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"I'll tell you something, I got poetry in me. I do, I got poetry in me! But... I ain't gonna put it down on paper, I ain't no educated man, I got sense enough not to try it."


John McCabe is a cocksure gambler and would-be frontier pimp from the turn of the 20th century. He was born losing and never really stopped, though he talks tough, dresses fancy, and smothers himself in cheap cologne to convince himself otherwise. He's settled in a mining town called Presbyterian Church, a diseased abscess growing in the dankest, darkest hole in the Cascades, to make his fortune. Problem is he doesn't know a damn thing about running a whorehouse. This is where Mrs. Miller enters the picture. She's an English madam who forms a partnership with McCabe, somewhat against his will. She turns the place into a profitable, high-class enterprise, building a bathhouse and bringing in high-class women from Seattle.

Even in a slice of nowhere like Presbyterian Church, that kind of success doesn't go unnoticed. One day a pair of agents from the Harrison Shaughnessy mining company come into town and make McCabe an offer to buy him out. He demurs, hoping to negotiate for more money from the deal, despite Mrs. Miller's warnings that they're making an offer he can't refuse. The next morning, they're gone, never to return. The next men the company sends will be armed.

Mrs. Miller still charges him, same as anybody else. He wishes she could be sweet to him without there being money in it. Even if it's just once. Even if she doesn't really mean it. His whole damn life, he's never been this close to anyone; never had another heart to grab onto; never had anyplace he could call home. But when she's in his arms, there's this glimmer inside him; this fool's hope that this time, for the first time in his life, he's got something. And maybe that's why he didn't do the sensible thing. Maybe that's why he didn't run away.

Or maybe he's just a fool.


John McCabe is a character from the film McCabe & Mrs. Miller and is property Warner Brothers, Inc. He is being used solely for roleplaying purposes and no profit whatsoever is being made off him.