“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.
