“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.
“Want go drink a little courage,” I said. “Come back later?”
He went for it. He was pressured, probably scared, and I was right. He wasn’t that good. He fumbled the draw slightly and I hit him in the face with both barrels. It turned him completely around and propelled him about three steps before he went down. It didn’t blow his head off like I’d said it would. But it was an awful mess. I reloaded.
The room echoed with silence, the way it usually did after a shooting. The smell of my gunshots was strong. Wickman’s Colt was ten feet from his outstretched hand. He’d never even aimed it. People looked briefly at what was left of Wickman and looked quickly away. The people who had been standing closest to him were spattered with blood and tissue. One man took his stained shirt off and threw it away from him. I thought about Virgil Cole again.
You gotta kill someone, do it quick. Don’t look like you gotpushed into it. Look like you couldn’t wait to do it.… Sometimes you got to kill one person early, to save killing four or five later.
Wolfson came into the saloon from wherever he’d been, with two Chinamen. One Chinaman had a big piece of canvas, the other one had a bucket and mop. He nodded at the mess I’d made on his floor.
“You fix,” he said to the two Chinamen. “You clean one time. Chop, chop.”
The men went about it without expression. The one with the tarp wrapped it around Wickman and dragged him out through the door they’d come in. The other one mopped the floor.
“Anyone comes down from Liberty to ask about this,” Wolfson said, “I’ll talk to them. Everybody saw him draw on you… and the sheriff’s a friend of mine.”
I nodded, thinking still about Virgil’s advice. Virgil was always clear, and he was always certain. But he wasn’t always right.
I was hoping he would be, this time.
6.
Koy Wickman had been the toughest man in town, and I had killed him. It appeared that now I was the toughest man in town. And it made for a highly increased level of civility in the Blackfoot Saloon. I waited to hear from the O’Malley Mining Company. But nothing was forthcoming. Meanwhile, I sat in my high chair each evening amid the pleasant hubbub of a successful saloon. Days I read some, and rode my horse around, looking at the country. It was pretty unstressful, and I didn’t mind it for a while. Sooner or later, I knew it would get boring, and I would have to move on. But for now it was good to sort of rest up from my days with Virgil in Appaloosa.
It was a Tuesday night when things began to change a bit. I was in my chair when a little whore named Billie came into the saloon, walking fast, and headed for me. Billie always claimed to be twenty, but she looked to me about fifteen. And this night she also looked scared.
“There’s a man gonna get me, Everett,” she said.
“Customer?” I said.
“Yes,” Billie said. “But he don’t want to just fuck me. He wants to do things to me, you know?”
“Hurtful things?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t have to let him do hurtful things, do I, Everett?”
“No,” I said.
A squat, bowlegged fella with long arms came through the same door Billie had entered and looked around the room. He spotted Billie and came toward her hard, pushing people out of the way. He didn’t appear to be heeled, but I could see the handle of a knife sticking out of the top of his right boot. Billie saw him and hunched up behind my chair.
“Everett,” she said.
I nodded.
“Be all right, Billie, just stay quiet.”
Again she said, “Everett.”
Again I nodded. The man with the knife in his boot shoved a drinker aside to get next to Billie, who had wedged herself behind my chair. He grabbed her arm.
“Everett,” Billie said.
“Let her go,” I said to the knife man.
“I want that whore,” he said.
“Make the usual arrangements,” I said. “But no grabbing.”
He took his hand off her arm. I was pretty sure he knew I was the guy who killed Koy Wickman. On the other hand, he was drunk, and drunks can be stupid.
“I already paid for the little bitch,” he said.
“And you already done business?” I said.
“I fucked him,” Billie said.
“So?” I said to the guy with the knife.
“So she run off ’fore I was through.”
“He wanted to do stuff that hurt,” Billie said.
“I paid for her,” he said to me.
“That’s for fucking,” I said. “It don’t cover hurting.”
“I wasn’t gonna hurt her,” he said. “We was just playing a little.”
“She don’t want to play,” I said.
“She don’t want to?” he said. “She don’t want to? She’s a fucking whore. Who cares what she don’t want to? I paid good money for the little bitch.”
“You do what you supposed to?” I said to Billie.
“I done stuff with his pecker and then I fucked him,” she said. “He got a ugly little pecker.”
“Probably don’t see a lot of pretty ones,” I said.
The man bent down and took the knife from his boot. It was a big bowie knife with a wide blade. I rapped him on the wrist with both barrels of the shotgun, and the knife clattered to the floor and slid away. The man doubled over, holding his arm against his stomach.
“You cocksucker,” he said. “You broke my fucking arm.”
I didn’t say anything.
“It feels broke,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“You got no right to be banging me with that fucking eight-gauge.”
I looked at him and didn’t say anything.
“I want my damned money back,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Ain’t you gonna talk?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “First, your arm ain’t broke. I can tell. Second, she fucked you, so you don’t get your money back. Third, you annoy one whore in this establishment, ever, and I’ll kill you.”
He stared at me. I stared back. He wanted to say something. But I had, after all, killed Koy Wickman. Still nursing his arm against his stomach, he turned and went to pick up his knife.