Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Judge,” he said. “I am going to stand up or I’m not. If I did not go there after Tittle I backed down in every man’s eyes. And it was not just me that backed down.”

“There is a time when a man does best to back down,” the judge said, and evaded his eyes.

Gannon started on down toward the Assay Office, where there was another knot of men watching him come. The Judge crutched along beside him, grunting with the effort. Gannon knocked on the door of the doctor’s office. It opened a crack and Dawson’s scared face appeared. “What do you want?”

“I want to see MacDonald.” Past Dawson he could see the doctor washing his hands in a crockery bowl. The doctor shook his head.

“Not now, Deputy. He’s resting now. He has lost some blood.”

“I want to see him as soon as he is able,” he said, and Dawson nodded and closed the door. As he started on back to the jail Pike Skinner caught up with him and caught his arm, and he heard the crack of the judge’s crutch behind him.

“Johnny, for Christ’s sake!” Pike whispered. “Are you trying to get Blaisedell in a brace?”

“He has caught pride like a dose,” the judge said.

Gannon swung around to face them. “It is not so, Judge,” he said thickly.

“Listen!” Pike whispered. “Do you know what MacDonald did, Johnny? Went in the General Peach there and called Miss Jessie a whore to her face, and it a whorehouse! Johnny, any man’d done what that crippled one did. MacDonald is lucky Blaisedell wasn’t there!”

Gannon looked from Pike’s face to the judge’s. His mind felt as though it would burst. It did not signify, he told himself. He walked slowly away from them, past Goodpasture’s store, and across Main Street to the jail. He sat down heavily in the chair behind the table and stared at the sunlight that came through the door. Nothing was ever clear, everything was incredibly difficult, complex, and suspect; there was no right way. He sat in miserable loneliness contemplating himself and his deputyship. It was a long time before he heard footsteps on the boardwalk outside, and he supposed that it was Dawson coming.

Pike Skinner came inside, grinning. “MacDonald has skedaddled,” he said. “Dawson went and got his buggy and brought it around just now, and they have lit out on the Bright’s City road.” He grinned more widely. “The judge said you might be pleased to hear it.”

He didn’t answer, and Pike’s face stiffened. “What are you going to do, Johnny?”

He shook his head; relief made him feel giddy. “Why, nothing I guess. I guess there is nothing to do.”

I

UPSTAIRS in the General Peach a group of miners had collected in old man Heck’s room. Heck was standing; his skinny neck stuck out as he spoke. “If there is any trouble we will stand behind Blaisedell,” he said. “That’s what we have to do, every man jack of us. He said to me there wasn’t going to be any trouble and no reason looking for any, and how the deputy’d just left Ben in Miss Jessie’s custody. But I notice Miss Jessie didn’t look so sure. I told him we would stand right behind him all the way. It is something we got now.”

“That deputy’s gone and got too big for his britches,” Bull Johnson said.

“Jimmy said MacDonald called Miss Jessie a whore,” Frenchy Martin said.

They all looked at Fitzsimmons, who stood before the door. He placed one disfigured hand in the other and nodded.

“Why, God damn him!” Bull Johnson said, with awe in his voice. “He did? Did you hear him, Jimmy?”

Fitszsimmons told them what he and Ben Tittle had heard MacDonald say to Miss Jessie and the doctor.

“Dirty God-damned buggering rotten son of a bitch!” Bardaman cried. Patch added his curses, and each man cursed MacDonald in turn, formally, as though it were a kind of ritual.

“We should’ve burnt the Medusa long since!” old man Heck said. “And run MacDonald right out of the territory.”

“It’s not too late,” Bull Johnson said. “There’s matches still.”

“Is Ben hurt bad, Jimmy?” Patch asked.

They all looked to Fitzsimmons again. “He has got some shot in him. In his legs mostly.” Fitzsimmons looked as though he could hardly restrain a smile.

“I’ll break Lafe Dawson in half!” Bull Johnson said.

Fitzsimmons laughed, then, and said, “Do you know what is funny? MacDonald thinks he is way ahead of us now.”

“How’s that, Jimmy?” Daley asked.

“Why, because Ben shot him. He thinks he can hold it up to everybody now how we are a bunch of wild men.”

“What’s so funny about that?”

“I believe,” Bull Johnson said, squinting at Fitzsimmons. “I do believe that sonny-boy here is going to lecture the grownups again, and going around the barn to do it.”

Fitzsimmons flushed. “Well, MacDonald does, and he is wrong. You fellows should have seen him downstairs. Miss Jessie asked him to his face if he’d got orders to settle, and you should have heard him yell. He yelled too much,” he said, and grinned. “I would just make a bet he had got orders to settle, and he is scared to death we can sit him out. But now he thinks he is way ahead of us, on account of getting shot. Do you know the best thing that could happen to us? If Ben got taken to the judge and heard. And better yet if he got sent up to Bright’s City to court. We would be the worst kind of tom-fools to try to stop them from taking him out of here. Because then it would come out in court what MacDonald said to Miss Jessie. Threatening her like he did, and calling her what he did. You see?”

“I see we ought to cut his balls for him,” Bardaman said uncertainly.

Fitzsimmons shook his head and leaned easily against the door. “No, for if we just tread soft for a while he has ruined himself for good. There’ll be others to cut his balls for us when this gets out. And if it came to trial at Bright’s! I expect Mister Mac might hear more from Willingham. People think high of Miss Jessie, and not just here. MacDonald is gone out in the bucket if we just play it right. If we can just last it out.”

“I think maybe Jimmy is talking sense,” Bardaman said.

“Good sense,” Daley added quietly.

“By God, maybe we are not plowed under yet!” Patch cried.

Frenchy Martin leaned forward. “You think we might pull it off yet, eh, Jimmy?”

“I know so.”

“What about the union, Jimmy?” Bardaman said. He leaned forward too. Old man Heck was scowling a little, and Bull Johnson gnawed on a knuckle, but he was watching Jimmy Fitzsimmons too. They all watched him, waiting to hear what he had to say, and he smiled triumphantly from face to face, and began to speak.

II

In the hospital room, Ben Tittle lay on his cot like a bas-relief figure beneath the bedclothes. The whisky bottle the doctor had left was on the floor beside him. When Miss Jessie and Blaisedell appeared Tittle raised his head and grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth. The flesh on his bony face was an unhealthy, tender-looking white. “They going to hang me, Miss Jessie?” he said.

“No, they are not going to hang you, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. She came forward to sit on the edge of his cot, while the marshal remained in the doorway.

“Why, heck, and I was just in the mood for a hanging, too,” Tittle said. “Hello, Mr. Blaisedell.” The drunken grin looked pasted to his face. He said in a quieter voice, “Mister Mac cashed in yet?”

“Nobody’s heard,” Blaisedell said.

“You are to quiet down, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. “You have been drinking too much of that whisky. The doctor left it to stop the pain.”

“What did you want to take a shot at MacDonald for, fellow?” Blaisedell asked gravely. “That didn’t do anybody any good.”