Oakley Hall - Warlock

“I guess,” Pike said.

Peter came in with Tim French. There was a grunting and scraping within the cell; the judge’s hands appeared on the bars, then his face between them, heavy with sleep and liquor. The hot, red-veined eyes stared at him unseeing as he put on his hat and nodded, and nodded to Tim and Peter. Peter glanced down at Pike’s hand holding the other star.

“Chilly out,” Tim said.

He stepped past them, and outside. Down the boardwalk a way Chick Hasty stood, and with him were Wheeler, old Owen Parsons, and Mosbie, with his right arm in a muslin sling and a jacket thrown over his shoulders. There were men along the boardwalks farther down, too, and he saw the miners collecting at the corner of Grant Street, where the wagons from the Medusa and the other mines would pick them up. The first sliver of the sun showed over the Bucksaws, incredibly bright gold and the peak beneath it flaming.

Chick Hasty looked down at him and nodded. Mosbie leaned back and nodded to him past Hasty, sick-eyed. He could hear the increasing bustle of Warlock awakening. Already, with the half-sun showing, the air was warmer. It would be another hot day. He moved farther out upon the boardwalk to lean against the railing and watch the great gold sun slowly climb from its defilade behind the mountains. All at once it was free, and round, and he walked on down the boardwalk past the men leaning against the railing there, and out into the dust of Main Street.

II

Blaisedell came out of the hotel, and immediately the men began moving back off the boardwalks, into doorways and the ruins of the Glass Slipper and the Lucky Dollar. Blaisedell walked slowly out into the street, and then Blaisedell was facing him, a block away, like some mirror-image of himself seen distant and small, but all in black, and Blaisedell began to walk at the same instant that he did. He could see the slant of Blaisedell’s shell belt through the opening of his unbuttoned coat, and the gold-handled Colt thrust into his belt there. Blaisedell walked with a slow, long-legged stride, while his own star boots felt heavy in the dust. The boots hurt his feet and his wrist brushed past the butt of his Colt with almost an electric shock. He watched the dust spurting from beneath Blaisedell’s boots.

He could see the angry-looking stripes on Blaisedell’s face. He felt Blaisedell’s eyes, not so much a force now as a kind of meaningless message in a buzzing like that of a depressed telegrapher’s key. The sun was very bright in his face, and the figure approaching him began to dance and separate into a number of black-suited advancing figures, and then congeal again into one huge figure that cast a long, oblique shadow.

Then he saw Kate; she stood against the rail before the Glass Slipper, motionless, as though she had been there a long time. She too was dressed all in mourning black, heavily bustled in a black skirt of many folds, a black sacque with lines of fur down the front, her black hat with the cherries on it, black mesh mitts on her hands that gripped the rail. A veil hid her face. He saw her raise her hands to her breast, and he saw Blaisedell glance toward her, and make a curt motion as though he were shaking his head.

Straight down, straight up, Blaisedell had told him; it burst in his mind so there was room for nothing else. He walked steadily on, trying not to limp in his tight boots, and his eyes fixed themselves on Blaisedell’s right hand swinging at his side. He felt the muscles in his own arm tighten and strain at every step. He could feel Blaisedell’s eyes upon him and now he felt their thrust and still the confused buzzing inside his mind. But he watched Blaisedell’s hand; it would be soon. Now, now, now, he thought, at every jolting step; now, now. He felt himself being crushed beneath a black and corrosive despair. Now, he thought; now, now—

It was as though there had been no movement at all. One instant Blaisedell’s hand had been swinging at his side, the next it contained the Colt that had been thrust inside his belt. His own hand slammed down — straight down, straight up — but already he was staring into the black hole of Blaisedell’s gun muzzle and saw Blaisedell’s mouth shaped into a crooked contemptuous half-smile. He steeled himself against the bullet, halting with his feet braced apart and his body tipping forward as though he could brace himself against the shock.

But the shock, the explosion, the tearing pain, did not come. As he brought his own Colt up level, he hesitated, his finger firm against the trigger, and saw Blaisedell’s hand turn with a twisting motion. The gold handle gleamed suddenly as the six-shooter was flung forward and down to disappear in the street with a puff of dust.

Blaisedell’s hand moved swiftly again, and the mate of the first Colt appeared. Again his finger tensed against the trigger and again he held it back as Blaisedell flung the other down. The slight contemptuous smile still twisted Blaisedell’s lips in his battered face. Blaisedell’s arms hung at his sides now, and slowly, uncertainly, he let his own hand drop. His eyes caught another splash of dust, in the street below the railing where Kate stood, her right hand extended and open and her face invisible behind the veil. Blaisedell stood staring at him with his swollen eyes looking shut.

The realization burst in him that all he had to do now was walk the remaining thirty feet and arrest Blaisedell. But he did not move. He would not do it, he thought, in sudden rebellion, as though it were his own thought; but now he was feeling intensely the thrust of all the other eyes that watched this, and it was a force much stronger than that of his own gratitude, his own pity, and he knew all he served that was embodied in the vast weight pinned to his vest, and knew, as he made a slight, not quite peremptory motion with his head, that he spoke not for himself nor even a strict and disinterested code, but for all of them.

Blaisedell started forward again, no longer coming toward him but walking along the track of his shadow toward Goodpasture’s corner. He walked with the same, slow, long-legged, stiff-backed stride, not even glancing at Gannon, as he passed him, and turned into Southend and disappeared down toward the Acme Corral.

As Gannon turned to face the corner, he saw, past his shoulder, that the sun seemed not to have moved since he had come out into the street. But now he heard the sounds of hoofs and wagon wheels, and saw the wagons turning into Main Street. He watched the miners climbing into them, and the mules stamping and jerking their heads. More wagons appeared; the Medusa miners were going back to work. Miners appeared all along the boardwalks now, glancing back over their shoulders at him and at the corner of Southend as they moved toward the wagons. They made very little noise as they embarked.

Miss Jessie appeared among them, hurrying along the boardwalk with a dark rebozo thrown over her shoulders and her brown hair tumbling around her head with her steps. She stopped with one hand braced against one of the arcade posts, and stared at Kate, and then, blankly, at him.

He heard the pad of hoofs. Blaisedell came out of Southend Street on a black horse with a white face, white stockings; the horse pranced and twisted his sleek neck, but Blaisedell’s pale, stone profile did not turn. The black swung around the corner, and, hindquarters dancing sideways, white stockings brilliant in the sun, trotted away down Main Street toward the rim.

“Clay!” he heard Miss Jessie call. Blaisedell did not turn, who must have heard. Gannon heard the running tap of heels upon the planks. She stopped and leaned against another post before Goodpasture’s store, and then ran out into the street, while the black danced on away. He saw Pike Skinner and Peter Bacon watching from the jail doorway, and more men were crowding out along the boardwalks now, and some into the street.