Oakley Hall - Warlock

“I know all that,” Blaisedell said. It seemed a rebuke, and it angered Gannon that this thought, so hard to put into words, should be brushed aside. He glanced up to see a bitterness in Blaisedell’s face that shocked him; but instantly it was gone, so that he could not be sure he had really seen it.

“Go on, Deputy,” Blaisedell said easily. “I guess there is more.”

“It would be a poor thing if this town was to turn against you,” he said. “Because Warlock is a safer place since you came here. And there is more to it than that, for people have got some starch into them to stand up to things. Like Carl. Why, like the other day! There was others than you that let me make that play, and come out of it. But those others wouldn’t have been standing by if you hadn’t done what you’ve done in this town.

“But there is that point, Marshal,” he went on. He managed to meet the impassive blue stare. “It is like a kid with a big brother to run the bad kids off him. Some time the big brother is going to have to let the kid fight for himself. I mean even if he gets whipped—”

“That is you you are talking about,” Blaisedell broke in.

“No, it is the deputy here. Which only happens to be me.”

“Do you think you are ready to take it on, Deputy?”

He almost groaned, for it was the question. He shook his head tiredly and said, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t think you are ready yet,” Blaisedell said. “But then I didn’t think you were before the Regulators came in, either.”

He saw Blaisedell smile a little, and he supposed it had been a compliment. “I think I will stay on awhile,” Blaisedell said. “It is not time yet.” He said it with a certain inflection and Gannon thought he might be talking of himself now.

He remembered Blaisedell’s telling the judge that he would know when it was time to go, but now he wondered what time Blaisedell had meant, Warlock’s or his own. “Surely,” he said quickly. “I don’t think it is time yet, either. But I have got to be ready sometime. I couldn’t ever have been ready at all if you hadn’t been here.”

Blaisedell blinked. After a long time he said, “I see you have taken up with Kate Dollar.”

Gannon felt himself blushing, and Blaisedell continued, still gazing at the names on the wall. “She is a fine woman. I knew her back awhile.”

“She said.”

“Down on me,” Blaisedell said. “I killed a friend of hers in Fort James.”

She said; this time he did not say it aloud.

“It was shoot or get shot,” Blaisedell said. “Or I thought it was. I had been edgy about things.” He was silent for a time, and Gannon remembered what Kate had told him about it. He had thought she must be telling the truth because she had sounded so certain; but now he wondered about it just because Blaisedell sounded so uncertain.

Then Blaisedell said, “I remember when I killed a man the way you did the other day. And it was clear and had to be done, though I went home afterwards and puked my insides out. The way you did.” His voice sounded removed and musing, and, after another pause he went on again. “But there was a lesson I learned. It is that a man can’t ever be careful enough. Even careful as a person can be is not enough. For there will be a man you don’t want to come against you, and that shouldn’t, but all the same he will—”

He stopped and shook his head a little, and Gannon thought he had been speaking of Curley Burne.

Blaisedell said, “I knew a man once who said it was all foolishness — that if you want to kill a man, why, kill him. Shoot him down from behind in the dark if you want to kill him. But don’t make a game with rules out of it.”

This time it was Morgan; it hit Gannon like a picture slapped across his sight and then drawn back into focus so he could study it: Morgan standing masked in the doorway in the dark, and Abe McQuown with his back turned.

“But he doesn’t understand,” Blaisedell said. “It is not that at all, for you don’t want to kill a man. It is only the rules that matter. It is holding strict to the rules that counts.”

Blaisedell let his chair down suddenly, and the legs cracked upon the floor; he leaned forward with his face intent and strained, and Gannon felt the full force of his eyes. “Hold to them like you are walking on eggs,” he said. “So you know yourself you have played it fair and as best you could. As right as you could. Like you did with Haggin. I admired that, Deputy, for you did just what it was put on you to do, and did it well.”

Then the muscles along the edges of his jaw tightened. “So it was all clear for you,” he said, with the bitter edge to his voice again. “But there are things to watch for. Watch yourself, I mean. Don’t be too fast. I have been too fast two times in different ways, and it is why I asked you about Cade. For after the first time, there are people out after you, and you know it and worry it, unless you are not the worrying kind. So then, you think, if you don’t get drawn first and them killed first — do you see what I mean?”

Gannon nodded. He was being instructed, he knew, and this was a very precious thing to Blaisedell. He felt embarrassed as he had been once when his father had tried to instruct him about women. And he saw that Blaisedell was embarrassed, as his father had been.

“Well, I came in to try to tell you a couple of things, Deputy,” he said, in a different tone. “And a long time getting to it. A little thing I noticed watching you draw, for one.”

“What was that, Marshal?”

“Well, you lose a little time and your aim, too, flapping your hand out when you pull your piece free. I would put in a little practice bringing it up straight. Down straight with your hand, up straight with your piece. I saw you flapped your hand out a little, and though you center-shot him clean, you lost time. He lost aim. He flapped out so far he didn’t get the barrel back in line, was the reason he missed you.”

“I’ll remember. I hadn’t thought of that, Marshal.” He waited, tensely.

Blaisedell frowned. “The other thing,” he said. “It is something you ought to know, but I don’t know quite — Well, it is just something you have got to tell yourself every time. It is a kind of pride a man has to have, and it has got to be genuine. Has to. You will see when another man hasn’t got it. I mean, when a man thinks maybe you are faster and better than him, he is already through. You can see that, and those times you don’t have to hurry a shot, for he will more than likely miss. Like Curley missed,” he said, in a flat voice. “I knew he would miss.

“But it is more than that,” he said, frowning more deeply. “I don’t — I—”

“More than just that you are faster,” Gannon said.

Blaisedell looked relieved. “That’s it. It is just that you are better. A man has to be proud, but he has to have the reason to be proud to hold him. Genuine, like I said.” Blaisedell grinned fleetingly. “I guess you will understand me. It is a close thing out there, you and the other. But I mean it is like two parts of something are fighting it out inside — before there is ever a Colt’s pulled. Inside you. And you have to know that you are the part that has to win. I mean know it.”

“Yes,” Gannon said, for he saw that.

“There is no play-acting with yourself,” Blaisedell said. He got quickly to his feet, and stretched, and put on his hat and patted it. “Why, just some things I thought I could pass along, Deputy,” he said.

“Thank you, Marshal.” He rose too.

“Have you figured who killed McQuown yet?”

“There are a lot of people who could have done it.”

Blaisedell nodded gravely. Then he said, “Maybe you would have a whisky with me?”