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 gunny?” I said. “Or is it just a hobby?”
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 running them off?”
“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 gonna stick?” Wolfson said.
“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.