Oakley Hall - Warlock

“When?” he said.

“Tomorrow or — Tomorrow.”

He nodded again, as though it were nothing. He could hear the roomers talking down the hall again. He rubbed his bandaged hand upon his thigh and nodded, and felt again, more intensely than he had ever felt it, his ineptness, his inadequacy, his incapacity with the words which should be spoken.

“I guess I didn’t expect anything,” Kate said harshly. “I guess you are sulking with the rest tonight.”

“Sulking?”

“About Blaisedell,” she said, and went on before he could speak. “I was the only one that thought it was wonderful to see,” she said in a bitter voice. “For I saw Tom Morgan try to do a decent thing. I think it must have been the first decent thing he had ever tried to do, and did it like he was doing a dirty trick. And had it fall apart on him. Because Blaisedell was too—” Her voice caught. “Too—” she said, and shook her head, and did not go on. Then she said, as though she were trying to hit him, “I’m sorry you feel cheated.”

“You think if Blaisedell had posted him he would have gone?”

“Of course he would have gone. He was trying to give Blaisedell that — so people would think Blaisedell had scared him out. I think it’s funny,” she said, but she did not sound as though she did.

They were talking about Blaisedell and Morgan like everyone else, and he knew she did not want to, and he did not want to.

He looked down at his hands in his lap and said, “I’d thought you might be going with Morgan.”

“Why?”

“Well, I talked to him. He said you’d been his girl but that you were through with each other. But I thought you might have—”

“ I told you I’d been his girl,” Kate said. Then she said, “Did he tell you more? I told you more, too. I told you what I’d been.”

He closed his eyes; the darkness behind his eyes ached.

“I guess I am still,” her voice continued. “Though I don’t have to work at it any more, since I’ve got money. That came from men.” Again she spoke as though she were hitting him. She said, “I’m damned if I am ashamed of it. It is honest work and kills no one. What are you waiting for, a little country girl virgin?”

Now he tried to shake his head.

“Why, men marry whores,” she said. “Even here. But not you. And not me. There is nothing here at all for me, is there?” Her voice began to shake and he looked up at her and tried to speak, but she rushed on. “So I have been a whore by trade,” she said. “But I can love, and I can hate by nature. But you can’t. You just sit and stare in at yourself and worry everything every way so there is no time nor place for any of that. Is there?”

“Kate,” he said in a voice he could hardly recognize. “That is not so. You know well enough I have loved—”

“Don’t say that!” she broke in fiercely. Her face looked very red in the lamplight, and her black eyes glittered. “I have never heard you lie before and don’t start for me. I know you haven’t been to the French Palace,” she said, “because I asked.” She said it cruelly. “I wanted to know if you were waiting for a little country virgin or not. And I—”

“That’s not so, Kate!” he cried in anguish.

Slowly the lines of her face relaxed until it was as gentle and full of pity as that of the little madonna in her room. He had never seen it this way before. “No,” she said gently. “No, I guess it isn’t. I guess you thought going to a whore wasn’t right. And I guess you thought that about me, too.”

“Kate — I guess I knew you felt — kindly toward me. I kind of presumed you did. I’m not a fool. But Kate—” he said, and couldn’t go on.

“But Kate?” she said.

“Well, this is where I live.”

He waited for a long time, but she did not speak. When he looked up he saw the harsh lines around her mouth again. He heard the rustle of her garments as she moved; she clasped her hands before her, staring down at him, her eyes in shadow.

“Another thing,” he said. “You have been in the jail and seen those names scratched on the wall there.” He took a deep breath. “There was something Carl used to say,” he went on. “That there wasn’t a man with his name on there that didn’t either run or get killed. And Carl used to say who was he to think he was any different? And that he wouldn’t run. I think he even knew who was going to kill him.”

“I’ve got money, Deputy,” Kate said. “Do you want to come with me? Deputy, this town is going to die and there is no reason for anybody to die with it. I am asking you to take the stage to Bright’s City with me tomorrow. Out of here, out of the territory.”

“Kate—” he groaned.

“Do you want to, or not?”

“Yes, but Kate — I can’t, now.”

“Killed or run!” she cried. “Deputy, you can run with me. I have got six thousand dollars in the bank in Denver. We can—” She stopped, and her face twisted in anger and contempt, or grief. “What kind of a fool am I?” she said, more quietly. “To beg you . Deputy, you can’t give me anything I haven’t had a thousand times and better. I can give you what you’ve never had. But you will lie down and die instead. Do you want to die more?”

“I don’t want to die at all. I only have to stay here.” He beat his bandaged hand upon his knee. “Anyway till there is a proper sheriff down here, and all that.”

“Why?” she cried at him “Why? To show you are a man? I can show you you are more a man than that.”

“No.” He got to his feet; he rubbed his sweating hands on his jeans. “No, Kate, a man is not just a man that way. I—”

“Because you killed a Mexican once,” she broke in. Her tear-shining eyes were fastened to him. “Is that why?”

“No, not that either any more. Kate, I have set out to do a thing.” He did not know how to say it any better. “Well, I guess I have been lucky. That’s part of it, surely. But I have made something of the deputy in this town, and I can’t leave it go back down again. Not till things are — better. I didn’t drop it a while back when I was afraid, and, Kate, I can’t now because I would rather go off with you”—he groped helplessly for a phrase—“than anything else in the world.”

He wet his dry lips. “Maybe to you Warlock is not worth anything. But it is, and I am deputy here and it is something I am proud of. There are things to do here yet that I think I can do. Kate, I can’t quit till it is done.”

He saw her nod once, her face caught halfway between cruel contempt and pity. He moved toward her and put out a hand to touch her.

“Don’t touch me!” she said. “I am tired of dead men!” She stepped to the door and jerked it open. The bottom of her skirt flipped around the door as she disappeared, pulling it half closed behind her.

He took up the lamp and followed her, stopping in the hallway and holding the lamp high to give her a little light as she hurried down the stairs away from him, and, when she was gone, stared steadily at the faces that peered out at him from the other doorways until the faces were drawn back and the doors closed to leave him alone.

MORGAN stood at the open window with his tongue mourning after a lost tooth and the night wind blowing cool on his bruised face. The night was a soft, purplish black, like the back of an old fireplace, the stars like jewels embedded in the soot. He stood tensely waiting until he saw the dark figure outlined against the dust of the street, crossing toward the hotel. Then he cursed and flung his aching body down into the chair, and took out a cigar. His hand shook with the match and he felt his face twisting with a kind of rhythmic tic as he listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs, coming along the hall. Knuckles cracked against the panel of his door. “Morg.”