Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  The delegation from the Warlock Citizens’ Committee exited from the Jim Bright Hotel. A Bright’s City deputy, chewing on a toothpick, greeted them pleasantly as he sauntered on his rounds.

  “How enviable it is,” Will Hart said, “to see the same deputies on hand every time you come in here.”

  “I wish we’d see a different sheriff,” Buck Slavin said irritably.

  “Well, let’s go see what sheriff there is,” Goodpasture said, and they proceeded to the sheriff’s office, which adjoined the courthouse. Sheriff Keller was visible through the dusty glass of the window. He sat at ease with his scrolled boots propped up on his pigeon-holed desk, his fine, white, sugar-loaf hat tipped over his eyes.

  Keller rose ponderously as they entered, a bull-necked, heavy man with the face of a jolly bloodhound, a tobacco-stained mustache, and a gold watch chain with links like barbed wire strung across his massive midsection. Behind him the cell doors stood open, and in one of them a number of prisoners were playing cards.

  “Why, it’s some gentlemen from Warlock,” Keller said, removing his hat and smiling in greeting. Then his face turned sad as he said, “I certainly was distressed to hear about old Carl Schroeder. A good man.” He shook his head sadly, and clucked.

  The prisoners dropped their cards and crowded into the door of the cell. “What’s happened?” one cried.

  “Blaisedell throw down on McQuown yet?”

  “You boys hush, now!” the sheriff roared. “You! Get back in there!” The prisoners moved back inside, and Keller went over to slam the door on them. “I’ll have a little peace and quiet in here!” he said severely, and turned back to the delegation again. Another deputy came in.

  “Branch, you run for Jim Askew,” the sheriff said. “Here is some more news from Warlock and he’ll apoplexy sure if he gets gone to press before he hears it. Now; what’s up now, gentlemen?”

  “We want some law in Warlock, Sheriff!” Slavin said. “The Citizens’ Committee has sent us up here to insist—”

  “Well, now, hold on,” Keller said. “You people are all right. That young Gannon come up here ahead of you people, and told me he was going to resign, but I have talked him out of it. Anyway, you have got Blaisedell still, haven’t you?”

  “Damn,” Slavin said.

  “Well, we wanted to get rid of Gannon, Sheriff,” Will Hart said. “I must say we are a little sorry to hear you talked him out of resigning.

  The sheriff sat down, frowning heavily. “Well, now, gentlemen; he said people was kind of down on him, thinking he had swore false over Curley Burne. Maybe he did too, but it come right in the end, now, didn’t it?” He eyed them each in turn. “You people down there have got to realize it is hard to get a decent man to deputy in Warlock. You don’t just chuck one out when he does something you don’t like once or twice; no, sir.” He scowled at the deputy, who had not left yet. “Run along now, Branch. Get Jim Askew here, boy.” The prisoners were whispering together excitedly.

  “Like I say,” Keller went on. “It came right anyway what with Blaisedell cutting down Curley Burne, so I can’t see what you people are so excited about.”

  “We insist that you fire Gannon!” Slavin said. “The Citizens’ Committee has sent us up here to tell you—”

  “Huh!” Keller said. “Now, I mean! Who is the Warlock Citizens’ Committee to tell me who I am to fire? I mean, I like to get along with you folks, but it is hard to hire a man for that place down there.”

  “What did he want here, Sheriff?” Goodpasture asked.

  The sheriff leaned back in his chair, his face crinkling with amusement. “Why, he didn’t really want to resign. He was just trying to blackguard me with it. He wanted four more deputies down there. Four!” He held up four fat fingers. Well, he’s young, but he is all right. I promised him if he’d wait over a day or so, I’d get him a new sign made for that jail down there, though.”

  “That will be an improvement,” Goodpasture said.

  “Now, see here, Sheriff!” Slavin said heatedly, and then he stopped and sighed.

  Keller sat rubbing his red-veined nose and glancing from face to face again. “You gentlemen ought to try to get on with your deputies down there. Down on him, are you? Well, let me tell you. Either he went and lied to get Curley Burne off, or else he didn’t lie. You gentlemen know for sure he went and lied?”

  “Everybody knows he lied,” Slavin said.

  “Well, now, I meant proof, Mr. Slavin. No, now, you don’t know for sure. You have got to look at it this way, anyhow. I mean, say he did lie; what’re you going to do if a man lies for an old partner of his? You’d do it; maybe I’d do it, though I won’t admit it straight out. I mean, that is a poor place to be down there, terrible bad pay, and a man doesn’t live long enough to take much of it home, either. Look at poor old Carl. And he lasted a coon’s age compared with most. I mean, you have got to give a man with a job like that a little leeway.”

  “There’s another way of looking at it, too,” Hart said. “Burne probably would have gone free anyway if he’d come up here to trial.”

  The prisoners broke out laughing. Keller scowled and scratched his nose. “Well, now!” he said. “You know what the man said when he saw the black-headed Swede, don’t you? That’s a Norse of a different color!” He roared with laughter, amid a further chorus from the cell. The delegation from Warlock looked at each other despairingly.

  Then Keller’s face assumed a serious expression, and he said, “Well, now, about McQuown’s boys getting off up here. I might doubt it some. Things’ve gone and changed in people’s eyes up here a little. I don’t expect no jury here is going to let those Pablo ’cases run quite so pecker-up any more. What I mean—it looks like Abe’s just about run his string. People used to take a fright you just creep up behind them and whisper ‘McQuown!’ It’s not so any more, not with Clay Blaisedell salting his tail for him and lopping his gun hands off like he is doing. It is like when the old general got after Espirato and made him run for cover.”

  Hart said, “You make it sound almost safe enough for you to come down and be a proper sheriff, Sheriff.”

  “Now it is not going to do any good for you to get insulting, Mr. Hart. I swear, you people come up here and play me the same tune every time, and all I can tell you is just any day now there is going to be a separate county set up down there. Peach County, I expect it’ll be called. You will have your own sheriff to pick at then. I was talking to Whiteside just last week, and he was saying any day now that—”

  “I do hate to remind you, Sheriff,” Goodpasture said. “But it has been any day now for over a year.”

  “Two years,” Hart said.

  “Well, it is any day now for sure. I’d put money on it—not more than a month, for sure.”

  “Bellywash!” Slavin cried. “I’ll tell you this, Keller. If we don’t get some satisfaction from you this time, we will see Peach himself!”

  “See him!” Keller said, smiling, nodding. “Do that.”

  “And if we don’t get any satisfaction from him we will by God go to Washington, if we have to!”

  “Go,” Keller said. “You will probably have to. I’d sure like to go back there myself. I hear it is pleasant this time of year, back there.”

  “We are asking for your help, Sheriff,” Goodpasture said. “The situation in Warlock is much more difficult than you realize.”

  Keller’s eyes flickered a little. He hunkered forward in his chair, and spread his hands. “But what would you want me to do, Mr. Goodpasture? I mean! I’d be all my time riding back and forth between here and Warlock, and I am too old for that foolishness. And don’t mind saying I am scared. Mr. Goodpasture, I just don’t claim to be anything I’m not. I run for sheriff here, surely, but to my mind this county stops at the Bucksaws there and that is all I run for. That is so, now; you know I didn’t come down there beforehand, either. Now, I like this big belly here as it is and not all shot full of holes. Like Carl, and that feller Brown an
d how many others before that? I am not sheriff down there, that’s all. If it was put to me hard I had to be, why, I’d quit. What’s the matter with Blaisedell all of a sudden you are so dissatisfied again? Sounds from here like everything is going nice as pie.”

  Will Hart said, “It has not worked out, Sheriff. He has had to kill too many men.”

  “Why, my stars! You fellows aren’t shedding tears for those rustlers he is popping off, are you?”

  “Sheriff,” Goodpasture said. “He has no authority. And we had none when we hired him. He and the Citizens’ Committee have had to take too much upon themselves.”

  “It looks from here like it is going nicely. He has got McQuown tramped down and Pablo thinned out some. Those cowboys will stop getting their fingers burnt pretty quick, and settle down. I will give you gentlemen the same advice I gave Gannon. Let Blaisedell work it out. There is no better man nowhere, from what I have heard. I told Gannon to quit worrying, and you too. The time to worry’s when things is in bad shape, not—”

  “They are in bad shape,” Hart said.

  “You are an officer of the court!” Slavin cried.

  “Not down there.”

  Hart said, “Well, maybe if we had three or four more deputies, as Gannon suggested—”

  Keller shook his head. “You would have to collect taxes down there to have your three or four, and that would take a dozen. And fighting men! Now, maybe you gentlemen wouldn’t mind paying taxes, and maybe Mr. Slavin wouldn’t even mind having it run into his franchise about transporting prisoners up here, but you gentlemen ought to know those ranchers down that way never even heard of taxes. They’d think a tax collector was a road agent! Why, it’d take Peach and the whole shooting match from the fort to collect taxes down there. All that for some deputies? Why, Blaisedell is serving you better than ten deputies could in a month of Sundays. Now, isn’t that so, Mr. Goodpasture?”

  “Blaisedell is a very fine man,” Goodpasture said. “We have had no cause to be anything but highly satisfied with him. It is a matter of authority. We are in a position of ordering him to kill men. We are in a position of trying to administer severe laws that do not exist, when the responsibility is yours.”

  “No, sir! It is not mine either. No, sir, you just take all the authority you need.”

  Goodpasture sighed and said, “And the kind of thing that Blaisedell can deal with is necessarily limited. You should be able to understand that.”

  “You mean those Cousin Jacks running wild and tearing things up? MacDonald was up here complaining about that just lately, but I thought you people had worked up some sort of regulation committee to deal with those wild men.”

  “MacDonald has,” Hart said. “Please don’t connect us with that pack of mongrels.”

  “I thought it was a Citizens’ Committee thing,” Keller said. “So did everybody. Well, it goes to show you.”

  “Say!” one of the prisoners called. “Does it look like McQuown is going to make a play against Blaisedell? There is betting here he won’t.”

  The sheriff regarded them questioningly too, but, sunk in gloom, no one of the delegation answered. The sheriff chuckled and said, “I’d ride down to see that.”

  “Let’s get out of here and see Peach,” Slavin said. “I knew there was no damned use in our coming here.”

  “See him,” Keller said, approvingly.

  “We are going to! Right now!”

  “Let me tell you something first,” Keller said, in a confidential tone. “Just like I told Gannon, that’s bound and determined he is going to see him too. Don’t mention about Blaisedell if you see him. Old Peach doesn’t like anything to do with Blaisedell for beans.” He winked hugely. “Jealous! Jealous as a lap dog. For you know what used to be the biggest thing in this territory? Peach cleaning out the Apaches. Now it’s been so long people’s forgotten there ever was Apaches, and new people coming in all the time that’s never even seen one. Why, now the biggest thing out here is Blaisedell. By a mile! Jim Askew is coining money from newspapers all over the country.

  “He sends out stories by telegraph, for heaven’s sake! And those papers back east of here pay for it and beg for more, he says. Nothing new on Blaisedell, he writes about some fool gossip or other, anything. Back East Peach is only some has-been of a general, maybe he is dead by now, it’s been so long since anybody heard anything about him. But Blaisedell! Why, Jim got rich on that Acme Corral shoot-up alone, and never stopped a minute since. Jump, when he heard about Curley Burne! You should have seen him!

  “Oh, Blaisedell has got to be the biggest thing that ever happened out here, and you remember what I say and keep kind of quiet if you have to mention him to the general. Or talk him down. Here comes Jim right now,” he said, nodding toward the window.

  Jim Askew, editor and publisher of the Bright’s City Star-Democrat, came hurrying in. He was a little, wrinkled, side-whiskered man with a green vizor over his eyes, ink-smeared paper cuffs, and a canvas apron. The deputy was a step behind him, and the other deputy, whom the delegation had seen before the hotel, appeared also.

  “What’s happened now? What’s happened now?” Askew demanded, taking a newsprint pad from beneath his apron, a pencil from behind his ear. He stared from one to the other of them with his eyes enlarged and rolling behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. “What’s happened in Warlock, fellows?”

  “Warlock is gone, Jim,” Hart said. “It was a terrible thing. The old Warlock mine opened right up and the whole town fell in. Nobody left but the few miserable survivors you see before you.”

  “Now, now, fellows,” the editor said reprovingly. “Now, seriously, what’s been going on lately? What’s Blaisedell been up to now?”

  41. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

  April 15, 1881

  IT HAS been said, with the exaggeration by which truth is memorialized in a kernel, that the reason people remain in Warlock is that death is preferable to a journey to Bright’s City, and damnation better than the stage to Welltown. It is not quite so bad as that, although the trip is a long day’s horror, and upon arrival at Bright’s City the spine feels like a rock drill that has lost its temper.

  This morning, then, to see Sheriff Keller. He is a shameful excuse for a sheriff, venal, cynical, and cowardly, and yet it is difficult to dislike him. Gannon, we found, had preceded us to Bright’s City—having ridden through the Bucksaws, a shorter route by half than the stage road—and Keller out-argued our demands for his dismissal, I think more from force of habit than from loyalty to his deputy. His reasoning was: 1) deputies for Warlock are hard to come by, good or bad; 2) Gannon is willing to be deputy in Warlock; ergo, 3) Gannon remains deputy in Warlock.

  We are so used to being defeated and thwarted by Sheriff Keller that we no longer feel animus against him. Still, we were depressed by our encounter with him, and when we were kept from seeing General Peach by Whiteside at his most obstructionistic. We will try again tomorrow with renewed determination, revived by a night’s rest at the Jim Bright Hotel.

  It is curious to talk to the inhabitants here about recent events in Warlock. Bright’s Citizens are defenders of Blaisedell to a man, and they are, indeed, surprised and insulted that we should feel there are two sides to the matter. They will not accept the fact that there are things in heaven, earth, and Warlock undreamt of in their philosophy. To them, Blaisedell is an uncompromised and untainted Hero, battling a Villain named McQuown. There are none of the shadows and underbrush that have so haunted us in Warlock. Morgan is Blaisedell’s right bower, and is somewhat revered himself. The miners and their quarrel with MacDonald are of no interest, although it is disturbing to hear the Regulators described as a band of eminent Warlockians convened in aid of Blaisedell.

  April 16, 1881

  Colonel Whiteside guards his lord like a lion. He is a colorless little man, thin, worried-looking, and nervous to infect the most placid. He is uneasy with civilians, and his manner alternates between chill command and a
n inept cajolery. He routed us again this morning. This afternoon we won through to the Presence.

  I had not seen the General since November, when he passed through Warlock en route back from the border after one of his idiotic dashes after a rumor of Espirato. Since then, I think, he has not been out of Bright’s City. That he is insane, I have now no doubt.

  Whiteside was fending us off again, although with increasing desperation, when the General himself stormed down the corridor of the courthouse where we were seeking to obtain an audience, shouting incoherently in his great blown voice. He was followed by a company of aides, orderlies, and sergeants, all in dress uniform, and was in dress uniform himself, although his blouse hung open and some kind of liquid had been spilled upon his shirt front. He waved his gauntleted hands and shouted something at Whiteside which seemed to have to do with the presence of dogs upon the post, and how they were to be dealt with. With him chaos came, as he roared meaningless sounds, and all his company sought to speak at once, while Colonel Whiteside, with pad and pencil in hand, called simultaneously for silence, sought to make sense of what his chief was saying, and watched us nervously for evidences of a flank attack.

  Then, out of the uproar he himself had brought into the corridor, or out of the decay of his brain slipping into senilty or worse, or because of our unaccustomed presence, General Peach fell silent and confusion spread over his face. It was pitiful to see it. The little blue eyes, fierce and determined a moment past, wandered distraitly around, all but lost in the fat, red folds of his face. He stripped his gauntlets off hands as fat as sofa cushions, and, as soon as he had them off, struggled to put them on again, while all the time his eyes worried from face to face as though he did not know where he was, nodding from time to time as poor Whiteside tried to prompt and question him into repeating what the order, so urgent a minute before, was about—with a desperation that called forth pity not only for his master but for Whiteside himself, who must be the one to govern this territory under a madman while trying to conceal that madness from the world.