Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  But she didn’t speak, and he could feel the hate. It was as though he were in a cage with an animal. He turned and moved toward the door.

  He heard a shot. It came from the direction of Main Street, and there was a yell, and a chorus of yells. But still he did not leave. “Kate—” he said.

  “Maybe they have killed him for me,” Kate said, viciously, and he went outside. He ran down toward the corner of Main Street with his ribs aching and the scabbarded Colt slapping against his leg.

  It was some time before he could find out what had happened; no one seemed to know. Someone said that Blaisedell had shot Curley Burne, who had been taken dying to the General Peach; another thought that some of the Regulators had come in and scared up a Medusa miner. He crossed the street finally, to another group of men before the Billiard Parlor. Hutchinson, Foss, and Kennon were there.

  “Carl got shot,” Foss told him. “It was Curley.”

  “Dirty hound!” Kennon said, in a cracked voice.

  “Where is he?”

  “Forked a horse and lit out running,” someone said. “There is a bunch going to take out after him. They’re down at—”

  “No—Carl!” he said.

  “They took him over to the General Peach,” Hutchinson said. “He was bleeding bad.”

  As Gannon ran back down Main Street, Kennon shouted after him, “You had better start getting a posse together, Gannon!”

  There was another bunch before the General Peach, and a number of horses. “It’s Gannon,” someone said. “Here comes Johnny Gannon.” He made his way through them and up the steps, where Miss Jessie’s man Tittle barred his way with a Winchester.

  “Listen, nobody else comes—”

  He shouldered past, and Tittle stumbled back clumsily, banging his rifle butt against the door. “Where is he?” Gannon panted, starting back toward the hospital room. Then he saw Pike Skinner and Mosbie through Miss Jessie’s open door. Buck Slavin was there, and Sam Brown and Fred Wheeler. Morgan leaned on the foot of the bed, with the doctor beside him, and Blaisedell stood apart. Miss Jessie was sitting beside the bed, where Carl was.

  “Well, hello, Johnny,” Carl said, in a breathless voice. He looked like a scared, white-faced boy with a pasted-on, graying mustache. Gannon hadn’t realized how gray Carl was. He moved over to kneel beside the bed, next to Miss Jessie’s chair. Carl wet his lips and carefully turned his head toward him.

  “You will have to deputy alone awhile, Johnny.”

  “Sure,” he panted. “Surely, Carl. We’ll make out.”

  Behind him Pike Skinner said roughly, “We will help him till you are up and around again, Carl.”

  Carl grinned thinly; he turned his head a little farther toward Gannon, and winked. “Sure,” he whispered. “There is some good boys to help. They have been rallying round. You’ll be all right, Johnny.”

  “Hush, now, Carl,” Miss Jessie said, and patted his hand. She wore the high-necked, frilled blouse with the black necktie she had worn when she had come to the jail, and she smelled cleanly of sachet and starched linen. “You mustn’t talk so much, Carl,” she said.

  “it’s all right,” the doctor said, in his clipped, curt voice.

  “I have always been a talker, ma’am,” Carl said. “It is hard to quit being one now.”

  Leaning on the brass foot of the bed in a clean shirt and trousers, his cigar bobbing in the corner of his mouth as he spoke, Morgan said gently, “A man needs a little rest after fighting those wild-eyed jacks off my neck half the night.”

  Carl grinned again. Behind Morgan, Blaisedell stood with his arms folded over his chest, and only his blue eyes alive in his cold, bruised and scraped face. There was a tramp of hoofs outside the window, and Gannon could hear the men talking there. “Let’s get moving,” one said. “Where’s Gannon. He going to weasel on this?”

  “What happened?” Gannon said quickly, to Carl.

  “Just stupid,” Carl said, in an embarrassed voice. “Curley and me had some more words. That was there by the Billiard Parlor and I kind of surprised myself and him too getting drawed before he did.” He laughed shakily. “Durned if I didn’t! Well, I kind of cooled off, seeing I’d got the drop; so I thought I’d camp him in jail for the night. So I called for his piece—” His voice trailed off.

  “Curley went to let him take it and then spun it on him,” Mosbie said. “I saw him do it, and a good lot of others standing there saw it. Run the road-agent spin on him, by God—pardon me, Miss Jessie. I should have chose him myself, I just about did earlier.”

  “We’ll see he is caught, Carl,” Buck Slavin said solemnly.

  Gannon saw a little cluster of bluish veins at Carl’s temple, and the slow beat of blood in them. He had never seen those veins there before. The flesh of Carl’s face looked as though it had been waxed.

  “Better get a posse riding, Johnny,” Pike said. “There is a good lot gathered outside already.”

  “Not much use till morning,” Carl said. “If I was doing it I’d wait. Nobody could follow sign till light.”

  Miss Jessie patted Carl’s hand. Her hand was white and small beneath the long cuff of her sleeve, the nails cut shorter than Kate’s. Carl’s brows knit together beneath the long, crusted scratch on his forehead, and Carl’s eyes took on an inward expression.

  “Feels like something’s broke loose again, Doc,” Carl said easily. “I don’t want to bleed up Miss Jessie’s nice bed.”

  “It will stop,” the doctor said.

  “Let’s go on outside,” Pike whispered, and he left the room, followed by Buck, Wheeler, Mosbie, and Sam Brown.

  Gannon could hear more horses in the street now. He saw Carl’s eyes close and he quickly looked up at the doctor, who had on his nightshirt beneath his rusty black suit. The doctor shook his head.

  Gannon saw that Blaisedell was watching him expressionlessly. Above Blaisedell’s head was a mezzotint of a man thrashing at some ocean waves with a long sword.

  Carl opened his eyes again. “You know?” he said. “It makes a person sort of mad—I mean I was just watching it go by in my head here. Say you catch him, Johnny, and the judge binds him over to trial in Bright’s. He will just get off.” He laughed a little and said, “Are you going to post him out of town for me, Marshal?”

  Gannon heard Miss Jessie draw in her breath; he saw Morgan’s face harden. Blaisedell didn’t give any sign that he had heard.

  Miss Jessie said, “David, I think he ought to rest a little now. I think everybody ought to leave and let him rest.” She said it as though she were talking to the doctor, but it sounded like a command. Gannon started to get to his feet.

  “Except Johnny,” Carl said. “Leave Johnny stay.”

  Miss Jessie rose with a quick movement, brushing her hands together in her skirt. Her eyes looked tired, but very bright; her brown ringlets swung as she turned toward Blaisedell. She went over to take Blaisedell’s arm, as though she must lead him out, and Morgan’s cold eyes followed her all the way. They all left the room.

  Gannon knelt uncomfortably beside the bed, watching Carl’s face, in profile to him, and the steady throb of the little cluster of veins. Carl whispered, “I’m going, old horse.”

  Gannon shook his head.

  “It is like big gray curtains coming down. You can kind of see them trailing down—like the bottom of a tornado cloud coming down. Getting black like that too, but slow.”

  “I’m sorry, Carl,” he said.

  “Surely,” Carl said, as though to comfort him. “We have been friends and got along, haven’t we? I was a good enough deputy, wasn’t I? Whatever old Judge had to say about it.”

  Gannon tried to speak and choked on it.

  Carl laughed soundlessly. “Well, I don’t know what I am crying about now. I knew one of those cowboys was going to score me, and I guess I’d just as soon it was Curley.

  “Ah, I came in all big medicine brave on account of Bill Canning,” he went on. “And saw what I was into, and cave
d in for a while. Pure fright. But I come up again, I’ll say that for myself. I picked up there toward the last. Why, I was right proud of myself standing up to Curley like I did. I just wish I didn’t have to go out on killing that poor, stupid jack, though; that was no kind of thing. And sorry to leave you right in the middle of all hell, Johnny. With Curley to get, and I suppose somebody ought to get word in to Bright’s City on Murch, in case he went that way. And muckers and Regulators.” He began to chuckle again, his shirt trembling over his chest with it. “Maybe I picked the best time after all,” he said. “But damn Curley Burne anyhow.”

  Carl looked exhausted now, and his eyes seemed suddenly sunken. After a moment he said, “Me and Curley scrapped over Blaisedell mostly. I guess you figured that.”

  “I thought it’d been that, Carl.”

  Carl’s eyes flared in their sockets, like candles guttering. “Once in a while—once in a long while there’s a man— Blaisedell made a man of me, Johnny. But now—”

  “I know,” he said quickly.

  “Things getting him down,” Carl whispered. “Bringing him low. Like those jacks tonight, and nothing for a man to do to help him back. Then somebody comes along and you can speak up for him. And maybe because it is the only thing you can do—you push it too hard. Maybe I pushed Curley too hard.”

  “Never mind it now, Carl.” Gannon could hear now, in the street outside, the pad of hoofs and the jingle of spurs and harness, and voices, diminishing as the men rode away.

  “I always was a talker,” Carl said. His eyes drooped closed. His hands moved slowly to fold themselves upon his chest. He looked as though he were aging at tremendous speed.

  Gannon rose from his knees and sank into the chair. He saw Miss Jessie standing in the doorway behind him, one hand to her throat and her round eyes fixed on him steadily.

  Carl whispered something and he had to bend forward to hear it.

  “—post him out,” Carl was saying, smiling a little, his eyes still closed. “And right down the middle of the street with no two ways about it, like that in the Acme was.” His voice came more strongly. “Why, that’d be epitaph enough for a man! Carl Schroeder that was deputy in Warlock, shot by Curley Burne. And right next to me: Curley Burne, killed for it by Clay Blaisedell, Marshal. Cut that in stone! That’d be—” His words became a kind of soft rustling Gannon could no longer understand.

  Gannon sat watching with fascination the slow movement in the little veins, knowing he should be both with the posse, which was not a posse without him, and here with Carl.

  “That stupid jack!” Carl said suddenly. His eyes opened and all at once fright was written with cruel marks upon his face. He reached for Gannon’s hand and gripped it tightly. “Johnny! Bring out your Colt’s and hand it here!”

  “Carl, you—”

  “Quick! There is not much time!”

  Gannon drew his six-shooter and held it out where Carl could see it, which seemed to be what Carl wanted.

  “Hold it right,” Carl said. “Finger on the trigger.” Carl caught hold of the barrel and gave it a jerk. Then he groaned. “Yes!” he whispered, as Gannon withdrew the Colt. “I pulled on it the same as that damned, stupid jack did to me with the shotgun. No, not the same! But by God it was!”

  Carl turned his head from side to side with a tortured movement. “Oh, God Almighty, there is no way to know! But maybe he didn’t go to do it, Johnny.”

  “But he ran—” he started.

  “Because there was half a dozen there would’ve cut him down! Johnny—” Carl stopped, his throat working as though he could not swallow. Finally he got his breath; he lay there panting. “Forgive as you would be forgiven,” he whispered. “And I will be going to that judgment seat directly. Oh, God!” he whispered, dully.

  Tears squeezed from beneath his eyelids. His throat worked again. He whispered, “Johnny—I guess you had better tell them that Curley didn’t go to do it.”

  That was all. Still a faint flicker of life showed in the blue veins. Gannon stared at them, slowly thrusting the muzzle of his Colt toward its scabbard, until the barrel finally slid in; he sat hunched and aching, watching the little veins, and at no given instant could he have said that the movement in them ceased. There was only, after a time, the realization that Carl’s life was gone, and he rose and disengaged the counterpane from beneath Carl’s arms, folded the hands together on the thin chest, and drew the counterpane up over all.

  He backed away, upsetting the chair in his clumsiness, and catching it as it fell. Jessie Marlow still stood in the doorway. She nodded, just as he said, “He’s gone,” and raised her finger to her lips in a curious, straitened, intense gesture he did not understand.

  He moved out past her into the dark entryway. Blaisedell stood across from him, his legs apart, hands behind his back, his head bent down—as still as a statue. Morgan sat on the bottom step, smoking.

  “He’s gone,” he said again. Still Blaisedell didn’t move. The doctor came out of the shadows near the front door and followed Miss Jessie into her room. Gannon knew these out here had not heard Carl’s last words; he wondered if even Miss Jessie had.

  “They went on down toward San Pablo,” Morgan told him. “Skinner said he thought you would just as soon not go anyway.”

  He nodded dumbly, and went on outside. There was no one now in the street before the General Peach. He walked to the jail and in the darkness there sank down in the chair at the table, with his head in his hands. He did not know if he could face telling them what Carl had said. They would say he lied, with utter condemnation and contempt, and the lie thrown in his face until he would have to fight back. But how would he be able to blame them for thinking that he lied? He could only pray that the posse would not catch Curley. Surely they would not catch Curley Burne.

  He groaned. Finally he rose, with broken glass scraping beneath his boots, and lit the lamp, staring, in the gathering light, at the names scratched on the wall. He slid open the table drawer and took out Carl’s pencil. With his ribs aching, he squatted before the list of the deputies of Warlock, and, carefully, in small, neat lettering, he added, beneath Carl’s name, the name of John Gannon.

  35. CURLEY BURNE LOSES HIS MOUTH ORGAN

  CURLEY was half asleep in the saddle when the sun came up, sudden and painfully bright just above the peaks of the Bucksaws. As he cut in from the river his eyes felt sandy and his spine jarred into the shape of a buttonhook. The gelding he had taken plodded along, stiff-legged, and he was grimacing now at every jolt.

  “That is some gait you got, horse,” he complained, leaning both hands on the pommel to ease his seat. “I never heard of a horse without knee joints before.” He reached for his mouth organ inside his shirt; somehow the cord had got broken, and he had to dig for the mouth organ inside his shell belt. He blew into it to wake himself up, and now he began to feel a growing elation. For now he could go, now he must move on, and there was good news for Abe about Blaisedell’s comedown for him to leave on.

  The elation faded when he thought of Carl Schroeder. Carl had been an aggravating man, and more and more aggravating and scratchy lately, but he had not wanted to see Carl dead. He wondered if there was a posse out yet, and he looked back for dust; he could see none.

  “Poor old Carl,” he said aloud. “Damned scratchy old son of a bitch.” In his mind’s eye he saw Carl go down with the front of his pants afire, and he winced at the sight. He knew that Carl was dead by now.

  The gelding went grunting pole-legged down a draw, and labored up the rise beyond it. He had a glimpse of the windmill on the pump house with the blades wheeling slowly in the sun, and the tall chimney of the old house. He pricked the gelding’s flanks with his spurs. “Let’s run in there with our peckers up, you!” The gelding maintained the same pace. “Gait like banging an ax handle on a fence post,” he said.

  By dint of jabbing in his spurs, yelling, and flapping his hat right and left, he got the gelding into a shambling, wheezing run down the l
ast slope. He fired his Colt into the air and whooped. The gelding fell back into a trot. Joe Lacey and the breed came out of the bunkhouse and waved to him. Abe appeared on the porch of the ranch house in an old hat and a flannel shirt, and no pants on. The legs of his long-handled underwear were dirty and baggy at the knees.

  Curley gave one last half-hearted whoop and jumped off the gelding; his knees gave beneath his weight and he almost fell. Abe leaned on the porch rail, sleepy and cross-looking, as Curley mounted the steps.

  “Where’d you get that bottlehead?”

  “Stole him, and a bad deal too.” He leaned against the porch rail beside Abe. “I’m leaving, Abe,” he said. “Things look like they’ll be getting hot for me here.”

  Abe said incuriously, “Blaisedell?”

  “Carl and me come to it.”

  A shadow came down over Abe’s red-bearded face, and he blew out his breath in a whisper like a snake hissing.

  “Abe!” the old man called from inside. “Abe, who is that rode in? Is that you, Curley?”

  “It surely is,” he called back. “Coming and going, Dad McQuown. I’m on the run.”

  “Killed him?” Abe said sharply.

  “Looked like it. I didn’t stay to see.” When he flipped his hat off, the jerk of the cord against his throat made his heart pump sickly.

  “Killed who?” Dad McQuown cried. “Son, bring me out so’s I can see Curley, will you? Killed who, Curley?”

  “Carl,” Curley said. He tried to grin at Abe. He said loudly, for the old man’s benefit, “Run the road-agent spin on him. Neat!”

  The old man’s laughter grated on him insupportably, and Abe cried, “Shut up, Daddy!” One of Abe’s eyes was slitted now, while the other was wide; he looked as though he were sighting down a Winchester. Curley saw Joe Lacey coming toward the porch.

  “You are not needed here!” Abe snapped, and Joe quickly retreated. “What happened?” Abe said.