“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.
35.
We could head for Texas,” I said to Virgil.
“We could,” Virgil said.
“I don’t owe Wolfson anything,” I said.
“Nope.”
“You haven’t even taken his money.”
“True,” Virgil said.
“Cato and Rose will probably stay,” I said.
“Probably,” Virgil said.
We were working the horses again. We’d already let them stroll. Then we’d breezed them pretty hard for a while. Now, with the reins looped over the saddle horn, we were letting them browse along, nibbling grass.
“We could head for Texas,” I said.
“Could,” Virgil said.
“Ain’t we just had this talk?” I said.
“Yep.”
“So why don’t we head for Texas,” I said.
“Ain’t time yet,” Virgil said.
“Because?”
Virgil leaned back in his saddle and looked up at an eagle circling slow and easy on the air currents in the sky.
“Don’t want Wolfson running the town,” Virgil said.
“Why not?”
“Same reason we didn’t want that mob lynching Cato and Rose,” Virgil said.
“’Cause it would be against the law?”
Virgil shook his head. The horses moseyed along, reins loose, head down, nosing at the grass.
“I ain’t a lawman,” he said.
“Good thing,” I said. “Ain’t nothing happened here since I got here had anything to do with law.”
“Had to do with us shooting better than them,” Virgil said.
“It did,” I said.
“Better than shootin’ worse,” Virgil said.
There was a stream to the right. In the late summer it would probably be dry. But for now, it came up near the bottom of the hills behind us and found its way down a shallow wash to the bigger stream that ran among the homestead ranches. The horses smelled it and veered over to it and drank from it. Virgil patted his horse’s neck quietly while he drank.
“Don’t feel bad about anything I done here,” I said.
Virgil patted his horse some more. He nodded.
“I know,” he said.
You got any money left?” I said.
“Not much,” Virgil said.
“Me either.”
“Don’t need much,” Virgil said.
“Got to have some,” I said.
“Maybe we should work for Wolfson,” Virgil said. “While we see how things develop.”
“And if they develop wrong?”
“Don’t know about wrong,” Virgil said. “But Wolfson shouldn’t run the whole town.”
“With Cato and Rose to back him.”
“So if it goes that way, we quit?”
“Probably,” Virgil said.
“And do what?” I said.
“Can’t say.”
“Might have to go against Cato and Rose,” I said.
“Might.”
“And you’re willing?”
“Yep.”
“Yesterday you was saving their lives,” I said.
“We was,” Virgil said.
“What’s the difference?”
“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “Maybe we’ll find out.” We picked up our reins and lifted the horses’ heads and pointed them back toward town.
“Virgil,” I said as the horses walked toward home, “I get killed while you figure out what you are, I’m gonna resent it.”
Virgil nodded.
“Don’t blame you,” he said.
36.
So we were all working for Wolfson. Me and Virgil doing lookout duty at the Blackfoot. Cato and Rose doing the same at the Excelsior. It was a lot more firepower than either saloon needed. And we all knew it. But we also all knew that keeping order in a couple of saloons was not why Wolfson paid us. It was just something useful to do while we waited.
On a wet Tuesday morning Virgil and I, with our hats pulled down and our collars turned up, rode through the hard rain, up to the copper mine with Wolfson.
“We couldn’t do this tomorrow?” I said to Wolfson.
“Decided to do it today,” Wolfson said. “Gonna do it today. When I do business, I do business.”
Wolfson looked sort of funny on horseback, out in the daylight. He had on a black slicker and a big hat, and seemed out of place.
“Fine,” I said.
Virgil said nothing. I knew he could barely tolerate Wolfson.
At the mine we put the horses under a tarpaulin shelter beside the mine shack and went on and had some coffee with the mine foreman, a tall, stoop-shouldered guy with a lot of gray beard. His name, he said, was Faison.
“Sorry about the trouble up here last week,” Wolfson said. “I hope no miners were hurt.”
“Nope, we stayed low,” Faison said.
“Smart,” Wolfson said.
“You taking over the mine?” Faison said.
“I’d like to do that,” Wolfson said. “Keep everybody on, promote you to mine manager.”
“More money?” Faison said.
“Of course,” Wolfson said.
Faison nodded.
“Nobody misses O’Malley,” Faison said. “Or the gun hands he brought in, neither.”
He looked at Virgil and me.
“No offense,” he said.
I shook my head. Virgil said nothing.
“Only thing anybody misses is payday,” Faison said. “You keep the paydays in order, we’ll be happy to work for you.”
“Excellent,” Wolfson said. “You bring the books into town soon as you can, go over them with Hensdale, my chief clerk, at the emporium.”
“I know Hensdale,” Faison said.
“Good.” Wolfson raised his coffee cup. “Here’s to bigger and better paydays.”
Faison nodded and raised his cup. Virgil and I did nothing. Wolfson might have glanced at us. It was always hard to tell because of the random eye.
“One favor,” Wolfson said after he’d put his cup back down. “I’d like a new sign that says Wolfson Mining.”
“Sure,” Faison said.
He and Wolfson shook hands, and we left. It was still raining steady, and the horses were not happy to leave the shelter of the tarpaulin.
“We going to talk with Stark?” I said.
“Wolfson said we
were.”
“I wouldn’t expect much from Stark,” I said.
“Fritzie is smart,” Wolfson said. “He’s a businessman. He sees how the landscape has changed.”
I glanced at Virgil. He shrugged. The rain slanted in on us riding east. Virgil rode the same way as he did when it was sunny or cold or windy or not. Things didn’t make much impression on Virgil Cole. He just went on being Virgil Cole… except about Allie. We rode across the face of the hill for an hour to Stark’s lumber operation. The rain didn’t encourage talking. We left the horses under cover in a lumber shed and went to the office. Stark let us in.
“What the hell do you want, Wolfson?” Stark said.
“Just stopping by, say hello, talk about how things have changed.”
“I got no interest in talking with you,” Stark said. “And I don’t care what’s changed and what hasn’t.”
“I thought maybe we should talk about partnering up.”
“Partnering up?” Stark said. “With you?”
“Fritzie, look around,” Wolfson said. “I got this whole town, hell, the whole west slope, tied up pretty tight. It’s to your fucking benefit, you know? To partner with me.”
“Wolfson,” Stark said, “you are a greedy, slimy, pig-fucking sonovabitch. I wouldn’t partner with you in Paradise. You’re a thief. You’re a back shooter. You’re a fucking coward hiding behind vermin like these two.”
“You better think about what you’re saying,” Wolfson said.
“I’ve thought all I want to about it, you walleyed cock-sucker, ” Stark said. “I ain’t afraid of you or your two gunners, neither.”
“Maybe you’ll learn to be,” Wolfson said.
“And maybe I won’t,” Stark said.
He picked up an ax handle that lay on his desk.
“So unless you’re ready to fucking shoot me now,” he said, “get out of my office and off my land.”
Wolfson stared at him. Stark took a step toward him with the ax handle raised. Wolfson took a quick back step.
“No,” he said. “We won’t shoot you today.”
“Then get your ass out of here,” Stark said.
“But there’s no guarantees about another day,” Wolfson said. “Think on it.”
“Fuck you,” Stark said.
An argument like that doesn’t leave you with much to say. Wolfson turned and strode out of the lumber office. Virgil grinned at Stark for a moment, then we went after Wolfson. When we were on our mounts and heading back toward town, nobody said anything.
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