Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  Murch started for the alley door. The inner door creaked and strained again, and there was another volley of shouting and cursing. Murch turned and the straight-on eye regarded him worriedly. “What about you, Tom?”

  Morgan didn’t answer, and Murch went out. Morgan stood facing the three miners, trying to get his breath back. As they would not think of blaming the derringer that had put the bullet through Brunk’s head, so they would not think either of blaming merely Murch. The bar on the door began to squeal as a more concerted weight crashed against it. He drew the Colt from its holster as Waxed-mustache took a step toward him.

  “Bust that door in, boys!” Goat-beard yelled. “For there is rats in here need cleaning out!”

  One of the iron keepers sprang loose from the door and flew like an arrow to smack against Waxed-mustache’s shoulder. Morgan grinned suddenly to watch Waxed-mustache rubbing his arm, and unhurriedly went to the door and stepped out into the alley. Murch was nowhere in sight. He started to the left. When he heard the crash as the door burst open, he broke into a run. He had reached the end of the alley before he saw, over his shoulder, a flock of them come out of the Glass Slipper and start after him. He laughed as he ran down Southend Street toward Main. It would be quite a run, he thought, if neither Schroeder nor Gannon were at the jail.

  32. GANNON TAKES A TRICK

  GANNON was in the jail with Carl when Tom Morgan ran in, panting, covered with blood, hatless, a holstered Colt in his hand. “Lock me up, boys!” he panted. “Or there’s a lynching coming off!” He ran into the cell and slammed the door on himself.

  Carl sprang up, knocking his chair over backward. There was a roar outside; it came down Main Street like a flood, and Gannon snatched the shotgun down from its pegs. “What the hell?” Carl cried.

  “Lock the damned door!” Morgan said, and Carl leaped to do it, and flung the key inside the cell. Gannon ran to the door. Behind him he heard Morgan laughing like an idiot.

  Miners were streaming around the corner out of Southend Street, more were coming out of the Glass Slipper to join them, and all of them were yelling.

  Gannon held the shotgun out before him with his finger tight on the trigger and felt the sweat starting from his face. “Hold off!” he shouted, “Hold off!” the words lost in the tumult. Beside him Carl was shouting too. Then the leaders halted.

  Gradually the whole mass came to a halt, forming a broad semicircle on the boardwalk and in the street around the front of the jail, all of them yelling still, until Carl raised his Colt and fired into the air.

  “Now, what the hell?” Carl said, in the silence.

  There was a disturbance in the front rank and Frenchy Martin stepped forward through the settling dust; then old man Heck came out.

  “Now you turn over that son of a bitch in there, Deputy!” Frenchy Martin cried.

  “He is our meat and no business of yours at all!” old man Heck shouted. “Dirty dog killed Frank Brunk and we are—”

  The clamor began again and the miners crowded forward. Gannon thrust the muzzle of the shotgun against the belly of the one nearest him. Slowly the shouting died.

  “—fair fight,” Frenchy Martin was saying. “And then Frank got him down and that lookout of his shot Frank through the head!”

  “Where’s Murch?” someone yelled. “Somebody’d better get that wall-eyed son too!”

  “He lit out on a horse!” another replied. “He was moving!”

  “You turn over that bloody-bellied gambler, hear!” old Heck said. “I mean, we will tromp you down, Schroeder!”

  Gannon swung the shotgun toward Heck. Another miner made a grab for it and he slammed the barrel against the man’s elbow. “Get back!” he said.

  Somebody was singing, “We’ll hang Tom Morgan to a sour apple tree!”

  Frenchy Martin jumped up on the tie rail, and, clinging to a post, motioned for silence. “Boys, are we going to let them stop us? Are we going to take out that murdering bastard or not? Good old Frank was a friend to us all, and MacDonald set Morgan to kill him, most likely.” The miners roared.

  Gannon looked toward Carl, for this had better be stopped, and Carl leaped forward and clubbed the barrel of his Colt down behind Martin’s ear. Martin fell forward into the street, where the miners caught him; the yelling increased in volume and violence. Old man Heck was shaking his fist. Carl fired into the air again. Gannon began edging toward old Heck again, to buffalo him next. He was only worried that it would get dark before they could run the mob off. Already the light was fading with the sun gone.

  “Listen!” Carl shouted. “There’s been men took out of here and hung but not while I was here and by God there won’t be, either! Because I can play hell with a good lot of you and Johnny will just make pure mincemeat with that shotgun. Now; if you want Morgan that bad maybe you can get him, but it’s going to cost you dear. You hear now!”

  The solid roar went up again, the shoving back and forth. Old man Heck turned and cupped his hands to his mouth to yell, and Gannon slammed the shotgun barrel against the side of his head. He fell to his knees.

  “Watch that bull moose over there!” Carl cried, and Gannon swung the shotgun toward a big bearded miner who was moving toward him.

  “Back off!”

  The miner retreated a step, grinning. Past him, over the heads of the men in the street, Gannon saw riders coming down Main Street from the direction of the rim. They were riding abreast, two ranks of them, and they filled the street. Heads began turning toward them. Abruptly the miners fell silent.

  “It’s MacDonald!” Carl said.

  MacDonald was in the lead, on a white-faced horse, wearing a checked suit and his hard-hat. In the gathering dust Gannon began to recognize the other riders: Chet and Wash Haggin, and Jack Cade, Walt Harrison, Quint Whitby, Jock Hennessey, Pecos Mitchell, and more, and still more in the second rank. Some of them had Winchesters over their arms, and belts of cartridges hung from their saddle-horns.

  Abe McQuown was not with them, Gannon saw, straining his eyes; nor Curley. The big miner near him was now flattened against the wall as though he wished he could push back on through it.

  “He has brought his Regulators in to do us all down!” Gannon heard someone say. The miners in the street began to retreat, some, on the fringes of the crowd, fading back into Southend Street. Now there was no sound but the pad of oncoming hoofs in the dust.

  “MacDonald’s come to run his agitators out himself,” Carl said. “Damned if he isn’t, and damned if it is pleasant to be bailed out by such a bunch.”

  Someone yelled, “Morgan already did your dirty work for you, Mister Mac!”

  “Hold together, fellows!”

  “Damned if we will run before a pack of rustlers, MacDonald!”

  Carl said mournfully, “What the hell are we going to do, Johnny?” and Gannon took a deep breath and then ducked under the tie rail and jumped down into the street. He moved through the miners as rapidly as he could, pushing right and left with the shotgun butt as though it were an oar. Sweating, dusty faces turned to stare at him. There was muttering behind him. A hand reached out to grasp his shotgun.

  “Let me by,” he said, and the hand fell away.

  “Let the deputy through, boys,” a voice said, and the miners began to move more rapidly aside before him. He came out of the mob not fifty feet from the riders, and he walked on through the dust straight toward MacDonald.

  “Pull up!” he said, bringing the shotgun muzzle up to bear on the white-faced horse. MacDonald reined in and the horse stood steady, swinging his head around to feign a bite at MacDonald’s leg. The others reined up also. Wash Haggin gazed contemptuously down at him, Chet Haggin grinned a little, Jack Cade lifted his round-crowned hat and ran his fingers through his hair, his dark, whiskered face sullen. Gannon looked from face to face. Those in the rear rank were the kind of San Pablo scum that even Abe McQuown was too proud to ride with. Except for the Haggins they were all bad ones, but after the first glance
around he looked only at MacDonald. He felt calm enough.

  “What’s going on here, Mr. MacDonald?” he said.

  “This has nothing to do with you, Deputy,” MacDonald said coldly. “We have constituted ourselves a regulation committee and we know our objectives. It is none of your business. Stand aside.”

  “It is my business. You are not coming in here with these people.”

  “You caught this posting people out from the marshal, Bud?” Chet Haggin asked.

  Gannon saw Cade casually draw his Colt and rest it on his thigh. He kept the shotgun trained on MacDonald. “Take them out, Mr. MacDonald.”

  “You fool!” MacDonald said. His mouth looked like a trap in his ascetic, coldly handsome face. “We intend to round up some agitators who are bent on making trouble at the Medusa. You won’t stop us. You—”

  “Take them out,” he said again. His ribs ached where the butt of the shotgun was clamped against his side, his hand sweated on the barrel. “Out,” he said.

  “We’ll come through shooting if we have to, Bud,” Wash said.

  Gannon heard the iron snap as Cade cocked his Colt; he tried not to flinch, not to look. He stared straight at MacDonald over the muzzle of the shotgun, and MacDonald licked his lips.

  “Morgan already killed Frank for you, Mister Mac!” a miner yelled, and MacDonald scowled.

  “Take your people out of town, Mr. MacDonald,” Gannon said once more. “There will be no rounding up done in Warlock.”

  “Schroeder!” MacDonald cried. “Tell this idiot to get out of the way.”

  “Do like he says, Mister Mac!” Carl called back. His voice was shrill. “And Jack Cade, you had better hang up that hog leg, for I am laid in on your belt buckle.”

  Gannon stood watching MacDonald and he thought he had won.

  “What do you say, Mister Mac?” Cade said, in his flat, harsh voice. “Shoot in or crawl out?”

  Wash said, “You had better back off and let us handle it, MacDonald.”

  “He doesn’t go unless you all go,” Gannon said.

  “Very well!” MacDonald said. “Your piece there speaks with more authority than you do. I’m forced to honor it, since I want no bloodshed. You will hear more about this from Sheriff Keller.” He stood in his stirrups and called to Carl, “This is not the end of this, Schroeder!” He sawed viciously with the reins, and the white-faced horse bucked, scaring Chet’s mare sideways. Gannon swung the shotgun toward Wash and Jack Cade. Cade nodded once, thumbed his teeth, nodded again. The Regulators became, for a moment, a milling mass of horsemen, cursing and muttering among themselves as they turned away. Then they sorted themselves out into the same two ranks, and, with MacDonald again at the head, faded into hazy shapes in the twilight as they retreated. A roar went up from the miners; taunts were shouted after them. Gannon made his way back to the boardwalk and mounted it once more. Pike Skinner was standing with Carl; Pike watched him come up with his mouth pursed, and his hat brim shadowing his eyes. Carl was laughing.

  “They’ll be back, deputy!” someone yelled from among the miners in the street. “Don’t think they won’t be back!”

  Gannon leaned against the adobe wall. The sign above his head creaked a little. He let the shotgun barrel droop.

  “Why, I guess you had better clear out of the street then,” Carl said. “So they won’t ride you down.”

  “We want Morgan!” someone shouted. A few took it up, but soon the cry died away. Gannon leaned against the wall and watched the miners drift off. A tension had gone out of the air. “Meeting!” somebody was yelling. “Meeting!” The crowd began to break up into small clots of men. A wagon came across on Southend, breaking it up still further.

  “You had better go scratch your name on the wall in there, Johnny,” Carl said. “You have done smart work tonight. I thought we was due for two falls at once, but damned if you didn’t take them both instead. What’s that you say, Pike?” he said, turning toward Pike Skinner, who had said nothing.

  “It isn’t done with yet,” Pike said grouchily.

  “Well, I expect you are right,” Carl said. “And you are deputized, you and Pete and Chick and Tim. Hunt them up for me, will you? There’s a good fellow.”

  Pike went off along the boardwalk. Carl slapped Gannon on the back as he followed him into the jail. Morgan was leaning against the cell door, almost invisible in the darkness.

  “Hanging off?” he said.

  “For a spell anyway,” Carl said. He pulled down the pulley lamp and lit it. Now Gannon could see Morgan’s face; it looked as gray and tired as he himself felt. “I wouldn’t say clear off, no,” Carl went on. “Well, you surely went and roused things up. What’d you want to kill this Brunk for?”

  “Bled his dirty blood all over me,” Morgan said, distantly. Gannon sat on the table edge with the shotgun leaning against his leg and his arms folded, watching the gambler’s face. For all the expression that was there Morgan might have meant what he said.

  “I suppose you might call that a reason,” Carl said. “You taken up fighting jacks as a steady thing now, Morgan. Knife fight, was it? What was all that yelling how it was supposed to be a fair fight?”

  Morgan said in a disgusted voice, “Brunk had me in a little trouble so Murch shot him.”

  “Heard them saying Murch’s lit out, but damned if I think I had better take after him the way things stand. You put Murch to shooting him?”

  “He thought of it before I did.”

  “Get me to believe you didn’t put him to it.”

  “Believe it or don’t!”

  “Now don’t go scratchy, Morgan,” Carl said mournfully. “If a hardcase that works for you kills a man that’s got you in trouble, maybe it is on your back some.”

  “Nothing’s on my back,” Morgan said, and withdrew into the shadows.

  Gannon said to Carl, “Maybe somebody’d better get the judge.”

  “Time enough. You’re not in any hurry, are you, Morgan?”

  “I’m patient by nature,” Morgan said.

  Peter Bacon appeared in the doorway; he nodded at Gannon, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Witnesses?” Carl said to Morgan.

  “All muckers,” Morgan replied. “Old Goat-beard and that one with the waxed mustaches, and another one called Patch.”

  “Old Heck and Frenchy,” Carl said. “They seemed kind of maddest, all right. You sure you didn’t tell Murch to blow him loose from you?”

  There was a crash and splatter of glass and a rock rebounded from the far wall, and came to rest among the shards of glass beneath the broken window. Peter Bacon disappeared out the door, and Gannon ran to look. He could see no one in the darkness, and after a moment Peter returned along the boardwalk, shaking his head. Gannon went back inside, where Carl was cursing and trying to push the broken glass into a pile with the side of his boot.

  “Oh, hello, miss,” Peter said from the doorway, and Kate Dollar came in.

  “Good evening, Deputy,” Kate said to Carl. “Deputy,” she said to Gannon. She wore a tight jacket, a long, thickly pleated black skirt, and her black hat with the cherries on it. She smiled her harsh, unpleasant smile as Morgan appeared at the cell door again.

  “Is that Tom Morgan?” Kate said, and her voice was as unpleasant as the smile. “I heard the miners had him on the run.”

  Gannon backed up uncertainly to lean against the wall, and Carl said, “It sure is him, Miss Dollar. And he sure was running. Not much of a lead on the pack, either.”

  “You running, Tom?” she said, and laughed.

  “Oh, I can run with the best of them,” Morgan said. His voice was as harsh as Kate’s, his face, framed in the thick, hand-smoothed bars, was blank. “I have run before this. There was a place called Grand Fork I ran and got caught.”

  “Did they hang you?” Kate asked, and Gannon felt that he was witnessing something he did not want to see, or know.

  “Maybe they did,” Morgan said. He frowned with thought. “No, come
to remember, a friend I had there set fire to the hotel where those vigilantes had me, and during the whoop-de-do I got out some way. No, I didn’t hang that time.”

  “But no friends here?” Kate said.

  “Well, now, miss, we made out all right,” Carl said uncomfortably. “Johnny and me didn’t need any help.”

  Gannon saw Peter Bacon grimacing painfully as Kate spoke to Morgan again. “But I understand you didn’t kill him yourself, Tom. Was he a good man, Tom? That you had your gunman kill for you?”

  “Just a big, stupid mucker, Kate,” Morgan said. “But you probably would have liked him, at that.”

  “But what was the matter with Clay?” Kate cried. Now she sounded hysterical, and now, Gannon thought, he must stop this.

  He put a hand out toward her and said, “Kate!” just as Morgan said loudly, “What kind of jail is this, where anybody can drift in off the street and bedevil the prisoners?”

  “Bedevil!” Kate cried.

  Gannon touched her arm. “Now, Miss Dollar,” he said.

  “Well, now, yes, miss,” Carl said. “I don’t expect you ought to be in here with a bunch of wild jacks around throwing rocks through the window and all. I guess you had better—”

  “I just came down to tell you they are throwing rocks through the windows of the Glass Slipper, too,” Kate said, calmly now. “There are some people trying to stop them, but I don’t know if they will.”

  “Durn!” Carl said. “I should’ve thought of that. I’d better go, Johnny.” He took up the shotgun and hurried out. “Come on, Pete!”

  Morgan disappeared again and Kate stood facing the cell for a moment longer. Then she bowed her head and turned away. Without looking at Gannon, she said, “Will they try again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t try to save him,” she said in the ugly voice. “Don’t try to do anything for him. He doesn’t want you to, and anybody that ever did has been sorry for it the rest of their lives.” She stopped and he saw that she looked almost ashamed; then her face tightened again, and she swept on out of the jail.

  In the cell Morgan was laughing softly.