At a card table in the middle of the room somebody lost a hand he thought he had won, and got mad and slammed his open hand down on the table. The impact knocked over a bottle of whiskey that rolled off the table and shattered on the floor. The card player whirled toward me and put both hands, palms out, in front of his chest.

“No trouble, Everett. An accident. I’ll buy a new bottle.”

“That’ll be good,” I said.

The card player walked to the bar to buy a new bottle. A Chinese man with a broom came from someplace and cleaned up the broken glass.

“Ain’t it grand how they love you, Everett,” Wolfson said.

“Ever hear of a man named Machiavelli?” I said.

“No.”

“When I was at West Point,” I said, “they made us read some things he wrote.”

“I’m not much for reading,” Wolfson said.

“One thing he said sort of stayed with me,” I said. “It’s better to be feared than loved. Because you can’t make them love you. But you can make them fear you.”

“Pretty smart fella,” Wolfson said. “So what?”

I grinned at him.

“Koy Wickman,” I said, “did not die in vain.”

12.

It was payday at Fort Rucker, and the Blackfoot had a lot more soldiers than usual. They were noisy but peaceful, except for one fight, which I convinced the fighters to take outside. I watched them for a little while as they flailed away drunkenly until one of them threw up and the other walked away in disgust.

I was back in my chair when two men came into the Blackfoot who were not soldiers, or ranch hands, or miners, or lumberjacks, or drummers, or wandering preachers. They had on town clothes and smallish town hats, and they wore guns. In fact, one of them wore two. I always thought two guns were for show. And the fact that his were adorned with bright pearl handles didn’t cause me to reconsider. He was as tall as I was, but not as thick, and he wore a big mustache. His partner was shorter and smaller. Kind of scrawny-looking, he was shaved clean, and carried one walnut-handled Colt.