Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  I will put down, then, what I think: that McQuown carefully chose the time, the place, the occasion; that this was deeply premeditated; that McQuown is not merely high-spirited, mischievous, careless, that he is not simply a spoiled and willful youth; that, further and specifically, McQuown was jealous of what his henchman Billy Gannon had won for himself by dispatching an obnoxious bully of a deputy, and sought to repeat a winning trick.

  About a month ago, Canning buffaloed a young Cowboy named Harms. It was a Saturday night and Harms was in town with a month’s pay, which he promptly lost over Taliaferro’s faro layout. With whisky under his belt and no more money in his pocket, and so nothing to do for excitement, Harms vented his feelings by proceeding to the center of Main Street and firing off his six-shooter at the moon—for which he is not much to be blamed. Canning, however, accosted him, for which the deputy was not to be blamed either, and, at some danger to his person, grappled with Harms in order to relieve him of the offending Colt’s. In the end he had to clout the boy over the ear with the weapon to quiet him, which is acceptable practice. Canning then bore Harms off to see Judge Holloway, who presented him with a night’s accommodation in the jail. Released the next morning, Harms started back down valley, but was thrown from his horse en route, was dragged, and died. No doubt his death was in good part brought about by the buffaloing he had received.

  It was too bad. We felt badly, those who thought of it at all, and I am sure Canning was as sorrowful as anyone. Still, in this rough-and-tumble corner of creation, such things will happen, and are usually considered no more than too bad.

  I think there is some East Indian doctrine to the effect that our fate is shaped in the most inconsequential of our acts, and so it was with poor Canning. Enter, then, a further minister of providence, a week or ten days later, in the person of Lige Harrington, a braggart, blow-hard fellow more ridiculous than dangerous, but a minor hanger-on of McQuown’s. Harrington announced himself a bosom friend of Harms, and his avenger. Harrington was patently seeking to make himself a reputation at Canning’s expense, and to give himself prestige among the San Pabloites. Well primed with liquid courage, Harrington sought Canning’s demise, but was dispatched in short order, crated, and immured upon Boot Hill.

  Again, I think, no one was much concerned. This sort of asinine bravado must be the bane of any peace officer’s existence. Yet I wonder if Canning did not have a fearful vision of how Right carries the seeds of Wrong within it, and Wrong its particular precariousness for a man in his position. For what are Right & Wrong in the end, but opinion held to? Certainly there were men who said that Canning had murdered the unfortunate Harms, and so had murdered Harrington his avenger, bad rubbish or not. Is not the semblance of guilt, however slight the tinge, already a corruption?

  And I wonder if Canning did not feel the web beginning to encase him and the red spider gently shaking the strands. For soon rumors started. Canning had better get out of town. The threat was nameless at first, but after a time it was joined with McQuown’s name. What other name would do?

  I had heard rumors of impending trouble between Canning and McQuown, and dismissed them as idle gossip. At some point, I cannot say when, I realized they were not; I realized it as Warlock itself did, with a jerk to deadly anxiety as of a rope pulled suddenly tight and singing with strain. I have said that Canning was a prudent man. Had he been prudent enough he would have left town as soon as these rumors started, while still he could have done so without too great a loss of face. Yet he had come too far along the course. He had his own reputation as man and gunman now. He was caught in his own web as well as in McQuown’s. He did not get out in time, and McQuown came in from San Pablo day before yesterday with all his men.

  They hurrahed the town that night. Not so wildly, though, as to be much out of the ordinary, and I see that, too, as cunning upon McQuown’s part: there was cause, but perhaps not urgent or completely justifiable cause (by our standards!), for Deputy Canning to step in. But Canning made no trouble; we did not see him abroad that night.

  By then, however, the handwriting was etched upon the wall for all to see, and early yesterday men were loitering in the street, and Canning was early at the jail. I watched from my window as avidly as the rest of Warlock, in that crackling deadly tension, waiting for the trouble to start.

  It was noon before McQuown came down the center of Main Street in his shining sugar-loaf hat and his buckskin shirt, stepping with disdain through the powdery dust. He fired into the air and shouted his taunts, such as, “Come out into the street, for you have murdered too many good men!” etc. Canning came out of the jail and I retreated—no more cowardly, I say in defense of myself, than any other citizen of Warlock—from my store to my rooms upstairs where I could watch from a more protected coign of vantage. There I watched Canning advance unfalteringly down the street toward McQuown. Once he looked back, and I saw behind him, almost hidden in the shadows under the arcade—two men. One from his short stature I knew to be Pony Benner, the other I have heard since was Jack Cade, both henchmen of McQuown’s.

  Canning came on still, but a few yards more and his steps slowed. They quickened again, but not with courage. He ran down Southend Street and got his horse from the Skinner Bros. Acme Corral, and fled Warlock.

  My eyes smarted with rage and shame that there was not a man in Warlock to get out in the street with a Winchester and face down those devils behind him, and to see McQuown tip his white hat back on his head and laugh, as though he had won a trick at cards. My eyes smart still.

  Last night honest men barricaded their doors, and no lights were left burning for fear they would be shot at. The Cowboys roamed the street and quarreled, and loudly joked, and shot at the moon to their hearts’ content. They only quieted, like stallions, when they trooped off to the French Palace and the cribs along Peach Street. After a brief respite their unholy din began again, and lasted until morning, when the wagons that transport the miners out to the mines were held up, and the mules set loose and chased out of town. The doctor’s buggy was commandeered and put to a wild race down Main Street against the water wagon, and many other pranks were played. Before noon they had departed for San Pablo with much hilarity, leaving our poor barber dying at the General Peach with a bullet through his lungs. Pony Benner shot him, evidently because he cut Pony’s cheek while shaving him.

  So the wild boys have had their fun, and played their mischievous games, driving a good man from this town, and murdering a poor, harmless fellow whose razor slipped because he was deadly afraid.

  I think we would have done nothing about Canning, for his shame was ours. McQuown must know our cowardice well, and count on it, and despise us for it. So he should, and so should we despise ourselves. Yet, as with Canning, an inconsequential act may have set in train forces of adversity against McQuown. Our little barber’s death has caused a congealing of feeling and determination here such as I have never seen before. If we cannot give voice to our indignation over Canning’s shame, since it is too much our own, we can cry out in righteous wrath against the murder of the barber.

  The Citizens’ Committee meets tonight, called upon to defend Warlock’s Peace & Safety, not righteously, only sensibly, for as this town is affected adversely by anarchy, violence, and murder, so are we, its merchants. Furthermore, Warlock has no other possible protector. It is to be hoped that the Citizens’ Committee can, on this occasion, pull itself together and gain for itself, at last, the name of action.

  The original organization, from which the Citizens’ Committee sprang, was perhaps more fittingly titled the Merchants of Warlock Committee, including Dr. Wagner in his capacity as proprietor of the Assay Office, Miss Jessie in hers as boardinghouse mistress, and the judge as the operator of a commercial enterprise in his judgeship.[1] Some time ago, however, when it became obvious that the granting of a town patent, and so of some measure of government, to Warlock, was not imminent, it was resolved that the original committee be expanded into something mor
e. Since we were the only organization that existed, except for the Mine Superintendents Assn., we, the merchants, seemed the ones to initiate some sort of pro-tem governing assembly.

  The old town-meeting style of government was immediately proposed. The suggestion was met with high democratic enthusiasm, which, however, waned rapidly. I, who made this proposal myself, immediately came to regard it as patently unworkable here, in a place where passions in all things run high, and men go armed as they wear hats against the sun, and where such a large proportion of the inhabitants is of the ignorant and unwashed class, if not actual renegades from the law elsewhere.

  There are, for instance, the miners, the bulk of the town’s population. Are they intelligent and responsible enough to be entrusted with the vote? They are not, we feel, perhaps a little guiltily. Then there are the brothel, gambling, and saloon interests; it is true that Taliaferro and Hake belonged to the Merchants Committee, but could we afford to give them and their disreputable employees proportionate power over the more decent citizenry? The question also arose as to how extensive the city-state should be. If it were to include ranchers from the San Pablo valley, what of such as Abe McQuown, not to speak of the Haggins, Cade, and Earnshaw, all of them landholders at least in a small way, and at the same time Warlock’s scourges?

  Our projected state was thus gradually whittled down, to become a kind of club restricted to the decent people, the right-thinking people, the better class of citizens; became, ultimately, restricted to the merchants of Warlock—ourselves; with a few additions, for Warlock had grown meanwhile; and a new name: The Citizens’ Committee of Warlock. Now we must act, or abandon all claim to that name.

  The situation is indeed fantastic. Keller[2] never appears here. We are none of his concern, he says firmly. When given argument by various volunteers passing through Bright’s City, or by any of the numerous subcommittees that have been assigned to plead with him and General Peach[3] himself on the subject of law enforcement here, Keller gives it as his opinion that the country beyond the Bucksaws is not properly Bright’s County at all, and that General Peach and his aides are presently working on boundaries of the new county, which will soon be established. Warlock will then be given a town patent, and will, of course, be the county seat. This will be any day, he says; any day, he repeats, and again repeats—but it has not been yet. Keller points out, when badgered further, that he did not campaign for our votes when running for his office, and promised us nothing, which is true; and that he has given us deputies, when they could be hired, which also is true enough.

  Despairing, consequently, of aid from above, savaged beyond patience by McQuown and his San Pablo crew, some of us of the Citizens’ Committee have decided that we must put it strongly in meeting tonight that our only solution is to hire a Peace Officer on a commercial basis. This is common enough practice, and there are a number of renowned gunmen available for such positions if the pay is high enough. They are hired by groups such as we are, or by town councils in luckier and more legitimate localities, and paid either a monthly fee or on a bounty system.

  Something must be done, and there is no one to do it but the Citizens’ Committee. It will be seen tonight whether the determined among us outnumber the timid. I think not a man of us has not been badly frightened by Canning’s flight, and fear can engender its own determination.

  August 26, 1880

  At last, it seems, Something Has Been Done. The meeting last night was quiet and brief; we were of one mind, except for Judge Holloway. We have sent for a man, a Marshal, and have obliged ourselves to open our pocketbooks in order to offer him a very large sum of money monthly. He is Clay Blaisedell, at present Marshal in Fort James. I know little of his deeds, except that it was he who shot the Texas badman, Big Ben Nicholson, and that his name at present is renowned—names such as his flash up meteor-like from time to time, attaching to themselves all manner of wild tales of courage and prowess.

  We have made him a peerless offer, for what we hope will be a peerless man. Such, at least, is our prospective Marshal’s reputation, that he was one of the five famous law officers to whom Caleb Bane, the writer, recently presented braces of gold-handled Colt’s Frontier Models, as being most eminent in their field, and so, no doubt, most lucrative to Bane as a chronicler of deeds of derring-do. A fine act of gratitude on Bane’s part, certainly, although it is cynically rumored that he asked for their own many-notched pacifiers in return, and from the sale of these to collectors of such grim mementoes realized a very tidy profit on the transaction.

  So Clay Blaisedell has been sent for—not to be Marshal of Warlock, for there is no such place, and no such position, legally; but to be Marshal acting for the Citizens’ Committee of an official limbo.[4] This is our third, and most presumptuous, action as the government-by-default of this place—the local government “on acceptance,” a term Judge Holloway often uses to refer to himself as a judge, who has no legal status either. Our first act was to build Warlock’s little jail by subscription among ourselves, in the hope that the presence of such a structure might have a steadying influence upon the populace. It has had no such effect, although it has proved useful on at least two occasions as a fortress in which deputies were able to seek refuge from murderously-inclined miscreants. Our second was to purchase a pumping wagon, and to guarantee a part of the salary of Peter Bacon as jointly the driver of Kennon’s water wagon and as Fireman in Chief. Taxes are no less painful under another guise.

  I write with levity of what have been serious decisions for small men to make, but I am elated and hopeful, and the members of the Citizens’ Committee, if I am representative, feel a great pride in having overcome our fears of offending the Cowboys, and our natural reluctance to part with any of the profits we extract from them, from the miners, and from each other, and at last having made an attempt to hire ourselves a Man. It will be the luck of the camp to have its savior ventilated by road agents en route, and arrive here boots before hardware.

  He is to be hired, as we said last night, to enforce Law & Order in Warlock. He is actually to be hired, as no one said aloud, against the San Pabloites. What one man is to do against the legion of wild Cowboys of McQuown’s kin or persuasion, we have, of course, asked ourselves. The question being unanswerable, like sensible men we have stopped asking it. We do not demand Law & Order so much as Peace & Safety, and a town in which men can go about their affairs without the fear of being shot down by an errant bullet from a gun battle no concern of theirs, or of incurring in a trifling manner the murderous dislike of some drunken Cowboy. Warlock’s Marshal will have to be a Warlock indeed.[5]

  It is not known when Blaisedell will arrive here, if he accepts our offer, which we are certain he will. At any rate we pray he will. He is our hope now. I think we must have, in him, not so much a man of pure, daredevil courage, but a man who can impart courage to this town, which is, in the end, no more than the sum of every one of us.

  September 1, 1880

  Evidently Canning managed to pass on some of his limited portion. Carl Schroeder, who was, I understand, Canning’s closest friend, has given up his position as shotgun messenger for Buck Slavin’s stage line, to undertake the post of deputy here at one-third the pay. He is a fool. God protect such fools, for we will not.

  September 8, 1880

  Blaisedell has accepted our offer! He will be here in about six weeks. This delay is unfortunate, but presumably Fort James must be possessed of a suitable substitute before he departs. On the other hand, McQuown and his gang are reported in Mexico on a rustling expedition, so Warlock may still be inhabited when our new Marshal arrives.

  September 21, 1880

  A gambler named Morgan has arrived, and purchased the Glass Slipper from Bill Hake, who has departed for California. The new proprietor of Warlock’s oldest gambling and drinking establishment has brought with him two attendants; a huge, wall-eyed fellow who serves as lookout and general factotum; and a tiny, bright, birdlike man of whose function I wa
s uncertain until it developed that Morgan had imported for his shabby and run-down establishment (besides a fine chandelier, which much enhances the interior of the Glass Slipper), a piano, and the Little Man is its “professor.” It is Warlock’s first such instrument, and the music issuing from the saloon is a wonder and joy to Warlock, and a despair to Taliaferro and the Lucky Dollar. It is rumored that Taliaferro will now bring in a piano himself, either for the Lucky Dollar or the French Palace on the Row, to meet the competition.

  Morgan is a handsome, prematurely gray fellow, of a sardonic aspect and reserved nature. His deportment, as a newcomer, has been subject to much comment, and his manner with his customers seems bad business practice, in a place where men are apt to be friends or enemies. But his “professor’s” music remains much admired.

  October 11, 1880

  McQuown and several of his comrades have been back in town twice now—not including Benner, the barber-killer. They have been very much on their good behavior, as though ashamed of their last excesses here, and aware of the hostile attitude toward them that now generally obtains. Or else McQuown may be aware that we have hired a Nemesis.

  [1] The Citizens’ Committee at this time consisted of the following members: Dr. Wagner, Miss Jessie Marlow, Judge Holloway, Goodpasture (the General Store), Petrix (Warlock and Western Bank), Slavin (the Warlock Stage Co.), Pike Skinner (the Acme Corral), Hart, Winters (Hart and Winters Gunshop), MacDonald, Godbold (superintendents, respectively, of the Medusa and Sister Fan mines), Egan (the Feed and Grain Barn), Brown (the Billiard Parlor), Pugh (Western Star Hotel), Kennon (Kennon’s Livery Stable), Rolfe (Frontier Fast Freight), Swartze (the Boston Café), Robinson (lumber yard, carpenter shop, and Bowen’s Sawmill), Hake (the Glass Slipper), and Taliaferro (owner of the Lucky Dollar and the French Palace).