“’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.”
“You shoot at me?” I said.
“Me,” Wickman said.
He was playing to the audience that had begun to gather.
“Me?” he said. “Why would you think it was me?”
“’Cause you’re a back shooter,” I said.
The banter went out of Wickman’s voice.
“I ain’t no back shooter,” he said. “You don’t know nothing about me. Every man I killed was facing me straight up.”
“I know a back shooter when I see one,” I said. “I bet you never shot a man wasn’t drunk. This morning you missed me by five feet.”
“I missed shit,” Wickman said. “I wanted to I coulda put that bullet right between your ears.”
“So you was just thinking to scare me,” I said.
Wickman opened his mouth and closed it and backed away a step.
“Didn’t work,” I said.
“I’m just saying it was me shot at you I wouldn’ta missed.”
“Naw,” I said. “’Course you wouldn’t. You’da drilled me from behind, back shooter.”
“Don’t call me that,” Wickman said.
The audience began to spread out a little. I thumbed back both hammers on the shotgun and rested the butt on my thigh with the barrels pointing at the ceiling.
“You ain’t behind me now,” I said.
“You think I’m going up against that eight-gauge,” Wickman said.
“I ain’t pointing it at you,” I said.
The audience spread out farther.
“I’m pointing the shotgun at the ceiling,” I said. “Good gun hand should be able to clear leather and drill me ’fore I can drop the barrels.”
I was right, there were people who could win that matchup, and I wouldn’t have made them the offer. But I was betting that Koy Wickman wasn’t one of them. I was probably the first person he went up against that he couldn’t bully, maybe the first one that was sober, and almost certainly the first one that was sober and had an eight-gauge shotgun. He backed up another step. The audience gave him plenty of room.
