“No,” he said.
“Gunfight ain’t like other things,” Virgil said.
“Lujack’s people are professionals,” I said. “You’ll get buried.”
“He ain’t gonna run us off,” Redmond said.
Both fists were clenched in his lap. His face was red.
“Hell he ain’t,” Virgil said.
Redmond stood.
“You calling me a coward?” he said to Virgil.
Virgil looked at him as if he were an odd specimen of insect Virgil hadn’t seen before.
“At the moment,” Virgil said, “I’m calling you a fool.”
“I’ll fight you,” Redmond said. “Goddamn it, I will.”
“Bob,” Stark said, “shut the fuck up.”
“I ain’t scared of him,” Redmond said.
“Should be,” Stark said, in a voice that would have cut through shale. “Now sit fucking down and shut fucking up. These people are trying to help you.”
“We don’t need it,” Redmond said.
But he sat down.
“We could all go down, lumberjacks, us, everybody,” he said. “There’d be like fifty of us.”
“And leave who,” I said, “looking out for the women and children?”
“They wouldn’t…” Redmond said.
“’Course they would,” Virgil said.
Redmond started to speak, and stopped and started again and stopped.
“Jesus,” he said finally.
“Finally,” Stark said to him, “do you get it? You know what you’re dealing with?”
Redmond nodded silently.
“You’ll help us,” Stark said to Virgil.
“If you’re going to stay with it,” Virgil said. “If you ain’t, me ’n Everett will ride off down to Texas.”
“You’d run from Wolfson?” Redmond said.
“Got no reason not to,” Virgil said. “’Less you folks are gonna stay and fight.”
“We are,” Redmond said softly. “We got no place else to go.”
“Stark?” Virgil said.
“I’ll be here,” Stark said. “I’m not gonna ask my boys to go up against professional shooters. But there’s enough of us, I think, to keep them out of here.”
“Got enough food?” I said.
“For now,” Stark said. “Shot an elk couple days ago. That’ll help.”
“Wolfson ain’t gonna sell you none,” I said.
“Nope.”
“Any come in on the lumber train?”
Stark smiled without any amusement.
“Somebody blew the tracks of my spur about ten miles west of here,” he said.
“So you can’t sell your lumber, either,” I said.
“Not for now.”
Virgil looked at me.
“Well,” he said. “Seems like we ought to clean this up pretty quick, Everett.”
I nodded.
“What are you going to do?” Redmond said.
“We’ll talk with Cato and Rose,” Virgil said. “And you stay here and hold tight. Don’t get caught out in the open.”
“You four against twenty?” Stark said.
“At first,” Virgil said.
62.
What you suppose Wolfson’s gonna do with all that sodbuster land he’s got?” Rose said while we were eating breakfast in the Excelsior.
“Not much,” I said, “because we ain’t gonna let him keep it.”
“Sure,” Rose said. “But what’s he think he’s gonna do with it.”
“Could run cattle,” I said.
“Not the best range I ever seen,” Rose said.
“Could reparcel it,” I said. “Sell it off to a new crop of homesteaders.”
“That’s what he’ll do,” Virgil said. “Sell the land in house lots. The bank will hold the mortgages, so he’ll still control it. They’ll be new customers for the store and the saloons.”
“So why not keep the sodbusters he’s got now,” Rose said.
“He’s wrung ’em dry,” Cato said.
All three of us looked at him. But he didn’t add anything.
After a time Virgil said, “Cato’s right. They got nothing. They can’t repay a mortgage. They haven’t got any money to spend at the emporium. They probably can’t even rebuild enough to make a profit. But they can keep him from owning the land, and they can keep him from reselling to people who have some money.”
“For him to squeeze out of the new folks,” I said.
“So unless he can run them off, or starve them out, or kill them,” Rose said, “these shitkickers are just in Wolfson’s way.”
“Yep.”
“And they got nothing to bargain with,” Rose said.
“Just us,” I said.
Virgil appeared to be paying no attention to the conversation. He stood up suddenly.
“Think I’ll go talk to Wolfson,” he said, and walked out the front door of the saloon.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Rose said.
“Let’s go see,” I said.
We got up and went after Virgil.
Wolfson was at his table in the Blackfoot, and with him were Lujack and Swann.
“Virgil,” Wolfson said, “I thought you’d be on your way to Texas by now.”
Swann shifted a little in his chair. Virgil walked across the saloon and stopped in front of Wolfson.
“Used to work for you,” Virgil said.
Wolfson nodded his head once.
“We ain’t gonna let you run them settlers off their land,” Virgil said.
No one at the table said anything for a long time. Virgil stood patiently. He was doing what he always did, just going about his business, plowing straight ahead. Nothing bothered him. He never seemed in a hurry, except things always seemed to happen faster for him than other people.
Finally, Wolfson said, “You’re not?”
“Nope,” Virgil said.
“You and them three boys?” Lujack said, nodding at Cato and Rose and me.
“That’s right,” Virgil said. “Wanted to let you know. Give you a chance to negotiate, if you was of a mind to.”
“Negotiate?” Lujack said.
Lujack was slowly discovering what so many people had discovered before him, that Virgil Cole was not like other folks.
“We ain’t negotiating shit,” Wolfson said. “You boys got a brain in your heads, you’ll skedaddle the fuck out of Resolution while we’re still willin’ to let you.”
Virgil nodded and looked at Swann.
“You got anything to say?” he said to him.
Swann looked lazily at Wolfson and Lujack seated with him, and then at me and Cato and Rose, behind Virgil.
“Not right now,” he said.
They looked at each other. Swann didn’t like the odds, and he was right. But he wasn’t afraid of Virgil, which could be a mistake. Though as Virgil always insisted, you didn’t know for certain until it happened.
Virgil nodded slowly.
Then, without speaking again, he turned and walked out of the saloon. Cato and Rose and I followed him.
63.
It’ll be like it was with the Shoshones,” I said. "They may not come, but you can’t plan on it.”
"We’re losing manpower,” Stark said, “every day. Mostly miners are moving on.”
“Mine’s dried up,” Faison said. “Nothin’ to hold ’em.”
“Wolfson know that?” I said.
“They send somebody up every day to look at us,” Stark said. “Coupla riders.”
“Where?” I said.
“Top the ridge over there,” Stark said.
He pointed west.
“Where we’ve cleared the trees,” he said.
“When do they come?”
“Late afternoon.”
“So the sun’s behind them,” Rose said.
“And anybody wanted to pick them off from down here,” I said, “be shooting into it.”
It was the middle of the afternoon. We were at the lumber camp, outside the lumber office, with Stark and Faison and Redmond and several men I didn’t know. Virgil and Cato both looked up at the sun.
“Awful long shot, sun or no sun,” I said.
“Better to be closer,” Virgil said. “And not facing the sun.”
Cato nodded and tapped himself on the chest. Virgil nodded back. Cato stood and walked away from the group and around the corner of the lumber office. Everyone watched him go. No one said anything.
So I said, after a time, “You need to stay careful. Keep your pickets posted on the road, and above the camp, too. Lujack and his posse may not come prancing up the road for you.”