Oakley Hall - Warlock

There was an immediate uproar. It was a time before the bearded miner could make himself heard again “and the general himself’s here, Miss Jessie! They are going to shoot us down if we don’t—”

He stopped abruptly and all the others were silent as Miss Jessie raised a hand. “They will not bother you here,” she said calmly. She looked up at O’Brien, on the stairs. “Will you go up to a front window where you can see them coming? Let us know when you do. The rest of you are to go back to the hospital room.” She stood looking from face to face again until they all started down the hall, shuffling their feet but otherwise silent. Then with a glance at Blaisedell she went into her room, and he followed her.

III

There was a disturbance outside the General Peach, a mutter of voices, a crack of boots on the wooden steps and on the porch. A file of townsmen entered, carrying rifles and shotguns, with six-shooters holstered at their sides or thrust into their belts; their faces were set, their eyes excited — Pike and Paul Skinner, Peter Bacon, Sam Brown, Tim French, Owen Parsons, Hasty, Mosbie, Wheeler, Kennon, Egan, Rolfe, Buchanan, Slator. “Marshal!” Pike Skinner called, and immediately the miners reappeared, crowding silently back down the hallway. The door of Miss Jessie’s room opened and Blaisedell came out. Miss Jessie stood in the doorway behind him.

“Marshal,” the townsmen said, in a scattered greeting, and one or two removed their hats and said, “Miss Jessie.”

“Marshal,” Pike Skinner said. “It has come time for vigilantes, looks like.” His gargoyle’s face was earnest. “Marshal, we don’t know what to do but we heard you did and there is a bunch of us here that will back any play you want to make. And more coming. We’ll not see this thing happen in Warlock.”

“Fight if it comes to that,” Mosbie said.

“Ought to be a few of you jacks to make a fight of it, too,” Hasty said, nodding toward the miners crowded together in the hallway.

“As well as you people!” one of them cried.

“Well, we didn’t all come to make a fight,” Peter Bacon said. A chew of tobacco worked in his brown, wrinkled cheek. “But we will make a decent enough stand, and I guess fight if we have to do it.”

Blaisedell leaned on the door jamb. His intense blue eyes traversed the faces before him. He smiled a little.

Paul Skinner said, “Marshal, it is time folks in this town stood up to things some. You tell us how we’re to do, and we’ll do it.”

“They won’t fire when there’s a town full of us against them,” Kennon said. “It is a pitiful sight; they are stacking miners in my stable there like cordwood.”

Blaisedell still said nothing; Pike Skinner looked at Miss Jessie anxiously.

“We are with you, Marshal,” Sam Brown said, cracking the butt of his rifle down on the floor. “You lead us on and we’ll chase blue breeches right on back to Bright’s. We are with you sink or swim.”

“Or stuck in the mud,” Bacon said, sadly. “Marshal, the sheriff is down here and got Johnny Gannon hobbled. That couldn’t do anything anyway. But we are with you, U.S. Cavalry or not.”

“It is his place,” Miss Jessie said. Their faces all turned toward her. Blaisedell straightened.

Then they were all silent, watching Blaisedell.

All at once he grinned broadly. “Well, boys,” he said. “Maybe we can pull some weight here between us.”

There was a concerted sigh. “Why, now then!” Mosbie said.

“You want us in here or outside, Marshal?” Oscar Thompson asked.

“I’ll make my place on the porch there, if that’s all right with you boys. I don’t mean to take it on for myself, but it looks like if I can’t handle it without going to shooting maybe we all couldn’t.” His face turned grave again. “For if it came to shooting there’d be dead men and too many cavalry for us, and nothing gained in the end.”

“Except by God we fit the sons of bitches!” one of the miners cried in a high, cracked voice.

“You mean to bluff it, Marshal?” Wheeler said worriedly.

Pike Skinner said, “Don’t leave us out of it, Marshal!”

“Marshal,” Sam Brown said. He sounded embarrassed. “Well, Marshal, no offense, but — well, that time those jacks tramped you at the jail. I mean, a bluff’s a bluff, but—”

Blaisedell looked at him coldly. “You asked me how I wanted to do it,” he said. “I am telling you how. I am not going to fire on the U.S. Cavalry, or you either. Do you hear?” He gazed from face to face. “I said I will stand by on the porch here. I’ll ask the rest of you to do some climbing and get up on the roof of the barn, and the other places on down the street.” He grinned again, in a swift flash of teeth. “We will have the U.S. Cavalry surrounded and we’ll see if they don’t bluff.”

Tim French laughed out loud. “Why, if we could call old Espirato up from his grave we could hightail Peach out of here at a run!” The others laughed.

“No shooting!” Blaisedell said sharply. “Now maybe you had better move, boys.”

“Squads left!” Paul Skinner said, and limped toward the door. The others started after him.

“General!” someone called back. “Send up chuck now and then, and we will hold out for a month.” They tramped out, laughing and talking excitedly.

“Let them have their fun,” a miner said bitterly. “They don’t want any help from us.”

“Looks like we are having it from them, though,” Bardaman said. “Marshal, you sure you know what you are doing?”

“No,” Blaisedell said, in a strange voice. “No man ever is.”

“You had better get your six-shooters, Clay,” Miss Jessie said. She said it as though she were the general, after all, and turned back inside her room as Blaisedell started for the stairs. Three miners who stood there glanced at him covertly, each in turn, as he mounted the steps past them.

“I hope MacDonald’s black soul rots in hell,” a miner in the hallway said. “And General Peach with him.”

“Amen.”

“This might be a fine show here today,” the bitter one said. “But we will get shipped further and harder for it.”

“Shut up,” Bardaman said. “It’s a show worth it, isn’t it?”

They were silent again as Blaisedell came back down the stairs. He had taken off his coat, and was bareheaded. The sleeves of his fine linen shirt were gartered on his upper arms, pulling the cuffs free of his wrists. He wore two shell belts, two holstered Colts hung low on his thighs. Their gold handles gleamed in the light as he threw the front door open.

“The best show there is,” Bardaman whispered, to the miner next to him. Miss Jessie came to stand behind Blaisedell in the doorway and they watched the men appear on the rooftops across the street.

There was a yell from upstairs. Boots thumped in the upstairs hall; O’Brien yelled from the top of the stairwell, “Marshal! Here they come! It is the whole damned army!”

IV

The troopers made their way down Grant Street with difficulty through the crowd that had collected. There were more than thirty of them, and with these were MacDonald, on a white horse, and Dawson and Newman from the Medusa. At the head of the troop were a major and a young captain. A still younger lieutenant rode beside Dawson. The crowd jeered and cheered as they came through. MacDonald toppled in his saddle as someone pulled on his leg, and there was a burst of laughter. MacDonald lashed out with his quirt, blindly, for his hat had slipped forward over his eyes. His left arm was folded into a black sling.

“Mister Mac!” someone shouted. “You have got yourself a passel of new foremen!”

There was more laughter. The lieutenant grinned sheepishly, the captain looked angry; the major was glancing up at the men on the rooftops along Grant Street, and their weapons. MacDonald spurred the white horse toward the porch of the General Peach, where Blaisedell stood, with Miss Jessie Marlow behind him in the doorway.