Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  65. THE WAKE AT THE LUCKY DOLLAR

  I

  MORGAN lay face down in the dust of Main Street. Kate Dollar bent over him, pulling weakly at his shoulder, her harsh, dry sobbing loud in the silence, her white face turning to stare at Blaisedell, and then at the men who lined the boardwalk. Buck Slavin ducked under the tie rail and came out to join her.

  Blaisedell retrieved his hat. His face was invisible beneath its brim in the fading light. Kate Dollar rose as Slavin bent down and turned Morgan over. Morgan’s face, caked with white dust, was grinning still. His shirt front was muddy and blood welled through the mud.

  “Get your hands off him,” Blaisedell said, and Slavin straightened hurriedly, wiping his hands on his trouser legs. Blaisedell’s face was a mesh of thick, red welts, his eyes were swollen almost closed.

  “You weren’t worth it,” Kate Dollar said, not loudly, as Blaisedell bent down and picked up Morgan’s body. He stood for a moment, staring back at her, and then he carried Morgan slowly back up the street toward the Lucky Dollar. He laid him on the boardwalk, ducked under the rail, and, in the silence, picked him up again. He backed through the batwing doors of the Lucky Dollar, gently maneuvering Morgan’s sagging, dusty head past the doors.

  Inside, grunting a little now with his burden, Blaisedell moved with heavy steps toward the first faro layout. Men scrambled out of his way, and the dealer and the case keeper retreated. He laid Morgan on the layout amid the chips and counters, and the silver. He straightened Morgan’s legs and folded his hands upon his muddy chest, and he stood for a long time in the intense and crowded silence staring down at Morgan. Then he glanced slowly around at the men who watched him, his eyes slanting from face to face white-rimmed like those of a frightened stallion: toward Skinner, Hasty, French, and Bacon, who stood nearby; toward the miners at the bar; toward the sheriff and Judge Holloway, who sat at a table with a whisky bottle between them, the sheriff staring at nothing in frozen concentration, the judge leaning forward with his forehead resting in his hands. Blaisedell glanced up at the sweaty-faced lookout sitting stiffly with his hands held rigid six inches above the shotgun laid across his chair arms.

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket and gently brushed the dust from Morgan’s face; then he covered the face with the handkerchief and said to the lookout in a jarring voice, “Watch him.” His bootheels scuffed loudly as he moved toward the bar. The men edged away before him so that by the time he reached it he had a twenty-foot expanse to himself. He put his hands down flat on the bar. “Whisky,” he said, staring into the looking-glass opposite him.

  One of the barkeepers brought him a bottle and a glass, and retreated as though on wheels. Blaisedell poured a glassful, raised it and said, “How?” He drank and set the glass down with a sharp clatter.

  The sound only intensified the silence. Faces peered in the batwing doors, and men close to the doors began silently to edge toward them, and outside. Those beyond Blaisedell remained in rigid attitudes. Skinner, French, Hasty, and Bacon quietly seated themselves at a table near the judge and the sheriff. A chair scraped and Blaisedell looked around; again his white-rimmed, swollen eyes swung from face to face. They fixed themselves finally upon Taliaferro, who stood down at the far end of the bar, and Taliaferro’s mole-spotted dark face turned yellow.

  With a slow, hunched motion Blaisedell turned toward him. “Taliaferro!” he said.

  Taliaferro screamed, raised his hands high above his head, turned, and fled back through his office doorway as Blaisedell’s hand slapped to his side. But he did not draw.

  Peter Bacon crossed his hands on the table before him, staring down at them; Pike Skinner was gazing fixedly at Morgan lying on the faro layout with the handkerchief over his face. “Oh my sweet God damn!” the sheriff said, almost inaudibly, his lips barely moving with it. “Don’t anybody cross him, for God almighty’s sake!”

  “Oh Lord, deliver us from evil,” the judge said suddenly, loudly, in a drunken voice, and the sheriff flinched.

  Blaisedell glanced once at the judge, and then turned back to the bar. “How?” he said, as though to himself; he straightened, staring at his dark reflection in the glass. With a slow, deliberate motion he drew his Colt. The explosion jerked the men around him like puppets on strings; one of the miners cried out shrilly, and the bartenders ducked behind the bar. Sound rocked and echoed through the Lucky Dollar, and, in the smoke, the mirror opposite Blaisedell dissolved into a spider web of cracks. A long shard of glass tipped out and fell, and others crashed down in brittle breakage.

  The lookout stood gazing straight ahead of him at nothing, with his hands held out before him like a piano player’s. The barkeepers raised their heads. The sheriff rose from his chair and, moving like a sleepwalker, slowly and carefully walked toward the batwing doors, and then, in a rush, fought his way through the men there and outside. Blaisedell stood facing the shattered mirror obscured in gun-smoke still. He thrust the gold-handled six-shooter into its scabbard, grasped the whisky bottle by the neck, and swung around.

  He moved back to the layout where Morgan lay. He walked around it, putting the bottle down beside Morgan’s head, and stood staring at the men beyond with his swollen eyes in his battered, striped face. No one moved. White-faced, they avoided his gaze, and one another’s. He turned toward the judge.

  “Say something.”

  The judge drew his arms in closer to his body, hunching his shoulders, his wrists crossed and his hands held flat against his chest; his head sagged lower.

  Blaisedell’s mustache twisted contemptuously. He turned back to the others. “Say something.”

  Peter Bacon looked steadily back at him. Hasty was cleaning his fingernails with minute attention. Tim French, with his back to Blaisedell, stared at Bacon, plucking at his lower lip. Pike Skinner, his ugly, great-eared face flushed beet-red, said, “I guess he would’ve killed somebody. He broke Mosbie’s arm for him. He was after trouble. He—”

  “What’s Mosbie worth?”

  “He was out to kill somebody, Marshal,” Hasty said. “He—”

  “Kill who? You?”

  “Might’ve been me, I guess,” Hasty said, uncomfortably.

  “What are you worth?”

  Hasty said nothing. French turned slightly, carefully, to glance up at Blaisedell.

  “Oh Lord, deliver us!” the judge said.

  The whites of Blaisedell’s eyes flashed again, his teeth showed briefly beneath his mustache. He hooked his thumb in his shell belt. “Was it what you wanted?” he said to French.

  French did not reply.

  “What you wanted?” he said to Bacon.

  “I guess I never much want to see a man killed, Marshal,” Bacon said.

  “You are talking to your friends here, Marshal,” Skinner said.

  “I have got no friends!” Blaisedell’s breath leaked steadily, noisily through his half-parted lips. “Don’t look at me like that!” he said suddenly.

  Peter Bacon, to whom he had spoken, leaned back a little in his chair. His wrinkled face was grayish under the dark tan, his washed blue eyes remained fixed on Blaisedell. Then he rose.

  “I’ll be going,” he said, in a shaky voice. “I don’t much like seeing this.” He started for the door.

  “Come back here,” Blaisedell said.

  “I guess I won’t,” Bacon said. His face turned toward Blaisedell as Blaisedell drew the gold-handled Colt, but he said, “I’d never be afraid to turn my back on you, Marshal.” He went on outside.

  “You’ve got no cause to turn mean against us here, Marshal,” Pike Skinner said.

  “I’ve got cause,” Blaisedell said. It was almost dark in the Lucky Dollar now, and his face looked phosphorescent in the dim light. “Judge me,” he said. “You judged him. Judge me now.” He swung toward Judge Holloway. “Judge me,” he said, in the jarring voice.

  “What will you do?” the judge cried suddenly. “Kill us all for your pain?” He pulled himself upright, trying to fit
his crutch beneath his armpit. With a swift movement Blaisedell skipped forward and kicked the crutch loose. The judge fell heavily, crying out. Blaisedell snatched up the crutch and flung it toward the batwing doors. It fell and slid with a clatter.

  “I’ve had too much of you!” Blaisedell said. “Crawl for it. Crawl past him, that was a man and not all talk!”

  Pike Skinner got to his feet, and Tim French half rose; Blaisedell swung toward them. The judge crawled, awkwardly, sobbing with fear; he crawled past the faro layout, reached the crutch, and pushed it toward the bar, where he pulled himself up, and, sobbing and panting, swung out through the louvre doors. It was silent again. Blaisedell went back to stand beside Morgan’s body. He took off his hat and brushed a hand uncertainly over his pale hair. He pointed a finger at one of the barkeepers.

  “Bring me four candles over here.” He turned slowly, in the dim room. “Take off your damned hats,” he said. His voice cracked. “Sing,” he said.

  There was no sound. One of the barkeepers scurried forward with four white candles. Blaisedell jammed one in the mouth of the whisky bottle, lit it, and placed it beside Morgan’s head. He took the bottle from the judge’s table and fixed and lit a second, which he placed on the other side of Morgan’s head. He handed the other two candles back to the barkeeper and indicated Morgan’s feet.

  “Sing!” he said again. Someone cleared his throat. Blaisedell began to sing, in the deep, heavy, jarring voice:

  “Rock of ages, cleft for me,

  Let me hide myself in thee.”

  The others began to join in, and the hymn rose. The candle flames soared and shivered at Morgan’s head and feet.

  “Let the water and the blood

  From thy side, a healing flood,

  Be of sin the double cure,

  Save from wrath, and make me pure.”

  They sang more loudly as Blaisedell’s voice led them. They sang the same verse three times, and then the singing abruptly died as Blaisedell’s voice ceased. Blaisedell removed the handkerchief with which he had covered Morgan’s face.

  “You can come past and pay your respects to the dead,” he said, quietly now.

  Several of the miners came hesitantly forward, and Blaisedell moved to the other side of the layout, so that they had to pass between him and Morgan. He stared into each face as the man passed. The others began to fall into line. There was a scrape of boots upon the floor. One of the miners crossed himself.

  “Have you got a cross on?” Blaisedell said. The man’s sweating, bearded face paled. He brought from under his shirt a silver crucifix on a greasy cord, which he slipped over his head. Blaisedell took it from him and fixed it upright between Morgan’s hands. The men filed on past the faro layout, under Blaisedell’s eyes, and each glanced in his turn at Morgan’s grinning dead face, and then passed more quickly outside. The candle flames danced, swayed, flickered. Blaisedell beckoned the lookout down from his stand to join the line, and the men at the tables, and the barkeeps. Some, as they went by, crossed themselves, and some nodded with their hats placed awkwardly against their chests, but all in silence and without protest passed by as Blaisedell had directed, and on outside into the crowd that waited in Main Street.

  II

  “Where’s Gannon?” Pike Skinner said, in a stifled voice, when he joined the others outside in the darkness. “Oh hell, oh, God damn it, oh, Jesus Christ,” he said helplessly.

  “What’s he doing now?” someone whispered. They stood crushed together upon the boardwalk, but at a distance from the louvre doors.

  “Breaking bottles, it sounds like.”

  The sound of breaking glass continued, and then they heard furniture being dragged across the floor. There was a wrenching sound of splintering wood. Presently they noticed that there was more light inside.

  “Fire,” someone said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “Fire!” another yelled.

  Immediately Blaisedell appeared in the doorway, outlined against the strengthening bluish light. He had the lookout’s shotgun in his hands. “Get back!” he said, and, because they did not comply rapidly enough, shouted viciously, “Get on back!” and raised the shotgun and cocked it. They fled before him off the boardwalk into the street, and down the boardwalk right and left. Flames rose in great blue tongues inside the doors. Blaisedell looked huge, black, and two-dimensional standing against them. The fire crackled inside. Soon it coughed and roared, and red and yellow flames were mingled with the blue.

  “Fire!” someone shouted. “Fire! It’s the Lucky Dollar going!” Others took up the cry. Flames licked out through the louvre doors, and Blaisedell moved aside, and, after a while, walked east along the boardwalk, the men there silently giving way before him, and disappeared into the darkness.

  66. GANNON TAKES OFF HIS STAR

  IN THE jail the flame in the hanging lamp was dim behind the smoky shade. Gannon watched the broad, wide-hatted shadow Pike Skinner made as he moved across before the lamp, pacing toward the names scratched on the wall, and back toward the cell where the judge snored in drunken insensibility upon the prisoners’ cot. Peter Bacon sat with his shoulders slumped tiredly in the chair beside the alley door, wiping the sweat and ashes from his face with his bandanna. The fire, at least, was out.

  Gannon leaned against the wall and watched Pike and wondered that his legs still held him up. He heard the judge snort in his sleep and the clash of springs as he changed position. The whisky bottle clattered to the floor. He had locked himself in the cell and had the key ring in there with him.

  “Well, by Christ,” Pike said. “Keller’s lit out of here like the fiends was after him and the judge’s drunk himself to a coma. What’s there for you and me, Pete?”

  “Go home and sleep,” Peter said.

  “Sleep!” Pike cried. “Jesus Christ, sleep! Did you see his eyes?”

  “I saw them,” Peter said.

  Pike rubbed a hand over his dirty face. The back of his hand was black with soot. Then Pike turned to face Gannon. “Johnny, he will kill you!”

  “Why, I don’t know that it will come to that, Pike,” he said.

  Pike glared at him with his ugly red face wild with grief and anger; Peter was watching him too, the chew of tobacco moving slowly in his jaw. He felt the skin at the back of his neck crawl. They were looking at him as though he were going to kill himself.

  “You didn’t see his eyes,” Pike said. “Leave him be, for Christ’s sake, Johnny! Go home and sleep on it. Maybe he will’ve come to himself by morning.”

  Gannon shook his head a little. He could look down through himself as through a hollow tube and see that he was a coward and be neither ashamed of it nor proud that he would do what he had to do. He said, “I guess it doesn’t matter much whether he comes to himself or not. You can’t go around burning a man’s place down. The whole town might’ve gone.”

  “And a damned good thing,” Pike said. He resumed his pacing. “It’s what’s wrong,” he said. “A town of buildings is more important than a man is.” The judge groaned and snorted in the cell, in his troubled sleep.

  “I hold it poorly on the judge,” Peter said, as bitterly as Gannon had ever heard him speak. “I hold a man should face up to a thing he has got to face up to.”

  “Shit!” Pike Skinner cried. He halted, facing the names scratched upon the wall, his fists clenched at his sides. “Face up to shit!” he said. He swung around. “Johnny, he is still owed something here!”

  “I thought maybe I’d tell him I wouldn’t come after him till morning. I thought maybe he might go before, then.”

  “Johnny, who the hell are you to tell him to go, or arrest him either?”

  He felt a stir of anger; he said, stiffly, “I am deputy here, Pike.”

  “He’ll kill you!”

  “Maybe he has come to himself already,” Peter said.

  “Is he still down there?”

  “He was just now.”

  Gannon pushed himself away from the wall.
He could smell on himself the stench of ashes and sweat, and fear. “I guess I will be going along, then,” he said. Neither Pike nor Peter spoke. The judge snored. He picked up his hat from the table and went on outside into the star-filled dark. The cold wind funneled down the street and he could hear the steady creaking of the sign above his head. He shivered in the cold. The moon was down already in the west, the stars very bright. He walked slowly along the boardwalk, with the hollow pound of his footfalls reverberating in the silence.

  A light burned in the window above Goodpasture’s store. The French Palace was dark. He crossed Southend Street and stepped carefully past the clutter of boards before the Lucky Dollar where a part of the arcade roof had fallen in. He could smell wet ashes now, and smoke, and the stink of char and whisky, and the sweeter, stomach-convulsing odor with them. Further on there were still a few loiterers standing along the railing. Some of them greeted him as he went by. He passed the burnt-out ruin of the Glass Slipper and crossed Broadway. A lamp burned in a second-story window of the hotel. The rocking chairs were dark, low shapes on the veranda. One of them was occupied, and his heart clenched breathless and painful in his chest for a moment, because it was the chair in which Morgan had always sat. But it would be Blaisedell now.

  He heard a faint creak as it rocked. He went to the bottom of the veranda steps and halted there, ten feet away from the chairs. He could make out the faint, pale mass of Blaisedell’s face beneath his black hat, the smaller shapes of his pale hands on the chair arms.

  “I’m sorry, Blaisedell,” he said, and waited. The face turned toward him, and he could see the gleam of Blaisedell’s eyes. Blaisedell did not speak.