Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Seven stages thrown down on since McQuown got killed!” Slavin said. “When McQuown was—”

“McQuown!” Mosbie broke in, and, in a rasping voice, he cursed McQuown at length.

Jameson said, “By God if it don’t look like everybody is escared of old Abe yet.”

“Let him stay buried,” Bacon said gloomily. “If he gets dug up he will stink to heaven.”

“Morgan’ll stink,” Slavin said.

Skinner said uncomfortably, “I just don’t see how everybody got so certain all at once it was Morgan did it.”

“Johnny rode out to see Charlie Leagle,” Bacon said.

“He supposed to’ve seen Morgan?” Slavin asked, and Bacon nodded.

“Supposed to be more than Leagle saw him,” Mosbie said.

Skinner paced the floor with his hands locked behind his back. He glared at the names scratched on the wall; he swung around and glared at the judge, who had picked up the whisky bottle. “Well, tell us about it, you righteous old son of a bitch!” Skinner cried. “I remember how you used to blister Carl, and you are blistering kind of different lately. Tell us how Johnny has to go after Morgan if it looks like Morgan was the one! Tell us how Johnny has to yank Tittle out of Miss Jessie’s place under Blaisedell’s nose, if a warrant comes down. I saw you charging down to get him out of dutch with Blaisedell like you was trying to bust the pole-vault champeenship, you damned drunken fraud. Come on, tell us, Judge! You won’t, will you? You are as sick as any man here, that used to preach at us till it came out our ears. Let’s hear you preach now!”

The judge tipped his whisky bottle to his lips and drank.

“Has to pour whisky in itself before it can talk,” Jameson commented.

“Shut up!” Skinner said. He leaned back against the wall with his arms folded.

But the judge did not speak, and Mosbie said, “Surely Johnny has got sense enough not to buck up against Blaisedell.”

“Hasn’t,” Skinner said, “is the trouble.” He glared at the judge. “Well, what do you say? Preach us about how he is only doing his damned duty!”

The judge nodded, and glanced up at Skinner from under his eyebrows.

“I noticed you stopping him from it the other day fast enough.”

“Wheels within wheels,” the judge said.

Skinner snorted. He swung around to face Slavin. “And you’d like to see him kiting off down valley so they could snipe him off from behind some rock. I suppose you can’t see around a Concord far enough to see it is just what they want him to do.”

“What they are doing,” Bacon said. “They are using McQuown getting killed for an excuse for hell-roaring all over the place. So I expect Johnny figures maybe he can quiet them by sticking who did it.”

“Which is Morgan,” Mosbie said.

“It’s a cleft stick for you,” Bacon said, and shook his head.

“It is a cleft stick for Johnny Gannon,” Skinner said. “Well, what do you say now?” he said to the judge. “Maybe you like all this?”

“No,” the judge said thickly. “I don’t like it, and don’t you scorn me, you great lumbering lout! I wasn’t liking it before you ever saw it.”

“Say Morgan did it,” Mosbie said, in his rasping voice. “Say he did and he is a dirty dog, and I won’t deny it. But he is Blaisedell’s friend, and I say this town owes Blaisedell one or two things, or two hundred — what he has done here. I say we can give him Morgan.”

“Blaisedell has to go,” Slavin said firmly. “Not just because of the friends he picks, either.”

“Buck!” Mosbie said. “I want to hear you say out loud that Blaisedell has done no good here. I want to hear you say it.”

“Why, I don’t deny he has, fellows,” Slavin said. “Nobody does. It is just time for him to move on, and mostly it is time because of Morgan.”

“Tell you what you do, Buck,” Skinner said. “Next meeting you make a motion he is to post Morgan out. Since you are starting to speak up so bold.”

Slavin stood there biting his lip and frowning. “One thing,” he said. “One thing I have got against Blaisedell that isn’t Morgan. He makes people take sides hard against him or for him. He makes bad contention.” He nodded to the others, turned, and departed.

“Well, I am for the marshal,” Bacon said sadly. “But it certainly makes a man sick and tired — and makes him think. How Johnny is coming against him. Want it or not, looks like.”

“Johnny can go his way and Blaisedell his,” Skinner said. “I can’t see why they can’t go along and not scratch each other. Blaisedell has never made a move to set himself against Johnny. Not one!”

“I guess Johnny hasn’t gone and made any move against Blaisedell, for that,” Bacon said. “I guess it just looks like he is going to have to, one of these days.”

“Over Morgan,” Mosbie said.

“You boys are starting to make me feel real sorrowful over the deputy,” Jameson said. “It looks like he is in dommed bad shape.”

They all watched a fly circling in flat, eccentric planes over the judge’s head. The judge waved it away. “It is the awkward time,” he said. “It is where this town don’t know yet whether it still needs a daddy to protect it, or not.”

“You don’t have to kick your daddy in the face when you have got your growth,” Bacon said.

Jameson said, “You know what my old dad did to me once? I—”

“Shut up!” Skinner yelled at him.

Mosbie stirred in his chair. “There’s some things I wish I knew about Johnny,” he said. “I wish I knew how he felt about it when Blaisedell shot Billy. I wouldn’t want to think—”

“He don’t hold it against Blaisedell,” Skinner said. “I can say that for sure.”

Mosbie nodded.

Then Bacon spoke. “Man doesn’t like to talk about him when he is not here,” he said, in an embarrassed voice. “But there’s something been bothering me too I’d better speak up about. Maybe somebody can—” He paused, and his wrinkled face turned pink. “Well, that Kate Dollar he is seeing pretty good. There is that talk how she is down on Blaisedell, and why, from Fort James. And Johnny seeing so much of her, you know.”

“Set Johnny against the marshal, you think?” Skinner said worriedly. He began to shake his head. “I don’t think—”

The judge slapped the palm of his hand down on the table. “If you boys would accept my judgment,” he said. “I would say that Johnny Gannon wouldn’t do anything any of you wouldn’t, nor hold to a reason you wouldn’t. And I would say he is more honest with himself than most, too.”

Skinner was scowling. “Only—” he said, in a husky voice. “Only, God damn it to hell, if it comes to it, and pray God it don’t, Blaisedell is the one I would have to side with. Because—”

“That’s where you are wrong,” the judge broke in. “Thinking you can put it so you are choosing between two men.”

“Well, Judge,” Skinner said. “Maybe us poor, simple, stupid common folks has to look at it that way. Us that sees more trees than forest.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” the judge said. He let his head hang forward; he gripped the neck of his whisky bottle. “But maybe you have to see by now that the deputy here is only doing what the deputy here is going to have to do.”

Skinner’s red gargoyle’s face grew redder still, and deep corrugations showed in his forehead. He took a deep breath. Then he shouted, “Yes, I can see it! But damned if I want to!” He swung around and stamped out the door.

“He’s one for getting upset,” Jameson commented. “That one.”

“You know what I get to thinking about?” Bacon said. “I get to thinking back on the old days in Texas droving cattle up to the railroad. Didn’t own a thing in the world but the clothes I had on and the saddle I sat. So nothing to worry about, and nothing but hard work day in and day out sort of purifies a man. No forests there,” he said, smiling faintly at the judge. “It is the forests that wear a man down dead inside, Judge.”