“I didn’t appreciate you telling people not to shoot Redmond, ” Wolfson said.

“You wanted him shot?” Virgil said.

“I want to decide those things, not you.”

“Don’t blame you,” Virgil said. “But you ain’t doing the shooting.”

Wolfson frowned.

“I don’t get you, Cole,” he said. “I’d expect that you’d want him dead.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well,” Wolfson said, “I mean, you’re fucking his wife.”

Virgil stared at Wolfson and said nothing.

“Well, I mean, no offense,” Wolfson said.

Virgil stared silently.

“Damn it, Cole, you work for me, don’t you?” Wolfson said. “You act like you’re in charge of everything. Like you don’t work for anybody.”

Virgil shrugged. Wolfson looked at me.

“You too, Everett,” he said. “You act like a couple fucking English kings, you know? Like you can do what you want.”

“And Cato and Rose ain’t much better,” I said.

“No, goddamn it, they ain’t,” Wolfson said.

“You ever read Rousseau?” Virgil said.

“I don’t read shit,” Wolfson said. “Including Roo whatever his fucking name is.”

“Nope,” Virgil said. “’Spect you haven’t.”

He turned and spoke to Patrick.

“I’d like just a finger of whiskey,” he said.

Patrick poured some, and a shot for me as well. He held the bottle up toward Wolfson, and Wolfson shook his head.

“Things gonna have to change around here,” he said, and turned and walked away.

“Things gonna change,” he muttered as he walked. “Things gonna fucking change.”

“Why doesn’t he fire us?” I said.

“He’s scared of us,” Virgil said.

“And Cato and Rose,” I said.

“Same thing,” he said.

“So what do you think he’ll do?”

“Hire himself enough people to back him,” Virgil said. “Then he’ll feel safe. Then he’ll fire us.”

“You and me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cato and Rose?”

“Uh-huh.”

We sipped our whiskey.

After a while I said to Virgil, “Is it true?”

“What?”

“What he said. You poking Mrs. Redmond?”

“Ain’t gentlemanly to tell,” Virgil said.

I nodded.

“Hell, it ain’t even too gentlemanly to ask,” Virgil said.

“You are,” I said.

Virgil shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “ain’t you some kind of dandy.”

“Always have been,” Virgil said.

The next time we took Mrs. Redmond out to the ranch, Redmond came out of the house with the children and Mrs. Redmond climbed down from the buggy and went and sat on the porch with them while we sat our horses up the slope a ways.

“You pay any of Wolfson’s whores, Everett?” Frank Rose said.

I nodded.

“They’re all Wolfson’s whores,” I said.

“He says we can use anyone we want, no charge,” Rose said. “And a whore wants to give it to me for nothing, I’ll take it, and so will Cato. But me and Cato, we figure it ain’t Wolfson’s to say, you know? I mean, he don’t quite own ’em. Unless we pay them when they fuck us, they’re getting nothing.”

Rose grinned.

“’Cept a’course the ride of a lifetime. How ’bout you, Virgil? You agree with that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Cole don’t need no whores,” Cato said.

All three of us looked at him. Cato was still looking downhill at the Redmond ranch. Rose looked at Virgil, then suddenly down the hill at Beth Redmond. Then back at Virgil.

“Mrs. Redmond,” he said.

Virgil said nothing. Neither did Cato.

Rose looked at me. I shrugged.

We all looked down the hill, and no one spoke for a time.

Then Rose said, “Any one of us can deal with Redmond. Ain’t this a waste of manpower or something?”

“Maybe he don’t know that,” Virgil said.

“You mean if only one of us comes with her,” Rose said, “he might be tempted to give it a try?”

“Maybe.”

“And you don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Nope.”

“’Cause of the wife.”

“Maybe.”

“Ain’t got much use for a man beats on women,” Rose said. “You, Cato?”

“No,” Cato said.

“Not much of a man,” Rose said.

“No,” Cato said.

“He’s the only one fighting Wolfson,” I said.

“And he ain’t winning,” Rose said.

“True,” I said.

“You’d think Wolfson would be happy,” Rose said.

“But he’s not.”

“Hell, no,” Rose said. “He talked to me and Cato about you and Virgil. He don’t seem happy with Virgil.”

“Talked to you ’bout backing him,” Virgil said. “If he fired us.”

“Said he couldn’t trust you to do what he told you,” Rose said.

Virgil smiled.

“Tole him he could trust you to do what you said you would,” Rose said.

“That’s true,” Virgil said. “You tell him you’d back him?”

“No,” Rose said. “Tole him we wouldn’t.”

You went out to the Ward ranch the other day,” Mrs. Redmond said.

"We did,” Virgil said.

The three of us were having our coffee on the front porch of the hotel, watching the soft rain thicken the street dust into mud.

“My husband was there,” she said.

“Yep.”

“Mr. Rose says you told everybody not to hurt him,” she said.

“Mr. Rose is a talker,” Virgil said.

“But you did say that.”

“Something like that,” Virgil said.

“He told us, ‘Don’t shoot Redmond,’” I said.

“Did you do that for me?” Mrs. Redmond said.

“Yes,” Virgil said.

She was quiet for a time, holding the thick mug in both hands.

“He’s not a bad man,” she said after a while.

Virgil didn’t say anything.

“Good men don’t generally beat up their women,” I said.

She drank some more coffee.

“I know,” she said. “But…”

There wasn’t much traffic on the main street at any time, but in the rain with the mud thickening, there was none. Virgil and I were silent.

“When we first got married,” she said, “he was working in Saint Louis in a leather factory, cleaning hides. We was living in a room in a house near the factory. He used to smell terrible when he come home.”

“Hides do stink,” Virgil said.

“I was seventeen,” she said. “I’d run off from home.”

“And there you were,” I said.

“And there I was,” she said. “Only thing we had for decoration in the room was this old calendar that Bob hung on the wall. Wasn’t even the right year. But it had a picture on it, of a little house in the middle of a field, with a tree over it, and a little stream running past. There was a man and woman standing outside the house with two little children beside them.”

The Chinaman came out from the hotel kitchen with fresh coffee, and poured some in our cups. When he left, Mrs. Redmond started talking again. I wasn’t exactly sure how much she was talking to us.

“That’s what we wanted, Bob maybe even more than me. And finally, when we got the homestead land out here, we thought we was going to have it.”

“Nobody never really gets the pretty picture,” I said.

“I guess not,” she said. “Maybe if it wasn’t for Wolfson…”

“There’s always a Wolfson,” Virgil said.

She nodded.

“He tried so hard,” she said.

Her voice thickened as she spoke, and she sounded like she might cry.

“He’s still trying. Trying to make a profit, trying to organize the other homesteaders to fight Wolfson…”

“And it ain’t working out,” I said.

“No,” she said.

“And he’s taking it out on you?” I said.

“I nagged him awful,” she said.

Across the street, at the Excelsior, Cato and Rose came out on their porch and looked at the rain. Mrs. Redmond waved at them. Rose waved back.

“That Mr. Cato doesn’t say much, does he,” she said.

“Cato’s his first name, ma’am,” I said. “Cato Tillson. And no, he don’t say much.”

“He seems like a good man, though,” she said.

I smiled.

“Depends on your definition,” I said.

“Like how?” she said.

“Cato shoots people,” Virgil said. “But he don’t do it for the hell of it. And he ain’t a back shooter. And he gives you his word, he keeps it.”