Oakley Hall - Warlock

It is a Saturday night, and very quiet outside my window. I remember when a Saturday night was a matter of dread in Warlock — I remember the wildness, the shouts and laughter, the brawling, the shooting that would all too often punctuate and bring a bloody climax to the night. Is not this what we wanted? McQuown is dead; I have to remind myself of that. Is not that too what we wanted? Yet I am aware of the dissatisfaction on every hand. It is finished, but not finished. It is not right, but I cannot express what I feel. It is an uneasy peace in Warlock.

May 22, 1881

I have noticed that we are seeing more of Blaisedell these days. He spends much of his time on Main Street, standing at his ease beneath one or the other of the arcades. His leonine head is in continual but almost imperceptible movement — as he glances up the street, then down the street. He gives the impression of intently watching and waiting. He is a part of the furniture of Main Street, a kind of black-suited eminence — a colossus there, or is it astride the town itself?

For what does he watch and wait? The question depresses me greatly, for is not his use gone? He is like a machine primed and ready for instant service with its function no longer of value. Was not his ultimate purpose to fight, and kill, Abe McQuown? So is his use buried with McQuown? I know there is an increasing sentiment in the Citizens’ Committee that he should be released. As yet this has hardly been voiced, but I know it is so. I wonder who will tell Blaisedell when, and if, it is agreed upon.

He must then go on to some other Warlock and some other McQuown. There are no more McQuowns or Curley Burnes here, and he is like a heavyweight champion awaiting a challenger where there are only lightweights. I pity him that everything has gone so wrong for him. Is not all, from now on, anticlimax?

I have seen him once or twice in converse with Gannon, more often sitting upon the veranda of the Western Star with Morgan. They sit side by side, uncomfortably similar in black broadcloth suits, black hats. It strikes me that I have no impression of them speaking together. Then Blaisedell makes a round of the town, and Morgan goes to resume his bout with Taliaferro.

The quiet nights pass, and, a little after noon each day, Blaisedell reappears at one of his three or four central posts. You do not see him come and go, he is only there, or not. Once in a while you are more conscious of him. A couple of miners tumble out of the Billiard Parlor, fighting and cursing. Calmly he separates them. Upon seeing him they are at once sober and out of their fighting mood, and slink away. Or Ash Bredon rides in from up valley and thinks to do a little shooting into the air to enliven the atmosphere of Warlock. Blaisedell speaks to him from across the street, and Bredon changes his mind.

He stands and waits, and the days pass, and I wonder what will become of him. What he waits and watches for does not exist; I cannot help but feel he knows this himself. In a very brief time he has turned, almost, into a monument.

THE doctor stood in the entryway watching the miners file in through the door of the General Peach for their noon meal. As usual, they were quiet and orderly. There were more than a hundred of them now, and each one nodded to him as he came in the door, and then, carefully, did not look at him again.

The queue bent in through the dining-room doorway and past the tables where Jessie, Myra Egan, Mrs. Sturges, Mrs. Train, and Mrs. Maples served them soup, salt pork, bread, and black coffee in a rattle of plates and cutlery. Jessie looked faded and tired beside Myra Egan’s pink-cheeked freshness. Those who had been served stood in the middle of the room and wolfed down their food, more, he knew, from an urge to get out than from hunger. Finished, they joined another line, where Lupe, the fat Mexican cook, watched them drop their plates into a cauldron of hot water, after which they filed outside past those who still entered.

The hot, wet smell of soup that permeated the General Peach seemed to him the stench of defeat. They were almost defeated, and he raged at it, and at his presumption in thinking he could help them, and, most of all, at MacDonald, who had beaten them so easily. They did not even send MacDonald the revised demands any more, for MacDonald only threw them away as soon as they were presented to him. More than a dozen of the strikers had left Warlock, and he knew most of the rest were only waiting for some excuse to go back to the Medusa. Leaning against the newel post, he watched their leaders, old man Heck and Frenchy Martin, filing out with the rest. Their faces were resolute still, but he knew it was only for show. Each day he stood here to watch the strikers and feel their temper, and each day he could see them weakening.

He stayed to watch the last of the miners leave before he went into Jessie’s room and sat down in the chair beside the door. He rose when Jessie came in. Myra Egan stood outside in the entryway, and smiled at him as she tucked her hair up under her bonnet. Myra’s face was plumper, and her breasts looked swollen in her crisp gingham dress; before many months had passed she would bear Warlock’s first legitimate child.

“My goodness, I am feeling the heat these days, Doc!” she said, fanning her flushed face with her hand.

“It is natural that you should, Myra.”

She flushed still more, prettily. Jessie thanked her, and thanked the other ladies, whom he could not see from where he stood. Disparate types though they were, they were beginning to form a women’s organization, now dedicating their energies to the welfare of the strikers. He had heard Mrs. Maples indignantly informing Myra Egan that Kate Dollar had offered to help them; a club existed as soon as there was someone to be excluded.

Jessie closed the door and went to stand listlessly by the table. “It is very tiring,” she said.

“I don’t expect it will need to be done much longer.”

She shrugged. He knew she did not really care, yet it was what she had chosen for her role and she would fulfill that role to the limit of her strength, and probably better than someone who cared more. She bent her head as she leafed through the pages of a little book of poems on the table. The nape of her neck under the curls was white, downed with fair hair, and heartbreakingly thin.

He heard the sound of boots mounting the porch. “Jessie!” a voice called.

She moved to the door and opened it.

“The hogs are all fed, I see.” It was MacDonald’s voice, and the doctor went to join her in the doorway. “How long are you going to go on feeding this herd?”

“As long as they are hungry,” Jessie said. MacDonald stood facing her, his derby hat in his hand. His pale, small-featured face was savage. With him was one of his foremen, Lafe Dawson, with a shotgun over his arm.

“Well, they are going to stay hungry as long as you are going to feed them,” MacDonald said. “Why should they work when they can line up at your trough for every meal? You may think you are being quite the little angel of mercy, but let me tell—”

“Maybe you had better not talk so loud, Mr. MacDonald,” Dawson said, rolling his eyes toward the stairs.

“I will talk as loudly as I wish! I am talking to you, too, Wagner. You are doing them a disservice. You are going to regret this; and they are.”

“There are no Regulators any more, Charlie,” the doctor said. It pleased him to see how frightened MacDonald was behind his mask of anger.

“I have heard from the company,” MacDonald said. “They are backing me completely — completely! There is no pressure upon me to settle this strike, whatever lying rumors have been circulated to the contrary.”