by Oakley Hall
Gannon went outside to stand beneath the gently creaking sign in the cool night breeze. He could hear shouts and see the dark shapes of men against the whitish dust of the street up before the Glass Slipper.
He heard the sad, suspirant music of a mouth organ. A thin figure was coming toward him.
“Well, howdy, Deputy Bud Gannon.”
“Hello, Curley,” he said. “Did you come in with MacDonald?”
“No, just rode in to watch the fun,” Curley said. “Should have; Mister Mac is giving six dollars a day and expenses. There is going to be a lot of expenses, too, up at the French Palace and around.”
“No, there’s not. They’re not coming in here.”
Curley looked at him with his eyebrows crawling up. He ran his fingers back through his black curls, and took a step back, raising his hands in mock terror. “By God, posted out of town by Bud Gannon! Not me too, Bud? Say it isn’t so!”
Gannon shook his head and tried to grin.
“Whuff!” Curley said. “I was ready to fork it and crawl. Well, I guess I’ll have the French Palace to myself then.” He looked at Gannon sharply, and his clownish expression vanished. “What’re you going to do if some of them come back anyway, Bud?” he said quietly. “Brace a man?”
“They haven’t come back in.”
“Might, though,” Curley said. He pried at a crack in the boardwalk with the toe of his boot. “You know, people don’t take to posting so good. Billy didn’t.”
“I’m not posting anybody,” he said tightly. “We are just not going to have MacDonald and that crew in here chasing miners around.”
“Strikers,” Curley said. “Agitators, what MacDonald said. Bunch of damned, over-paid—”
“Why didn’t you hire out with the rest, then?”
Curley laughed cheerfully. “Well, I just don’t like Mister Mac much, Bud. One of a few I don’t.”
“Including me. Are you down on me too, Curley?”
“Yep,” Curley said.
“All right,” he said, and felt his eyes burning.
Curley sighed and said, “Well, I kind of am and kind of not. I see you think you did right and maybe I see how you could think it honest. But I can’t think that way. How a man is brought up, I guess, and you are a cold one, Johnny Gee.”
“Maybe I am.”
“That was your brother, Bud. The only kin you had.”
Gannon said in a shaky voice, “Most people here think Blaisedell only did what he had to.”
“You think that way, don’t you?” Curley said. His boot toe scuffed at the planks again. “No, I am not all the way down on you, Bud. But I am about the only one. You sure ought to think about putting distance between you and here—when you get a chance.”
“Thanks.”
“Por nada,” Curley said.
A group of men was coming across Southend Street and onto the boardwalk. Gannon heard the crack of the judge’s crutch; with him were Carl, Pike, Peter Bacon, and some others. Carl stopped while the rest went on into the jail.
“You ride in with the Haggins, Curley?” Carl said, in a rasping voice.
“Oh, no!” Curley said. “No, sir, I am separate. I just swore it in blood to your partner here. I’m just having a little chin with Bud about this posting fellows out of town. You boys have come pretty hard against us cowboys, haven’t you?”
“Yeh,” Carl said, in a kind of grunt. “Hard.”
“The Acme Corral for you boys, huh? Big medicine. Run up a score, maybe they’ll make you marshal, Carl, now Blaisedell has quit. Money in it, I hear. Scalp money for—”
“D-don’t you say anything against Blaisedell to me!” Carl said.
Gannon could feel the hate. “Carl,” he said. But Carl didn’t look at him.
“Don’t even say his name to me,” Carl said hoarsely. “You Goddamned picayune rustler.”
“You have rewrote the laws, have you?” Curley whispered, dangerously. “A man can still talk, I guess.”
“Not to me,” Carl said. “Not here or Bright’s City either. You or any other rustler.”
Gannon took out his Colt and held it pointed down before him. Curley glanced toward him, only his eyes moving in his rigid face. “Better move along, Curley,” Gannon said.
Curley shrugged and sauntered off into the darkness. The sound of the mouth organ drifted back. Carl stood staring after him, rubbing his right hand on his pants leg.
“Schroeder!” the judge shouted from the jail, and Pike Skinner appeared in the doorway: “Come on, Carl!”
“Let’s go in, Carl,” Gannon said.
“Kind of pleasant not to be scared of a man for a change,” Carl said in the hoarse voice. “Sure, let’s go in and get the hearing started.”
33. A BUGGY RIDE
THE strikers from the Medusa and the sympathetic miners from the other mines held their meeting on the vacant ground next to Robinson’s wood yard on Peach Street. Torches made an orange glow there and smoke from the torches overlay the meeting like a milky sheet illuminated from below. There was a steady roar of shouting and clapping as they listened to various of their number harangue them, or broke up into smaller groups to attend half a dozen different speakers at once.
The town had fortified itself against riot. Shopkeepers sat inside their stores with shotguns close to hand. Horses were kept off Main Street. The Glass Slipper was dark, its front windows broken and a frame of timbers nailed up before the batwing doors. Men stood along the arcades listening to the sounds of the miners’ meeting. Inside the Lucky Dollar the gambling layouts were packed and townsmen stood three deep along the bar. Among them were Arnold Mosbie, the freight-line mule skinner, Fred Wheeler, who worked at the Feed and Grain Barn, Nick Grain, the beef butcher, and Oscar Thompson, Kennon’s blacksmith. These four were sharing a bottle of whisky, Mosbie and Wheeler squeezed against a narrow strip of bar, while the others stood behind them.
“Listen to those sons of bitches yell up there!” Mosbie said.
“Think they’re going after Morgan again?” Thompson said, glancing worriedly toward the doors.
“Working themselves up to it?” Wheeler commented. “I’ll bet Carl and Gannon’s wetting their pants.”
“Looks like they might’ve done better not to let out the judge wasn’t holding Morgan for Murch killing that jack,” Thompson said. “Just keeping him in jail for his own good.”
“I heard old Owen wouldn’t go stand by the jail with the rest,” Grain said, reaching past Wheeler for the bottle. “I sure agree with him about Morgan. I don’t hold with miners much, but I’ll whistle when they set out to hang Morgan.” He glanced at the others from beneath his colorless lashes. “Blaisedell is going to let him hang, too. See I’m not right.”
“Sure been scarce today,” Wheeler said, shaking his head.
“What’s wrong with Morgan?” Mosbie asked.
“Well, you heard about him and that little Professor of his, didn’t you?” Grain said. “Morgan wasn’t paying him enough so he was going to go to work for Lew Taliaferro, playing that new piano Lew got for the French Palace. So Morgan had that Murch of his fill Lew’s piano with lime mortar, and the Professor knew about it and was going to tell—you know what happened to him. Looked like he got tramped by a horse out here, but it wasn’t any horse.”
Wheeler snorted. “I heard it,” he said. “I didn’t have to believe it, though.”
Mosbie had turned to face Grain. “That is Lew’s story, Nick,” he said. “And bull piss just like his whisky.”
“Well, it is just hard for a man to like Morgan, Moss,” Thompson said.
Someone near them said, “Whooo, listen to them crazy muckers!”
Mosbie turned to face Thompson. “Listen,” he said. “I have said it, and you have said it too—hooray for Blaisedell for going against those sons of bitches of McQuown’s. He has made McQuown eat it till it comes out of Abe’s ears, and hooray for him, I say. So I say hooray for Morgan too, that is the only man in Warlo
ck that ever helped another out against those backshooting bastards.” He looked back at Grain again, “And I say piss on those that piss on Morgan, for he is a better man than them, whatever he’s supposed to’ve done.”
Grain flushed. “Now, listen, Moss—”
“I’m not through,” Mosbie said. “Now it is funny how all of a sudden McQuown and Curley and them is smelling sweeter and sweeter to people again, I don’t say who, the mealy-mouthed sons of bitches. And all of a sudden it is clear somehow that it is Morgan that’s done everything mean and rotten that ever happened around Warlock, killing piano players and such. And in the whole valley besides, it looks like—riding around dropping off strongboxes to make it look bad for poor, innocent murdering rustlers. It surely is nice for Abe McQuown.”
“Now, see here, Moss,” Grain said. “I don’t hold with McQuown, but—”
“That’s good,” Mosbie said, turning back to the bar again. “I am glad to hear you don’t.”
“They’re coming!” somebody cried. The Lucky Dollar fell abruptly silent. The yelling of the miners was louder.
“Jesus, here they come,” Thompson said, and he and Grain were borne along by the men crowding toward the batwing doors. There was a tramping and a rhythmical shouting now in the street, a burst of singing. The bankers at the layouts were swiftly cashing in the chips. Wheeler tossed his whisky down and looked at Mosbie.
“Want to go watch the hanging, Moss?”
“Hanging, hell,” Mosbie said. “Let’s go watch Blaisedell.” They shouldered their way into the press of men moving toward the doors.
The miners came along Main Street, marching in what must have been ranks when they started, and with a semblance of the martial in their blue shirts and trousers and red sashes. Many of them carried torches or lanterns, and their bearded faces shone sweaty and orange-red in the torchlight. They sang in ponderous unison:
“Oh, my sweetheart’s a burro named Jine!
We work at the old Great Hope mine!
On the dashboard I sit,
And tobacco I spit
All over my sweetheart’s behind!
Good-by, good-by, good-by, Tom Morgan, good-by . . .”
The singing broke off in a ragged yell. Some tried to continue the tune, while others merely shouted as they went on down Main Street toward the jail, with the dust rising beneath their marching feet and hanging like fog in the darkness. There was a crash of glass as a rock was thrown through Goodpasture’s store window, followed by an outcry of argument and laughter. There were other crashes. Torches were swung from side to side, shedding sparks like Catherine wheels.
“Christ, they will burn the town down!” someone exclaimed, as the men streamed out of the Lucky Dollar in their wake. The street began to fill behind the miners as townsmen came out of the saloons and the Billiard Parlor, and, with the sidewalk loungers, drifted along after the marchers. Outlined against the front of the jail, in the light of the torches, stood a small group of men.
Mosbie and Wheeler crossed Main Street and made their way down to Goodpasture’s corner, where their bootheels grated on broken glass. Goodpasture stood within the darkened store with a shotgun in his hands. “Morgan!” the miners were shouting, all together. “Morgan! Morgan!” They approached the boardwalk before the jail in a broad semicircle, the near end of which moved slowly, the far more rapidly. Carl Schroeder shouted something that was lost in the yelling.
“My God!” Wheeler said. “Look at them go! They’re going right on in!”
The miners advanced steadily toward the six who opposed them: the two deputies, Pike Skinner, Peter Bacon, Tim French, and Chick Hasty. Three of them had shotguns, Bacon a rifle, Gannon and Hasty only handguns. The miners in the front rank began swinging their torches and sending up great arcs of sparks.
Finally they halted and Schroeder’s voice was heard: “First one across this rail gets shot!”
“Tromp them down!” the miners cried. “Morgan! We want Morgan!”
“Give him up, Schroeder! We’ll tramp you down!”
Mosbie said to Wheeler, “By Christ, it looks to be two hundred of them there!”
“Where the hell’s Blaisedell?” a man near them said. “He had better damn well hurry!”
“He’ll be along and back them off,” said another.
“Hell he will,” a third said, with a snicker. “He is soaking it over at Miss Jessie’s. She’ll keep him there, being for those stinking jacks—” He cried out as someone hit him in the mouth.
Mosbie struggled to free himself from those who pressed around him, and flung himself at the man who had spoken; they went down in a cursing pile. Others tried to separate them. “Foul-mouthed son of a bitch!” Mosbie yelled.
On the far corner a miner was haranguing Schroeder. He tried to climb over the rail and Schroeder swung the shotgun barrel down on him. Instantly a wave of miners poured forward over the tie rail. “Moss!” Wheeler shouted. “There they go!”
The boardwalk before the jail was a mass of fighting men. A shotgun was discharged; there was a scream, and the blue-clad figures fled back into the street, leaving one crumpled and shrieking on the boardwalk, with Carl Schroeder standing over him.
“Shot one, by God!” Wheeler said, as Mosbie rejoined him, panting. “Best thing for it, too.”
“Who did it?”
“Carl, looked like.”
“Hey, Carl shot one!”
The miners began to roar with one voice, and the tightly packed mass of them in the street weaved and swayed, the torches waving wildly above them. “Kill them! Kill them! Hang them with Morgan!”
“Boys, they have killed Benny Connors!”
Mosbie leaned against one of the posts that held up the arcade, with Wheeler pressed tightly against him by the men around them. “Oh, Jesus!” a man near them said, over and over, like a prayer. The weaving, uncertain movement of the mob changed, section by section, into a single forward thrust forcing the men in the front rank against the railing. One of the deputies raised his six-shooter and discharged it with a flat shock of sound; still the miners pressed forward, almost in silence now.
“Here he comes!”
“It’s Blaisedell, all right. Here he comes!”
“Thank the good Lord!” Wheeler said.
“Look at the buggy!” someone said, but no one paid any attention to him.
Mosbie clambered up on the tie rail and clung to the post. “You ought to see him!” he called down to Wheeler.
Blaisedell came down the center of Main Street, with the townsmen moving quickly aside before him. He came at a swift, certain, long-legged stride, with his black hat showing above the heads of the men he passed. He did not pause as he came to the edge of the mob of miners, forging straight ahead through them like a knife splitting its way through a pine board. Torchlight gleamed on the barrel of his Colt as he knocked a miner aside with it.
“Kill him too!” someone among the miners cried suddenly. “Don’t let him get up there, boys!”
But Blaisedell went on, unhindered, and finally he stood before the jail among the deputies, taller than any of them. His voice was sudden and loud. “Back off, boys. There’ll be no hanging tonight.”
“I believe he could stand off the U. S. Cavalry,” Wheeler said. The miners in the street remained silent.
“You had better get this one to Doc Wagner,” Blaisedell said, motioning to the miner still groaning on the boardwalk.
Still there was silence. The torches flared and smoked. The front rank had drawn back from the rail.
Then someone shouted, “He won’t shoot!”
Others took it up. “He won’t shoot to save that murdering high-roller! He’s bluffing! Run him down!”
The yelling mass began swaying forward once more, compressing those who tried to hold back away from the rail. Then the railing went down and miners leaped and crowded onto the boardwalk. Blaisedell and the deputies were swamped by the blue-clad bodies in a melee of flailing arms and g
un barrels. There were two shots, two furry spurts of flame reaching upward. Again the miners retreated. Gannon and Schroeder appeared, and Blaisedell with his hat gone. One of the deputies was down; Pike Skinner and Tim French helped him inside the jail.
“Who was that, Moss?” Wheeler cried.
“Chick Hasty.”
“He won’t shoot!” the same voice shouted again, and again the miners took up the cry.
“They are going to run him,” Mosbie said hoarsely.
Blaisedell stood before the jail door with a lock of hair fallen over one eye, his chest heaving, and both his Colts out. Schroeder, shouting unheard, stood on one side of him, Gannon on the other. Skinner and French came out of the jail again and took up their posts. Once more the torches began to swing, and sparks flew upward in the wind.
“They are going to bust over him,” Mosbie said.
“There they go again!”
The miners flung themselves forward and Blaisedell and the deputies were thrown back before them. Blaisedell went down; there was a yell as the watchers saw it, and a groan; the other deputies went down. One retreated inside the jail, dragging another with him, and slammed the door. The miners crashed against it, drew back, and crashed against it again.
“Look at that! Look!” cried the man beside Mosbie on the railing.
But no one noticed him as the jail door broke and the miners streamed inside, yelling in triumph. Almost immediately they began thrusting themselves back out again, while others still fought to enter. The deputies began to appear among them.
“What the hell happened?” Wheeler demanded.
“Look! It’s Miss Jessie!”
A buggy was coming out of Southend Street. Miss Jessie Marlow was in it, and there was a man on the seat beside her. She was trying to turn the bay horse that drew the buggy east into Main Street and the horse was scaring in the crowd. Miss Jessie sat very straight with a bonnet on, and a white frilled blouse with a black necktie. The man lounging on the seat beside her was Morgan.
“It’s Morgan with her!”
“It is Morgan, for Christ’s sake!”