. “Might have some high celebrating later on.”
“What about the miners?” I said.
“A few could get hurt, I suppose,” Wolfson said. “Can’t be helped if they do. We’re in a fucking war, you know.”
“Right,” I said.
“I’ll be here in the saloon, until the boys come back,” Wolfson said. “Speak to Cole. I want you and him watching me tight.”
“Sure,” I said.
Wolfson gestured to Patrick, who handed him a bottle and a glass. Wolfson took it and sat near the bar at a table where I could see him.
Wasn’t a bad plan, if you don’t mind back-shooting twenty men, who would probably have back-shot you first if they’d thought of it before you did. If it worked, it would end Wolfson’s troubles right then, and leave him in charge of the town with twenty gun hands to back him.
I climbed down from the chair, took the eight-gauge with me, and went to talk with Virgil.
32.
Henry Boyle came into the Blackfoot about an hour later. His eyes were big and his face was flushed. He held the saloon doors open and behind him came the two buffalo skinners carrying a body, which they dropped on the floor near the bar. Wolfson walked over and looked down. It was O’Malley.
“What the fuck are you bringing that in here for?” Wolfson said.
“Thought you’d want to see him, prove that he’s dead,” Boyle said.
His voice had a high, strained tone to it.
"Okay,” Wolfson said. “He’s dead. Now get him the fuck out of my saloon.”
“You heard the man,” Boyle said in his odd voice. “Throw him in the street in front of the Excelsior.”
The two skinners dragged the body out through the rest of Boyle’s mob, which came boiling in through the door.
“We wiped ’em out,” Boyle said to Wolfson. “Ones ain’t dead are heading for Texas.”
He made a sound that might have been a giggle.
“And running hard,” he said.
Wolfson nodded absently.
“We lost two hands.”
“Good work, Henry,” Wolfson said.
Then he turned and raised his voice to the room.
“Great work, men,” he shouted. “Rest of the night, drinks on me.”
The mob cheered. Wolfson looked over at me.
“Anything goes tonight, Everett,” he said. “No rules. You may as well take the night off.”
I nodded.
“Billie,” I said. “Go to my room and go in and lock the door and don’t let anybody in but me… or Virgil.”
“I might make some money,” Billie said.
“Not enough,” I said. “Stay in my room. I’ll take you.”
She nodded. We stood and I walked with her through the saloon. Near the door to the hotel, one of Boyle’s mob grabbed at Billie’s arm.
“Hey, Billie, where you going,” he said. “You should fuck us all.”
I clubbed him across the side of the head with my fist and forearm, and he staggered back against the doorjamb, and we went out and went upstairs to my room. I took my spare handgun off the top shelf of the closet, made sure it was loaded, and put it on the nightstand.
“You know how to shoot it?” I said.
“Cock it and pull the trigger,” Billie said.
“Okay,” I said. “Use both hands. And don’t be afraid to shoot.”
“I ain’t afraid to shoot,” Billie said. “Anybody comes in here I’ll shoot him in the pecker.”
“Aim for the middle of his body,” I said. “Gives you a bigger margin for error.”
Billie nodded. Her eyes were very big.
“I’ll wait outside until I hear the door lock,” I said.
I patted her on the backside and went out. The door locked behind me, and I went on back downstairs.
33.
Boyle was standing on the bar, with a whiskey bottle in his left hand.
"We ain’t done yet,” he screamed. “Don’t get drunk till we done.”
The mob didn’t stop drinking, but they looked at him. He pointed at the street side of the saloon.
“Across the street,” he said. “Burn the Excelsior.”
There was a kind of hiccup in the noise level. Then the mob cheered. “No,” Wolfson shouted, but no one paid any attention.
“I want the property,” Wolfson said.
“Burn it,” somebody yelled. The mob took it up.
“Burn it. Burn it.”
It became like a battle cry.
“No, for crissake. That’s valuable property.” Wolfson was screaming now, but if anyone heard him, they didn’t care.
“Cato and Rose,” Wolfson screamed.
The mob did hear him.
“Cato and Rose,” somebody yelled.
Once again, the mob took it.
“Cato and Rose,” they screamed, “Cato and Rose.”
Boyle took a slug from his bottle.
“Yes,” he shouted. “Yes.”
“Get them,” Wolfson yelled. “That’ll end it.”
“Drag them out of there and hang them,” Boyle said.
“And don’t burn the saloon,” Wolfson screamed.
I walked to the back of the room where Virgil stood motionless, leaning on the back wall. My eight-gauge was leaning on the wall beside him. I picked it up.
“Cato and Rose,” Boyle screamed, still standing on the bar.
“Cato and Rose,” the mob answered.
“Between the mob and the booze,” Virgil said to me, “Henry’s ’bout as brave as he’s ever gonna be.”
“Think they’ll do it?”
“Yep.”
“I seen you face down a mob this big,” I said.
“No. You seen me face down a bunch of cowboys and gun hands. This is a mob. It’s killed ten, fifteen people, and it’s drunk.”
“Cato and Rose,” Boyle screamed.
He jumped off the bar and headed for the door. The mob crowded after him. They burst out of the saloon and into the street.
“Cato and Rose,” the mob chanted. “Cato and Rose.”
Virgil and I walked through the suddenly empty saloon and looked out.
Across the street, in front of the Excelsior, faceup in the dirt, was O’Malley’s body. Cato and Rose came out the front door of the Excelsior. Cato never took his eyes off Henry Boyle. Rose looked down at the body in the street. He smiled for a moment, nodded, and made a small, silent whistle. Then he surveyed the mob.
“We’ve come to hang you bastards,” Boyle said.
Cato said nothing. Rose continued to survey the mob.
Then he said, “You sure you got enough?”
Virgil and I stepped out onto the porch of the Blackfoot. The mob didn’t see us. It was focused on Cato and Rose.
“You won’t be such a smartass cocksucker,” Boyle screamed at him, “when your feet are kicking air.”
Rose looked past him across the top of the mob at us standing on the porch across the narrow street.
“We gonna let this happen?” I said.
“No,” Virgil said.
I nodded so that Rose could see me, and held the eight-gauge up over my head.
Rose smiled.
“I’m a talker,” he said to Henry Boyle. “I’ll stand out here all evening and chew the fat with you, Henry. But Cato ain’t a talker. You don’t get this smelly pack of vermin out of here, he’ll shoot you and I’ll have to start in, too.”
“Like hell,” Boyle yelled, and started toward the porch. The mob went with him. Cato shot Henry after he’d taken one step. Rose shot the men on either side of Boyle. Virgil shot the next one in line, and I cut loose with the eight-gauge and knocked down two people at the back. The mob turned in on itself. The eight-gauge must have sounded like a cannon from behind them. Some of the mob tried to turn toward us, some of it continued toward Cato and Rose. Some of it tried to run. We had the mob in a crossfire, and we cut it into scraps. The mob got off a few rounds, but the mob was shooting like a bunch of drunken wild men, in all directions. It hit nothing that mattered. After some frantic milling that maybe lasted a minute, the mob broke and ran, leaving Boyle and six others dead in the street with O’Malley. After they ran, there was no sound. Only the hard smell of gunpowder and some faint smoke hanging in the air. Virgil was reloading his gun. I broke the eight-gauge and put in two fresh shells. Across the way, Cato and Rose were reloading as well.
Then, in the stark silence, Cato and Rose, guns holstered, walked among the corpses across the street and joined us on the porch of the Blackfoot. Cato nodded his head once at us, and stood silent.
“Any of us get shot?” Rose said.
None of us had.
Rose said, “Thanks for the backup.”
“Professional courtesy,” Virgil said.
Rose nodded. Cato nodded. Both of them looked at me. I nodded.
“Lemme buy us a drink,” Rose said.
“Your saloon or ours?” I said.
“We’re already here,” Rose said.
“We are,” I said.
And we all went into the Blackfoot.
34.
You saved the building,” Wolfson said.
"Collative,” Virgil said.
Wolfson looked at him blankly.
“Collateral,” I said. “Saving the building was collateral to saving Cato and Rose.”
“Oh.”
“Virgil reads a lot,” I said. “He got a bigger vocabulary than he knows how to use.”
Virgil nodded.
We were alone in the Blackfoot, except for Wolfson and Patrick behind the bar.
“Well,” Wolfson said, “whatever. I’ll have the windows fixed over there by tomorrow. I’ll have the sign changed and have it open and running by tomorrow night.”
“Any deeds involved,” Rose said. “Titles, anything?”
“Hell, no,” Wolfson said. “There’s a piece of property standing vacant and decrepit. A blight on the town. I’m going to rescue it, restore it, make it an asset.”
“Maybe there’s heirs,” Virgil said.
“They show up, we’ll deal with them,” Wolfson said.
We all sipped a little of Wolfson’s best whiskey.
“How ’bout the copper mine,” I said. “If it’s still worth anything.”
“If it is I’ll add it to Blackfoot,” Wolfson said.
“What if the miners object?” I said.
Wolfson shrugged.
“How ’bout Stark?” I said. “Think he’ll give you trouble.”
Wolfson grinned, his loose eye wandering as he spoke.
“He won’t like it when I take his lumber business,” Wolfson said.
“Him, too?” I said.
“I’m going to own everything in this town,” Wolfson said. “Simple as that.”
“Ranches, too?” I said.
“Ranches,” Wolfson said, “lumber, mining, bank, general store, saloons, hotel, everything.”
Virgil was looking at Wolfson thoughtfully.
“We just shot hell out of your army,” he said to Wolfson.
“Which means if I hired you four boys to help me with this,” Wolfson said, “we should be pretty successful.”
“What would we be doing when we weren’t shooting ranchers and miners and lumberjacks?” Rose said.
“You could pretty much intimidate all those people,” Wolfson said. “Don’t know you’d have to do much shootin’.”
“Fine,” Rose said. “So what would we do otherwise?”
“Keep order,” Wolfson said. “There’s no law in this town. You boys could be like the law. Like Everett was in here.”
“’Cept we wouldn’t be the law,” Virgil said.
“Be the same,” Wolfson said. “’Fore you boys came here. Everett had this place turned into a damn refuge, you know? People got in trouble anywhere in town, they run here, to Everett.”
“But you wasn’t the law,” Virgil said.
“Just in here,” I said.
“Hell.” Wolfson drank some more whiskey. “We be running things on this whole side of the mountain. You want laws, I’ll write up some laws. You boys want to be lawmen, I’ll make you lawmen.”
“Just you,” Virgil said.
“Boys, a town’s got a right to appoint lawmen,” Wolfson said. “And right now, I’m the town.”
Virgil got up and walked to the saloon door and looked out at the silent street, lit by a full moon.
“Bodies are gone,” he said.
“Chinamen,” Wolfson said. “Take everything valuable and dump what’s left outside of town. Animals eat ’em pretty clean in a couple days.”
Virgil nodded slowly, staring out at the street.
“So we got a deal?” Wolfson said. “Pay you top wages.”
Cato looked at Rose. I looked at both of them. None of us said anything. We all looked at Virgil, who was still staring out into the street.
Then Cato said, “What you think, Virgil?”
Virgil was silent for a moment, then, without looking back, he said, “Gotta think on it,” and walked out into the moonlight.