Bob Redmond walked up the board sidewalk toward the front porch of the Blackfoot.
"Mind if I sit?” he said.
Virgil didn’t respond, and I realized that I had assumed he would. It was funny, me and Virgil these days. Always before, he’d been in charge. Always before, I had worked for him. Now I wasn’t sure if I was in charge, and he didn’t exactly work for me. But things were different.
“Don’t mind,” I said. “This is Virgil Cole.”
“I heard of you,” Redmond said.
Virgil nodded.
“You working for Wolfson now?” Redmond said.
“Visiting Everett,” Virgil said.
“But if there was trouble?”
“You think there’ll be trouble?” Virgil said.
“It’s coming,” Redmond said. “Sure as hell.”
"Wolfson and O’Malley?” I said.
“O’Malley came and talked with us last night,” Redmond said.
“Who’s us?” I said.
“Ranchers, said there was trouble coming. Said we’re either with him or with Wolfson. Tole us if he ran things we’d get a fair shake on the beef prices, and a decent rate at the bank.”
“He want your help?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Redmond said. “My sense is that he just don’t want us, you know, sniping at his flank.”
“How many ranchers,” Virgil said.
“All told maybe fifty.”
“How many at the meetin’?” Virgil said.
Redmond paused and counted in his head.
“Me and six others,” he said.
Virgil didn’t say anything.
“We’re scattered,” Redmond said. “We work hard. Lot of us can’t get to meetin’s.”
“You speak for them all?” I said.
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess I do. Nobody else does.”
“What do you want out of this?” I said.
“We got to get rid of Wolfson,” Redmond said. “He’s chokin’ us. We can’t make it with Wolfson running things.”
“And you think you can with O’Malley?” I said.
“No.”
“So?”
Redmond was quiet for a minute.
“We got to get rid of Wolfson,” he said.
“So you’re throwin’ in with him,” I said.
“I guess so, ’less you could help us.”
“How we gonna do that?” I said.
Redmond was sitting with his feet flat on the floor, his elbows resting on his thighs, his hands clasped. He stared down at the clasped hands for a time.
“What would work for us,” he said, “would be the two of them fight it out, and after they beat hell out of each other, and one of them finally wins, we take the town away from him.”
Redmond looked up at us. Virgil smiled.
“Nice,” Virgil said.
“Might need more than a few Winchesters for that,” I said.
“I know.”
“Got the balls for it?” Virgil said.
Again, Redmond looked at his hands for a while.
“No, I don’t think we do,” he said.
“Only a fool would have claimed they did,” I said. “It’s sort of special work.”
“But if you could help us, especially with Mr. Cole here. We couldn’t pay you much now, but…”
I put up my hand.
“Same answer as before. I work for Wolfson.”
“Mr. Cole doesn’t,” Redmond said.
“I’m with Everett,” Virgil said.
We all sat silently.
Finally, Redmond said, “Well, we can’t live the way we’re living.”
“You can count on changing that,” Virgil said.