by Oakley Hall
Clay did not reply; Morgan refilled Clay’s glass, and filled his own. “How?” he said.
“I guess I had better do it,” Clay said, and got to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Bright’s City,” Clay said. He put on his hat and patted the crown.
“What for?”
“Stand trial,” Clay said, and went outside. The batwing doors swung through their arcs and came to rest behind him.
Morgan rinsed whisky through his mouth, and finally swallowed it. He smoothed his hands back over his hair, and halted them midway to press his head hard between them. “Damn you, Clay!” he whispered. Yet he should have foreseen, as soon as Gannon had spoken his piece, that Clay would feel he had to do this. One time wrong and every time wrong after it; Bob Cletus to Pat Cletus, and Pat Cletus to Billy Gannon; and not a one of them worth a minute’s bother.
He rose and started down along the bar. Men were standing there two-deep now, and thick around Basine’s layout. He caught Murch’s eye and nodded to the other layout. Men greeted him cordially as he passed; he ignored them, listening to the names dropping out of the loud whine of talk—Billy Gannon, Pony, Calhoun, Curley Burne, Cade, McQuown, Johnny Gannon, Schroeder, and his own name and Clay’s. Eyes watched him in the mirror and the talk died a little. He heard his name again, and halted.
A short, heavy-set miner with an arm in a dirty muslin sling was talking to McKittrick and another up-valley cowboy. “Why, this fellow I knew was up there at the trial and he said there wasn’t anything but smoke blown against those poor boys there. They wasn’t within fifty miles of that stage! So I say it is clear enough who stopped that stage if they didn’t, and they didn’t. Oh, there is plenty knows how come the marshal and Morgan had to shoot those poor boys down dead crack-out-of-the-box like they did, and you can bet they are sick Friendly got away. For what’s dead is dead and don’t talk back, and what’s dead’s forgotten about too. If the marshal and Morgan didn’t throw down on that stage, I’ll eat—”
His voice faltered as one of the cowboys nudged him, and he broke off. Slowly he raised his eyes to meet Morgan’s in the mirror. The cowboys edged away.
“Eat what?” Morgan said.
The miner turned toward him. His mouth was pursed as though he had been sucking on a lemon. With his left hand he shifted the sling around before him. McKittrick moved farther away from him, with disclaiming gestures.
“Eat what?” Morgan said again. “I want to know what you are thinking of eating.”
“Sneak around listening you will hear a lot of things,” the miner said. He glanced around to see if he was getting any support. Then he said, “I just don’t aim on ruckusing with anybody, Mr. Morgan, with this smash elbow I got.”
“I want you to get started eating whatever it was you were fixing to eat,” Morgan said. He stared into the miner’s frightened eyes until the miner shifted the slinged arm again, with a fraud of a grimace of pain as he did it. “Because,” Morgan said, “you are a dirty-mouth, stinking, lying, buggering, pissant, yellow-belly, mule-diddling, coyote-bred son of a nigger whore. Which is to say a mucker.”
The miner’s Adam’s apple bounced once. He wiped his free hand across his mouth. “Why, I guess you wouldn’t talk like that and still be standing if I had the use of my right arm here,” he said. “I said what I said, Mr. Morgan.”
“You said it in the wrong place.”
The miner said stubbornly, “I guess a man can still talk—”
“Eat this, then,” Morgan said, and hit the miner in the mouth. He kicked him in the crotch and the miner screamed and doubled up, clutching himself, and fell. Morgan kicked him in the face as he fell.
The miner lay face down by the rail at the base of the bar, his slinged arm beneath his body, one leg stretching and pulling up rhythmically. He groaned in a hoarse monotone. Murch came stumping up with the toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
“Get him out of here.”
Murch picked the miner up by his belt and carried him like a suitcase toward the louvre doors.
Morgan swung around and went over to the second faro layout, and seated himself in the dealer’s chair. He held his hands out over the box. His right knuckle was torn whitely and a trickle of blood showed, but his hands were as steady and motionless as though they were a part of the painted layout beneath them.
When he looked up to meet the eyes that watched him from the glass behind the bar, no longer friendly, he saw that what had been bound to pass had already quickly passed.
23. GANNON WITNESSES AN ASSAULT
GANNON stood in the doorway of the carpintería staring at the greasy tarpaulin furred with sawdust and fine curls of wood. It was so stiff that the separate shapes beneath it were not discernible. He could not even tell which of the three pairs of boots that protruded beyond its edge was Billy’s.
Old Eladio, with a maul and chisel, was cutting dovetails in a yellow pine board, and beyond him the other carpenter pushed his long plane along the edge of another board, freeing crisp curls of wood, which he shook from the plane from time to time. One of the coffins was already finished, and Gannon seated himself upon it. He tried to keep his eyes from those three pairs of narrow-toed boots. Eladio fitted an end and a side together, and meshed the dovetails with sharp raps of his maul.
“Va bien?” Gannon said, just to be saying something.
“Si, bien,” Eladio said. He bowed his bald, wrinkled brown head for a moment. “Que lástima, joven.”
Gannon nodded and closed his eyes, listening to the clean scuff of the plane and the tapping of the maul. Then abruptly he went out into the hot sunlight, and started up Broadway toward the jail. His Colt felt very heavy upon his thigh, his star heavy where it was pinned to his vest; his boots scuffed and tapped along the boardwalk. The men he passed watched him with carefully indifferent side glances.
In the thick shadow of the arcade on Main Street a knot of them, standing before the Billiard Parlor, moved aside to let him by, and he saw a horseman swing out of Southend Street, turning east. It was the marshal, riding a big-barreled black with white face and stockings. Blaisedell rode stiff-backed and heavy in his black broadcloth, trouser legs tucked into his boots, black hat tipped forward against the sun. The black’s hoofs danced in the dust. Blaisedell glanced toward Gannon briefly, and he felt the intense blue stare like a physical push. The horse broke into a trot. He heard the men before the Billiard Parlor whispering as the black danced on down Main Street, horse and horseman gradually smaller and more and more dimly seen in the dust, until they disappeared on the Bright’s City stage road.
As he went on again, toward the jail, he felt relieved; he had not been sure that Blaisedell had believed him.
The judge sat at the table, his crutch leaning beside him, before him his hard hat, his pen, bottle of ink, Bible, rusty derringer, and a half-empty pint of whisky—all the accoutrements of his office, which he brought out when he sat to fine or jail an evening’s transgressors. He frowned when he saw Gannon; he had not shaved, and there was a thick gray stubble on his cheeks and chin. Carl sat on his heels against the wall, teasing a scorpion with a broomstraw. His jaw was shot out and he looked sullen and stubborn.
“Deputy Schroeder has resigned,” the judge said.
“I haven’t either, you old fool!” Carl got up and smashed the scorpion with his heel. “Damn, how you badger a man!”
“Badger you to do your duty like you are sworn to,” the judge said. “You won’t, so you have resigned.” He looked up at Gannon and said, “Will you do your duty, Deputy?”
“Damned old bastard!” Carl cried. “Murderer, hell!” Then he said apologetically, “Johnny, I am sorry talking this way now, but he has drove me to it. What kind of judge are you?” he said to the judge. “Four hardcases trying to burn down a peace officer and it isn’t self-defense? I never heard—”
“Not for you to judge what it is,” the judge said.
“Or you!
”
Gannon sat down beside the cell door and leaned back. Watching the two angry faces, his eyes felt as though they were bleeding.
“Warned him!” the judge said. “Warned him what he was doing. Making a murderer out of himself, issuing ukases and banishments like a duke. Now he has to stand trial like any ordinary mortal man and poor sinner, and I will witness against him if I have to crutch it into Bright’s City.”
“You couldn’t,” Carl said. “There is no place to buy whisky on the way.”
“I’ll witness against you for malfeasance of duty while I am at it. Will you arrest Blaisedell, Deputy Gannon?”
“He’s gone,” Gannon said.
The judge stared at him.
“Gone where?” Carl said.
“He rode out toward Bright’s City. I expect he’s gone up to court.”
“What the hell would he do that for?”
“To be shriven,” the judge said. He smiled and stretched, smugly. “Ah, he listened after all, did he? Yes, to get it off himself.”
“Nothing on him, Christ’s sake.” Carl swung toward Gannon. “He only did what he had to do. Johnny, you heard him trying to talk Billy out of it!”
Gannon nodded with an incomplete and qualified assent. Carl was right to the boundaries of what he had said; Blaisedell had done what he had to do, given the circumstances. Yet the judge was right when he said that Blaisedell must be accountable. Billy would not have died had the Citizens’ Committee not decided to post him, and had Blaisedell not decided to honor their decision, as he had not in the case of the miner Brunk. But on the other hand Billy would not have been posted had McQuown not loaded the court in Bright’s City with perjured witnesses, tricked it with a clever lawyer, menaced it with gunmen and the threat inherent in his name. And, in the end, Billy would not have died had he not set himself to kill Blaisedell.
Carl furiously scraped his bootheel over the shredded stain that had been the scorpion. “By God!” he said thickly. He sounded as though he were in pain. “Johnny, what the hell did he think he had to go for?”
“The law is the law, Mister Malfeasor of Duty,” the judge said smugly. “And no good getting hysterical—”
Carl took a long stride toward him, swung an arm, and slapped him on the side of the head. The judge screamed and toppled; Carl caught him by the shirt front and set him upright, slapped him again, forehand and backhand. The judge snatched for his derringer and Carl knocked it aside. The judge screamed and tried to cover his face. Gannon leaped out of his chair, caught Carl around the waist, and pulled him away.
“Witness!” the judge cried. “Assault and battery and—”
“Shut up!” Carl shouted. He stopped struggling in Gannon’s grip, but when Gannon released him Carl darted for the judge again.
This time he only bent down close to the judge’s blotched face. “The law is the law!” he panted. “But there isn’t enough of it to go around out here. So when we get a good man protecting this town from hell with its door open I am not going to see him choused and badgered and false-sworn and yawped at fit to puke by a one-legged old son of a bitch like you!
“Until he gets fed up and rides the hell somewheres else and this town left pie on the table again for those San Pablo cowboys to pick it clean and kill anybody fool or awkward enough to get in their way. A good man, God damn you! That gives some of us here some pride and gets our peckers up for a change. God damn you, if by God because of you he has went up there to court and gets frazzled out of patience by it and sets his back against us here I will tear your other leg off and bust it around your God-damned neck for a God-damned necktie and run your God-damned crutch through it for a Goddamned stickpin!” He stopped, panting.
“Witness!” the judge said hoarsely, covering his face with his hands.
“Shut up!” Carl yelled. “You don’t know what assault and battery is yet, and by God I want witness to what I am saying! Because that’s the word with the bark on it—if you have got him turned against us here with your law’s-the-law bellywash, I swear to God people will walk ten miles out of their way around what happened to you, so as not to see the mess!”
Carl stepped back from the table. The judge snatched up his whisky bottle and tilted it to his mouth; whisky trickled over his chin.
Carl leaned back against the wall, chewing furiously on a mustache end. “By God, Johnny, it is a shameful thing,” he said, in a shaky voice. “Here I am making a damned yelling fool of myself, and you with your brother killed. I am sorry.”
“That Blaisedell killed,” the judge whispered.
“It wasn’t Blaisedell killed him,” Gannon said, and Carl gave him a confused look.
Bootheels racketed on the planks outside and Pike Skinner came in. “Where the hell’s Blaisedell gone to?”
“Bright’s, it looks like,” Carl said.
The judge said, in a loud, trumpeting voice, “He knew he had to go, because no man can set himself above the law!” He turned toward Gannon suddenly. Red marks showed on his pale, stubbled cheeks. “That’s why, isn’t it, Deputy?”
“I guess so,” Gannon said.
“You two have been drinking out of the same bottle,” Carl said, disgustedly.
“It is the only bottle there is,” the judge said.
Pike stared at Gannon with wide eyes in his red face. Pike came forward around the table. “I don’t know,” he said, with difficulty. “I don’t know what’s happened or what’s going to happen. But Johnny Gannon, I know if you throw Blaisedell down some way because of Billy I will—”
Carl caught Pike by the shoulder and jerked him around. “Shut your face!” Carl drew and jammed his Colt into Pike’s side. His face was contorted with fury. “You have shot your mouth one too many times!”
Pike backed up a step and Carl moved after him. “Johnny, I will hold on him and you can beat the holy piss out of him for that if you want.”
“Never mind it, Carl,” Gannon said.
“Take it back then!” Carl said, through his teeth. “I say back down, you bat-eared ignoramus! You don’t know what you are talking about even!”
“I’ll not!” Pike said stiffly.
“It doesn’t matter, Carl,” Gannon said, and Carl cursed and holstered his Colt.
“Pus and corruption,” the judge said, in the smug voice. “Small men bickering and quarreling and killing at each other, a whole world full and not one worth the trouble it is to law them. But there is one did a right thing one time in his life.”
“Shut up!” Carl cried. He hit his fist back against the wall. “Just shut that up. I’m warning you! Just shut up about it!”
24. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE
February 10, 1881
THE pipers play “The World Turned Upside Down.” Clay Blaisedell is in Bright’s City awaiting trial. He took himself there upon his own warrant, evidently preferring not to present himself to the deputies here for arrest, as is fitting his Dignity & Station.
The rumors fly. His action has astounded everyone. We cry that there is no need for him to seek justification in court, and further that he puts himself in grave danger by thus surrendering himself to the mercies of a judge and jury too often proved weak creatures of McQuown’s will. Yet perhaps I do see a need. Blaisedell must have come to suspect immediately after the fight what is being more and more widely bruited about here—that Billy Gannon was not one of the road agents. And he must have felt that the fact that Billy Gannon had killed a posseman and had joined with those who were actually and clearly the road agents in order to ambush him (Blaisedell), does not alter this original case. If this is true, I must feel that he has acted correctly and honorably.
I wonder if Blaisedell realizes that he will stand trial for us of the Citizens’ Committee as well as for himself.
February 15, 1881
It is too bad that Blaisedell left so soon for Bright’s City and was not here to enjoy the luster of his feat in the Acme Corral while that luster remained i
ntact. For within a week his triumph has become somewhat tarnished. Ah, the pure shine of a few moments of heroism, high courage, and derring-do! In its light we genuflect before the Hero, we bask in the warmth of his Deeds, we tout him, shout his praises, deify him, and, in short, make of him what no mortal man could ever be. We are a race of tradition-lovers in a new land, of king-reverers in a Republic, of hero-worshipers in a society of mundane get-and-spend. It is a Country and a Time where any bank clerk or common laborer can become a famous outlaw, where an outlaw can in a very short time be sainted in song and story into a Robin Hood, where a Frontier Model Excalibur can be drawn from the block at any gunshop for twenty dollars.
Yet it is only one side of us, and we are cynical and envious too. As one half of our nature seeks to create heroes to worship, the other must ceaselessly attempt to cast them down and discover evidence of feet of clay, in order to label them as mere lucky fellows, or as villains-were-the-facts-but-known, and the eminent and great are ground between the millstones of envy, and reduced again to common size.
So, quickly, as I have said, Blaisedell’s luster has been dimmed. As if ashamed of our original exuberance, we begin to qualify our praises, and smile a little at the extravagant recountings of the affair. For would we not look fools, were facts to arise that showed Blaisedell’s part in the Acme Corral shooting to have been despicable? What cowards we are!
Still, it is a reaction against his having at first been made too much over. The pendulum inevitably swings, and, I hope, may come to rest dead center. But at the moment some scoffing has replaced the adulation, as I will now recount:
Blaisedell had, after all, Morgan with him—a gunman of no small accomplishments.
Blaisedell’s antagonists are reconsidered. We realize that there were only four of them, and one did not even participate in the shooting. Pity is felt for their ineffectuality.
I feel some pity for them myself, but I am infuriated when I hear attitudes expounded that go beyond mere pity. For instance, I have heard Pony Benner remembered as a kindly albeit rough-cut spirit, who had unfortunately incurred general displeasure when he killed our poor barber in self-defense! Now it seems that the barber insulted a nice woman in Pony’s presence, Pony called him down for it, whereupon the barber flew at him brandishing a razor! Who this nice woman could possibly have been, I have no idea.