Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  He rose and blew out the lamp. As he started out he remembered the spare key to the cell door. He took it with him, on its iron ring, to leave at the jail.

  Outside it was lighter, harsher gray now, and down Main Street he could see lights burning among the miners’ shacks beyond Grant Street. As he walked toward the jail more of them were lit. The dust of the street was cleanly white, and the slight breeze from the northeast was fresh in his nostrils and no longer cold. The gray above the Bucksaws showed a greenish cast now, a yellow green that faded up and out to darken and merge with the gray world, but higher and brighter almost as he watched, so that he began to walk more rapidly. He turned into the jail, where first he hung the key ring on the peg, and then sat down at the table and placed his hat carefully before him to wait these last few moments. He tried to think only of what he might have left undone.

  He glanced toward the cell as the judge groaned and moved, made wet smacking sounds with his lips, groaned, and snored again; he could not see him in the darkness there.

  Turning again he watched the whitening dust in the street, and leaned on the scarred table top from which the justice of Warlock was dispensed, and waited, and wished only that there were some way he could see Warlock’s future before him, and wished, with a sudden, terrible pang, that he could hear how they would speak of him.

  But he felt, besides a flat and unfocused anxiety that came over him intermittently like a fever, a kind of peace, a certain freedom. He realized that there was no need for self-examination now, no need to question his decisions, no need to reflect upon his guilt, his inadequacy, nor upon himself at all. There were no decisions to be made any more, for there was only responsibility, and it was a freedom of tremendous scope. And he looked once more at the list of the names of the deputies of Warlock upon the whitewashed wall, at his own name scratched last there, but not last, and felt a pride so huge that his eyes filled, and he knew, too, that the pride was worth it all.

  A slow tread of bootheels came along the boardwalk, and Pike Skinner turned in the door. There were heavy smudges beneath his eyes, so that they looked like a raccoon’s eyes; the flesh of his face was stretched tight over the bone, and two day’s growth of beard made his face look dirty. He wore a sheepskin-lined jacket.

  “Pike,” he said, and Pike nodded to him, and looked in the cell.

  “Chicken old son of a bitch,” Pike said, with infinite contempt. Then he glanced at the names on the wall, and nodded again as Gannon slid the table drawer open.

  He took out the other deputy’s star and handed it to Pike, who tossed it up and caught it once, not speaking. He indicated the key ring on its peg. “I brought the other key along. The judge’s got one in there with him.”

  Pike nodded. He tossed the star again; this time he dropped it, and his face reddened as he bent to pick it up.

  “Careful of it,” Gannon said.

  “Shit!” Pike said, and in the word was a grief for which he was grateful. Pike turned away. “There’s people out,” he said. “Funny how they hear of a thing.”

  He looked past the other and saw the first light upon the street. “It’s close to time, I guess,” he said.

  “I guess,” Pike said.

  Peter came in with Tim French. There was a grunting and scraping within the cell; the judge’s hands appeared on the bars, then his face between them, heavy with sleep and liquor. The hot, red-veined eyes stared at him unseeing as he put on his hat and nodded, and nodded to Tim and Peter. Peter glanced down at Pike’s hand holding the other star.

  “Chilly out,” Tim said.

  He stepped past them, and outside. Down the boardwalk a way Chick Hasty stood, and with him were Wheeler, old Owen Parsons, and Mosbie, with his right arm in a muslin sling and a jacket thrown over his shoulders. There were men along the boardwalks farther down, too, and he saw the miners collecting at the corner of Grant Street, where the wagons from the Medusa and the other mines would pick them up. The first sliver of the sun showed over the Bucksaws, incredibly bright gold and the peak beneath it flaming.

  Chick Hasty looked down at him and nodded. Mosbie leaned back and nodded to him past Hasty, sick-eyed. He could hear the increasing bustle of Warlock awakening. Already, with the half-sun showing, the air was warmer. It would be another hot day. He moved farther out upon the boardwalk to lean against the railing and watch the great gold sun slowly climb from its defilade behind the mountains. All at once it was free, and round, and he walked on down the boardwalk past the men leaning against the railing there, and out into the dust of Main Street.

  II

  Blaisedell came out of the hotel, and immediately the men began moving back off the boardwalks, into doorways and the ruins of the Glass Slipper and the Lucky Dollar. Blaisedell walked slowly out into the street, and then Blaisedell was facing him, a block away, like some mirror-image of himself seen distant and small, but all in black, and Blaisedell began to walk at the same instant that he did. He could see the slant of Blaisedell’s shell belt through the opening of his unbuttoned coat, and the gold-handled Colt thrust into his belt there. Blaisedell walked with a slow, long-legged stride, while his own star boots felt heavy in the dust. The boots hurt his feet and his wrist brushed past the butt of his Colt with almost an electric shock. He watched the dust spurting from beneath Blaisedell’s boots.

  He could see the angry-looking stripes on Blaisedell’s face. He felt Blaisedell’s eyes, not so much a force now as a kind of meaningless message in a buzzing like that of a depressed telegrapher’s key. The sun was very bright in his face, and the figure approaching him began to dance and separate into a number of black-suited advancing figures, and then congeal again into one huge figure that cast a long, oblique shadow.

  Then he saw Kate; she stood against the rail before the Glass Slipper, motionless, as though she had been there a long time. She too was dressed all in mourning black, heavily bustled in a black skirt of many folds, a black sacque with lines of fur down the front, her black hat with the cherries on it, black mesh mitts on her hands that gripped the rail. A veil hid her face. He saw her raise her hands to her breast, and he saw Blaisedell glance toward her, and make a curt motion as though he were shaking his head.

  Straight down, straight up, Blaisedell had told him; it burst in his mind so there was room for nothing else. He walked steadily on, trying not to limp in his tight boots, and his eyes fixed themselves on Blaisedell’s right hand swinging at his side. He felt the muscles in his own arm tighten and strain at every step. He could feel Blaisedell’s eyes upon him and now he felt their thrust and still the confused buzzing inside his mind. But he watched Blaisedell’s hand; it would be soon. Now, now, now, he thought, at every jolting step; now, now. He felt himself being crushed beneath a black and corrosive despair. Now, he thought; now, now—

  It was as though there had been no movement at all. One instant Blaisedell’s hand had been swinging at his side, the next it contained the Colt that had been thrust inside his belt. His own hand slammed down—straight down, straight up—but already he was staring into the black hole of Blaisedell’s gun muzzle and saw Blaisedell’s mouth shaped into a crooked contemptuous half-smile. He steeled himself against the bullet, halting with his feet braced apart and his body tipping forward as though he could brace himself against the shock.

  But the shock, the explosion, the tearing pain, did not come. As he brought his own Colt up level, he hesitated, his finger firm against the trigger, and saw Blaisedell’s hand turn with a twisting motion. The gold handle gleamed suddenly as the six-shooter was flung forward and down to disappear in the street with a puff of dust.

  Blaisedell’s hand moved swiftly again, and the mate of the first Colt appeared. Again his finger tensed against the trigger and again he held it back as Blaisedell flung the other down. The slight contemptuous smile still twisted Blaisedell’s lips in his battered face. Blaisedell’s arms hung at his sides now, and slowly, uncertainly, he let his own hand drop. His eyes caught another splas
h of dust, in the street below the railing where Kate stood, her right hand extended and open and her face invisible behind the veil. Blaisedell stood staring at him with his swollen eyes looking shut.

  The realization burst in him that all he had to do now was walk the remaining thirty feet and arrest Blaisedell. But he did not move. He would not do it, he thought, in sudden rebellion, as though it were his own thought; but now he was feeling intensely the thrust of all the other eyes that watched this, and it was a force much stronger than that of his own gratitude, his own pity, and he knew all he served that was embodied in the vast weight pinned to his vest, and knew, as he made a slight, not quite peremptory motion with his head, that he spoke not for himself nor even a strict and disinterested code, but for all of them.

  Blaisedell started forward again, no longer coming toward him but walking along the track of his shadow toward Goodpasture’s corner. He walked with the same, slow, long-legged, stiff-backed stride, not even glancing at Gannon, as he passed him, and turned into Southend and disappeared down toward the Acme Corral.

  As Gannon turned to face the corner, he saw, past his shoulder, that the sun seemed not to have moved since he had come out into the street. But now he heard the sounds of hoofs and wagon wheels, and saw the wagons turning into Main Street. He watched the miners climbing into them, and the mules stamping and jerking their heads. More wagons appeared; the Medusa miners were going back to work. Miners appeared all along the boardwalks now, glancing back over their shoulders at him and at the corner of Southend as they moved toward the wagons. They made very little noise as they embarked.

  Miss Jessie appeared among them, hurrying along the boardwalk with a dark rebozo thrown over her shoulders and her brown hair tumbling around her head with her steps. She stopped with one hand braced against one of the arcade posts, and stared at Kate, and then, blankly, at him.

  He heard the pad of hoofs. Blaisedell came out of Southend Street on a black horse with a white face, white stockings; the horse pranced and twisted his sleek neck, but Blaisedell’s pale, stone profile did not turn. The black swung around the corner, and, hindquarters dancing sideways, white stockings brilliant in the sun, trotted away down Main Street toward the rim.

  “Clay!” he heard Miss Jessie call. Blaisedell did not turn, who must have heard. Gannon heard the running tap of heels upon the planks. She stopped and leaned against another post before Goodpasture’s store, and then ran out into the street, while the black danced on away. He saw Pike Skinner and Peter Bacon watching from the jail doorway, and more men were crowding out along the boardwalks now, and some into the street.

  Miss Jessie ran down Main Street in the dust, holding her skirts up; she would run swiftly for a time, then decrease her pace to a walk, then run again. “Clay!” she cried.

  Gannon began to move forward with the others, as Miss Jessie ran on. The black horse dropped down over the edge of the rim, Blaisedell’s head and shoulders visible for an instant and his ruined face turning back to glance once toward the town; then abruptly he was gone. “Clay!” Miss Jessie screamed, with her voice trailing thinly behind her as she ran. The doctor was hurrying after her.

  Gannon walked with the others down Main Street toward the rim, where the doctor had caught up with Miss Jessie. The doctor had an arm around her and was leading her back, her face dusty and white with huge vacantly staring eyes, her mouth open and her breast heaving. He saw the wetness at the corners of her mouth as he passed her and the doctor, and her eyes glared for a moment at him, vacant no longer, but filled with tears and hate. He moved on, and heard the doctor whispering to her as he led her back through the groups of men approaching the rim.

  III

  From the rim the great, dun sweep of the valley was laid out before them. There were wild flowers on the slopes from the recent rain. The long dead spears of ocotillo were covered with a thin mist of leaves, and from their ends red flaming torches waved and bowed in the breeze. Someone extended an arm to point out Blaisedell, where he guided the black horse among the huge tumbled boulders of the malpais. He was hidden from time to time among the boulders and each time he reappeared it was a smaller figure on a smaller horse, trailing tan clouds of dust that lingered in the air behind him. They watched in silence as he rode on down the stage road toward San Pablo and the Dinosaurs, until they could not be sure they saw him still at all, he was so distant. Yet now and then the tiny black figure on the black horse would stand out clearly against the golden, flower-speckled earth, until, at last, a dust devil rose in a gust of wind. Rising high and leaning across his path, it seemed to envelop him, and, when it had passed and blown itself apart, Blaisedell too was finally lost to sight.

  AFTERWORD:

  A Letter from Henry Holmes Goodpasture

  1819 Pringle St.

  San Francisco, Calif.

  May 14, 1924

  My Dear Gavin: [1]

  It has been a long time now, but I am surprised, as I look into the past in order to answer your letter, how easily it all comes back to me. Perhaps I am able to remember it with such immediacy because you and your brother so often asked me to tell and retell stories of my days in Warlock. That must seem a long time ago to you, who are now in your third year at New Haven, but to me, in my eighty-third upon this planet, it is only yesterday.

  I am most pleased that you should recall those old stories, and be interested enough to wish to know, now that you are grown, what happened “After.”

  To begin with, Warlock did not continue to prosper and grow as her citizens had once hoped, and when I departed for San Francisco in 1882, her decline was well under way. The Porphyrion and Western Mining Company had by then bought up the rest of the mines, and struggled for a number of years to cope with the increasing amounts of water met with at the lower levels; but it was a hopeless task, and Porphyrion, faced too with the fall of the silver market, was finally forced to the wall. By 1890 only the Redgold Mine was still in operation. The hamlet of Redgold then flourished briefly but, after the mine closed, became in its turn a ghost like Warlock and so many other mining camps.

  In answer to your questions, I shall try to be as succinct as it is possible for a garrulous old man to be. Yes, Warlock did become the county seat of Peach County. Its courthouse still stands (or stood the last time I visited Warlock, seventeen years ago), a fine brick structure that was unfortunately gutted by a fire soon after the turn of the century. Curiously, its blackened brick husk seemed to me to have no connection with the adobe husks around it, and even stands near the rim at the southwest corner of the town (where it commands a most striking view of the valley), apart from them. As I say, Warlock was the county seat; but not for long. The county offices were removed to Welltown, I believe in 1891.

  Dr. Wagner accompanied Jessie Marlow to Nome, where he died of a heart ailment. Jessie herself operated an establishment there called “The Miners’ Rest” for a number of years, and you will find her mentioned in many accounts of the Gold Rush days. I think she married a man named Bogart, or Bogarde, a prospector and saloonkeeper, and himself a figure of minor importance in Nome.

  James Fitzsimmons was one of the I.W.W. leaders imprisoned during the Great War. I have heard nothing of him since.

  There was never any doubt in Warlock that John Gannon’s death was cold-blooded murder. Cade had concealed himself in the alley behind the jail, and the shooting took place in Main Street before my store. I saw the body very shortly after the shooting, and poor Gannon had been clearly shot in the back, nor had his revolver been drawn. I was especially struck by the expression on his face, which was remarkably peaceful; he cannot even have known what struck him down.

  Cade took flight, but was apprehended in short order by a posse led by Pike Skinner. His trial was a notorious one, and these stories you have heard stem from his defense, which was based upon the contention that Gannon had not only murdered McQuown but had communicated to the Mexican authorities information which resulted in the massacre of the Cowboys
in Rattlesnake Canyon. As far as I could see, Cade mustered no evidence whatever to support this, but his accusations were then, and probably still are, widely believed. I know that Will Hart, an honest and intelligent man, professed to believe Cade’s story. I do not.

  Although he was tried in Bright’s City, Cade was returned to Warlock for execution, and became the first man legally hanged in Peach County. That was a memorable day.

  Pike Skinner was Peach County’s first sheriff. Judge Holloway presided briefly over the bench in Warlock’s new courthouse. Buck Slavin was Warlock’s first mayor. I am sure you will remember hearing stories of his career in the U.S. Senate. He was a colorful man, a brilliant politician, and had a matchless eye for the main chance.

  Arnold Mosbie, who served as a deputy under Skinner, became one of the last of the famous peace officers. He was Marshal in Harrisonburg.

  I have heard that the notorious “Big-nose Kate” Williams, of Denver fame, or ill fame, was Warlock’s Kate Dollar. I have also heard that Kate Dollar married a wealthy Colorado rancher. One, both, or neither of these stories may be true.

  You will notice that I have kept your questions about Blaisedell to the last. No, I cannot say I wish I had been present to hear you and your “know-it-all” friend argue about him. I have heard in my time too many such arguments, and I think you must have held for him as well as I could have done—perhaps better, for I was always chary of making him out a better man than he may have been. What was he? I think in all honesty I must say I do not know, and if I do not know in this late year of Our Lord, then I think that no man can. Certainly your opinionated friend cannot.