Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  “Looks like all of them,” Bacon said, in an unhappy voice.

  “Send out and tell old Ike he and three others can come in.”

  Bacon went outside, and the judge drummed his fingers on the table top. Skinner glanced covertly at Gannon with mixed anxiety and disapproval. Mosbie chewed on a cheekful of tobacco and leaned on his shotgun. French and Hasty stood together against the rear wall. There was a silence outside, and a shuffling of feet. The top of a woman’s hat appeared among the sombreros, and men moved aside to let Kate Dollar through. She entered the jail, tall and richly curved in a black jacket and pleated skirt. There was a string of jet beads around her neck.

  “Here now, Miss Dollar!” the judge said. “This won’t do! This is no place for a lady. Now, see here!” he said, as she came on in. Gannon looked up.

  “Why not?” Kate Dollar said. “Aren’t ladies allowed in a court of law?”

  “Well, now—this isn’t any real court of law.”

  “Well, I am not a real lady, Judge,” Kate Dollar said, with a tight smile. There were titters behind her, and the judge pointed a finger at the men in the doorway.

  “Miss Dollar, it just won’t do. Dirty, stinking, foul-mouthed men—”

  “I don’t mind. Pretend I’m not here.”

  “Well, get a chair for her. You, Pike!” Skinner hurriedly set out a chair and she sat down, carefully spreading out her skirt and folding her hands in her lap. She looked once at Gannon, without interest.

  There was another disturbance outside and the men in the doorway parted again, this time to let through Wash Haggin and Quint Whitby, who were carrying old man McQuown on his pallet. Chet Haggin entered behind them, his face grave; the others were angry and wary. They set the pallet down and the old man raised himself on an elbow and gazed around him with venomous, grief-filled eyes that settled finally upon Gannon.

  “Well, Ike,” the judge said. “Lost your son.”

  Old man McQuown nodded curtly. His white beard had been brushed until it looked as fine and light as silk. “Never thought I would live to see it,” he said in his harsh voice. “Backshot by one he’d took in an orphan and befriended too. God damn your black Blaisedell-bought soul, Bud Gannon!”

  “Johnny says he didn’t shoot your boy. You prepared to swear he did?”

  “I God damn am!” old McQuown cried. “And how Blaisedell sent him to—”

  “We’ll have no cussing in here!” the judge said. “There is a lady present and this may not be any court of justice but we will pretend it is. All right now! Hearing’s in session and you are to show cause why Johnny Gannon ought to be sent up to Bright’s City to proper court, Ike McQuown. Now: I am nothing here but judge on acceptance, like I have said in here about three thousand times already. Johnny, are you going to accept me here?”

  “Yes,” Gannon said.

  “You, Ike?” the judge asked. “Being plaintiff?”

  Old McQuown nodded again.

  “Pike, you are appointed sergeant-at-arms. I’ll have the artillery collected and put by.”

  Skinner, moving as stiff-legged and cautious as a dog among unfriendly dogs, took six-shooters from the Haggins and Whitby, and then from the others inside the jail. He stacked the Colts on the table before the judge and hung Mosbie’s shotgun on the pegs on the wall. The judge had donned the steel-rimmed spectacles, from which an earpiece was missing. He held out the Bible to Skinner and nodded toward Gannon. “Swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, Johnny. Put your hand on the book and swear.”

  “I swear,” Gannon said, and Skinner turned with the Bible to old McQuown.

  “I swear,” old McQuown said contemptuously, and Skinner moved along to the others, who also swore.

  “All right,” the judge said. “Did you shoot Abe McQuown, Johnny Gannon?”

  “No,” Gannon said.

  “Who says he did?”

  “I say so,” old McQuown said. The judge looked at the others.

  “I say so!” Whitby and Wash Haggin said, at the same moment.

  “Tell me about it then, one of you,” the judge said, and leaned back in his chair. Old McQuown told how it had happened, in his harsh, fierce, old voice. “You saw him, huh?” the judge said, when he had finished. “You and these boys saw Johnny clear in the door there, did you?”

  “Said I saw him and swore to it,” old McQuown said.

  “I saw him clear, Judge,” Whitby put in.

  “All right. Now you tell it your way, Johnny.”

  Gannon told his version of what had happened, while old McQuown stirred and muttered and cursed to himself upon his pallet, Wash Haggin and Whitby scowled, and Chet Haggin bit his lip.

  “You drawed on Abe McQuown twice then, like Ike said?” the judge asked. “But you claim you didn’t go back there after leaving. Heard shots, though?”

  Gannon nodded. Pike Skinner was watching him closely, while Mosbie scowled back at Wash Haggin.

  “Did you say how you and Blaisedell was going to get even?”

  “No.”

  “He said it!” old McQuown cried. “Didn’t he, Quint?”

  “He said it all right,” Whitby said. There was a stirring and whispering among the spectators in the doorway. Kate Dollar stared at Whitby, and, when she caught his eye, shook her head a little. Whitby flushed.

  “You?” the judge said, to Wash Haggin.

  “Oh, he said it all right,” Wash Haggin said, evading Kate Dollar’s gaze.

  The judge shifted his attention to Chet Haggin.

  “I didn’t hear him say it,” Chet Haggin said.

  “You are saying he didn’t say it, then?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just didn’t hear it. He might’ve said it without me hearing it.”

  “Uh-huh,” the judge said. “Now,” he said to old McQuown. “You are not claiming Blaisedell was with him, are you?”

  “Might’ve been. I claim Blaisedell put him up to it.”

  “Swear it, you mean?” the judge said. “You can’t—”

  “Damned right I swear it!” old McQuown yelled. “And these boys’ll swear it too! It stands to reason, don’t it?”

  “Ike, I have told you once I’m not going to have any cussing in here. There is a lady present.”

  “What’s she doing here, anyhow?” Whitby growled.

  Kate Dollar smiled, and said in a clear voice, “I am trying to see if any of you boys will look me in the eye when you lie.”

  The judge slapped his hand down on the table. “Ma’am, you will keep hushed or I will clear you out of here!”

  Chet Haggin said, “Cousin Ike, I don’t see how you are going to swear to a thing like that. We don’t—”

  His brother swung around toward him angrily. “Chet, you know well enough Blaisedell put him up to it!”

  Old McQuown raised himself on his elbow again. “There is not a man in the territory that don’t know Blaisedell was out to kill my boy, and was out for it ever since he came here. Abe a peaceable, law-abiding boy that—”

  Someone in the doorway snickered loudly. The judge swung around and pointed a finger at the offender. “You! Get!”

  Old McQuown’s breathing sounded very loud in the silent room. He rubbed a hand roughly over his eyes. His voice shook as he continued. “Abe wouldn’t give him cause to pick a fight, not wanting to kill a man that was marshal even if he was pure devil. So Blaisedell couldn’t get at him, and he had to send a dirty, rotten, nose-picking backshooter of a—”

  “Never mind that,” the judge said. “That’s irrelevant and a matter of opinion too. Now, you say every man knows Blaisedell put Johnny Gannon to it?”

  “Said so.”

  “Well, now, Ike, maybe everybody knows it. But I will put it to you that everybody knows too how you and these same boys here, and your son, has gone up to Bright’s City to court and swore false I don’t know how many times to keep some of yours from prison or hanging for what they did and what everybody knew they did. Now what do you
say to that?”

  “By God!” old McQuown whispered. “By God, George Holloway, you are calling us liars!”

  “I am,” the judge said calmly. “Maybe not this time, but I say you have been other times. You just swore to me on the Bible to tell the whole truth, and I am asking you on your oath if you people haven’t been liars in court before this time.”

  Old McQuown didn’t speak.

  “You going to answer, Ike, or not?”

  “Be damned to you!” old McQuown said hoarsely.

  “Judge,” Chet Haggin said. “If you make us out liars it don’t make Bud there not one.”

  “No, it don’t. But the point I am making is that it don’t signify that the bunch of you is swearing one way, and him another.” The judge took off his glasses and tapped the earpiece against the Bible. Carefully he pushed the stack of six-shooters farther along the table. “Now, the next thing,” he said, “is how you all saw Johnny firing in through the door. Kicked it open, you said? And went right to shooting? He was seen clear?”

  “Swore to that already,” old McQuown said, in the hoarse voice.

  “You don’t mind if we run through it again, though—since I wasn’t there. Now there was light enough to see by, was there?”

  “Three lamps burning. Ought to’ve been.”

  “It was light enough, all right,” Whitby said.

  “But he didn’t come inside, did he? Thought you said he stayed outside and just kicked the door open.”

  “Said he was outside.”

  “Dark outside, though, wasn’t it?”

  Old McQuown did not reply. He looked from face to face around him, twisting his head so as to look Kate Dollar in the eye. He grunted scornfully, and lay back on his pallet, panting from the exertion.

  “Now, what I am trying to get at here,” the judge said, “isn’t just that every man knows how a man outside can see fine into a lit-up room, but a man in a lit-up room can’t see outside when it’s dark anywhere near as good. That’s not what I’m getting at.” He scowled and held up a hand as Whitby started to speak.

  “I am just trying to make certain you are sure of your man, is all,” he went on. “Now I am asking you to think back hard, Ike, and you, boys—in view of the fact there’s been some talk that Blaisedell rode down there himself the night Abe McQuown got murdered. I am asking you if you are absolutely dead certain sure that the man you saw shoot Abe McQuown down was Johnny Gannon here. I mean, since everybody knows Blaisedell was out to kill Abe by hook or crook, like you say. Now!”

  There was a sudden excited rustle of comment in the doorway. Whitby whispered triumphantly, “Why, by God, maybe it was at that! Say! Neckerchief pulled up over his face, but—” His eyes narrowed cunningly as he swung toward the old man. “Say, what do you think, Dad McQuown? By God if it wasn’t Blaisedell himself, come to think of it!”

  “You was closer to the door than the rest, huh, Quint?” the judge said.

  “Cousin Ike!” Wash Haggin said. “It is a trick!”

  “Hold on there!” old McQuown shouted. Pike Skinner grinned suddenly, and there was laughter from the men in the doorway. Whitby’s brown, fat face paled.

  The judge said mildly, “It is hard to see a man clear when he is out in the dark and you in the light.”

  “I say it was Bud Gannon!” old McQuown cried. “By God, if you have threw us down with this fool—”

  “Hush up, now,” the judge said. They shouted back and forth at each other until old McQuown gave up and lay back on his pallet in exhaustion again.

  “You just listen to me,” the judge said. “I am going to sum things up now, and I will have quiet in here to do it. Now, here is Johnny Gannon to swear one thing, and four to swear against him—and more outside that’ll do the same, I guess. But—”

  “Damned right they’ll swear the same!” Wash Haggin cried.

  “—but as I said before, it doesn’t signify. So now I’ll take up things brought in against Johnny Gannon. First how he and Blaisedell planned to kill Abe McQuown in a conspiracy. Dismissed. No evidence whatsoever, except everybody’s supposed to know it’s so.

  “Then there is that Johnny Gannon went down there and tried to pick a fight with Abe McQuown spang in front of fifteen or so of his friends and kin, drew on him, and all that. I just can’t believe it. No man with a speck of sense would do such a thing. Say he killed Abe like that, it’d been pure suicide in front of all those. It doesn’t stand to reason and I just don’t believe it is so.”

  “He did it!” old McQuown shouted.

  “Hush. Now the next thing, that he got stabbed through the hand somehow and went out swearing he would get even for it—that sounds reasonable, and I might believe it. And he might have said that he and Blaisedell was going to get even, knowing the people he was talking to was edgy about Blaisedell.

  “But this don’t get him to killing Abe McQuown, which is what is primary here. Whitby, and you, Ike, swear you saw him and it was Gannon. Only Whitby went and changed his mind a little—and I will admit I tried to fuddle him saying that about Blaisedell, who was in town that night for all to see, whatever rumors have got started about him. But now it turns out Whitby didn’t see quite so clear as he first made out, and now it turns out that the killer had a neckerchief over his face, as would be natural. Only the neckerchief got forgot about, first time you told it. So now it looks to me that since Whitby thinks it might be nice if it was Blaisedell after all, it must be he didn’t really see who it was, Gannon and Blaisedell not being two that look much alike. And so I figure that if Whitby didn’t see who it was at all, then nobody did, and I think you people have accused Johnny Gannon wrong and I think you know it!”

  He slapped his hand down on the table top with a report like a revolver shot. “Dismissed!” he said. “I say there is no evidence Johnny Gannon did it what-so-ever that would stand up in proper court, and I just don’t believe it!”

  Old McQuown spat on the floor. Whitby, red-faced still, laughed harshly, and Wash Haggin stared hard at Gannon.

  “Hearing’s adjourned,” Judge Holloway said hastily. He took off his spectacles and put them, the derringer, and the Bible away in the drawer. “So now you can tell me what you think of me without offending the court, Ike.”

  Old McQuown glared around the jail with eyes full of tears and hate. “My son is killed,” he said. “My son is backshot before my eyes, and not a man anywhere to do anything about it.”

  “There is plenty to do something, Cousin Ike,” Wash Haggin said.

  “I guess that is my place, Dad McQuown,” Gannon said suddenly. “I will be trying to find out who did it.”

  Old McQuown grunted as though in pain. He didn’t look at the deputy. “I reckon you won’t be doing anything if there is a man anywhere,” he said. He looked back at the judge. “Come here after justice, George Holloway, even knowing you was a Yankee.”

  “Ike,” the judge said gently. “You said you’d accept what I decided. Are you going to crawfish now?”

  “I am! Because I see my son shot down and the cowardly bugger that did it walk free!”

  “How many walked free because your son and his people went up to Bright’s City and perjured them off?” the judge said.

  “I trusted you, George Holloway,” the old man said, shaking his head. “And you have tricked and thrown us down today, and mocked an old man with his son dead. I come in here against my inclination, and these boys too. I thought soon or late we was going to have to face up to a change in things, but I see it is dog eat dog like always, and justice only what you make yourself.”

  “Bud,” Wash Haggin said to Gannon. “A man could say you did Curley a disservice swearing what turned him loose for Blaisedell to kill. The judge did you a disfavor the same just now, Bud. You are a dead man.”

  Kate Dollar sat up very stiffly. All eyes turned on Gannon.

  “Wash,” Gannon said. “You have known me—what did I ever do you’d think I’d do a thing like this?”
/>
  “Know what you turned into,” Wash Haggin said.

  “Chet,” Gannon said. “Maybe you will see that if every man is to think the worst he can think of every other man, then there is going to be no man finally better than that.”

  The muscles on Chet Haggin’s jaw stood out, but he did not answer. Wash Haggin said in a flat voice, “You won’t be around to see it get much worse, Bud.”

  “George Holloway,” said old McQuown, “I have known you awhile and you me. I tell you it is a shame on you. You have thrown me hard and by a poor trick. You don’t know what it is to lose your son and have it laughed in your face, and the bugger that did it tricked free.”

  “It’s not laughed in your face, Ike.”

  “Was, and right here. I say he was a good boy and peaceable, and they laugh and scorn me for saying it. He was sitting down there how long with every man to think him yellow for it—because he didn’t want to go against Blaisedell that was marshal here. Not a yellow bone in his poor dead body. Oh, I was as bad as the rest, I’ll say that right out; his own daddy was as bad as the rest, that was every one of them badgering at him to go against Blaisedell. When he knew it wasn’t the thing to do. Knew it better than me, God rest his soul, for I cared too much in my pride about what some coyotes thought of him. Blaisedell pushing on him and pushing on him, that only wanted to be left in peace and to do right, till finally he was pushed too far and his own best friend murdered by that murdering fiend out of hell. And he had to come then, there was nothing else for it.

  “And then Blaisedell sends his lick-spittle Judas down to gulch him rather than fight it fair down the street here. But there is no justice to be had. It is bitter, George Holloway, but I will swear something else I didn’t swear before because it would’ve only been laughed to scorn. I swear my boy will go to heaven and that foul devil to hell where he belongs and Bud Gannon along with him.”

  “And soon,” Whitby said, in a low voice.

  “That’s pled to another judge than me, Ike,” the judge said.