Warlock

by Oakley Hall

Miss Jessie flicked the buggy whip down once, and the bay pranced ahead. Men moved out of the way. The lighted tip of a cigar glowed in Morgan’s hand. The two of them looked as though they had been out for a pleasant ride.

  “She took him out of the back!” a man cried. “I saw that buggy turning in the alley there a while ago. Look at that, will you?”

  “She won’t get away with it,” Mosbie said, in the hoarse voice.

  “Hurry up!” Wheeler whispered, hitting his fist against the tie rail. “Hurry up, ma’am! Bust that bay again!”

  The buggy continued its slow progress through the men in the street. The miners had fallen silent, and now the main traffic was away from the jail. Some of them appeared out of the alley in Southend. “He’s gone!” a miner shouted. “Got out the back!”

  “There he is! In the buggy!”

  Miners surged around the buggy, the whole mass of them changing direction now, and pressing back up Main Street. But the miners who surrounded the buggy began to drop away from it. Others ran after it, looked in, and dropped back too. Mosbie began to laugh.

  “Did it!” he said. “They are going to make it, by God! Came right through them, and the best thing she could’ve done, too.”

  The buggy began moving more swiftly now, out of the press; it disappeared into the darkness up Main Street.

  “Taking him to the General Peach,” someone commented calmly. “Well, they’ll never bust over her.”

  “Where’s Blaisedell?”

  “He just went inside the jail. He’s all right, looked like.”

  “He held them long enough for her to get Morgan out. Slick!”

  “I’d a lot rather seen him cut a few of them down.”

  Miners stood in uncertain groups in the street. The deputies were shooing them off the boardwalk. Two of them carried off the miner who had been shot. Schroeder had a long, bloody cut over one eye. Gannon retrieved Blaisedell’s black hat from a miner who had picked it up.

  Mosbie climbed down from the tie rail. “What the hell did Blaisedell let those sons of bitches run over him for?” he said to Wheeler. “That’s what I don’t see. God damn it to hell.”

  Nick Grain appeared beside Wheeler. “Did you see him get run over, Fred?” he cried, in an excited voice. “They sure called his bluff.”

  “Shut up!” Mosbie said. He caught Grain by his shirt collar. “Shut up! You push-face cow-turd of a butcher! Shut up!” He flung Grain away from him, and Grain disappeared hurriedly into the crowd.

  “I hate that stupid asinine flap-mouth son of a bitch,” Mosbie said. He and Wheeler started back along the boardwalk with the others. The men around them were talking in low tones; one of them laughed and Mosbie glared at him.

  Groups of men stood in the street, looking toward the jail, or up toward the General Peach where the buggy had gone. The miners were heading into the saloons, or congregating along the boardwalks.

  Wheeler and Mosbie walked on east in the deep shadow under the arcade, crossed Broadway, and continued up to Grant Street, where they joined a group standing by the side of the Feed and Grain Barn. All the windows were lighted in the General Peach. The buggy stood in front, the fat bay scratching her neck against the hitching post. Eight or ten miners stood near the buggy, and the crippled miner, Tittle, was watching them from the porch with a rifle in his hands.

  “The Doc’s buggy,” someone commented.

  “Not a one to try and stop her!” Paul Skinner said. “Not a one!”

  “There’s a woman with more guts than any man I know.”

  “Shame to see them bust over Blaisedell,” said another.

  “Should’ve shot one for himself like Carl did.”

  “I heard Carl didn’t go to. The stupid muck got hold of his shotgun and yanked on it, and Carl’s finger on the trigger.”

  “Looks like maybe Blaisedell’s a human being like the rest of us though,” another man said. Mosbie started toward him, but Wheeler grasped his arm.

  “There comes Curley Burne,” someone whispered.

  Curley Burne came across Grant Street toward them with the light from the General Peach gleaming on his black curls.

  “Curley,” someone said, and several others also greeted him.

  “Big night, boys,” Curley said. “You boys fun it like this every night in Warlock?”

  There was some laughter. “Where’s those Regulators of MacDonald’s, Curley?” a man drawled from the shadow of the adobe wall. “Just when we needed those Regulators bad they didn’t show for beans.”

  “Warlock’s too calky for them,” Curley said. “Curl a man’s hair just to walk down the street here.” He indicated his own head with a sweep of his hand, and there was more laughter.

  “There’s Blaisedell.”

  They all fell silent. Blaisedell rounded the corner; he limped a little as he walked down toward the General Peach. As he mounted the porch past Tittle he held to the hand rail, and, in the light there, he did not look so tall. The front door closed behind him with a hollow whack.

  “The marshal got himself some chewed up tonight,” Curley Burne said.

  Wheeler gripped Mosbie’s arm, but Mosbie pulled away with a curse. “Go tell it to Abe McQuown, Curley!” he said thickly. “Maybe it will bring him out of his hole.”

  “Who said that?” Curley said.

  Mosbie crouched a little. “I said it!”

  “Hold off now!” Paul Skinner said. “Hold off! Curley, you leave be! Moss!” Wheeler stepped between Curley and Mosbie.

  “You shouldn’t have said it, Moss,” Curley said, and his voice was as thick as Mosbie’s.

  “I’ll say it again!”

  “Take it and forget it, Curley,” a voice said from the darkness. “He has got friends here and you haven’t.”

  “We are pretty sick of cowboys up here,” another man said.

  Curley glanced toward the two who had spoken, looked past Wheeler at Mosbie, shrugged, and turned away. His hat swung across his back as he disappeared into the darkness.

  “Soooooo-boy!” Wheeler said. “He is no man to mess with, Moss!”

  “I am no man to mess with tonight either,” Mosbie said.

  Behind him someone laughed a little, relievedly.

  “God damn it to hell!” Mosbie said, and kicked in fury and frustration at the dust.

  34. GANNON PUTS DOWN HIS NAME

  I

  GANNON leaned limply against the cell door, pressing a hand to his ribs. Pike Skinner and Peter Bacon were hunkered down with their backs to the wall opposite him, Pike with a bloody ear over which he kept cupping the palm of his hand, Peter supporting himself on the shotgun. Tim French had helped Hasty, who had been badly shaken up, home to bed.

  “Nothing to do now,” Carl said. He sat at the table brushing his hand back over his graying, thinning, sweat-tangled hair. “It is off our back anyhow. Blaisedell is probably right, there is less chance of trouble if we stay away from the General Peach.” He sat looking down at the crooked trigger finger of his right hand.

  Gannon slowly seated himself in the chair beside the cell door, holding his breath at the sudden ache in his ribs.

  “Damn them,” Carl said, without heat. “Looked like they might’ve saved that one I shot. But they had to let him bleed it out and then tramp what was left of him. Course, any man that’s fool enough to give a jerk on a gun barrel when it’s pointed right at him and cocked, and your finger—”

  “Sure, Horse,” Peter said. “None of your doing.”

  “Well, he held them off long enough for Miss Jessie to get Morgan out the back,” Carl said. “What we was after, after all—save a lynching.”

  “Yes,” Gannon said, and Peter Bacon glanced up at him and nodded.

  “I guess he did pure right not shooting,” Peter said. “But that didn’t make it a better thing to see.”

  “I admire to see a woman cool as Miss Jessie was,” Carl said. He straightened and stretched. “You boys go home and get some sleep. This deputy
’s office is just about to close up for the night.”

  Pike said, “I’m going out and drink some of the meanness out of me.”

  “You stay out of scrapes with jacks, now!” Carl said. “I don’t want anything more to mess with tonight. If I don’t get some rest for my old bones I am going to have to lay right down and die.”

  “’Night,” Peter said, rising; he nodded to Carl and Gannon, and he and Pike went outside into the darkness.

  Carl went over and kicked at the broken glass on the floor, and inspected the broken latch of the door. “You suppose the Citizens’ Committee’ll pay for fixing these? Place could fall down for all of Keller. All I asked him for here was a new sign, but I guess I am not going to get it unless I pay for it myself.” Blood had scabbed over the long scratch above his right eye, and run and crusted on his cheek. “Bad night,” he said, in a sad voice. “Let’s close up, Johnny.”

  Gannon pulled down the lamp and blew out the flame, and followed Carl out. Outside, in the thick dark, the town seemed very still.

  “Quiet,” Carl said, and sighed. “I guess I’ll have a whisky before I go home. You, Johnny?”

  “I guess not; thanks.” He watched Carl go off along the boardwalk, frail-looking and limping a little, his bootheels cracking unevenly on the planks.

  II

  Gannon went along past the wood yard to Grant Street and turned down toward Kate’s house. He could see a light burning at the back.

  He mounted the two steps, knocked, and waited. He felt for the key in his jeans pocket, and his face prickled; he knocked again. He heard her footsteps inside, and the door was opened a crack.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  The crack widened and he was aware of her close to him, although he could not see her yet in the darkness. “Oh, it’s my gentleman caller,” she said.

  “I just came by to tell you Morgan is all right now.”

  “Come in, Deputy,” Kate said. He went inside; Kate was outlined for a moment against the lighted bedroom doorway, but she moved aside to become invisible again. Something thumped on the oilcloth-covered table and he realized that she had had the derringer in her hand.

  “Blaisedell?” she said.

  “He showed up, but he couldn’t stop them either. It was Miss Jessie got him out. She came in the doctor’s buggy and took him out through the alley. He’s at the General Peach now.”

  “Is he?” Kate said, as though she were not interested. She was silent for a long time, and he felt like a prying fool. He turned to go.

  “Well, I’ll be going. I just—”

  “The angel of Warlock,” Kate said. He couldn’t make out her tone. “Is she Blaisedell’s sweetheart?”

  He nodded, and realized that she could not see him nod. But before he could speak, she said, “I’d heard of her before I came here. She is what you hear of when you hear of Warlock. And I’ve seen her on the street. What’s she like?”

  “Why, she is a fine woman, Kate. It took some doing what she did tonight.”

  “She is a nice woman,” Kate said, in the tone he could not make out.

  “She is. She—”

  “I hate nice women,” Kate said. It shocked him to hear her. Again he turned to go; he felt strangely angry.

  “Anxious to go, Deputy?”

  “It’s not that. But I just came by to tell you about Morgan.”

  “Did you think I cared what happened to Morgan?”

  He licked his lips. He could see her now, standing across the table from him. There was some kind of shawl draped over her shoulders. “Well, I couldn’t help hearing what you was saying to him earlier tonight,” he said. “When you came in the jail. And I thought—”

  “Is it any of your business?”

  He nodded, and the anger ached in him like the savage ache in his ribs where the miner had kicked him.

  “Is it?” Kate said.

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I saved him like that once.”

  “In Grand Fork.”

  “He’d killed a man that called him for cheating. That was when he still let himself get caught cheating once in a while. The vigilantes took him to the hotel to hold him till they could hang him. I started a fire and—”

  “I understood what he was saying.”

  “Did you?” Kate said, in a flat voice. “And you want it your business? If you don’t want it, say so now.” She sounded as though she were warning him. “Maybe you don’t,” she said.

  “I want to know.” He leaned on the back of a chair.

  “I was Tom Morgan’s girl for four years,” she said. His fingers tightened on the chair back, not to hear her telling him what he had already sensed, but to hear her say it as though it were no different than telling him where she was born, or how old she was, or who her parents were.

  “Most of the time he was flush,” she continued. “There were scrapes and sometimes we’d have to run, and sometimes he would bust; but mostly he was flush. He is a real high-roller. He has owned places here and there, the way he does now, but he would always sell out sooner or later and go back to playing against the bank. He did that best. He liked that best. He will get tired of running the Glass Slipper here and sell out and go somewhere else to buck the tiger. That’s all he really wants to do. But he has to have a stake to start.

  “After we’d run from Grand Fork we went to Fort James. He didn’t have a dollar—except me.” She laughed a little. Then her voice went flat again as she said, “So he wanted me to make a stake for him. Going back to what I’d been doing when he took me up. Back,” she said, as though he might not have understood.

  “I did, and I made him his stake. But I told him I was through with him. I didn’t even see him for a long time—but I should have known I wasn’t through with him. Anyway, Bob Cletus was going to marry me. He had a ranch near Fort James.” Her voice began to shake. “Maybe I did know, for I told Bob he had better tell Morgan. And see if it was—all right.” She stopped then.

  “Cletus?” he said. “The one you came out here with?”

  “That was his brother. Blaisedell killed Bob in Fort James that day.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “So you see,” she said, her voice so low he could hardly hear her. “Did you want to know?”

  “Why, yes,” he lied.

  He could smell the perfume she wore; she had moved closer to him. She said, “I looked for his brother for a while—Blaisedell shot Bob in Seventy-nine. Then I just happened to run onto Pat in Denver, and I—he came out here with me. And they killed Pat, too.”

  He was aware again of the shape of the key in his pocket, and of its weight. He cleared his throat. “You got his brother to come out here with you to try to—”

  “Yes,” she broke in, curtly, as though he had been stupid even to ask. Then she said, “I want to see Blaisedell shot down like that. It is all I want.”

  He heard the scrape of her slippers and the creak of the floor as she moved again. She halted so close to him that he could have touched her, and he could see the shape of her face and the rounded pits of her eyes. But all at once she said, “No,” and drew back a little. Her voice began to shake once more as she said, “I don’t know. Maybe I only want to see it happen and not—do anything. Maybe it is enough. Maybe I have done too much already. But I would like to know the man who was to do it. Beforehand. I thought it might be you.”

  “No,” he said hoarsely.

  “After he killed your brother I was almost glad. For I thought there would be reason enough.. . .”

  “It won’t be me. I couldn’t anyway.”

  “I think you could. But I won’t ask you, Deputy. Are you afraid I am going to ask you?”

  “Why him?” he cried. “I should think it would be Morgan you are after!”

  He saw her turn away. When she spoke her voice was clear and small, and she sounded as though she were reasoning with herself as much as with him. “Because I should have known what Tom would do. So maybe it w
as part my fault. Because it was just the sort of rotten, dog-in-the-manger thing Tom would do. But Blaisedell—”

  Her voice ceased, but he saw, and was sick with jealousy and pain at what he saw. How much those four years must have been to her, and Morgan; she must have loved Morgan very much.

  He raised a sour, damp hand to rub it over his face. He tried to speak calmly. “Kate, maybe Blaisedell did that. But I don’t believe he is bad. He has done good here, killed my brother or not. Kate, do you think it will be someone decent who will kill him? It will not be!”

  “Decent to me.”

  “Do you know who will kill him? Someone like Abe McQuown, or some kid after score like Billy. No, not even that. It will be some backshooter, like Calhoun. Or Cade. It will be somebody like Jack Cade, somebody worse than you think he is even. Somebody all bad. Don’t you see?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters! Don’t you see he is a man for men to look up to? There are not many good ones like that, and it will be an all bad one that will kill him, and then the bad one looked up to for it. Don’t you see that?”

  “Maybe not a bad one,” Kate said. She sounded almost indifferent. “Maybe a better one. Someone like you, I mean.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I think it is so.”

  “That’s foolishness, Kate!”

  “Why, then it is none of your business after all,” she said. There was an edge of anger to her voice, and as she went on it was more and more angry, and filled with hate. “You look up to him, don’t you?” she said. “You should know how men look up to him, since you do yourself. Because he is so fine. He is quick on the draw—does that make him fine? He has killed I don’t even know any more how many men—does that make him fine? He is a hired killer! Morgan hired him to kill a man and Fort James hired him to kill men, and Warlock has. It must be fine and brave and manly to be a hired killer, but you can’t expect a woman to understand why men will worship him like a saint because he—”

  “Stop it!”

  “All right, I will stop it. And you get out of here. You are not a man. Not the man I want.”

  “More man than you are woman, I guess, Miss Dollar.” He spoke in anger; instantly he was sorry. “I am sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t go to say a thing like that. I’ll ask you to forgive me, Kate.”