Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  Fitzsimmons glanced sideways at him and winked, solemnly, and he nodded in reply.

  Behind them Daley and Martin were talking in low, excited voices. Several whores peered worriedly from the cribs along the Row, and the dark, wooden faces of Mexican women watched them from the porches of the miners’ shacks along Peach Street. Warlock seemed apathetic after an eventful day. Now, the doctor thought, his anger against MacDonald must be regenerated, and yet this done in such a way that he could temper the mood of the strikers at the meeting to the proper course. He began to ponder what he must say to them—different words entirely from those of this afternoon.

  “Do you know what, Doc?” Fitzsimmons said, in a low voice. “There is not a miner in this town knows what to do now. They will be so pleased to have us tell them they will wag their tails.”

  “And do just the opposite,” he said, and smiled.

  “Not if we tell them what they are going to do is what they want to do.”

  “I think there are more than old Heck who want to burn the Medusa still. Or more than ever.”

  Fitzsimmons shook his head condescendingly. “They are too scared, Doc. Just so nobody says they are scared. We had just better be damned sure nobody speaks up to say we had better settle quick before the cavalry gets back. That’s all we have to watch out for.”

  “And make sure we show Willingham we think he is in rather a worse position than we are.”

  “Expect it would be a good idea to get up a torchlight parade tonight?”

  “I think it would be very effective, and a good thing for you to turn your energies to. If you are sure you could control it.”

  “I could control it, all right,” Fitzsimmons said stiffly, and glanced at him sideways again.

  The little procession passed the wood yard and turned into the vacant property, which had been used for miners’ meetings since Lathrop’s time. There were a number of miners there already.

  The doctor stopped and looked around to meet the eyes that were all fixed upon him. It was as though they knew instinctively that he had been chosen, and deferred without question to the choice. “Doc,” Patch said, in grave greeting, and then many of the others took it up. Their tone was different from that of their usual greetings—a pledge of loyalty that had a suspended skepticism in it. They greeted Fitzsimmons by name too, but less deferentially.

  “Frenchy,” the doctor said, as the rest of the men from Daley’s house came up to group around him, “will you see that those planks are set up on the barrels so the speakers will have a place to stand?” Fitzsimmons grinned crookedly as Frenchy went to do it, and the doctor realized why he had spoken so loudly, and to Martin in particular.

  “Doc!” Stacey, with his bandaged head, was hurrying toward him. Stacey raised a hand and broke into a trot. “Doc,” he panted, as he came up. “You had better come. Miss Jessie needs you at the General Peach.”

  He felt Fitzsimmons’ eyes. “I can’t come now,” he said curtly. But all at once what had happened at the General Peach, which he had tried to put from his mind as irrelevant, crushed down upon him, and he felt pity for Jessie like a dagger stroke. But not now, he almost groaned; not now. He could not go now.

  “It was the marshal sent me,” Stacey whispered. Beneath his muslin turban his freckled forehead was creased with worry. “He says she has got the nerves very bad, Doc.”

  He nodded once. “Get my bag from the Assay Office, will you?” He turned to Fitzsimmons, whose eyebrows rose questioningly in his bland face. “Jimmy, I must go and see about Miss Jessie. You will have to do your best here until I get back.”

  Fitzsimmons nodded, and then on second thought frowned as though it were a terrible burden and responsibility. “I will do my best, Doc,” Fitzsimmons said, massaging the torn knuckles with which he had made sure of his future. “You hurry,” he said.

  “I will,” he replied grimly. He left the lot, ignoring those who called after him; he almost ran down Grant Street to the General Peach. Jessie’s door was closed, but he could hear her voice raised shrilly inside her room. Blaisedell opened the door for him.

  He stared in shock at Blaisedell’s face. It was cross-hatched with great red welts, and his bruised eyes were swollen almost closed. “Thank God you have got here,” Blaisedell said, in a low voice. “You had better give her something. She is—”

  “David!” Jessie cried, as he entered past Blaisedell. She stood in the center of the room facing him. Her white triangle of a face looked wasted, as though the fire that blazed in her eyes was consuming the flesh around them. Her face contorted into a wild grimace that he realized was meant to be a smile.

  Blaisedell closed the door and came up beside him, moving as though he were sore in every fiber. He sounded exhausted. “She wants us to lead the miners up to burn the Medusa mine,” he said. “I have been trying to tell her it is—not the right time. I thought if you could give her something to quieten her,” he whispered.

  “It is the time!” Jessie cried. “It is the time now! David, we will lead them, and we will—”

  “Lead the miners, Jessie?” he broke in, and the words seemed a mockery of himself.

  “Yes! We will ride up to the Medusa at the head of them, an army of them. How they will cheer and sing! There are barricades there, they say, but that cannot stop us! Oh, Clay!”

  “Jessie, Blaisedell is right, I’m afraid. It is not the time.”

  “It is the time! The cavalry has gone, and—and we have to do something!” She had a handkerchief in her hands, which she kept winding around one hand and then the other.

  “We don’t have to do anything, Jessie,” Blaisedell said in a patient voice.

  Her sunken, blazing eyes stared at Blaisedell, shifted to stare at the doctor; it was as though she were looking past them both to the Medusa mine, to glory or redemption—he did not know what. She pulled the handkerchief tight between her hands again. “David,” she said calmly. “You must help me make him understand.”

  There was a knock. “That is Stacey with my bag,” he said to Blaisedell, who went to open the door. He took Jessie’s hands. The handkerchief was wet with perspiration, or with tears. He smiled reassuringly at her and said, “No, Jessie, I’m afraid it really is not the right time. Everything is very confused right now. But maybe tomorrow or the next day you and—”

  “Now!” she cried, and her voice was suddenly deep with grief. “Oh, now, now!” She swung toward Blaisedell. “Oh, it must be now, before they forget him. Clay, it is for you!”

  He took the bag from Blaisedell, and the bottle from it. There was a glass on the bureau and he filled it with water from the pitcher, and stained the water with laudanum. Behind him Jessie said despairingly, “Clay, it is for your sake!”

  In the mirror the doctor saw the agony and revulsion written on Blaisedell’s cruelly bruised face. Jessie flew to him and pressed her face to his chest, her ringlets flying as she turned her head wildly from side to side, murmuring something to Blaisedell’s heart he neither could hear nor wished to hear. Blaisedell stared at him over her brown head as, awkwardly, he patted her back.

  The doctor indicated the glass, and Blaisedell said, “Jessie, Doc has got something for you.”

  Instantly she swung around. Her face darkened with suspicion. “What’s that?”

  “It is some laudanum to let you rest.”

  “Rest?” she cried. “Rest! We cannot rest a moment!”

  “You had better take it, Jessie,” Blaisedell said, in the gentle voice.

  The doctor raised the glass with the whisky-colored liquid in it to her, but she lifted a hand as though she would strike it to the floor. “Jessie!” he said sharply.

  Her shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes. She began to sob convulsively. She rubbed her knuckles into her closed eyes and swayed, and Blaisedell put an arm around her. The doctor could see the sobs tearing at her frail body. They tore at him as well; with each one he was wrenched with pity for her, and with anger at Clay Blaisede
ll and the world that had broken her. His hand shook with the glass.

  “Drink it, Jessie.”

  Obediently she drank it down, and he went to turn the coverlet back on the bed. Blaisedell helped her to the bed and she lay down with her hands over her face, her fingers working in her tangled ringlets, her head moving ceaselessly from side to side. The doctor pulled the coverlet up over her as Blaisedell stepped back toward the door.

  “I will be going now, Doc,” Blaisedell said in his deep voice, and he turned to meet the blue, intense gaze that was almost hidden beneath the swollen lids. Blaisedell said it again, not aloud, but with his lips only, and nodded to him.

  “We will do it tomorrow!” Jessie cried suddenly. She raised her head and her eyes swung wildly in search of Blaisedell. “We will lead them to the Medusa tomorrow, Clay. Tomorrow may not be too late!”

  “Why, no; tomorrow won’t be too late,” Blaisedell said, and smiled a little; then he went out, gently closing the door behind him.

  The doctor sat down on the bed beside Jessie as she laid her head back again. She closed her eyes, as though she would be glad to rest. As he heard Blaisedell’s step upon the stairs he put down the glass and smoothed his hand over her damp, tangled hair.

  He glanced up at the mezzotint depicting Cuchulain in his madness, and felt the pain and fury convulse his heart. So Blaisedell would leave, and damned be his soul for ever having come, for having enchanted her, for leaving her forever in the circle of flames and thorns. And the miners and their union? he thought suddenly. There was no choice. He smiled down at her and smoothed his hand over her hair.

  “The miners are meeting now, Jessie,” he said. “Tomorrow will be time enough.”

  She nodded and smiled a little, but did not open her eyes. “It would be better today,” she said in a small, clear voice. “But he is tired and hurt. I shouldn’t have blamed him so. I shouldn’t have called him a coward. What a strange thing to say of him!”

  “He knew you were disturbed.” He looked down at the strong jut of her brows over her sunken, closed eyes, the whitening of her nostrils as she breathed, the determined set to her little chin.

  “Oh, I am so glad I thought of it!” she said. “For it will change everything. We will ride, of course, and they will march behind us. We—”

  “Tomorrow,” he whispered. “Tomorrow, my dear.”

  He saw her face crumple; she began to sob again, but softly. She said in the small voice, “But you see why I must make him do it, don’t you, David? Because what happened here was my fault.”

  “No, Jessie,” he said. “Jessie, you had better try to rest now.”

  She fell silent, and after a time he thought she must be asleep more from exhaustion than from the effect of the opiate. He left off stroking her hair and gazed at the window, wondering how the miner’s meeting was progressing. He felt detached from it now, but there were a few things he would have liked to say. He would have liked to treat with Willingham for them; he thought he would have enjoyed crossing swords with Willingham.

  Jessie said sleepily, “He was hurt and sick at heart, and I was so furious— He wanted to leave here tomorrow, he and I. To go somewhere else, and he said he would change his name. It made me so angry that he should think of changing his name! But I should have understood that he was hurt and sick at heart. Oh, dear God, I thought that monster had destroyed him! But it is silly to give in so easily when—”

  “Rest,” he said. “You must rest.”

  Again she was silent. He thought of her and Blaisedell leading the miners and wondered if it was any more insane than his trying to lead them himself. He gazed at his world through inward eyes and saw all his ideals and aspirations crumbling gray and ineffectual. He saw himself a fool. Much better, he thought, a torchlight parade than what he would have brought them, if he could have brought them anything; how much finer the flame of the Medusa stope mounting the shafthead frame against the sky, than the gray ashes of reason. He had deluded himself with his ideals of humanity and liberality, but peace came after war, not out of reason. They would have to have fire and blood to make their union. So it had always been, and revolutions were made by men who conquered, or who died, and not by gray thought in gray minds. Peace came with a sword, right with a sword, justice and freedom with swords, and the struggle to them must be led by men with swords rather than by ineffectual men counseling reason and moderation.

  He watched the shadows lengthening through the lace curtains. The room was dimmer now, Jessie’s pale face shadowed and more peaceful. It was a quiet meeting the miners were having, he thought. He wondered what kind of a showing Fitzsimmons was making, and smiled at these dregs of jealousy in himself. He knew that Fitzsimmons would do well. It was a sad truth that all the masses of men in their causes would be led by ambitious men, by power-hungry, cunningly self-serving men, rather than by the humanists, the idealists; and better led for it, he thought. Fitzsimmons loved neither the miners nor their cause, he loved only himself and the power he might attain through them. Neither did he, David Wagner, love the miners. He loved an ideal, a generality, and hated another. It was more love, and hate, than Fitzsimmons possessed, and yet it had crippled him in the end, because he could see too well how gray and impalpable was a generality, however fine, set against flesh and blood. There was no choice for him between serving an ideal made of straw and serving a single person in unhappiness and pain, whom he loved.

  When Jessie spoke again her voice was so blurred he could hardly understand it. “What did Curley Burne matter to him? I cannot understand why Curley Burne mattered to him so, David. He was not good for anything! He was just another rustler. He—” Her voice died, although her lips still moved.

  He watched the increasingly slow movement of her lips, and whispered, “Rest.” All that is over, he thought; but could not tell her so. There was a knock.

  “Doc?” It was Fitzsimmons’ voice. He rose quietly, and went to open the door. He put a finger to his lips, and Fitzsimmons glanced past him and nodded. His face was flushed and triumphant. “You and me are to go talk to Willingham!” he whispered excitedly. “We are to work it out somehow. It is up to us!”

  “I can’t go, Jimmy.”

  “You can’t!” Fitzsimmons avoided his eyes, pouting; but he knew that Fitzsimmons was relieved and pleased.

  “My place is here, I’m afraid.”

  Fitzsimmons made a show of scowling, biting his lip, rubbing a scarred hand over his stubble of beard. “Well—I guess I can’t go back and tell them. I guess I will try and go it alone.”

  “Listen to me. You will have to have something to take back to them. If it looks as though Willingham will give you nothing, tell him they will not go back to work for MacDonald. He will give you that, at least.”

  Fitzsimmons nodded. “I’ll get more than that.”

  “Good luck, Jimmy.” He put out his hand, and took Fitzsimmons’ gnarled, scarred hand, shook it once, and released it.

  “Thanks, Doc.” The other didn’t smile. He started away, and then he glanced back, warily, questioningly.

  The doctor smiled and said, “No, I won’t get in your way. I am a doctor, after all, not a miner. But try to remember that you are serving them, sometimes. Not just yourself, Jimmy.”

  Fitzsimmons’ face flushed more deeply, but his mouth was hard and crookedly set. “Why, it goes together, doesn’t it, Doc? Or does sometimes,” he said, and grinned and took his leave, his shoulders held very straight, his hands carried before him. No doubt those burned hands would be useful with Willingham, and no doubt Fitzsimmons meant to use them for all they would gain him, and the miners—that went together sometimes. And perhaps, he thought, as he closed the door, it was as much as could be expected in a world of men.

  He returned to sit beside Jessie again. As he watched her sleeping face he smiled and felt at rest himself. He thought there was no better vocation he could have asked, had he ever had a choice. Her sleeping face was quite beautiful, but he was
worried about her thinness. She was tired, there had been too much strain upon her, but it would be better with Blaisedell gone. He started to touch her hair again, but he was afraid of waking her, so he contented himself with staring at her face as though to memorize it.

  He started as there was a shot in Main Street; he frowned as he saw her eyelids move. There were more shots. Her eyes opened.

  “What’s that?” she whispered.

  “Only a cowboy making a little excitement.”

  Her forehead was wrinkled with worry, her eyes looked troubled. There were more shots, followed by shouting.

  “It is just some cowboy,” he said soothingly. He took the bottle of laudanum up again and measured ten more drops into her glass, and rose to fill it with water. “Drink this,” he said, and she raised her head to drink. The shooting continued, sporadically, and the shouting. Jessie smiled and he saw her relax as Blaisedell’s footsteps descended the stairs.

  “Clay will stop that,” she whispered, as she lay back upon the pillow again.

  He felt very tense as he listened to Blaisedell’s steps in the entryway, and then he too relaxed as they passed Jessie’s door and went outside. “I think I will join you, Jessie,” he said, smiling down at her. He measured into the glass his usual dosage, in which he had not indulged for some time now, and then added five more drops and poured the water in. He raised the glass ceremoniously. He thought, as he drank the bitter and puckery draught, that it was not too early in the day.

  64. MORGAN CASHES HIS CHIPS

  TOM MORGAN sat on the veranda of the Western Star Hotel and watched the sun’s slow descent toward the bright peaks of the Dinosaurs. The crowd of miners had drifted away and now there was no one in the street for whom he had to put on a show of being mine-owner-bought, which had made him feel like a fool. Alone now, with the sun going down, he felt at ease.