by Oakley Hall
The Marshal has not been looking well lately. Yet he seemed himself again in Petrix’s bank, as though he had recovered from an illness, and he had an air of ease and confidence about him that reassured us all. He did not, however, join us at the table—usually he sits to the right of Miss Jessie when she attends—but remained standing outside the counter while Petrix brought the meeting to order.
Jed Rolfe stated the premise: that we had, many times in the past, rejected the idea of a Vigilance Committee, but now, in his opinion, it was unavoidable.
Pike Skinner moved that a Vigilance Committee be established, he was seconded by Kennon, and the meeting was thrown open to discussion.
The doctor rose to state that it was obvious that the true mission of the Regulators was to punish, murder, or drive from Warlock the leaders of the Medusa strike; this had been their original purpose and was still their purpose, although now they saw that the Marshal would have to be disposed of before they could accomplish it, since he would most certainly stand in their way. MacDonald replied that the Regulators had been originally engaged to defend mine property, but that they were no longer in his employ, that he had no understanding with them whatsoever, nor did he hold patent to the title of Regulators. MacDonald then claimed, in his turn, that the doctor was responsible for a miners’ conspiracy against him, MacDonald, and was responsible for an outrageous and threatening set of terms upon which, a delegation of strikers had informed him, they would end the strike.
The doctor responded to this violently, and it was with some difficulty that Petrix restored order. Blaisedell was asked if he wished to speak, but he replied that he would rather hear us out before he expressed his own sentiments.
Will Hart obtained the floor and said with great seriousness that he knew what he was about to say would be unpopular, but that he must, in all honesty, speak out. He felt, he said, that it was the duty of the Citizens’ Committee to prevent bloodshed and not to form Vigilante Committees. The whole system of posting had, in his opinion, proved a failure, and had only led to the bloodshed it had been intended to prevent. He felt strongly that a battle with the Regulators should be avoided if it was humanly possible. This could be accomplished, although he was sorry to be the one to suggest such a thing, by Blaisedell quitting Warlock. The Regulators could then be sent word of this, and they would be deprived of their purpose, which now they could endow with a certain degree of righteousness.
He was afraid, he went on rather nervously, that this might be interpreted as cowardice on Blaisedell’s part. He, of course, knew that Blaisedell had no fear of McQuown—quite the opposite. As for himself, he would regard it as a much greater, and nobler, courage upon Blaisedell’s part were he to go and leave us in peace.
There was an instantaneous and outraged protest to this on every side. Miss Jessie cried out that Will wanted to drive Blaisedell out, and berated him with a violence that embarrassed us all. “After what he has done for Warlock!” she cried. “For everyone here! When all of us used to be afraid of being murdered on the street by a drunken Cowboy, and you speak of his leaving us in peace!” and so forth. She was out of order, but Petrix, usually the strictest of parliamentarians, was too dumbfounded to call her to order. She desisted only when Blaisedell called her name, and the doctor spoke quietly to her.
Jared Robinson stated loudly that he considered Will Hart’s idea a bad one and in bad taste, and that the rest of us apologized to Blaisedell for it. If Blaisedell departed, he said, Warlock would be thrown into chaos again, McQuown would be in the saddle, and any here who had been friendly with Blaisedell—and especially we of the Citizens’ Committee—would be in deadly danger. Succeeding speakers agreed with, and expanded upon, this, until MacDonald reiterated his former statement within this context: that chaos had already descended upon us, and had done so as soon as Blaisedell had permitted the miners to overrun him at the jail, in the attempt to lynch Morgan.
Miss Jessie promptly called him a liar, to which rebuke MacDonald knew better than to retort, although he was plainly infuriated by it. The doctor then said, with what was obviously a stern attempt to control his temper, that it took considerably more of a man to let himself be overrun by momentarily crazed (and with good reason, he added) creatures, than to fire among them as MacDonald no doubt would have preferred. But, he pointed out, Blaisedell, at the time of the attempt on Morgan’s life, had not been in our employ with the status of Marshal, and in any case, his object, which had been to save Morgan from a lynching rather than to preserve his own dignity, had been accomplished.
Judge Holloway, who had been sitting in a gloomy and alcoholic trance, now seemed to have accumulated enough strength to deliver one of his harangues. He rose, was recognized, and beat his crutch upon the floor for silence. He clung to the edge of the table, as fierce of mien (and as noisome of breath) as a vulture, and glared about him. He can be awesome enough, even when falling down drunk. He called us fools and said there was a man to deal with the present situation and it was not Blaisedell. There was a sheriff’s deputy in Warlock to uphold the law. There were, he said, always bloodthirsty fools to cry for a Vigilance Committee or a hired Vigilante, but Deputy Gannon was the one to deal with the Regulators.
His voice was drowned in a sudden burst of speculation as to Gannon’s whereabouts, and condemnation of him. Some thought him fled, some still in Bright’s City (as I did), others claimed he had gone to join McQuown’s forces. Pike Skinner informed us that Gannon had indeed gone to San Pablo, but with the announced intention of warning McQuown that he was not to come into Warlock; at which there were hoots of disbelief.
When order was restored, the Judge reiterated that the situation was the Deputy’s responsibility. Then, as is his custom, he began to rack us for our sins and presumptions. He accused us of inciting Blaisedell to the murder of an innocent man—to our considerable discomfiture, with Blaisedell present; he called us fools and mortal fools, idiots and monstrous idiots. He shouted down, in his wrath, all interruptions, and was, in short, magnificent in his fashion. I think I might have applauded him had not what he was saying been so painful.
He said to us, more temperately, that if we had not been blind we might have seen that we had almost had a man in Carl Schroeder, and that we unmistakably had one now, in Gannon. He expounded with painful sarcasm the complete illegality of Blaisedell’s position as Marshal, a point all too sore with the Citizens’ Committee. Not one of us had the temerity even to glance Blaisedell’s way while this diatribe continued, but at last Miss Jessie jumped to her feet and cried that he was no more a real Judge than Blaisedell was a real Marshal, and that he was a hypocrite to speak as he had.
The Judge replied that he was well aware of the fact that he was a hypocrite, and that he considered himself something worse than that for even belonging to the Citizens’ Committee. He added, “But I do not presume to send men to hang, Miss Jessie Marlow.”
Then, as Miss Jessie started to speak again, he gave her an awkward but courtly bow and said he refused to listen to her, for she was a special pleader, as everyone knew; and, finally, with the look of a man who has collected his courage to approach a rattlesnake, he turned to Blaisedell himself.
The Judge addressed Blaisedell deferentially at first, saying he had intended nothing personal by his remarks, and that his criticism was not so much of Blaisedell as of all of us. Soon, however, he recovered his hectoring style, and he raised his voice, lifted his crutch and shook it, and cried that Blaisedell was a crutch like the one he held, had been useful, and we should be grateful to him. But it was only an idiot who continued to use a crutch when the limb had grown whole. Including us all in his glare, he informed us that we no longer needed the crutch of an illegal gunman, that we had better begin properly using the law or it would wither away, and now we had a man to uphold the law, who was the deputy.
Petrix asked Blaisedell, who had been showing signs of wishing to speak, if he desired the floor. Blaisedell replied that he would like to a
nswer some of the things the Judge had had to say. As he spoke I saw Miss Jessie watching him with her great eyes, tugging a little handkerchief between her hands, and if ever I saw a woman’s heart in her eyes I saw it then.
Blaisedell’s face was very stern as he proceeded upon a track that surprised us. He said that he thought it would be a shame to put too much on the Deputy too soon. He said a new horse should not be racked too hard. “You will bust him to running, or kill him, putting too much on him,” he said, to the Judge. And he said, “He has stood up to every man here calling him a liar when he was not, but I don’t think he is able yet to stand off a wild bunch from San Pablo.”
He went on in this vein. But after we had grasped the fact that he believed that Gannon had not lied, and seemed to favor him—even though he did not feel he was qualified to stop McQuown yet—our comprehension of what he was saying ceased and we stared at him in confusion. I saw Buck Slavin’s jaw hanging open like that of a dull-witted boy, and Pike Skinner’s face grow fiery red. Miss Jessie had put her handkerchief to her mouth, and her eyes were round as dollars.
“Gentlemen,” Blaisedell said. “I have done some service here and I think you know it. But I think a good many of you are beginning to wish I would move along, and not just Mr. Hart.” He smiled a little then. “I had better, before you all start thinking of me like the Judge here does.”
Skinner and Sam Brown protested emotionally, as did Buck, but Blaisedell only smiled and went on to thank the Citizens’ Committee for having paid him well, and backed him as well as he could have wished. “But,” he said, “there is value in knowing when to move on. For the Judge is right in more ways than one, though I have argued with him and got as mad at him as the rest of you do.”
Blaisedell said, however, that he had one thing which he would ask of us. “I will ask you to let me handle McQuown and his Regulators my own way.” He said this in such a way that it was clearly a command for us to stay out of his affair. “It is my job,” he went on. “And he is coming after me, so it is my job two ways. If there are going to be Vigilantes I’ll ask that they stay out of it unless I go down.” He looked straight at MacDonald and said, “For I have been known to go down.”
There was a general gasp as it was realized that Blaisedell meant to stand alone, or perhaps only with Morgan, against the San Pabloites. A storm of exclamations and protests broke out, to which Blaisedell did not even attempt to reply, while Petrix exercised his gavel violently.
It was at this moment that Gannon made his entrance. He was freshly shaven, his hair neatly combed, but his upper lip was bruised and swollen and his face was drawn with exhaustion. I noticed that his right hand was bound up in a white cloth. He said, in a truculent tone, that there would be no Vigilantes in Warlock.
We were all as shocked at the arrogance of his first words as we had been at the implication of Blaisedell’s last ones. I had the impression, however, that Gannon had been steeling and rehearsing himself to his statement for some time, and was prepared, too, for a violent response to it. When there was none he seemed suddenly timid in our august presence.
In a more reasonable voice he said that he was sorry to butt in upon us, but that he had heard the Citizens’ Committee intended to form a Vigilante Troop, and he had come to inform us that there would be none of that in Warlock.
Jed Rolfe asked him if those had been his orders from McQuown.
Gannon replied without heat that he did not take orders from McQuown. Neither did he take them from the Citizens’ Committee. He had just come back from San Pablo, he said, whence he had ridden to tell McQuown there would be no Regulators. He was now telling us there would be no Vigilantes either. I felt a certain respect for the fellow then, thinking that he must not have pleased McQuown any more than he was pleasing us.
Skinner sneered that he would bet Gannon had scared McQuown out of his foolishness, and it was certainly nice that Warlock, and Blaisedell, had nothing to worry about. At this Gannon looked childishly angered and hurt. He said, however, that if McQuown did come in he would deputize whoever was needed to meet him, and reiterated his statement that there were to be no Vigilantes. I noticed that he studiously avoided Blaisedell’s eye.
Joe Kennon cried out that no one trusted Gannon enough to be deputized by him, to which Gannon replied that whoever he deputized would be deputized or go to Bright’s City to explain why not to the court. This exchange was followed by other angry statements, until Blaisedell interceded to say that it was his part to make a play against McQuown and whoever came in with him. “It is against me,” he said. “So it is me against them, Deputy.”
He spoke in a firm voice, and Gannon blanched noticeably. He stood still not facing Blaisedell, with his bandaged hand upon the counter and his forehead creased with what must have been painful thought. To our surprise he shook his head with determination.
“If it was just you against McQuown, I would keep out, Marshal,” he said. “I can’t when it is the whole bunch coming in and calling themselves Regulators.”
“Yes, you can,” Blaisedell said. It did not seem to me he said it particularly threateningly, but he drew himself up to his full height as he looked down at the Deputy.
Gannon, however, stood his ground. He said in an emotional voice, “I have told McQuown he is not to come in here with those people. I told him I will stop him if he does. I mean to stop them.”
With that he swung around to depart, and, although we waited breathlessly for Blaisedell’s reply, he made none. It was the Judge who broke the silence. “Hear! Hear!” he cried, in obnoxious triumph. His voice was drowned in the ensuing outcry, and Gannon was verbally flayed, drawn and quartered, and otherwise disposed of.
In the end, however, nothing was done about the Vigilance Committee.
April 19, 1881
I will confess that for a time I subscribed to a higher opinion of our Deputy than I had previously held. That was yesterday. Today the mercury of my esteem has sunk quite out of sight, for Gannon, in claiming he would stop McQuown from coming into Warlock, has perpetrated one of the most monstrous, grotesque, and completely senseless frauds of which I have ever heard.
Gannon is, in short, accused of murder. McQuown will not bring his Regulators into Warlock because he is dead, shot in the back, and Gannon is named by a host of witnesses as his murderer.
The Regulators have, indeed, arrived, but not in that role. They are pall-bearers, and Abraham McQuown is their charge. The story I have from Joe Lacey, who swears he was witness to it all.
As he informed the Citizens’ Committee yesterday, Gannon had ridden down to San Pablo the night before. He accosted the Regulators, who were gathered at McQuown’s, with the same brusquerie he showed the Citizens’ Committee at the bank. Hot words passed, and shortly, Lacey claims, Gannon drew his six-shooter on McQuown. Here I become a little dubious as to whether I am hearing the whole story, since drawing upon McQuown in the bosom of his friends sounds an act of incredible asininity. Be that as it may, McQuown then closed and tussled with Gannon, and, defending himself, stabbed Gannon through the hand, which accounts for the bandage we saw yesterday. Gannon was then allowed to depart, which he did ungraciously, calling back that he and Blaisedell would “get even.”
Lacey claims he thought Gannon might still be skulking about, for the dogs, which were locked up, had started barking when he first left the ranch house and were never entirely quiet thereafter, as though sensing a sinister presence. About an hour later the door was flung open and Gannon fired upon McQuown, who was standing with his back to the door, killing him instantly. He then fled, but not before he was recognized by old Ike McQuown, Whitby, and several others.
All crowded outside to fire after him in his flight, but pursuit was impossible, for he had unhitched the horses and these were stampeded by the shooting. By the time the mounts were recovered it was clearly useless to try to follow him, and some were afraid that Gannon had been accompanied by a whole party of murderers from Warlock, and
that he desired to be pursued so that he could lead the Cowboys into an ambush. There is no doubt in Lacey’s mind that Gannon was the assassin, for, although he did not see him himself, a number of others did.
The funeral party arrived not two hours ago. It was well known that the Regulators were coming, since they could be seen a long way off from the rim. Gannon had deputized, without the difficulty some had foreseen, more than twenty good men, whom he had stationed up and down Main Street and on the rooftops. He rode out alone to meet the Regulators and their funeral wagon as they came up the rim. I have not heard what transpired there, and am surprised they did not shoot him down on the spot, but he immediately returned to the jail and surrendered himself to Judge Holloway. He is to have a hearing shortly and will have another chance to appear and swear before the judge, this time not as a witness but as a defendant; Ike McQuown being plaintiff, a curious role for him.
This turn of events has staggered us all.
47. DAD MCQUOWN
JUDGE HOLLOWAY poked right and left with his crutch to clear a path for himself through the jail doorway. “Out of my way! Out of my way, damn you, boys!”
Inside, he glanced worriedly at Gannon, who leaned against the cell door looking listless, exhausted, and profoundly dejected. The judge glared around at Skinner, Bacon, Mosbie, and the others inside the jail. “Turn that table around for me,” he said.
It was done and the judge sat down with his back to the door. His crutch fell with a clatter as he moved his chair, and, grunting, opened the drawer against his belly and took out his Bible, derringer, and spectacles. There was a continual mutter of talk from the men crowded into the doorway.
“I will have some order here!” the judge said, and slammed his hand down on the table top. “Or I will clear you people out into the street. Now, I am not going to have that whole bunch from San Pablo in here cluttering, either. Anybody hear who was witnesses in particular?”