Warlock

by Oakley Hall

The doctor joined them and Winters said, “That is a good arm Miss Jessie is walking on, Doc. Did you see him in action last night?”

  The doctor shook his head.

  “I saw him,” Henry Goodpasture said. “He made fifty or sixty men run with their tails between their legs.”

  “Who were they?” the doctor asked.

  “The usual no-accounts. Slator and Grace among them. A bunch of drunken miners.”

  “I see you will blame the miners for everything, too,” the doctor said.

  Goodpasture rolled his eyes heavenward, and Kennon and Winters laughed. The new woman had moved away from Morgan to join Deputy Gannon. Slavin informed the others of this in a whisper, and each found occasion to glance back and confirm the fact.

  “It seems Gannon has a friend after all,” Winters said.

  Morgan passed and one or two of them nodded to him, but no one spoke. Morgan glanced from face to face with his contemptuous eyes, and nodded back with a kind of insulting deference.

  “Damned hound,” Will Hart said, when Morgan was out of earshot. “There’s a man I wouldn’t trust my back to.”

  “There’s talk Taliaferro’s man Wax trusted his to him,” Slavin said. “Damned if I don’t believe it, too.”

  “Blaisedell seems to trust him well enough,” Goodpasture said.

  “It does not say much for Blaisedell, I’m afraid,” Winters said. “Which is too bad.”

  They all fell silent as the deputy and Kate Dollar caught up with them. The deputy’s eyes flickered at them as he passed. The woman walked with him, but separately too. Her face was pale and set.

  No one spoke until these had gone on past, and they all stopped when they reached the doctor’s buggy. The fat bay mare swung her head from side to side, cropping stubble. Goodpasture and the doctor climbed into the buggy. “Is there a Citizens’ Committee meeting, Buck?” the doctor asked.

  “Why, I hadn’t heard,” Slavin said. “Is there, Joe?”

  “I don’t know,” Kennon said, glancing quickly away.

  The doctor took up his whip, shook it, and clucked to the mare. They waited while the buggy rolled off. Hart looked at Kennon, who flushed. Hart said to Slavin, “You know damned well there is a meeting, Buck! MacDonald called it.”

  “You know why he called it?” Kennon said. “He wants to vote Blaisedell to post some troublemaker at the Medusa out of town.”

  “I don’t like that!” Hart said swiftly.

  “Cheap,” Winters said. “Cheaper than hiring Jack Cade to do it, the way he did with that man Lathrop. This way we all foot the bill.”

  “Well, I will go along with him,” Slavin said. “It’s that one called Brunk, Will. You have one man like that and he stirs everybody up. I think Doc is pretty friendly with him, is why I didn’t want to say anything.”

  “Isn’t that pretty?” Paul Skinner said, pointing. Ahead of them, cutting across toward the Row, the whores with their pastel clothing fluttering in the wind looked like bright-colored birds.

  “I wish Doc would leave those damned jacks alone,” Kennon said. “My God, he has got touchy about them.”

  “Well,” Winters said, “in my opinion the troublemaker at the Medusa is Charlie MacDonald himself. Maybe he is the one that should be posted, and I don’t know that I wouldn’t vote for it.”

  “I don’t like anything about this,” Hart said.

  “I expect we’ll want the marshal to post those three of McQuown’s, won’t we?” Kennon said. “If they get off at Bright’s, I mean.”

  “They will. They will.”

  “Four of them,” Slavin said. “Friendly was with them, that’s for sure. Maybe it’d be better to post that Brunk then, come to think of it. I’ll tell Charlie.”

  Hart was shaking his head worriedly. Winters slapped him on the shoulder. “Do you know what Warlock’s second industry is, Will? Coffin manufacture,” he said, and laughed. But no one else joined him in his joke, and now they all walked in silence back along the dusty track to Warlock, returning from the burial of yesterday’s dead.

  16. CURLEY BURNE TRIES TO MEDIATE

  CURLEY BURNE rode beside Abe up into Warlock from the rim. As they entered Main Street he could feel Abe’s tenseness ten feet away, see him sitting up straighter, his left hand stiff with the reins and his right braced upon his thigh, his green eyes flickering right and left at the almost empty street. Up in the central block there were a few horses tied before the saloons, and, beyond, two teams and wagons stood before Egan’s Feed and Grain Barn. Peter Bacon drove the water wagon across on Broadway, water slopping from the top of the tank.

  “Got quiet in Warlock,” Abe said, in a flat voice.

  “Surely has,” Curley said, nodding. He pulled his mouth organ from inside his shirt and started to blow on it—and saw Abe frown. He let it drop back. “Chunk of them gone to Bright’s for trial tomorrow, I expect,” he said. “I hear there’s a lot of feeling.”

  Abe’s lips tightened in his red beard. He glanced toward the jail as they passed. The morning sun brightened the east face of the bullet-perforated, weather-beaten sign.

  “Bud in there?” Abe asked.

  “Didn’t see.”

  “Probably gone up to witness against Billy,” Abe said bitterly. He swung his black into Southend Street, so evidently he meant to stop in Warlock instead of just riding through. Curley supposed he felt he had had to come through, and had to stop, just to show himself.

  Goodpasture’s mozo was sweeping the boardwalk in front of the store; when he saw them he began to swing his broom in a burst of animation. A high, battered old Concord stood in the stageyard and a hostler was backing a wheeler into harness. He stared at them as they turned into the Acme Corral. Lame Paul Skinner came out to meet them, silent and hostile. Nate Bush spat on his hands and rammed the tines of his hayfork into the hay as though he were killing snakes.

  Abe stood watching Paul Skinner lead Prince and the black off to water with his eyes cold and color burning in his cheeks. “Now, easy, Abe,” Curley whispered.

  They moved out of the corral, Abe very straight in his buckskin shirt, his shell belt riding his hips low beneath his concho belt. “Easy, now, Abe,” Curley said sadly, again, and said it still again but not aloud.

  “Sons of bitches!” Abe hissed, as they went along past the buckled, leaning plank fence toward Goodpasture’s corner. “They will turn on a man as soon as spit. They will lick up to a new dog and turn on the old every time.”

  At the corner he started cater-cornered across Main Street toward the jail, and Curley followed a step behind him.

  Inside the jail Bud Gannon sat behind the table. His stiff, dark brown hair was neatly combed and his hat lay on the table between his hands. Beside the alley door was a rusty, dented bucket with a mop handle leaning out of it, and the floor was still damp in spots.

  Bud nodded to them. He looked tired, and thinner than ever. His star was pinned to the breast of his blue flannel shirt. Abe stopped just inside the door, and, standing at ease, glanced around the jail with careful attention. The cell was unoccupied, the door standing open.

  “Well, how’s the apprentice deputy?” Curley said, squeezing in past Abe. He had liked Bud Gannon as well as anyone at San Pablo, quiet and sober as he had always been. He had been a top hand with the stock, and he was missed. The killing in Rattlesnake Canyon had hit Bud the worst, he knew; immediately after it he had left for Rincon. He knew Abe hated Bud for that, and for not coming back to San Pablo now.

  “All right,” Bud said, nodding. “How are you, Curley?”

  “Fine as paint.”

  “We are going up to Bright’s,” Abe said.

  Bud nodded again.

  “Where’s your big-chief deputy?”

  “Bright’s City.”

  “Looks like half Warlock’s gone up.” Curley flipped his hat off, so that it hung down his back by its cord. Whistling through his teeth, he stepped over to the cell door and batted it back and forth between hi
s hands.

  “Lot of yours going up, Abe?” Bud asked.

  “Some,” Abe said gravely. “Some people down there are interested pretty good.”

  “Be jam-packed up there,” Curley said, pushing the door in faster, shorter arcs. “People all squunched together in court there and everybody calling everybody else a liar.” He laughed to think of it, and to think of the fat, sweaty-faced townsmen in the jury box.

  Abe leaned back against the wall and crossed his legs. “You look worried, Bud,” he said. “Don’t worry about Billy. It’ll come right.”

  “Will it?” Bud said, and he sounded hoarse. “I’m glad to hear that.” His thin face had paled. “How will it?” he said.

  “Because I will see it does,” Abe said. “Because they are friends of mine and I intend to see they are not blackguarded and false-sworn into hanging for something they didn’t do—by people that’s after me. I will stand up for my own, Bud.”

  Curley looked down as Bud’s eyes turned toward him; he knew Abe had meant what he said, not just about Billy, but about Pony and Calhoun as well. But Luke had told them that Pony and Calhoun had planned to stop the stage. It was all right to stand up for your own, it was the first principle; but there was no need to throw up a dust cloud about what they had or had not done. It was as though Abe were trying to fool himself as well as the rest.

  “You wouldn’t see what you are doing to your own,” Bud said, in the hoarse voice.

  “Doing!” Abe said. With a lithe movement he leaned his hands on the table and stared into Bud’s face. “What would you do, let them hang? Let your own brother hang? By God, I think you would do it, just so Blaisedell would pat you on the head and call you a good boy.”

  “I’d let them have a fair trial,” Bud said.

  “Fair trial!” Abe said, and straightened and grinned. “I hear Buck is running passengers up free so everybody in Warlock can go swear against them. Fair trial?”

  Bud said nothing, and it came over Curley with a sickening shock that Bud would not do anything, that he would let Billy hang and not make a move. “Holy smoke, Bud!” he said. “I believe you— What the hell has happened to you?”

  Bud swung toward him. “Do you think I want—”

  “I know what’s happened to him,” Abe broke in. “Clay Blaisedell is what’s happened to him.”

  He went on, but Curley didn’t listen, staring at Bud who was, in turn, watching Abe. It came on him strongly, all at once, that Bud did not hate Abe, that maybe Bud felt something of the way he did toward Abe. Yet there was some cold lack in him, where friends didn’t matter, or even his brother.

  “Whose town is it?” Abe was saying. “I mean, who was here to begin with? You know who, when Warlock was nothing but Cousins’ store and Bill Hake’s saloon. But then Richelin got his silver strike and everybody comes crowding in, and now it’s beginning to look like there is no more room for the ones that was here first.”

  “There is room, Abe,” Bud said.

  “Just if I make room, it looks like. Bud, I was friendly with people and took care of my own and got along, and people looked up to me some. But not any more. Because there is someone come in that is trying to run me off like you would a dirty, stinking dog. Turning people against me—” His voice began to shake, and he stopped.

  Bud said, “So now you are going up to Bright’s City and have your own lied free, or the jury scared off, one. Or both. You will trick and mess the law around like you want it until—” He hesitated. “Until you get Clay Blaisedell brought in against you, and then you can’t understand it.”

  “I understand it,” Abe said. “I understand he has got people thinking he is Jesus Christ, so that makes me a black devil from hell. I understand it, and you too, Bud. I put you and Billy on when your Daddy died, Bud, but I guess you have surely forgot that.”

  “No,” Bud said. “I haven’t forgot it. But there is other things I can’t forget either.”

  Curley said quickly, “There is some things better forgot.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Abe whispered. Curley saw that he had his hand on the haft of his knife. His lips were pulled back white against his teeth, and the long wrinkles in his cheeks were etched deep. “You son of a bitch!”

  Bud licked his lips. When he spoke his voice was dead and dry. “I’ve come against things like that, is all,” he said. “A thing happened there at Rattlesnake Canyon that I guess had to happen because of what’d gone before. So what went before was wrong, and I will try to see— Do you think it is easy?” he said loudly. “Because you think I am for Blaisedell against you, when I am not. And people here think the other way around, when I am not. But I am come against what we did in Rattlesnake Canyon, Abe. And against what was tried that night in the Glass Slipper when Jack would have shot a man in the back like you’d kill a fly. One fly, or seventeen flies.”

  Abe sucked his breath in; he cried, “If you say I fixed it to back-shoot Blaisedell you are a liar!”

  Curley tried to say jokingly, “Why, Bud, that kind of hits at me, don’t it? I thought that was my fight. My back-off, anyhow.” But he felt sick all the way down. He sighed and said, “Where you’ve gone wrong, Bud. You know where you went wrong? There’s been bad things done, surely, but you went wrong lining up against your own instead of trying to change them. Against your friends, Bud; against your brother! That’s no good! They are the most important people there is to a man; why, nobody else counts. Your friends and kin—Billy. You know that’s wrong!”

  “He doesn’t think so,” Abe said, easily now. “You can see that.”

  Curley said, “Do you think Billy run that stage and killed that passenger, Bud?” He watched Bud look down at his hat, and crease the top with the edge of his hand.

  “Happen to know he didn’t,” Abe said.

  “Luke says he didn’t, Bud.”

  “But you’d have him hang,” Abe said.

  “He killed a posseman,” Bud said tiredly.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Abe said, mockingly. “Banging away at him and he was supposed to just let himself get shot up. Hang for just trying to defend himself.”

  “Let him plead it then,” Bud said. “He wouldn’t hang if he got a fair trial. But he will be lied off for what he didn’t do in the first place, and stuck with it. No, he won’t hang and he won’t even go to the territorial, for you will get him off. And I don’t guess you will ever see how you killed him by it.”

  Curley stared at him, uncomprehending, and Abe laughed and said, “My, you are a real worrier, aren’t you?” His voice tightened as he went on. “Well, I know what you want—you want us all to hang for that in Rattlesnake Canyon. Don’t you? You are like a hellfire-and-damnation preacher gone loco on bad whisky. All for a bunch of stinking, murdering greasers that wasn’t worth the lead it cost to burn them down!” He stopped and rubbed a hand across his mouth, and Curley thought of Dad McQuown in one of his fits as he saw the shine of spit in Abe’s beard. “But you were there!” Abe cried. “Shooting and hollering with the rest!”

  Then Abe said softly, “Well, I am warning you, Bud.”

  Bud got to his feet and stood, stoop-shouldered, facing Abe. All at once he looked angry. “Warning me what?”

  “Why, how Cade knows you have been making talk he was out to backshoot Blaisedell.” Abe swiped at his mouth again, and Curley saw his eyes waver from Bud’s; they would not meet his, either. Then Abe grinned and said, “But maybe Billy will keep him off you, if he doesn’t get hung.”

  “Cade must be scared I’ll tell Blaisedell,” Bud said slowly. “Are you, Abe?”

  Abe grunted as though he’d been hit in the belly, and snatched for his knife. Curley leaped toward him and caught his wrist. It took all his strength to thrust that steel wrist down, and the knife down, while Abe glared past him at Bud, panting, his teeth bared and beads of sweat on his forehead. “You are to quit this, Abe!” Curley whispered. “I mean right now directly! You are making a damned fool of yourself!” A
nd Abe’s hand relaxed against his. Abe resheathed the knife.

  “Because I won’t,” Bud said. “And haven’t. That’s done. You can get out of here now. We have said all we have to say, I guess.”

  Abe’s eyes glittered as Curley stepped back away from him. “Why, Bud,” Abe said. “I’ll take almost anything off you, and have today—because we’ve been friends. But I won’t take you telling me to get out.”

  “Let’s go get some whisky and get along to Bright’s, Abe,” Curley said. “I mean! I’m not going to hang around here if I’m not wanted.”

  “Go, if you want,” Abe said. Footsteps came along the planks outside, a shadow fell in the door. Abe swung around with his hand jerking back.

  Pike Skinner came in, and Curley almost laughed with relief. Pike looked uncomfortable in a tight-fitting suit; he wore a new black, broad-brimmed hat and his shell belt under his sack coat. He halted as he saw them, and scowled. His flap ears turned red.

  “Well, howdy, Pike,” Curley said. “That is a mighty fine-looking suit of clothes you have got on there.”

  “Friends come in to see you, did they?” Pike said to Bud, in a rasping voice.

  “Anything wrong with it?” Abe said.

  “Yes!” Pike said, his face going as red as his ears. He squinted suddenly as though he had a tic. “Looks like something going on to me. There is two sides clear now, Gannon. You’ve got your pick!”

  “You’ve picked, have you?” Abe said. “It was clear enough brother Paul already did.”

  “I surely have,” Pike said. He stood with his hands held waist-high, as though he didn’t really want to make a move, but thought he’d better have them handy in case his mouth got away from him.

  “Boo!” Curley said, and laughed to see him start.

  Pike flushed redder still. He said to Gannon, “If you are with these people, say so. And get out of here. You have got your pick now, and I will—”

  “What if I don’t pick?” Bud said.

  Pike’s eyes kept moving, watching Abe’s hands, and Curley’s. Curley heard Abe laugh softly. “Nobody sits the rail any more!” Pike said.