Resolution

3.

In the saloon kitchen, the Chinaman made me biscuits and fried sowbelly for breakfast. I had two cups of coffee with it, and drank the second one on the front porch of the saloon. The sun was coming up behind me, and the weather was clear. I could see most of Resolution from where I stood. It was a raw town. Newer than Appaloosa, raw lumber, mostly unpainted, boards warping as they dried. Flat-front, mostly one-story buildings, with long, low front porches, covered by a roof. The saloons generally had second floors. And sometimes a second-floor porch.

I finished the coffee and put the cup down and strolled Main Street. There were three saloons besides the Blackfoot. There was an unpainted one-story shack with a sign in the front window that read Genuine Chicago Cooking. There were no customers yet. A Chinaman with a long pigtail was outside, sweeping down the porch. He kept his head down as I passed. I stopped in to the livery stable to visit my horse. There was a bucket of water in his stall, and some oats in another bucket. He seemed sort of glad to see me. He nudged at my shoulder and I gave him a piece of sugar that I’d taken from the saloon.

Past the livery stable were a couple of independent whorehouses where the girls lived and worked. No gambling, no food, just short sessions for a dollar. No one appeared to be awake in the whorehouses yet. Beyond, a little away from the wooden buildings, were a few tents where the Chinamen lived, maybe ten to a tent. They cooked in the saloons, and washed floors, and washed dishes, and emptied spittoons and chamber pots and slop buckets. They laundered clothes, and ironed and sewed. They mucked out the livery stables. And I knew they stepped aside when any white man encountered them in the street. I had heard someplace that they sent all their money back to China and lived on a few pe

Where I was standing, the main street petered out into a trail that led slowly downhill toward the south. Out a ways on the trail was a small ranch. Homesteader, probably. Beyond that further out, another one, and on the horizon, a couple more. I looked at the plains for a while, stretching out wide and, to my eye, empty, to the horizon. Behind me, Main Street stretched the length of the ugly little town. At the north end it became a two-wagon rut road that went up into the hills and wound out of sight among the bull pines.

I walked back along the main street. The sun was above the low buildings now and shone hard on me from the right. I passed the Blackfoot Saloon. It was the largest building in town. Besides the saloon, there was the hotel, the hotel dining room, a small bank, and the big general store. Past the Blackfoot was a blacksmith shop. The smith was there in his undershirt, loading charcoal into his forge. We nodded as I passed him.

I reached the north end of the main street. I looked at the pines. There were bird sounds, and the rustle of a light and occasional wind in the trees. Nothing else moved. The walk the length of the town had taken maybe ten minutes. Town was pretty small. Lotta space around it.

A whore I knew back in Appaloosa had asked me once if I got lonely, moving around in all this empty space, stopping in little towns with nothing much there. I told her I didn’t. I’m not hard to get along with, but I’m not convivial. I like my own company, and I like space.

A bullet clipped one of the pine trees’ branches five feet to my right. The sound of the shot was behind me. I drew, spun, and went flat on the ground. Nothing moved in the town. I waited. No second shot. After a time I stood and holstered my Colt. I walked back to the blacksmith shop.

“Hear a gunshot?” I said.

“Yep,” he said. “I did.”

“Know where it came from?” I said.

“Nope. You?”

“Nope,” I said.

We both stood and looked musingly back along the street toward where I had been standing.

“There’s a fella, name of Wickman,” I said. “Kind of sharp face, little eyes. Wears one of them round bowler hats. Carries a gun in a fast-draw rig.”

“Koy Wickman,” the smith said. “You think he shot at you?”

“Just speculatin’,” I said. “Seen him around this morning?”

“Nope. It was Koy shot at you, though, he wouldn’ta missed.”

“’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 gu

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 ru

“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 go

“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.