Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  He saw that he had most of them with him. He took a deep breath. “Some of your demands should be these: Demand above all proper timbering, especially in that number two shaft. And demand that the number two lift be made safe. Demand ventilation at the lower levels. There are a great many more items that concern your personal safety which you know much more about than I. People are going to sympathize with demands of this nature, as they will not sympathize with the drop in your wages, or with the Miners’ Union as yet.

  “You have every right to demand these things, but I would demand much more at first so that you can bargain downward. I would—” He paused a moment; what he was going to say seemed, in a way, a betrayal of Jessie, but he could see that they must, one day, have it. And, he though bitterly, Jessie had Blaisedell now. He said, “I would demand some kind of hospital for the injured, the cost to be shared between you and the mine owners.” He held up a hand for silence, and raised his voice above the muttering. “And there is to be a committee of miners established to supervise that, and to advise on what is to be done about safety in the Medusa. This is the most important thing. A committee,” he said, and paused again so as to catch their full attention, “that will be the basis for your Miners’ Union!”

  They cheered in one voice, and he could not help smiling. He sat down quickly, amid the prolonged yelling and clapping. Fitzsimmons sprang to his feet.

  “Listen!” he cried. “The Doc has told us the right way, I guess we all know; but there is something else to bring up. What we are waiting for is the day Peach gives this town a patent. Stop and think how the vote’ll run when we have got a vote. We—”

  “Sit down! Young one—sit!”

  “Listen! Why won’t you listen to me? I am telling you we can elect the mayor and council and all—and sheriff! We—”

  “Sit down, boy!” Bull Johnson growled.

  “Peach’s forgot us here. He thinks we are in Mexico.”

  “Brunk was after MacDonald about that retimbering too, Doc. He never got anywhere but fired.”

  “I say burn the Medusa for Frank’s sake!” Bull Johnson shouted. “Then they’ll have to retimber.”

  “Hear! Hear!”

  Old man Heck pounded on the table. Fitzsimmons sank into his chair again, and turned to grin bitterly at the doctor. “They won’t listen. Damn them, they just won’t.”

  “Well, I guess Bull has got us back to what we come here to vote on,” old man Heck said. “All this other is interesting and maybe edifying, Doc, but we are here to vote on the first thing. All right, all for it!” Old man Heck got to his feet to count the hands.

  The doctor did not turn to see how many had gone up, watching old Man Heck’s face. Fitzsimmons, who had looked around, grinned and winked at him.

  “Seven for,” old man Heck said sourly. “Well, all right; against.”

  “No fire tonight,” Frenchy Martin said.

  “Yellow-belly bastards!” Bull Johnson said. All around the room men began to stir and rise. There would be no fire tonight.

  The doctor sighed and got to his feet; he had better get back to Jessie. He excused himself and hurried from the dining room, waving a hand and nodding to the men who tried to talk to him.

  He crossed the hall and entered Jessie’s room without knocking.

  Blaisedell was there, sitting where he had sat, and Jessie’s head was against his chest. It did not appear that Blaisedell hated her, as she had feared. They both stared at him, Blaisedell with the color flushing to his cheeks, Jessie with her eyes round and bright. She smiled at him, and Blaisedell started to his feet.

  “You had better keep your door locked, Jessie,” the doctor said, and backed out and pulled the door quickly closed behind him. The entry-way was full of miners, but he thought no one had seen.

  Someone called to him, and he went to join Fitzsimmons, Daley, and Patch, and the two or three others who seemed to make up Fitzsimmons’ clique. Fitzsimmons asked if he would like to come to the Billiard Parlor for a game with them, and they all seemed surprised and pleased when he said that he would.

  “You can hold my cue for me, Doc,” Fitzsimmons said, as they left the General Peach together. “But maybe you could let me call the shots.”

  39. MORGAN LOOKS AT THE DEADWOOD

  TOM MORGAN sat in the sun on the porch of the Western Star Hotel in his only suit of clothes, his only boots, his only hat. He rocked, smoked a good Havana cheroot, and watched the activity of Warlock in the afternoon—the bustle down the street of horsemen and wagons and men afoot, the loungers along the arcades, the groups of Medusa strikers standing along the far side of Main Street. There was a racket of whistling and catcalls as three whores in their finery promenaded down Southend Street and stopped to look into Goodpasture’s store window.

  As he leaned forward in his chair to try to see down to the ruin of the Glass Slipper, his money belt pressed into his flesh. Quickly he leaned back. In it was his stake; his place was burned, and he had long been sick to death of Warlock. His mind began to poke pleasureably at place names, at things he had heard of this town or that one.

  He spun his cigar out into the dust of the street, where it disappeared as into water. He rocked back and stared up at the sun past his hatbrim, and grinned—a painful stretch of flesh over his teeth. He could not go. Clay would not because of Miss Jessie Marlow, and he could not because Clay would not, and because of McQuown, and because he did not know what Kate was up to with the deputy

  At that moment the deputy came into sight, mounted, from Southend Street. He came jogging down Main Street on a shabby buckskin horse, his hat pulled low on his forehead, his face turned aside against the wind. He nodded gravely as he passed, and Morgan turned to see that he took the Bright’s City road.

  As he watched the deputy ride out of town he saw Kate coming toward him with her skirt blowing and one hand holding her feathered hat on her head. He rose as she came up the steps to the veranda.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said.

  “Fine. Sit and talk.”

  “Not here.”

  “Your deputy rides out of town and first thing you are out hunting a tomcat,” he said, as he took her arm. They started back toward Grant Street to her house. “You will get yourself a bad name walking with me,” he went on. “I am a devil, as everybody knows. What’s this about you and Buck Slavin going to build a dance hall?”

  “We’ve talked about it,” Kate said shortly. “He’ll put up the money if I’ll run it.”

  “Just Buck?” He grinned at her.

  “No, I think there is somebody else in it, Tom,” she said, in an uninterested voice. He noticed that she was very pale. “I don’t know who.”

  “It is Lew Taliaferro, and if you think I am going to let what’s left of the Glass Slipper go to him for nothing you can have another think.”

  But she shook her head; that was not what she wanted to talk about. She unlocked the door of her house and let him in, watching him with her black eyes as he entered. Then she moved to stand across the table from him, as though it were necessary to have something between them.

  “What’s bothering, Kate?”

  “Clay was here. He said he had killed another one being too quick on the draw. I want to know what—”

  “He said what?”

  She repeated it. He stared back at her and slowly he took off his hat and dropped it on the table, and brushed a hand back over his head. “Why did he come here?” he asked.

  “He came to ask the deputy if he had lied about what Schroeder told him—there was something about Miss Jessie Marlow being mistaken. But I want to know what he meant about Bob Cletus! Tom, what did he mean, he’d been too quick on the draw?”

  He hardly listened; he felt a rage at Jessie Marlow that filled him until he thought he would burst with it, then pity and rage for Clay, who had killed Curley Burne wrongfully now by his lights—one time wrong, and every time wrong after it, Clay had said. More and more, it seemed, everyone looked
upon Clay as only a name, a thing, a machine to which they fed their pennies and out of him came the same trick which they could then class good or bad for their amusement. Even Miss Jessie Marlow; he knew she had done it to Clay without even wondering how she had. Talked him into going back to marshaling, for one thing. God damn her to hell! There was no one but Tom Morgan to see the man inside the machine any more.

  But Kate was not interested in Curley Burne or Miss Jessie Marlow; she was interested in Bob Cletus.

  “I don’t know what he meant, Kate,” he said. “Why didn’t you ask him?”

  “What did he mean, Tom?” She hit her fist on the table, and then she leaned on it heavily and the feather swayed on her hat. She looked suddenly as though she were going to break apart. “Now I don’t know! Don’t you see? Now I—” She got control of herself with an effort. “Tom,” she said. “Tell me the truth about what happened!”

  “Told you and told you, but you won’t believe me. Cletus called out Clay over Nicholson.”

  “Bob didn’t care anything for Nicholson! I know that!”

  He shrugged. “You are going to believe Clay shot him down because I asked him to, whatever I say.”

  He watched her face crumple. He could smile as he told the truth; “I didn’t tell Clay to shoot him down. I wouldn’t have if I’d wanted him shot down, for Clay wouldn’t have done it.” And he leaned toward her and said, “Kate, I wish you had gone and married Bob Cletus and that I’d given you away to the happy bridegroom. And that you were fat as a pig and worn out right now cooking chuck for him and all his hands on that spread he had, and a couple of dozen children. Don’t you believe I wish it?”

  He heard her make a high sound in her throat. “What did Clay mean by that, Tom?” she whispered hopelessly.

  “Ask him. But let me ask you something. What are you up to with the deputy, Kate? A person would think you had a thing on about somebody whose brother Clay shot. Are you trying to make something out of it?”

  She shook her head a little; her eyes were swollen. “No. Nothing. I can’t make anything with anybody, for you would just have him killed. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know which way you mean that. One way I might.” He sat down and leaned his chair back and crossed his boots up on the table. She was staring at him with her red lips half open.

  “Let me tell you something straight and for all, Kate,” he said, and he spoke as seriously as he had ever spoken in his life. He pointed a finger at her. “There have been damned few people I have ever thought anything of. Maybe only two, when it comes down to it. And those I have never thrown down and never will.”

  “Two!” she cried. “Do you mean me? You crucified me!”

  “Why, Kate, you’d been a whore and it was your own doing. No mac brought you to it. I thought you figured the way I did, and whoring is a way to make a stake like any other. I didn’t know you were going to be so damned delicate about it. A person is what they are and what’s there to be ashamed of?”

  “I didn’t mean that!”

  “Oh, you meant Cletus. Well, there is no point talking if you are going to hold I put Clay to that.”

  “You can’t even look at me and say you didn’t!”

  He looked at her and said he hadn’t. He wondered suddenly if he would have done it any differently if he had known he was never going to have Kate back, whatever. “I was saying,” he said, “that there have been a couple I held high like that. One was you, the other is Clay. I suppose you wouldn’t understand that, being a quarter-breed bitch, but it is so.”

  He paused and gazed back into her wide eyes and saw her mouth open again, as though she would speak again. But she did not, and he went on. “And I am talking about Clay now, for you have gone your way and it’s not mine. I call Clay friend and I don’t know that I’ve ever had another. Do you know what a friend means? I don’t expect you do, for all you’ve known is a bunch of other whores you thought poorly of, and said so. I call Clay friend, and I don’t give a damn that some go around holding him up as God’s salvation to this country, and others call him a dirty dog of a killer. And I don’t expect it makes much of a damn to him either what everybody thinks of me.”

  He pointed his finger at her again. “Now, that is a thing that is just so, whether you understand it or not, which I expect you don’t. But that holds strong with me. Now let me tell you some more. There are people who are trying to throw him down. I am speaking in particular of you, and maybe your deputy. And McQuown. And there are others, like Miss Jessie Marlow, though I don’t expect she thinks she is. Now: I think I will see Clay Blaisedell die, like I told you once. For that is the trade he is in. But I intend to see that he dies decently, and his name held good, and honor to him. Though not the same way some others want it. Listen to me: I will stick with him and try to do in every backshooter there is, and I mean you among them, and Gannon, if you two are up to something. And McQuown; and all. You want to see him die, in your woman-meanness, but I will fight you down the line. Maybe you will think you have won when he is dead, but I will win too, for I will see he goes down in the end like he wants to.”

  Again she started to speak, again he leveled the finger at her. “There is nothing I have ever set myself to do yet I haven’t done. Hear me and think if it isn’t so. And this is what I have set myself to. I will see it through in spite of every son of a bitch in the world against it. I will kill anybody I think is dangerous to him that way. Or get killed for it either without giving one good God damn, if it would do any good. Do you understand me, Kate?”

  “Tom,” she said shakily. “I don’t want to hear anything more about it. I don’t—”

  “Just one more thing,” he said. His throat felt very dry. “Listen. There is going to come a day when I cash in. When I get up to the Gate they will look at the records, like they do. They will scream to see mine. But I will say to them that I was made the way I was, but I did a decent thing in my life. And I don’t know that there are so many decent things done that they can sniff at it. I can say I did this, and by God I did my best, and it was a good thing. I can say I had a reason to be, and I don’t see many around me that have. I can say I had a reason for being alive that was mine, and that was worth something, and—”

  “I have got my reason to be!” Kate cried, but he felt a vast triumph as her voice broke.

  “Why, it isn’t worth anything and you know it. Two bits’ worth of forgiveness would cancel it out. To see a man that never meant to do you or yours any harm brought low! You a Catholic, with your Virgin to pray to and your candles and all—do you think you can go up there and when they ask you what reason you had for being alive, say it was to see a man dishonored and killed? It won’t pass, Kate.” He began to laugh. “They will send you to a lower part of hell than me. Wouldn’t that gripe your everlasting soul!”

  He shouted with laughter and beat his hand upon his leg. He tried to suck the laughter back at the sight of her face, but he could not. “Oh, that would be hell!”

  “Stop it!”

  He stopped. He put his feet down and leaned toward her, and said, seriously again, “Kate, do you think I would give a rap for Clay if I could tell him to go out and shoot down a randy son of a bitch that was after my girl?”

  He watched her fighting uncertainty. She shook her head and the feather on her hat swooped and swung; he could make her believe the truth a lie, he knew, but not a lie the truth.

  “Wait!” he said, as she started to speak. “Let’s try to work it out. Maybe I see how it went, come to think of it. You had a few rolls in bed with Clay, didn’t you?”

  “I did not!”

  “Are you sure, now?” he said, grinning, feeling hate of himself like black bile rising in his veins. “Because I thought you did, Kate. Wait now! I was just wondering if Cletus might’ve got wind of it too. Was he a jealous kind? Maybe that was why.”

  She clutched her hands to her face and he thought he had won; he wondered what he thought he had won. He said
softly, “Maybe that was why Cletus called out Clay, Kate. Do you think that might’ve been why? You knew him better than I did.”

  “It’s not so!” she said, through her hands. “That I— Tom, I knew he was your friend. I—”

  “Well, lots of things that aren’t so get fought over all the same.”

  She leaned forward, her hands on the table, her swollen eyes fastened to his. “You—” she whispered. “You—”

  “I’m just saying that somebody could have told him that,” he said easily. “And if he was a jealous fellow. I’ve heard—”

  “I don’t believe you!” she cried. “You didn’t. You are just trying to— I can’t believe you, I can’t ever believe you! Get out of here, Tom!”

  All at once he was very shaken by the sight of her face, and he picked up his hat and started for the door. He had only meant to try to take her off Clay’s back a little and let her sit his own. He thought of the times he had seen her in anger, the times in grief; it occurred to him, now, that he had never felt sorry for her before. He turned and said, “Kate—”

  “Oh, please get out!”

  He went on outside, where his eyes recoiled from the brightness of the sun. He could hear her sobbing behind him. Why couldn’t he tell her the truth? Why wouldn’t it be easy? He almost turned to go back to her, but, after a moment’s reflection, he did not. He could not, he thought, ever go back.

  40. BRIGHT’S CITY

  BRIGHT’S City lay just to the east of the Bucksaws, along Bright’s Creek. There was a heavy traffic of wagons across the rumbling wooden bridge over the creek, where, straight ahead, on Main Street, lay the Plaza. To the right, half a mile down Fort Street, was Fort Jacob Collins, with its flag rippling and colorful in the wind, and, to the left, the three-storied red-brick courthouse, its tall windows shuttered against the sun, its copper-sheathed cupola raised like a helmeted dragoon’s head.

  Soldiers from the fort paced the streets or stood upon corners. There were many women in Bright’s City, and many men in store suits among the more roughly dressed ranchers and cowboys. Townsmen and housewives kept to the north side of Bright’s City’s Main Street, while sporting women in their finery passed in promenade on the south side, accompanied by the whistling of cowboys and soldiers.