Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Then why are you threatening us, Charlie?” Jessie said; she said it calmly and without guile, only as though she were puzzled.

“For your own good!” MacDonald tried to smile, and failed. “I have come to tell you that I have heard from Mr. Willingham. Mr. Arthur Willingham.” He folded his arms, as though in triumph. “Mr. Willingham is in Bright’s City today, to confer with General Peach. You may know that Mr. Willingham, besides being president of the Porphyrion and Western Mining Company, has very important connections in Washington. I think that General Peach will not ignore what is going on down here any longer. If these men do not go back to work immediately, or if there is any more trouble down here whatsoever, you can be sure we will have martial law down here in every sense of the word, and a Mexican crew will then be brought in to work the Medusa. That,” MacDonald said, “was my communication from Mr. Willingham.” He waited, as though for some attempt at rebuttal.

Tittle and Fitzsimmons had appeared at the head of the hallway, and Dawson shifted his shotgun around to point at them.

“Have you had orders to settle the strike, Charlie?” Jessie asked.

“Are you calling me a liar?” MacDonald cried. “I tell you that Mr. Willingham is backing me one hundred per cent! The mining companies cannot allow a pack of ignorant, filthy foreigners to dictate to them how stopes are to be constructed, and what wages are to be paid!” MacDonald advanced a step, pointing a finger at the doctor as though it were a weapon. “Committees interfering with the work, and all the rest of this asininity you have put into their heads, Wagner. I see well enough that your committees are to be the Miners’ Union in fact. It was you —the two of you! Well, I will not be blackguarded by a pack of strong-backed louts, nor by a couple of conspiring — criminally conspiring! — busybodies! I swear to you that I will fight this until they come creeping back begging for work!”

“Charlie,” the doctor said. “I swear to you that I will do my best to see that they do not!”

MacDonald bared his teeth in the facsimile of a smile again, as though he had cunningly extracted a confession. “Remember that, Dawson,” he said. “When General Peach comes down here we will have things to tell him about Doctor David Wagner. And about this house. A disorderly house,” he said, and Jessie gasped.

“Watch your tongue, MacDonald!” the doctor cried. Dawson was grimacing horribly; Tittle started forward and Dawson swung the shotgun toward him again.

“I said a disorderly house!” MacDonald said. “A damnable mare’s nest of criminal conspiracy against the mining companies. Conspiracy to commit arson! And murder, for all I know!” He stopped, panting, his eyes flickering insanely; and then he cried, “And a disorderly house in more ways than that! This house and you are a scandal to this town, Jessie. I can ruin you!”

“Shut up!” Tittle screamed. Fitzsimmons was trying to hold him, and Dawson nervously threatened him with the shotgun. “Shut up! You lying, dirty dog!” Tittle screamed, in a mechanical voice.

“That’s enough, Ben,” Jessie said.

“Shoot that man if he tries to attack me!” MacDonald said to his foreman, but Tittle had quieted.

Dawson was motioning toward the stairs. “Mr. MacDonald, you had better hush!”

MacDonald sneered. “And do not think I am frightened of your adulterous scandal of a marshal, either! You may be sure he will be—”

“Charlie, I will kill you myself!” the doctor cried. He could feel his heart pounding dangerously in his chest as he started forward. Dawson turned the shotgun toward him. Tittle’s eyes were glaring from his contorted face, as insane as MacDonald’s; as murderous, he thought suddenly, as his own face must look. Jessie put a hand on his arm and he halted.

“Charlie—” Jessie said. She spoke in a clear, loud voice, and her tone was condescending; she might have been speaking to an obstreperous boarder. “Charlie, you must be terribly afraid of losing your position. To speak to me like this.”

MacDonald made a shrill sound. “The miners’ angel!” he cried. “The gunman’s whore, is better; and her eunuch!”

Tittle cried out, and Dawson clutched MacDonald’s arm. MacDonald glanced frantically from face to face. “You — have been warned,” he said, in a voice so hoarse his words were barely understandable. He backed away, then swung around, and, with Dawson close to his heels, hurried outside.

The doctor stared at Tittle’s wild eyes in his gaunt, bony face. Tittle’s mouth hung half open and he did not struggle now, in Fitszsimmons’ grasp. He looked as though he were in agony as he glanced at Jessie, wordlessly; abruptly he hobbled away down the hall.

Jessie turned back into her room. The doctor had thought she would be shattered, but her face was only a little pink. He wanted to cry out to her to deny it, swear to him that it was not true. He knew that she could not deny it, for, although she had lied that once to Blaisedell, she would not lie to him. The gunman’s whore, and her eunuch; he stood staring at her and in his mind’s eye saw his heart swelling and stretching until he thought he must faint with it. Motionless, hardly breathing, he waited for the tight pain to recede.

“He was very frightened, Jessie,” he said, surprised at the calmness of his voice, “or he would not have spoken as he did.”

“Yes,” Jessie said, nodding, her face pink still. “Charlie was very foolish to say those things.”

In the hall he heard the uneven crack of Tittle’s footsteps return and break into a run. With a steady, anguished grunting Tittle hurried outside; the doctor stepped out into the entryway just as Fitzsimmons came down the hall.

Then in the street he heard the shots, and the cry, and the answering deeper blast of Dawson’s shotgun. “Why didn’t you stop him?” he cried, as he ran for the door.

“He got away from me, Doc,” Fitzsimmons said blandly, behind him.

GANNON had just come back from lunch at the Boston Café when he heard the shots — four of them in rapid succession, and the harsh cough of what sounded like a shotgun. He went out of the jail at a run, vaulted the tie rail, and ran down the street. The hot wind plucked at his hat. Morgan sat in his rocking chair on the veranda of the hotel, and, beyond, figures milled in the haze of heat and dust.

As he approached he saw that two men were supporting a third, while a fourth with a shotgun stood in the middle of the intersection facing into Grant Street. Men were running along with him on the boardwalk. He saw Pike Skinner join the group around the wounded man, and Ralph Egan come out of the Feed and Grain Barn.

It was Lafe Dawson, one of MacDonald’s foremen, pointing the shotgun toward a group of miners on the comer of Grant Street. Oscar Thompson and Fred Wheeler set the wounded man down on the hotel steps. Blood spurted from his arm as Wheeler released it, and Wheeler quickly stripped off his belt and cinched it around the arm. The man was white with dust, as though he had been rolled in flour. As Gannon ran up someone tossed a hard-hat onto the boardwalk, where it thumped and rolled erratically.

“MacDonald, for Christ’s sake!” Egan said.

MacDonald wiped his left hand over his dusty forehead, and turned his head with a reluctant movement to look at his arm. “Deputy!” he cried, in a stifled voice, as he saw Gannon. His mouth hung open and his lower lip was pulled down to show pale gums; his breath was so rapid it sounded as though he were whistling. He stared at Gannon with terrified eyes.

“Somebody’d better run for the doctor,” Gannon said.