Oakley Hall - Warlock

He waited until Clay rapped again. Then he said, “Come on in.”

Clay entered, taking off his hat and bowing his head as he passed through the doorway. There was a strip of court plaster on his cheek, and his face was knuckle-marked enough. Morgan looked straight into his eyes and said, “You damned fool!”

“What was I supposed to do?” Clay said, closing the door behind him. “Post you out because you were going anyhow?”

The blue, violent stare pierced him, and his own eyes were forced down before it. “Why not?”

“Would you kill two men to serve a trick like that, Morg?”

“Why not?” he said again. His tongue probed and poked at the torn, pulpy socket. “One,” he said. “I had to take scarface first and Lew crawled for it.” With an effort he looked back to meet the blue gaze. “I told you I couldn’t let a man get away with burning me out!”

“I asked you to leave that alone.”

“Post me then, damn you!”

Clay moved over to sit on the edge of the bed, with his shoulders slumped and his face sagging in spare, flat planes. He shook his head. “I couldn’t anyhow. I am not marshall any more.”

“Well, I will back a play I have made. I don’t go unless you post me.”

Clay shrugged.

“What would it cost you? It might win you something.”

“No.”

“What does Miss Jessie Marlow say?”

Clay frowned a little. He said in a level voice, “What would you try to do this for, Morg?”

Because I never liked to look a fool, he thought. He had never hated it so much as he did now. “God damn it, Clay! A whole town full of clodhopping idiots aching for you to play the plaster hero for them one time again, and post out the Black Rattlesnake of Warlock. Which is me. And why not? It would have pleased every damned person I know of here except maybe you. Maybe you are yellow, though — a damned hollow, yellow Yankee. I hate to see you show it for these here!”

“They can have it that way if they want it. I have quit.”

“You could have posted me and quit after the big pot when I’d run.”

“It wasn’t a game to cheat and make a fraud of,” Clay said. His face looked pasty pale beneath the bruises. He shrugged again, tiredly. “Or maybe it was and it took a thing like this to show me. And maybe if it could be that, it is time and past time to quit.”

“Clay, listen. I am sick to death of this town! I am sick of sitting in the Lucky Dollar taking Lew’s money away, I am dead sick of watching the gawps from the chair on the veranda. I want to get out of here! It was a good reason for me to get out of here. I am trying to tell you it would have pleased everybody, me included. Now you are a damned has-been and a fool besides.” And you have not quit, he added, to himself; now you have not, whatever you think.

“Why, I have pleased myself then,” Clay said. He said, quietly, “What are you so mad about, Morg?”

He sat slumped down in his chair with his cold cigar clenched between his teeth. For whom was he doing this, after all? To please himself, was it? At least he wanted a live plaster saint rather than a dead one, and for that he had done what he had done, and for that he would do more. For whom? he wondered. It stuck now to try to say it was for Clay.

“Mad?” he said. “Why, I am mad because I have looked a fool. I am mad because I am used to having my way. I will have my way this time. If you won’t post me for that, I will—” He stopped suddenly, and grinned, and said, “I will ask you for it for a favor.”

Clay looked at him as though he were crazy.

“For a favor, Clay,” he said.

Clay shook his head.

“Then I will see what it takes. Do you think I can’t make you do it?”

“Why would you?” Clay said.

“I said I will have my way!” He felt his fingers touch his cheek, and the tic convulsed his face again.

“I have quit,” Clay said. “I will post no man again, nor marshal again.” He held his hand up before his face and stared at it as though he had never seen it before. “What is all this worth?” he said, in a shaky voice. “What is all this foolish talk? What’s my posting you out of Warlock worth to anybody?”

“It is worth something to me,” he said, under his breath.

“What are you trying to make of me?” Clay went on. His voice thickened. “You too, Morg! Not a human being at all, but a damned unholy thing —and a fraud of a thing in the end. No, I have quit it!”

“Do it for me, Clay,” he said. “For a God-damned favor. Post me out and turn me loose. I am sick to death of it here. I am sick of you.”

He saw Clay close his eyes; Clay shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He continued to shake it like that for a long time. He said, “Go then. I don’t have to post you so you can go. I—”

“You have to post me!”

“As soon as I did you would walk the street against me.”

“I’ve told you I wasn’t a stupid boy to play stupid boys’ games!”

“I don’t know that many of them was stupid boys,” Clay said. “But every time now it is that way. If I posted you out for whatever reason you made me — no sooner it was done than you would come against me. No, God, no!” he groaned, and slapped his hand hard against his forehead. “No, no more! What have I done that I was made to shoot pieces off myself forever? No, I have done with it, Morg!”

“Clay—” he started. “Clay, what are you taking on like this for? All I am asking is post me and I will get out of town on the first stage or before it. Good Christ! Do you think I am fool enough to—”

“I will not!” Clay said. His lips were stretched tight over his teeth, and his face looked pitted, as though with some skin disease.

Morgan got up and stood with his back to him. He could not look at that face. He said, “If you had been any kind of marshal here you would have posted me before this. But I guess you couldn’t see the hand in front of your nose. That everybody else saw.”

“What?” Clay asked.

“You should have posted me for killing McQuown, for one. If you had been any kind of marshal.”

Clay said nothing, and he felt a dart of hope. “If you had been any kind of marshal,” he said again, “which was supposed to be your trade, but I guess you did not think so much of your trade as you liked to make out. And before that. Those cowboys that stopped the Bright’s City stage didn’t kill Pat Cletus.”

“I don’t believe that, Morg,” Clay said, almost inaudibly. Then he cleared his throat. “Why?”

Morgan swung around. “Because Kate was bringing him out here to show me she had another Cletus to bed her, as big and ugly as the first one. I am tired of watching that parade. Do you think I like her throwing every trick she has rutted with in my face?” His heart beat high and suffocating in his throat as Clay raised his head, and the blue stare was colder than he had ever seen it before. Then, almost in the same instant, it seemed to turn inward upon itself, and Clay only looked gray and old once more.

Do you have to have more? he cried, to himself. For maybe the curse upon him was that now even the truth itself would not be enough. He said calmly, “Why, then, if you will have more I will tell you why Bob Cletus came after you in Fort James.”

Clay’s head jerked up, and Morgan laughed out loud, proud that he could laugh.

“Are you listening, Clay?” he said. “For I will tell you a bedtime story. Do you know why he came after you? Because he wanted to marry Kate, the son of a bitch. And the bitch — she told him I might make trouble, and he had better see me. So he came to see me. You didn’t know you killed Cletus over Kate, did you?”

“Kate?” Clay said; his eyes had a pale, milky look.