Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  “You are suspected of murdering McQuown,” she said, staring at him with her great, deep-set eyes. He saw in them how she had steeled herself to this.

  “Am I?” he said.

  He watched her maiden-aunt pose shatter. “Don’t—” she said shakily. “Don’t you see how terrible that is for Clay?”

  “There is always talk going around Warlock.”

  “Oh, you must see!” she cried. “Don’t you see that it is bad enough that people should think he had something to do with your going down there and—and—Well, and even worse, that—”

  “Why, I don’t know about that, Miss Marlow. I am inclined to think that whoever killed McQuown did Clay a favor. And you.”

  “That is a terrible thing to say!”

  “Is it? Well, Clay might be terrible dead otherwise.”

  She opened her mouth as though to cry out again, but she did not. She closed it like a fish with a mouthful to mull on. He nodded to her. “McQuown was coming in here with everything Clay would have had a hard time turning a hand against. I don’t mean a bunch of cowboys dressed up to be Regulators, either. I mean Billy Gannon and most of all I mean Curley Burne.”

  “They were dead,” she whispered, but she flinched back as he stared at her and he knew he had been right about Curley Burne.

  “Dead pure as driven snow,” he said. “Curley Burne, that is, and Billy Gannon not quite so pure but maybe pure enough because of the talk going around Warlock. McQuown was coming in with that and he could have come alone, only he didn’t know enough to see it. Clay would have been running yet. But since he wasn’t coming alone Clay didn’t have to run, and he may be the greatest nonesuch wonder gunman of all time but he wouldn’t have lasted the front end of a minute against that crew. The man who shot McQuown did him a favor. And you.”

  He heard her draw a deep breath. “Then you did kill McQuown,” she said, and now she was severe again, as though she had gotten back on track.

  He shrugged. Sweat stung in his eyes.

  “Well, that is past,” she said, in a stilted, girlishly high voice. “It cannot be undone. But I hope I can persuade you—” Her voice ran down and stopped; it was as though she had memorized what she was going to say to him in advance, and now she realized it did not follow properly.

  “What do you want, Miss Marlow?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What do you want of him?” he said. “I think you want to make a stone statue of him.”

  She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. “You cannot think me strange if I want everyone to think as highly of him as I do.”

  It was fair enough, he thought. It was more than that. She had cut the ground right out from beneath him with the first genuine thing she had said. She smiled up at him. “We are on the same side, aren’t we, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We are!” Still she smiled, and her eyes looked alight. She was not so plain as he had thought, but she was a curious piece, with her face not so young as the dress she affected and the style of her hair. But her eyes were young. Maybe he could understand why Clay was taken with her.

  “What if we are?”

  “Mr. Morgan, you must know what people think of you. Whether it is just or not. And don’t you see—”

  He broke in. “People don’t think as highly of him as they should. Because of me.”

  “Yes,” she said firmly, as though at last they had come to terms and understood one another. “And everyone is too ready to criticize him,” she went on. “Condemn him, I mean. For men are jealous of him. Too many of them see him as what they should be. I don’t mean bad men—I—I mean little men. Like the deputy. Ugly, weak, cowardly little men—they have to see all their own weaknesses when they see him, and they are jealous—and spiteful.” She was breathing rapidly, staring down at her clasped hands. Then she said, “Maybe I understand what you meant when you implied he would have been helpless against McQuown, Mr. Morgan. But he is helpless against the deputy, too, because you killed McQuown for him, and the deputy is in the right pursuing it.”

  Her eyes shone more brightly now. There were tears there, and he turned his face away. He had thought he could be contemptuous of her because of the different poses she affected—the faded lady, the maiden aunt, the innocent schoolgirl, the schoolmarm. What she was herself was lost among the poses, and must have been lost years ago. It did not matter to him that there was something piteous in all this, but he was shaken by the sincerity that shone through it all. He had not stopped to think before that she must love Clay.

  “He will attack Clay through you,” she went on. “He will do it so that Clay will either have to defend you or—Oh, I don’t know what!”

  He did not speak and after a moment she said, as though she were pleading with him, “I think we are on the same side, Mr. Morgan. I can see it in your face.”

  What she had seen in his face was the thought that he would rather have someone like Kate scratch his eyes out than Miss Jessie Marlow kiss them. But he could not scorn her concern for Clay. He sighed, removed his foot from the bale, and stood upright to light a cigar. He frowned at the match flame close to his eyes. She must think she was handling him as she would a bad actor among her boarders. “Well,” he said finally. “I guess I have a lien to pay off on that buggy ride, don’t I? What do you want? Me to pack on out?”

  She hesitated a moment. She licked her lips again with a darting movement of her tongue. “Yes,” she said, but he had seen from her hesitation that there was more to it and it angered him that she might be one step ahead of him. But he nodded.

  “So, since I am going anyway . . .” he said. He drew on the cigar and blew out a gush of smoke. She was working up one of her inadequate little smiles.

  He finished it. “He might as well post me out.”

  “Yes,” she said, in a low voice. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and touched it to her temples. Then she wound it around her hand.

  “I’d already thought of that. There is only one thing wrong with it.”

  “What, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Why, I don’t expect he’d want to. I don’t know if you’d understand why he wouldn’t want to, but I am afraid it would take some doing. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know! I—”

  “It would have to be something pretty bad,” he broke in. He eyed her with an up-and-down movement of his head. She flushed scarlet, but she was watching him closely nevertheless. There was no sound but the buzzing of the flies, and a creaking of buggy wheels in Grant Street.

  Finally she said, “Will you try to do something, Mr. Morgan? For my sake?”

  “No,” he said.

  She looked shocked. She flushed again. “I mean for his sake.”

  “If I can think of something.” All of a sudden rain splattered on the tile roof, with a dry, harsh sound like a fire crackling. He glanced up at the roof; a fine mist filtered through the cracks, cool upon his face. Miss Jessie Marlow was still staring at him as though she hadn’t noticed the rain.

  “Just one thing,” he said. “Saying I can think of something and they post me, and I run from him like the yellow dog I am. Afterwards can you let him be?” His voice sounded hoarse. “Can you let him bank faro in a saloon or whatever it is he wants to do? Can you let him be? There’ll be others that won’t, but if you—”

  “Why, of course,” she said impatiently. “Do you think I would try to force—” She stopped, as though she had decided he had insulted her.

  “Did you hear Curley Burne turning in his grave just now?” he said, and she flinched back from him once again as though he had slapped her. He saw the tears return to her eyes. But he said roughly, “You have been telling me a lot of things I ought to see—but you had better see this will be a place he can stop. If he wants to stop I will put it on you to let him. Understand me now!”

  Her expression showed that she was not going to quarrel with him, and, more than that, that s
he thought she had cleverly brought him to the idea of getting himself posted. He had been considering it all day, but it cost nothing to let her think there was no man she couldn’t get around.

  The rain rattled more sharply on the tiles, and she seemed to become aware of it for the first time. “Why, it’s raining!” she cried. She clapped her hands together. Then she got to her feet and put out a hand to him. He took it and she gripped his hand tightly for a moment. “I can promise you that, Mr. Morgan!” she said gaily. “I knew we were on the same side. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. I know you will do your part beautifully!”

  He gaped at her. She sounded as though he had promised to play the organ at her wedding and did not know how, but would learn, for her. He laughed out loud and she looked momentarily confused. But then she gathered up her skirts and ran out of the corral and through the pelting rain toward the back steps of the General Peach. She ran as a young girl runs, lightly but awkwardly.

  He put on his hat and went out into the rain, and his cigar sizzled and died. The rain beat viciously down on his hat and back from an oyster-colored sky. It made craters in the dust where it fell, and muddy puddles spread in the ruts. He walked back to the Western Star Hotel in the rain.

  57. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

  June 3, 1881

  IT HAS been most oppressively hot this last week or ten days, as though the sun were burning each day a little closer to the earth. Then this afternoon it rained, a brief and heavy downpour that turned the streets to mud. By tomorrow the mud will be gone, and the dust as fine and dry as ever. Yet we will have a spring: here there is a miniature spring of green leaves and blossoms appearing after any rain. This should cheer us, for all have been tense, or listless.

  Six weeks have passed since Whiteside made his promise to us. Buck feels we should set out immediately to put our threats into effect, but I have instead written a strong letter to Whiteside saying that in one more week we will do so. I am sure my further threats are worthless, but it allows me to procrastinate. Hart, more honest than I, readily admits he has no stomach for another journey to Bright’s City.

  The Sister Fan has had to put on a night crew. The water struck there at the lower levels has become a problem of increasing dimensions. They have a fifty-gallon bucket to bail out the excess and men must be kept working night and day to stay abreast of the flow. God-bold, the superintendent, says it looks as though expensive pumping machinery will have to be brought in. The Medusa strikers are, the doctor says, in despair over this (as they were previously over a rumor that Mexicans were to be brought in to work the idle Medusa), feeling that the Porphyrion and Western Mining Co. will not attempt to settle the strike until it is seen how grave is the water problem at the Sister Fan.

  All is quiet in the valley. The Cowboys, now apparently led by Cade and Whitby, have, according to report, descended into Mexico on a rustling and pillaging expedition. This is looked upon as foolhardy at the present time, since the border is supposedly under close surveillance.

  It is whispered that a board cross appeared briefly upon McQuown’s grave, with the inscription “murdered by Morgan.” In a way, I think, people have come to fear Morgan as they once feared McQuown. It is an unreasonable thing, and I suppose it is closely akin to the passions aroused in a lynch mob. Somehow he stands convicted of the murder of McQuown, and other murders as well, by some purblind emotionality for which there seems little basis in fact.

  There is talk of bad blood between Gannon and Blaisedell, this stemming, evidently, from the encounter they had when the miner who shot MacDonald took refuge, himself wounded, in the General Peach. No one seems to know what actually passed between them, but I have found from long experience that much smoke can be generated here from no fire at all. The human animal is set apart from other beasts by his infinite capacity for creating fictions.

  I must say that I myself have felt it necessary to change my own opinions of the deputy to a degree. I feel he is an honorable, though slow-moving man—a plodder. He has taken on a certain stature here—proof of which lies in the pudding of the speculation and of contention regarding him. He has become what none of the other deputies here has ever been—except possibly, and briefly, for Canning—a man to reckon with.

  MacDonald is in Bright’s City. I suspect he will soon return, and I suspect that he is plotting reprisal. He is indeed hot-headed enough to seek illegal means of punishing the strikers, who I am sure he feels conspired to take his life by means of a hired assassin. If he is fool enough, however, to attempt to convene his erstwhile Regulators again to this purpose, he will find an angry town solidly aligned against him. MacDonald has no friends in Warlock.

  So life in Warlock, with terrors more shadows at play upon the wall than actuality. The atmosphere remains a charged one, yet I wonder if it is not merely something that will go on and on without ever breaking into violence; if it is not, indeed, merely part of the atmosphere of Warlock, with the dust and heat—

  I spoke too soon. Another drought is ended. A gunshot; I think from the Lucky Dollar.

  June 4, 1881

  It is uncertain yet what provoked the shooting last night in the Lucky Dollar. Will Hart, who was present, says that Morgan suddenly accused Taliaferro of cheating, and, in an instant, had swung around and shot a half-breed gunman named Haskins through the head, and swung back evidently with every intention of shooting Taliaferro, who, instead of drawing his own pistol, sought to flee, and, on his hands and knees, was crawling to safety through the legs of the onlookers. Morgan, instead of pursuing him, had immediately to face the lookout, who had brought his shotgun to bear. All this, says Hart, took place in an instant, and Morgan was cursing wildly at Taliaferro for his flight and calling upon the lookout to drop his weapon, which order the lookout had the courage to ignore, or more probably, Hart says, was too paralyzed to comply with. The situation remained in this deadlock while Taliaferro made good his escape, and until Blaisedell, who had previously been present but had absented himself for a stroll along Main Street, burst back in.

  Blaisedell immediately commanded Morgan to drop his six-shooter, although, Hart says, Blaisedell did not draw his own. Morgan refused and abused Blaisedell in vile terms. Blaisedell then leaped upon his erstwhile friend and wrested his weapon from him, upon which, Morgan, evidently surprised by Blaisedell’s quick action and further infuriated by it, closed with the Marshal and a violent brawl ensued. Evidently Morgan sought to cripple Blaisedell a dozen times by some villainous trick or blow, but Blaisedell at last sent him sprawling senseless to the floor, and then carted him off for deposit in the jail as though he had been any drunken troublemaker.

  Last night the town was in part aghast, in part wildly jubilant, and the rumor sprang up immediate and full-blown that Blaisedell had posted Morgan out of town—people here are apt to forget that it is the Citizens’ Committee who posts the unworthy, not Blaisedell himself. The judge, however, was promptly summoned to hear Morgan on the murder of Haskins. Morgan claimed he had caught Taliaferro using a stacked deck. This is a strange argument. No doubt it is true, but in these engagements between master gamblers, such as the one that has been in progress for some time between Taliaferro and Morgan, it is clear to all that stacked decks are being used and the whole basis of the game becomes Taliaferro’s cunning in arranging a deck against Morgan’s cunning at ferreting out the system used. It has been said that Morgan was surpassingly clever at guessing Taliaferro’s machinations previous to this, but that for the last two days he has been losing heavily. Morgan also claimed that Haskins had, as Taliaferro’s gunman, attempted to shoot him in the back. Will says he could not have known this without eyes in the back of his head, but Morgan’s statement in this regard was supported by Fred Wheeler and Ed Secord, who swore that Haskins had indeed drawn his six-shooter as soon as Morgan had accused Taliaferro of cheating, and showed every sign of aiming a shot at Morgan. The judge could do nothing but absolve Morgan for the death of Haskins, and although Morgan had
clearly been bent upon Taliaferro’s speedy demise, he had been thwarted in this, and was culpable of nothing by our standards of justice, except creating a disturbance, for which he was given a night in jail.

  Gannon seems to have arrived in the Lucky Dollar while Morgan and Blaisedell were seeking to maim each other, but was fittingly nonparticipant throughout. I think it can be said of him that he knows his place.

  The hearing over, members of the Citizens’ Committee met stealthily to discuss the situation, and to remind ourselves that on the occasion of Blaisedell’s first encounter with McQuown and Burne, Blaisedell had warned the outlaws in violent terms against starting gunplay in a crowded place, where there was danger to innocent bystanders; the parallel was clear. Still in cowardly secrecy, a general meeting was called at Kennon’s livery stable. The secrecy was necessitated by the fact that we were not sure what Blaisedell’s attitude toward his friend now was, but we were one and all determined to seize the occasion at its flood and post Morgan out of Warlock, if possible. All were present except for Taliaferro, who was not sought, and the doctor and Miss Jessie, who, it was felt, would make us uncomfortable in our plotting.

  It was speedily and unanimously decided that Morgan should be posted. His actions had constituted, we told ourselves, exactly the sort of threat and menace to the public safety with which the white affidavit was meant to deal. The problem lay only in advising Blaisedell of our decision. It might suit him exactly, some felt, while others were afraid it would not suit him at all. Still, there are members of the Citizens’ Committee, whose names I shall not mention here, who, in the past weeks and even months, have become restive over Blaisedell’s high salary, or wish him gone for other reasons. They now began to speak up, each giving another courage, or so it seemed—I will not say more about them than that Pike Skinner had to be forcibly restrained from striking one of the more outspoken. Their attitude in general was that if Blaisedell refused to honor our instructions to post Morgan out, as he had done in the case of the miner Brunk, then he should resign his post. In the end their view carried, and I am sorry to say that I, in all conscience, felt I had to agree with them. Blaisedell is our instrument. If he will not accept our authority, then he must not accept our money.