Resolution

59.

Virgil decided that it was time to try out the old sorrel mare, see if her gashed leg had healed and she was sound. I went with him because I had nowhere else to go, and we rode easily up the hill north of town and sat the horses in the shade just inside the tree line.

Virgil got off the mare and picked up her foreleg. He looked at it and squeezed it gently and put it down and remounted. The mare cropped a little grass. Virgil patted her neck.

“Good as new,” he said.

“Which ain’t all that good,” I said.

“Nope,” Virgil said, “she ain’t much. But what there is of her is working fine.”

We looked down at the town below us. It wasn’t much, either. They were building a town marshal’s office next to the Blackfoot, on the north side. While we watched, a squad of new deputy marshals rode down Main Street and south out of town.

“You remember,” Virgil said as we watched them ride out, “how we got to be the law in Appaloosa?”

“Them three fellas, owned businesses in town, they hired us,” I said.

“Town council.”

“So they said.”

“Anybody elect them?” Virgil asked.

“Not that I know of,” I said.

The squad of deputies disappeared over the crest of the first hill south of town and reappeared at the crest of the next one.

“We had a set of laws,” Virgil said, “written out clear.”

“And we wrote them,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“So this collection of vermin,” he said, “is as much the law here as we was in Appaloosa.”

“I guess so,” I said.

The squad went over the next hill, where the road curved, following the creek.

“We done the right thing,” Virgil said, “best we could, in Appaloosa.”

“Yep.”

The deputies were out of sight now.

“These people won’t do the right thing,” Virgil said.

“Not likely,” I said.

“Already done the wrong thing, shooting that sodbuster,” Virgil said.

“I’d say so.”

“And they’re the law.”

“’Fraid so,” I said.

Virgil nodded his head slowly, gazing downhill at the ugly little town.

“Not much of a place,” he said.

“No,” I said.

“Getting worse,” Virgil said. “Mine’s dried up. Lumber company’s out of business, at least for now. Homesteaders been run off the land.”

“Yep.”

“There’s no money to be spent,” Virgil said. “Nobody to borrow from the bank. Nobody to buy feed at the emporium. No beef to broker. Whiskey sales are almost nothing in the saloons.”

“Hard to make a profit,” I said, “by eliminatin’ your customers. ”

“Whole fucking town is going under,” Virgil said.

“Seems so,” I said.

“And Wolfson wants it,” Virgil said.

“Yep.”

“Why?” Virgil said.

“He probably don’t know, either,” I said.

“Don’t seem worth killing folks over.”

“Hell, Virgil,” I said. “You know better’n I do that people kill folks for nothing at all.”

Virgil nodded again.

“They do,” he said.

Then he clucked to the mare and we rode on back down the hill.