Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  Pike said abruptly, “It was Billy shot Ted.”

  “He was shooting at me,” Billy said, in a harsh voice, from the cell. “What was I supposed to do, sit and let him do it?”

  “Carl,” Pony said. “You are not going to let those bastards take us out of here, are you, Carl?”

  “Shut your face,” Pike said. “You chicken-livered ugly little son of a bitch.”

  “Thought you wanted me to let you go,” Carl said. “Thought you told me I might as well, for a jury up at Bright’s would do it anyhow. Save me trouble, you said.”

  “I got something to tell you, Bud Gannon,” Calhoun said. “Come over here so’s I can whisper it.”

  “Never mind,” Billy said. “Never mind, Bud.”

  Gannon didn’t look toward the cell, leaning against the wall where the names were scratched, and watching within himself the slow turn of the cards, knowing each one as it turned. He stared at the goblin faces at the window and listened to the shouting and muttering outside. It was the only card he had not foreseen.

  “You are so God-damn sure you caught your road agents!” Pony yelled.

  “Hush!” Carl said.

  “Be damned if I do! You got the wrong people! You—”

  Carl got up, swung swiftly and hit Pony in the face through the bars. Pony fell backward, cursing.

  “Wrong people!” Carl said, rubbing his knuckles. “You just happened to pick up that strongbox where somebody else dropped it, I guess.”

  “One wrong, though,” Calhoun said quietly, and laughed; he moved back as Carl raised his fist again. Gannon stared in the cell at Billy and he felt his heart swell and choke him again; he had almost missed another card. Billy just looked back at him, scornfully.

  “Listen to those boys yell out there,” Pike said.

  Gannon started and Carl reached for the shotgun as there was a knock. Carl motioned to Gannon to unbolt the door. It was the Mexican cook from the Boston Café; he slipped in, carrying a tray covered with a cloth. The men outside set up a steady whooping, and the Mexican looked very frightened as he put the tray down and departed. As Gannon swung the door closed behind him he had a glimpse of the vast, dark mass in the street, and groups of pale, whiskered faces showing here and there by lanternlight. Someone was haranguing them from the tie rail at the corner. He bolted the door again.

  Carl passed bowls of meat and potatoes into Calhoun. Pony threw his to the floor. “Go hungry then,” Carl said.

  Pike took a steak in his hand and wolfed it down, and Carl attacked his hungrily too. Gannon set his plate on the floor beside him. There was another round of shouting outside, with one voice rising above the rest. The words were lost in the uproar. The faces at the window had vanished.

  “Bud,” Billy said. Pony and Calhoun had retreated into the darkness. Gannon felt Pike Skinner watching him. “What the hell would you do, Bud?” Billy said. “People after you and throwing lead all over the landscape. What the hell would you’ve done?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. Carl was pretending not to listen.

  Pike said, “You might’ve thought how come there was a posse after you in the first place.”

  Gannon saw Billy’s face twist, and something in him twisted with it. Another yell went up outside, and Pony appeared at the cell door again.

  “Sit there and lap your supper!” he shrilled at Carl. “They are coming! Can’t you hear them coming?”

  “We’ll stop them,” Carl said, “if they come. You can quit wetting your pants.”

  “Bud,” Billy said again.

  “Never mind it now, Billy,” Gannon said tightly. Pike glowered at him from the chair beside the alley door. Carl sat hump-backed at the table, forking food into his mouth.

  “Long ride to Bright’s,” Carl said, over a mouthful. “You boys in there better get some sleep.”

  “We’ll never get to Bright’s!” Pony cried.

  “Oh, hush that!” Calhoun said.

  Bud—Gannon could hear it, repeated and repeated, although Billy hadn’t spoken again. Reluctantly he turned his head to look at Billy again, and he saw Billy’s lips tilt beneath the pitiful young mustache. “Go ahead and say you told me what I was heading for,” Billy whispered. “Go ahead, Bud.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “No good,” Billy said, and disappeared. The cot springs creaked. Gannon could hear them whispering in the cell. “Why don’t you tell him?” he heard Calhoun say; then the tumult outside grew suddenly louder, and faces were pressed against the window again.

  Someone beat on the door with the flat of his hand. “Carl!”

  Carl grunted and rose. He wiped his mustache, hitched at his shell belt, and glanced significantly at Gannon and Skinner. He took up the shotgun and nodded at Gannon to unbar the door.

  Gannon did so, and leaped back, jerking his Colt free as the door burst inward. Two men hurtled in, to stop suddenly as they saw Carl’s shotgun. There was a knot of others jammed in the doorway, and behind them Gannon could feel the whole huge and violent thrust of the mob. Pike leaped forward with his Winchester in his hands. Outside they were whooping steadily again.

  “You are going to have to give them up, Carl,” Red Slator said loudly, as he and Fat Vint backed up to join the others in the doorway. Close behind these two, Gannon could see Jed Smith, a foreman at the Thetis, Nate Bush, Hap Peters, Charlie Grace, who was one of Dick Maples’ bakers, Kinkaid, a cowboy from up the valley, several miners, and Simpson and Parks, who were both macs for some of the crib girls. Their faces were grim. Fat Vint looked drunker than usual.

  “Get out of here, you miserable sons of bitches!” Carl said.

  “You can’t stop us!” Charlie Grace shouted, and cheers went up from the dark, featureless mass behind them.

  “See if I don’t,” Carl said. “If you think a bunch of pimps and drunk bullprods is going to bust this jail, you are mistaken. Get out of here!”

  “We will tramp you down!” Vint yelled blusteringly. “You hear, Pike?” He looked at Gannon with his bloodshot pig-eyes, and sneered, “And you’ll keep out of it if you know what’s good for you, Johnny Gannon.”

  “Get out of here!” Carl said, in a level voice.

  “We’ll get out of here taking them with us!” Slator said. “We are going to hang the murdering bastards and bust over you if we have to, Carl Schroeder. You know what’ll happen at Bright’s; by God, everybody knows. They’ll get off sure as hell, with McQuown to send up lying hardcases by the dozen and scare the jury green too. You know that, Carl!” The men in the doorway began all to shout at once, and the shouting gathered power outside until the whole world seemed to be shouting.

  Carl waited until the noise had subsided a little; then he said, “Red, I’d like to see them hang as much as you. I caught them and lost Ted Phlater doing it.” His voice rose. “And we went out and caught them while you and this bunch was sitting on your slat-asses drinking whisky. So I will be damned if you will take them off us now the hard work is done! Now get!”

  He jammed the shotgun against Slator’s chest and Slator backed up. Vint grabbed at the shotgun and Gannon slammed the barrel down on the fat hand. Vint yelped. Pike started forward, and, feinting blows with the butt of the Winchester, drove them all back through the doorway.

  “Tromp them down! Tromp them down, fellows!”

  “Christ, give us something to help stand them off with, Bud!” Calhoun cried.

  They pushed the mob leaders before them out the door, and the crowd in the street gave way. Then it surged forward again with a wild yelling. Hands caught Carl’s shotgun and pulled him forward. He stumbled to his knees, then fought and scrambled back away from the men crowding in on him. Gannon fired twice into the air. Someone yelled in terror and the mob fell back again.

  The three of them stood close together before the jail door. Carl was panting.

  “They won’t shoot!” a hoarse voice yelled from the rear of the mob. “They know better than to shoot!�
�

  “Give us a God-damned iron, Carl!” Calhoun shouted.

  “Good Christ, Carl, for Christ’s sake, give us a gun to hold them off with! Bud!”

  “Don’t be a damned fool, Carl!” Slator said.

  “Get the hell out of the way, Johnny Gannon! You two-way son of a bitch!”

  “What the hell are you doing, Pike? Leave us take them!”

  Slator, Vint, and Simpson started forward again; Vint was grinning. “You dassn’t shoot, Carl!”

  “One step more,” Carl panted.

  “Give us a chance, Carl!” Pony screamed.

  “One step more, you bastards!” Pike said, and Gannon started to swing his Colt at Simpson’s head.

  There were three shots in rapid succession from Southend Street, and then silence, sudden and profound. Craning his neck, Gannon saw men hurrying to get off the boardwalk, and Blaisedell appeared, walking rapidly, the Colt in his hand glittering by lanternlight. A whisper ran through the crowd. “The marshal!” “Blaisedell!” “Here comes the marshal!” “It is Blaisedell!”

  Blaisedell joined them before the jail. “Need another man?” he said.

  “Surely do,” Carl said, and let out his breath in a long, shaking, whispering laugh. “We surely do, Marshal.”

  “We are taking those road agents out to hang, Marshal!” someone cried from across the street.

  “You are not going to stop us, Marshal!” Fat Vint blustered. “We will tromp you with the rest. We are—”

  “Come here and tromp me,” Blaisedell said.

  Vint stepped back. Those around him retreated further.

  “Come here,” Blaisedell said. “Come here!” Vint came a step forward. His face looked like gray dough.

  “This is none of your put-in, Marshal!” someone yelled, but the rest of the mob was silent.

  “Come here!” Blaisedell said once more, dangerously. Vint sobbed with fear, but he came on another step. Blaisedell’s hand shot up suddenly, the Colt’s barrel gleaming as he clubbed it down. The fat man cried out as he fell. There was silence again.

  “Damn you, Marshal!” Slator cried. “This is none of your—”

  “Come here!” Blaisedell said. When Slator didn’t move he fired into the planks at his feet. Slator jumped and yelled. “Come here!” Slator moved forward, trying to cover his head with his hands. Blaisedell slashed the gun barrel down and he staggered back. Hands caught him and he disappeared into the crowd.

  “Take that one off, too,” Blaisedell said, and the same men hurriedly dragged Vint off the boardwalk.

  “You have done McQuown’s work tonight, Blaisedell!” a man yelled.

  “If you have got something to say, step up here and say it,” Blaisedell said, not loudly. “Otherwise skedaddle.” No one spoke. There was a movement away down Main Street. “Then all of you skedaddle,” Blaisedell said, raising his voice. “And while you are doing it think how being in a lynch mob is as low a thing as a man can be.”

  There was bitter muttering in the street, but the mob began to disperse. Blaisedell holstered his Colt. Gannon could see his face in profile, stern and contemptuous, and thought how they must hate him for this. But he had saved shooting; he had probably saved lives.

  Carl was mopping his face with his bandanna. “Well, thank you kindly, Marshal,” he said. “I expect there isn’t a one in there worth any man’s trouble. But damned if you don’t hate to be run by a bunch of whisky-primed, braying fools like that.”

  Blaisedell nodded. Pike Skinner, Gannon saw, was looking at the marshal with a reluctant awe on his face.

  “Prisoners get a scare?” Blaisedell asked.

  “Caterwauling like a bunch of tomcats in there,” Carl said, and chuckled breathlessly.

  Blaisedell nodded again. Suddenly he said, with anger in his voice, “A person surely dislikes a mob like that. They are men pretending they are brave and hard, but every one so scared of the man beside him he can’t do anything but the same.” He glanced from Pike to Gannon. “Well, I didn’t go to butt in so,” he said, as though apologizing. “I expect you boys could’ve handled it. It is just I surely dislike a mob of men like that.”

  “I guess we couldn’t’ve handled it, Marshal,” Pike said. “Things had got tight.”

  Gannon said, “I guess we would’ve had to go to shooting,” and Blaisedell smiled with a brief, white show of teeth below his mustache. He made a curt gesture of salute, as though acknowledging that as the proper compliment.

  The four of them stood in awkward silence, watching the men drifting away before them in the darkness. Then Carl turned and went inside, and Pike followed him. When the others had gone, Blaisedell said to Gannon, “Your brother was with them, I heard.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Too bad,” Blaisedell said. “Young fellow like that.” Blaisedell stood with him a moment longer, as though waiting for him to speak, but he could think of nothing to say and after a time the marshal said, “Well, I’ll be going.” With long strides he faded off into the darkness.

  Gannon slowly turned back inside the jail. His clothes were soaked with sweat. Billy stood alone at the cell door. “Well,” Carl was saying to Pike, leaning against a corner of the table with his arms folded over his chest, “good lesson on how to run off a mob. Haul them out and knock their heads loose one at a time.”

  “More lesson than that,” Pike said ruefully. “For it takes a man to do it.” He nodded toward the door.

  Gannon looked down at the blanket-wrapped body that was Phlater, whom Billy had shot. So the cards he had missed had not mattered. The lynch mob was gone. He knew that Billy had not been at the stage, but with Phlater dead and Billy’s stubborn pride, that would not matter either. So the rest of the cards would continue to play themselves out.

  Pony said savagely, “Shut up about that gold-hanneled son of a bitch and leave us get some sleep in here.”

  Carl’s face stiffened. Pike said hoarsely, “Gold-handled son of a bitch that just saved your rotten lives for you!”

  “Sleep good on that,” Carl said.

  Billy’s voice was bitter as gall. “Bring his boots and we’ll kiss them for him. Like he wants. Like you all do. Bring us his damned boots.”

  Pike took a step toward the cell door and Billy retreated. Now none of them were visible in the deep shadow of the cell, but it was as though Gannon could see through it, and beyond it, and beyond Bright’s City even, see all the massive irrevocable shadows with only the details not clear.

  He went out to the Boston Café, after a while, for a pot of coffee to take back to the jail, and sat the night, sleepless himself, watching Carl and Pike fighting sleep. In the morning Buck Slavin furnished a special coach, and Carl, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Tim French took the prisoners into Bright’s City for trial.

  15. BOOT HILL

  WARLOCK’S Boot Hill was not a hill at all, but a knoll protruding from the plateau next to the town dump, where flies hovered in great black swarms. From Boot Hill itself the valley all the way to the Dinosaurs was visible: near at hand the jumble of great rocks of the malpais, farther down the cottonwoods lining the river in irregular stretches, the greasy-green mesquite thickets, and the drier green of the grama grass along the bottoms. To the south were the barren, tan sides of the Bucksaws, marked here and there with winding mine roads, the neat ugly smears of tailings below the gallows of the shafthead frames. Farther to the west were the chimneys of the stamp mill at Redgold, with the smoke blowing southwest in gray chunks.

  Today there were two open graves, two pine coffins resting on the stony ground beside them. It was windy among the mounded graves. Men stood hatless and their hair blew askew and their trouser bottoms flapped—groups of townsmen, a few cowboys, two women in deep bonnets, and a number of curious Mexicans standing close by. A little apart stood Miss Jessie Marlow, with her hand on Marshal Clay Blaisedell’s arm, and, on the other side of her, Dr. Wagner in his old black suit. Further along, all in black and standing alone,
was the new woman, who, it was rumored, had paid for the coffins. Beyond her were six women from the Row, bunched close together as though for protection, from time to time one painted, powdered face or another glancing curiously sideways at the strange woman. Morgan was also alone, his hat in his hands like the rest of the men, his sleek hair shining in the sun and undisturbed by the wind, standing with one foot up on a rock and brooding down at the first coffin.

  The four gravediggers, who had been assigned a month’s duty as such by Judge Holloway in penance for being drunk and disorderly on various occasions, leaned on their shovels while Bill Wolters, one of Taliaferro’s barkeepers, recited the service from memory in a loud, sing-song, former-Baptist-preacher’s voice, that was broken into snatches of sound by the wind. The coffin was let down into the first grave with new yellow ropes, and Wolters moved to the second grave and recited again. The second coffin was lowered, and the gravediggers began shoveling dirt and rocks into the holes. The Mexicans, the strange woman, and one of the women from the Row crossed themselves. Morgan brought a cheroot from his pocket and chewed on it. Some of the other men took turns with the shovels. Dick Maples produced the two crosses he had fashioned and painted—it was his hobby. On the first was:

  PATRICK CLETUS

  Murdered by Bandits

  January 23, 1881

  “How long, oh Lord?”

  On the second:

  THEODORE PHLATER

  Shot by Billy Gannon

  January 23, 1881

  “A time of war—”

  A group of Citizens’ Committee members began moving away from the graves together. “Who is the tall woman?” asked Joseph Kennon.

  “Came in on the stage yesterday,” Buck Slavin said. He nodded back at the first grave. “With that one. Somebody said they were going to put up a dance hall here.”

  “Married?” Fred Winters inquired.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Her name is Kate Dollar,” said Paul Skinner, Pike Skinner’s brother, as he limped up to join them. “That’s how she’s got it down at the hotel, anyhow.”