Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  The meeting was adjourned, to be reconvened this morning with Blaisedell instructed to attend. He came, much bruised around the face, but he was not told he was to post Morgan out of Warlock. It was he who did the speaking. He said he was resigning his position. He thanked us gravely for the confidence we had previously reposed in him, said that he hoped his fulfillment of his duties had been satisfactory, and left us.

  Warlock, since this morning, has been as silent as was the Citizens’ Committee when we heard his statement. I think I am, ashamedly, as disappointed as the rest, but I know I think better of Blaisedell than I have ever before. It was clear that he knew exactly what was our intention at the meeting, and, since he did not wish to do it, saw that he must resign. There was no reproach evident in his demeanor. We will reproach ourselves, however, for what was said of him the night before. And I respect him for not wishing to post his friend from Warlock; I think he has acted with honor and with dignity, and I have cause to wonder now if this town, and the Citizens’ Committee, has ever been worthy of the former Marshal of Warlock.

  58. GANNON SPEAKS OF LOVE

  GANNON lay fully clothed on his bed and contemplated the darkness that enclosed him, the barely visible square of vertical planes that were the walls marred here and there by huddled hanging bunches of his clothing, and the high ceiling that was not visible at all, so that the column of darkness beneath which he lay sprawled seemed topless and infinitely soaring. He had been forced out of the jail tonight not by any danger, but only because there were too many people there endlessly and repetitiously talking about Morgan and Blaisedell, Blaisedell and Morgan, and he did not want to hear any more of it.

  Yet even now he could hear the excited murmur of voices from one of the rooms down the hall, and he knew that throughout Warlock it was the same, everyone talking it over and over and over, changing and fitting and rearranging it to suit themselves, or rather making it into something they could accept, angrily or puzzledly or sadly. Each time they would come to the conclusion that Blaisedell had better move on, but, having reached that conclusion, they would only start over again. He, the deputy, he thought, must not enter their minds at all; nor could he see in the black blank of his own mind what his part was. He had come, finally, almost to accept what Morgan had said to him—that it was not his business.

  He heard the upward creaking of the stairs, and then Birch’s high voice: “Now watch your step, ma’am. It is kind of dark here on these steps.”

  He started up, and groped his way to the table. His hand encountered the glass shade of the lamp; he caught it as it fell. He lit a match and the darkness retreated a little from the sulphur’s flame, retreated farther as the bright wedge mounted from the wick. As he replaced the chimney there was a knock. “Deputy!” Birch said.

  He opened the door. Kate stood there in the thick shadows; he could smell the violet water she wore. “Here is Miss Dollar to see you,” Birch said, in an oily voice.

  “Come in,” he said, and Kate entered. Birch faded into the darkness, and the steps creaked downward. The voices in the room down the hall were still. Kate closed the door and glanced around; at his cartridge belt hanging like a snakeskin from the peg beside the door, at the clothes hanging on their nails, at the pine table and chair and the cot with its sagging springs. Lamplight glowed in a warm streak upon her cheek. “Sit down, Kate,” he said.

  She moved toward the chair, but instead of seating herself she put her hands on the back and leaned there. He saw her looking around a second time, with her chin lifted and her face as impassive as an Indian’s. “This is where you live,” she said finally.

  “It isn’t much.”

  She did not speak again for a long time, and he backed up and sat down on the edge of the bed. She turned a little to watch him; one side of her face was rosy from the lamp and the other half in shadow, so that it looked like only half a face. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said.

  “You are?” he said numbly. “Why—why are you, Kate?”

  “There is nothing here for me.”

  He didn’t know what she meant, but he nodded. He felt relief and pain in equal portions as he watched her face, which he thought very beautiful with the light giving life to it. He had never known what she was, but he had known she was not for him. He had dreamed of her, but he had not even known how to do that; his dreams of her had just been a continuation of the sweet, vapid day and night dreams embodied once in Myra Burbage, not so much because Myra had been attractive to him as because she was the only girl there was near at hand; knowing then, as he knew now, that there would be no woman for him. He was too ugly, too poor, and there were too few women ever to reach down the list of unmarried men to his name.

  “You’re going with Morgan?” he asked.

  Her face looked suddenly angry, but her voice was not. “No, not Morgan. Or anybody.”

  He almost asked her about Buck, but he had once and she had acted as though he were stupid. “By yourself?” he asked.

  “By myself.”

  She said that, too, as though it should mean something. But he felt numb. What had been said was only words, but now the realization of the actuality of her leaving came over him, and he began to grasp at the remembrance of those times he had seen her, as though he must hold them preciously to him so that they would not disappear with her. He had, he thought, the key to remember her by.

  “When?” he said.

  “Tomorrow or—Tomorrow.”

  He nodded again, as though it were nothing. He could hear the roomers talking down the hall again. He rubbed his bandaged hand upon his thigh and nodded, and felt again, more intensely than he had ever felt it, his ineptness, his inadequacy, his incapacity with the words which should be spoken.

  “I guess I didn’t expect anything,” Kate said harshly. “I guess you are sulking with the rest tonight.”

  “Sulking?”

  “About Blaisedell,” she said, and went on before he could speak. “I was the only one that thought it was wonderful to see,” she said in a bitter voice. “For I saw Tom Morgan try to do a decent thing. I think it must have been the first decent thing he had ever tried to do, and did it like he was doing a dirty trick. And had it fall apart on him. Because Blaisedell was too—” Her voice caught. “Too—” she said, and shook her head, and did not go on. Then she said, as though she were trying to hit him, “I’m sorry you feel cheated.”

  “You think if Blaisedell had posted him he would have gone?”

  “Of course he would have gone. He was trying to give Blaisedell that—so people would think Blaisedell had scared him out. I think it’s funny,” she said, but she did not sound as though she did.

  They were talking about Blaisedell and Morgan like everyone else, and he knew she did not want to, and he did not want to.

  He looked down at his hands in his lap and said, “I’d thought you might be going with Morgan.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I talked to him. He said you’d been his girl but that you were through with each other. But I thought you might have—”

  “I told you I’d been his girl,” Kate said. Then she said, “Did he tell you more? I told you more, too. I told you what I’d been.”

  He closed his eyes; the darkness behind his eyes ached.

  “I guess I am still,” her voice continued. “Though I don’t have to work at it any more, since I’ve got money. That came from men.” Again she spoke as though she were hitting him. She said, “I’m damned if I am ashamed of it. It is honest work and kills no one. What are you waiting for, a little country girl virgin?”

  Now he tried to shake his head.

  “Why, men marry whores,” she said. “Even here. But not you. And not me. There is nothing here at all for me, is there?” Her voice began to shake and he looked up at her and tried to speak, but she rushed on. “So I have been a whore by trade,” she said. “But I can love, and I can hate by nature. But you can’t. You just sit and stare in at yourself and worry e
verything every way so there is no time nor place for any of that. Is there?”

  “Kate,” he said in a voice he could hardly recognize. “That is not so. You know well enough I have loved—”

  “Don’t say that!” she broke in fiercely. Her face looked very red in the lamplight, and her black eyes glittered. “I have never heard you lie before and don’t start for me. I know you haven’t been to the French Palace,” she said, “because I asked.” She said it cruelly. “I wanted to know if you were waiting for a little country virgin or not. And I—”

  “That’s not so, Kate!” he cried in anguish.

  Slowly the lines of her face relaxed until it was as gentle and full of pity as that of the little madonna in her room. He had never seen it this way before. “No,” she said gently. “No, I guess it isn’t. I guess you thought going to a whore wasn’t right. And I guess you thought that about me, too.”

  “Kate—I guess I knew you felt—kindly toward me. I kind of presumed you did. I’m not a fool. But Kate—” he said, and couldn’t go on.

  “But Kate?” she said.

  “Well, this is where I live.”

  He waited for a long time, but she did not speak. When he looked up he saw the harsh lines around her mouth again. He heard the rustle of her garments as she moved; she clasped her hands before her, staring down at him, her eyes in shadow.

  “Another thing,” he said. “You have been in the jail and seen those names scratched on the wall there.” He took a deep breath. “There was something Carl used to say,” he went on. “That there wasn’t a man with his name on there that didn’t either run or get killed. And Carl used to say who was he to think he was any different? And that he wouldn’t run. I think he even knew who was going to kill him.”

  “I’ve got money, Deputy,” Kate said. “Do you want to come with me? Deputy, this town is going to die and there is no reason for anybody to die with it. I am asking you to take the stage to Bright’s City with me tomorrow. Out of here, out of the territory.”

  “Kate—” he groaned.

  “Do you want to, or not?”

  “Yes, but Kate—I can’t, now.”

  “Killed or run!” she cried. “Deputy, you can run with me. I have got six thousand dollars in the bank in Denver. We can—” She stopped, and her face twisted in anger and contempt, or grief. “What kind of a fool am I?” she said, more quietly. “To beg you. Deputy, you can’t give me anything I haven’t had a thousand times and better. I can give you what you’ve never had. But you will lie down and die instead. Do you want to die more?”

  “I don’t want to die at all. I only have to stay here.” He beat his bandaged hand upon his knee. “Anyway till there is a proper sheriff down here, and all that.”

  “Why?” she cried at him “Why? To show you are a man? I can show you you are more a man than that.”

  “No.” He got to his feet; he rubbed his sweating hands on his jeans. “No, Kate, a man is not just a man that way. I—”

  “Because you killed a Mexican once,” she broke in. Her tear-shining eyes were fastened to him. “Is that why?”

  “No, not that either any more. Kate, I have set out to do a thing.” He did not know how to say it any better. “Well, I guess I have been lucky. That’s part of it, surely. But I have made something of the deputy in this town, and I can’t leave it go back down again. Not till things are—better. I didn’t drop it a while back when I was afraid, and, Kate, I can’t now because I would rather go off with you”—he groped helplessly for a phrase—“than anything else in the world.”

  He wet his dry lips. “Maybe to you Warlock is not worth anything. But it is, and I am deputy here and it is something I am proud of. There are things to do here yet that I think I can do. Kate, I can’t quit till it is done.”

  He saw her nod once, her face caught halfway between cruel contempt and pity. He moved toward her and put out a hand to touch her.

  “Don’t touch me!” she said. “I am tired of dead men!” She stepped to the door and jerked it open. The bottom of her skirt flipped around the door as she disappeared, pulling it half closed behind her.

  He took up the lamp and followed her, stopping in the hallway and holding the lamp high to give her a little light as she hurried down the stairs away from him, and, when she was gone, stared steadily at the faces that peered out at him from the other doorways until the faces were drawn back and the doors closed to leave him alone.

  59. MORGAN SHOWS HIS HAND

  MORGAN stood at the open window with his tongue mourning after a lost tooth and the night wind blowing cool on his bruised face. The night was a soft, purplish black, like the back of an old fireplace, the stars like jewels embedded in the soot. He stood tensely waiting until he saw the dark figure outlined against the dust of the street, crossing toward the hotel. Then he cursed and flung his aching body down into the chair, and took out a cigar. His hand shook with the match and he felt his face twisting with a kind of rhythmic tic as he listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs, coming along the hall. Knuckles cracked against the panel of his door. “Morg.”

  He waited until Clay rapped again. Then he said, “Come on in.”

  Clay entered, taking off his hat and bowing his head as he passed through the doorway. There was a strip of court plaster on his cheek, and his face was knuckle-marked enough. Morgan looked straight into his eyes and said, “You damned fool!”

  “What was I supposed to do?” Clay said, closing the door behind him. “Post you out because you were going anyhow?”

  The blue, violent stare pierced him, and his own eyes were forced down before it. “Why not?”

  “Would you kill two men to serve a trick like that, Morg?”

  “Why not?” he said again. His tongue probed and poked at the torn, pulpy socket. “One,” he said. “I had to take scarface first and Lew crawled for it.” With an effort he looked back to meet the blue gaze. “I told you I couldn’t let a man get away with burning me out!”

  “I asked you to leave that alone.”

  “Post me then, damn you!”

  Clay moved over to sit on the edge of the bed, with his shoulders slumped and his face sagging in spare, flat planes. He shook his head. “I couldn’t anyhow. I am not marshall any more.”

  “Well, I will back a play I have made. I don’t go unless you post me.”

  Clay shrugged.

  “What would it cost you? It might win you something.”

  “No.”

  “What does Miss Jessie Marlow say?”

  Clay frowned a little. He said in a level voice, “What would you try to do this for, Morg?”

  Because I never liked to look a fool, he thought. He had never hated it so much as he did now. “God damn it, Clay! A whole town full of clodhopping idiots aching for you to play the plaster hero for them one time again, and post out the Black Rattlesnake of Warlock. Which is me. And why not? It would have pleased every damned person I know of here except maybe you. Maybe you are yellow, though—a damned hollow, yellow Yankee. I hate to see you show it for these here!”

  “They can have it that way if they want it. I have quit.”

  “You could have posted me and quit after the big pot when I’d run.”

  “It wasn’t a game to cheat and make a fraud of,” Clay said. His face looked pasty pale beneath the bruises. He shrugged again, tiredly. “Or maybe it was and it took a thing like this to show me. And maybe if it could be that, it is time and past time to quit.”

  “Clay, listen. I am sick to death of this town! I am sick of sitting in the Lucky Dollar taking Lew’s money away, I am dead sick of watching the gawps from the chair on the veranda. I want to get out of here! It was a good reason for me to get out of here. I am trying to tell you it would have pleased everybody, me included. Now you are a damned has-been and a fool besides.” And you have not quit, he added, to himself; now you have not, whatever you think.

  “Why, I have pleased myself then,” Clay said. He said, quietly, �
�What are you so mad about, Morg?”

  He sat slumped down in his chair with his cold cigar clenched between his teeth. For whom was he doing this, after all? To please himself, was it? At least he wanted a live plaster saint rather than a dead one, and for that he had done what he had done, and for that he would do more. For whom? he wondered. It stuck now to try to say it was for Clay.

  “Mad?” he said. “Why, I am mad because I have looked a fool. I am mad because I am used to having my way. I will have my way this time. If you won’t post me for that, I will—” He stopped suddenly, and grinned, and said, “I will ask you for it for a favor.”

  Clay looked at him as though he were crazy.

  “For a favor, Clay,” he said.

  Clay shook his head.

  “Then I will see what it takes. Do you think I can’t make you do it?”

  “Why would you?” Clay said.

  “I said I will have my way!” He felt his fingers touch his cheek, and the tic convulsed his face again.

  “I have quit,” Clay said. “I will post no man again, nor marshal again.” He held his hand up before his face and stared at it as though he had never seen it before. “What is all this worth?” he said, in a shaky voice. “What is all this foolish talk? What’s my posting you out of Warlock worth to anybody?”

  “It is worth something to me,” he said, under his breath.

  “What are you trying to make of me?” Clay went on. His voice thickened. “You too, Morg! Not a human being at all, but a damned unholy thing—and a fraud of a thing in the end. No, I have quit it!”

  “Do it for me, Clay,” he said. “For a God-damned favor. Post me out and turn me loose. I am sick to death of it here. I am sick of you.”

  He saw Clay close his eyes; Clay shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He continued to shake it like that for a long time. He said, “Go then. I don’t have to post you so you can go. I—”