by Oakley Hall
“You will be civil, Brunk!”
A flush darkened Brunk’s face. He took hold of his forelock and pulled his head down, as though in obeisance. “Bless you, Miss Jessie,” he said. “I am beholden to you again.”
“I have promised to try,” Jessie went on. “But as I was saying when you interrupted me—if I cannot, then you must promise to leave.”
“Run for it?” Brunk said. “Run?”
“Do you have to go out of your way to be offensive, Brunk?”
“Doc, I am trying to go out of my way to be a man! But she won’t let me, will she? She will nurse me off this. She is too heavy an angel! She wouldn’t let Tom Cassady die when he was begging to. She won’t let me—” He stopped, and his mouth drew sharply down at the corners. “If I had courage enough,” he said. “But maybe I don’t.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Frank.”
“I don’t know what I am talking about either. Because they would not move even for me, and I would be a fool. But what would you do, Doc?”
“I think I would do as she asks,” he said, and could not meet Brunk’s eyes.
“Why, I have to, don’t I?” Brunk said. “She has kept me since I was fired at the Medusa. Put up with me, and fed me. But, Miss Jessie—you said Jim Lathrop didn’t have courage enough. Why won’t you let me have it? Maybe I have got enough.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” Jessie said. “But if you will not do this for your own sake—and I understand that men must have their pride, Frank—then you must do it for mine. I hope it will not be necessary.”
Brunk stared at her. “Why, I would be a fool, wouldn’t I?” he said in his heavy, infinitely bitter voice. “And ungrateful too, since it is for your sake, Miss Jessie. But don’t you see, Doc?”
The doctor could say nothing, and Jessie put a sympathetic hand on Brunk’s arm. But Brunk drew away from her touch and backed out the door. His heavy tread slowly remounted the stairs.
“I don’t understand,” Jessie said, in a shaky voice.
“Don’t you?” he said. “Brunk was just wishing he might be a hero, and knows he cannot be. It is difficult for a man to bring himself to be a martyr when he is afraid he might look a fool instead. Do you think you can persuade Blaisedell?”
She did not answer. She was staring at him strangely, tugging at the little locket that hung around her throat.
“It is very important that you do,” he went on. “Because of what the miners would think of you if Blaisedell went through with this. Whether Brunk fled, or not. And because of what everyone would think of Blaisedell.”
He felt a blackguard; he turned so as to confront himself in her glass, and saw there a short, gray man with bowed shoulders in a shabby black suit, undistinguished looking, not handsome, not heroic in any way, almost old. The eyes that gazed back at him from the glass looked like those of a man with a dangerous fever.
“There is Clay,” Jessie whispered, as footsteps came along the boardwalk outside her window.
“I wish you luck with him, Jessie,” he said. He went out into the entryway just as Blaisedell entered; a little light from Jessie’s open door gleamed in the marshal’s hair as he took off his hat.
“Evening, Doc,” he said gravely.
“Pardon me,” the doctor said, and Blaisedell stepped aside so that he could pass.
Outside he stood on the porch for a moment, breathing deeply of the fresh, cool air, and gazing up at the stars bright and cold over Warlock. Behind him he heard Blaisedell say, “Did you want to see me, Jessie?” Quickly the doctor descended the steps to get out of earshot. He went up the boardwalk, across Main Street, and on up toward Peach Street and the Row.
19. A WARNING
IN THE jail Carl Schroeder, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Pike Skinner were talking about the posting, while at the cell door Al Bates, from up valley, watched them with his whiskered chin resting on one of the crossbars.
“You suppose the news got down to Pablo yet?” Hasty asked.
“Dechine was in,” Bacon said, from his chair at the rear. “And went back down valley yesterday. I expect he’d take it as neighborly to stop in and tell McQuown the news on his way home.”
“They won’t come,” Schroeder said, hunched over the table, scowling, gouging the point of a pencil into the table top.
Hasty said, “I guess Johnny’s plenty worried Billy’ll show.”
“Worried of getting in bad with McQuown, mostly,” Skinner said. “He—”
“You!” Schroeder said. “I am sick of hearing you picking at Johnny Gannon!” He flung the pencil down. “He come in here and put on that star, you didn’t! You quit fretting at him, Mister Citizens’ Committee Skinner!”
Peering up at Skinner from under his hat brim, Hasty said, “Is MacDonald going to see the Committee fires Blaisedell for saying them no on that jack, Pike?”
“He did right,” Skinner said, with a sour face. “Nobody’s thought of firing him. MacDonald fired that son of a bitch Brunk how long ago, but he still hangs around trying to drum up a fuss. It’s the Committee’s business to post out troublemakers, but Blaisedell can’t go against a dumb jack that doesn’t know one end of a Colt from the other.”
“Old Owen was saying he heard some muckers talking that if the Committee fired Blaisedell over it, the miners would get together and hire him themself,” Schroeder said. “And put him to post MacDonald first thing.”
The others laughed.
“There is talk Miss Jessie had a hand in the marshal changing his mind about Brunk,” Hasty said.
“Lot of talk up our way them two is going to come to matrimony right quick,” Bates said from the cell. “Make a fine-looking couple.”
Nobody spoke for a time, and finally Bacon sighed and said, “You suppose the four of them is going to come against him? Or not?”
“They won’t come,” Schroeder said again, grimly. He began to jab his pencil at the table top once more.
Standing in the doorway Skinner worriedly shook his head. He turned as there was an approaching cracking sound on the board-walk.
“Here comes old Judge,” Bates said. “Charging along on that crutch of his to give everybody pure hell again.”
The judge entered past Skinner. With his shoulders hunched up by the crutch and his claw-hammer coat hanging loose, the judge looked like a big, awkward, black bird. He halted and his bloodshot eyes glared fiercely around the jail. “Where’s the deputy?”
“Here!” Schroeder said. He raised himself reluctantly from the judge’s chair, and leaned against the cell door.
“Not you. The other one.”
“Sleeping, I guess. He was on late last night.”
“There’s no sleep any more,” the judge said. He shifted his weight from the crutch to a hand braced on the table, and sat down with a grunt. His crutch clattered to the floor.
“Aw, please, Judge,” Hasty said. “Leave us sleep sometimes. We got little enough else.”
The judge scraped his chair around to face the others. “You would sleep through the roof of the world caving in and not even know it,” he said. He removed his hat, using both hands, and set it before him. He glared around the room.
“By God, you stink, Judge,” Skinner said. “Why don’t you come down to the Acme and me and Paul and Nate’ll scrape you down in the horse trough?”
“I don’t stink like you all stink.” The judge rubbed at his eyes, muttering to himself. “Where is Blaisedell?” he said suddenly. “He is running from me!”
Everyone laughed. “Laugh!” the judge cried. “Why, you poor, ignorant pus-and-corruption sons of bitches, he is afraid of me!”
“He’s went for his gold-handles, Judge,” Schroeder said. “Then he’ll show.”
They laughed again, but the laughter broke off abruptly as a shadow fell in the door. Blaisedell came in, bowing his head a little as he stepped through the doorway. He was coatless, wearing a clean linen shirt and a bro
ad, scrolled-leather shell belt, with a single cedar-handled Colt holstered on his right thigh.
“Judge,” he said. He nodded to each of them. “Deputy. Boys. Looking for me, Judge?”
“I was,” the judge said, and Bates snickered. The judge said, “I am warning you, Marshal. You are now standing naked and all alone. The Citizens’ Committee has gone and disqualified itself plain to everyone from pretending to run any kind of law in this town. Ordering you to something that wasn’t only illegal and bad but was pure damned outrage besides. And you have gone and disqualified yourself from them by refusing to do it. Now!” he said, triumphantly.
Blaisedell took off his hat and idly slapped it against his knee. He looked at once amused and arrogant. “You are speaking for who, Judge?” he asked politely.
“I am speaking—” the judge said. His voice turned shrill. “I’m speaking for— I’m just warning you, Marshal!”
“Listen to him go at it!” Bates whispered. “By God, he is a real Turk, that old Judge.”
Blaisedell glanced at him and he looked abashed.
“For what you have done,” the judge went on, more calmly, “you have run up a ukase on those four boys all by yourself now.”
“Pardon?” Blaisedell said.
“Now, hold on, Judge—” Schroeder began.
“Ukase!” the judge said. “That is a kind of imperial king I-want. What the king does when he makes the rules as he goes along. You have run one up the flagstaff and yourself with it. For what was behind you has blown itself out to nothing, and you have walked off away from it anyhow. I told you it was the only thing you had! And a poor thing, but even it gone now.”
“Don’t listen to the old cowpat, Marshal,” Skinner said placatingly. “He has got a load on and raving. He is not talking for anybody. He is surely not talking for the Citizens’ Committee.”
“I am talking for his conscience,” the judge said. “If he can hear it talking in his pride!”
“Why, I can hear you, Judge,” Blaisedell said. He stood looking down at the judge with his eyebrows hooked up, and his mouth, beneath the fair mustache, flat and grave. “But saying what?”
“Saying there is nothing you are accountable to any more,” the judge said. “You have got no status, you have chucked it away. No blame to you for that, Marshal, but it is gone. What I am saying is you can’t post those four fellers out. You are no law-making body. You can’t make laws against four men. Neither could the Citizens’ Committee, but they had a better claim than you. Mister Blaisedell, you are running up a banishment-or-death ukase and it is illegal and outlaw and pure murder. There is no law behind you!”
“Fry your head in your God-damned law!” Skinner said. “We saw enough of it, up in Bright’s City.”
The judge massaged his eyes with his hands again. Then he squinted cunningly up at Skinner. “You saw lynch law here in town just before that,” he said. “You didn’t like that either, did you? Liked that some less, didn’t you?” he cried. Pressing down on the table top, he half-raised his thick body, and cords stood out on the sides of his neck. “Did you like that mob? I tell you he is a one-man lynch mob if he goes on like he is headed!”
“By God!” Bates whispered, admiringly. “I bet he could beller a brick wall down.”
The judge sank back into his seat. Blaisedell’s intense blue stare inspected, one by one, the men in the room. They fastened last upon the judge again, and he said, coldly, “One man is a different thing from a mob. If a man runs with a pack like that he is only a part of the pack and the whole thing hasn’t got a brain or anything. I say what you said just now is foolishness, and I think you know it. I am not scared of myself so I have to look around every second to make sure the Citizens’ Committee is standing right behind, nodding to me. Or the town either,” he said, glancing at Hasty. “Because in a thing like this I know best and can do best by myself.”
“You have said it out loud!” the judge whispered. “You have said it. You have set yourself above the rest in your pride!”
Blaisedell’s face tightened. “If I am hired to keep the peace in this town,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “why, I will do it and the best I can. Judge, I would keep those four birds out of town whether anyone told me to or not.”
“You are not going to keep them out! You are going to kill them! You are going to shoot them down dog-dead in the street, or them you. Keep the peace! Why, if that don’t make somebody a murderer and somebody dead that didn’t need to be then I can’t see across my nose! Keep the peace! Why, you will bust it wide open with your hail-to-the-king ukase!”
“Maybe,” Blaisedell said. “But most likely they won’t come in.”
“They will come!” the judge said. “I’ll tell you why they will come. Because now they are guilty-as-sin road agents to every man, and they know it. They are that if they stay out, and yellow-bellies besides. If they come in they will think they are honest-to-genuine, gilt-edged heroes proving they are innocent to all, and striking a blow for freedom too. Men have died for that many’s the time, and God bless them for it!”
“They know better than to come,” Skinner said.
“They will have to come. And you, Mister Marshall of Warlock Blaisedell, have made it so. There is no way out of it. So you will have to kill them. And that will put you wrong. You will fall by it, son.”
“Don’t call me son, Judge,” Blaisedell said, very quietly. A vein began to beat in his temple.
The judge said in a blurred voice, “Marshal, if you understand me and go your way anyhow, God help you. You will be killing men out of pride. You will be doing foul murder before the law, and you will stand trial in Bright’s City for it or these deputies here ought to throw their badges in the river. For you will be an illegal black criminal and outlaw and murderer with the blood fresh on you as bad as any of McQuown’s and worse, and every man’s hand should be against you. Murder for pride, Marshal; it is an ancient and awful crime to go to book for.”
Blaisedell backed up a step, to stand in the patch of sunlight just inside the door. He put his hat back on and tapped it once, and glanced around the jail again. This time no one met his eyes.
Blaisedell said gravely, “Maybe somebody will get killed, Judge. But that is between them and me, for who else is hurt by it?”
“Every man is,” the judge whispered.
Blaisedell flushed, and the arrogant, masklike expression came over his face again. But his voice remained pleasant. “You have been going on about pride like it was a bad thing, and I disagree with you. A man’s pride is about the only thing he has that’s worth having, and is what sets him apart from the pack. We have argued this before, Judge, and I guess I will say this time that a man that doesn’t have it is a pretty poor specimen and apt to take to whisky for the lack. For all whisky is, is pride you can pour in your belly.”
The judge flushed too, as Bates snickered and Schroeder grinned. “That was a mean thing you said, Marshal,” the judge said. “But I won’t say it isn’t so, so maybe I am honester than you. And I don’t have to be scared of you, either, Marshal.”
Skinner said disgustedly, “You a poor, one-legged, loud-mouthed old—”
The judge raised a finger toward Blaisedell’s face. “Being decent like you are—and I didn’t say you wasn’t!—I think you can brace no man that has got right on you; I think you know that. It is what I am warning you. What you are working toward in your pride is some day meeting a man that has got to kill you or you him, only he is righter and you know it. Because you have gone wrong. And what are you going to do then?” His voice sank until it was almost inaudible. “That is the box, Clay Blaisedell. What are you going to do then?”
There was a taut silence. Blaisedell’s face had paled, except for the spots of color on his cheeks. “Judge Holloway,” he said, in his deep voice. “I think you haven’t only been drinking.” He paused ominously. “I think you have been drinking out in the hot sun.”
Everyone laughed explosive
ly in the sudden release of tension, and Blaisedell himself grinned. “Well, I guess I will go have a glass of whisky for my bruised-up pride,” he said, and turned to go out.
“Marshal,” Pike Skinner said. “I just want to say—” His angular, ugly face reddened furiously. “I just wanted to say the judge wasn’t speaking for me just now, and I know he wasn’t speaking for Carl Schroeder. I expect he wasn’t speaking for anybody but Taliaferro’s bad whisky.”
“That’s right, Marshal,” Schroeder said.
“That goes for me, Marshal,” Hasty said, and got to his feet.
Peter Bacon said nothing. His brown, lined face was sad. The marshal glanced at him. Then he nodded silently to the others and went on outside.
The judge rubbed his hands over his face. Then he turned to Schroeder; his dark face was drawn and puckered around the wart on his cheek. “You mark what I have said, Carl Schroeder. He is going to kill men and it will be on you to arrest him for it. Hear?”
“I don’t hear,” Schroeder said. “You are acting like a damned virgin, Judge. Like you have never known a man to be shot down before. It’ll be a day when I try to arrest Blaisedell.”
The judge bent, grunting, to recover his crutch, and then, red-faced with effort, thrust himself upright and hooked the crutch under his armpit. He set his hat, which was too small for him, on his head. He said contemptuously, “Maybe you will see, some day, how if you are bound to arrest some of McQuown’s people for a thing, you are bound to arrest another man the same. So if Blaisedell goes out and murders—”
“Great God, Judge!” Schroeder cried. “You are getting it all switched around who is murderers here!”
The judge hobbled toward the door, his crutch tip racketing. Pike Skinner glared at him. At the door the judge turned again, the hat slipping forward over one eye. “We all are, boys,” he said. He swung on outside on his crutch and his one good leg.
20. GANNON HAS A NIGHTMARE
IT IS a dream, he told himself; it is only a dream. Sweating, naked, daubed with mud, he crouched behind a crag upon the canyon wall and watched against the curtain of his memory the sandy river bottom of Rattlesnake Canyon, listening in the waiting silence to the pad of hoof irons in the sand and the sharper, urgent sound as a hoof struck stone, and, nearer, the musical clink of harness, and nearer still, voices soft-mouthed with Spanish; his heart turning over on itself as the first one came around the far bend upon a narrow-faced white horse, looking very tall at first in his high, peaked sombrero, but small, compact, brown, watchful-eyed, with pointed mustachios, behind him another and another, some with striped serapes hung over their shoulders and all with rifles carried underarm; seven, eight, and more and more, until there were seventeen in all, and Abe’s Colt crashed the signal. The echo was instantaneous and continuous. Smoke drifted up from all around the canyon where the other mud-daubed figures were concealed, and it was as though an invisible flash flood had in that instant swept down the canyon: horses reared and screamed, swept backward in the flood, and died; men were thrown tumbling, a rifle flung up in a wide arc turning end over end with weird slowness, and there were gobbling Apache cries mixed with the screams of dying men. There was the white horse lying on the reddening sand, there was the leader in his high, silver-chased hat crawling in the stream; then the hat gone, then a part of his head gone, and he lay still in the channel with his jacket shiny and bloated in the water that ran red over him. And now the half-naked, muddy Apache figures stood all around the canyon, yelling as they fired into the mass of dying men and horses below them, the faces magnified and slowly revolving before his eyes—Abe, and Pony and Calhoun and Wash and Chet, and on the far side Billy and Jack Cade, Whitby and Friendly, Mitchell, Harrison, and Hennessey.