Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Damn you, Kate,” he said aloud. “Why can’t you leave a thing alone? It is done.” He said it as though he were pleading with her, but half-humorously; it caught in his throat. “It is done,” he said again, as though saying it could make it so.

Finally he turned away from the man he had killed. He made his way without haste back along the ridge and down the canyon where he had tied his horse. He buried the Winchester and the canvas jacket, and, in his black broadcloth, rode back along the stage road to Warlock. Before he reached town he cut over to the north side, where he left the horse in Basine’s little corral, and walked to the Glass Slipper.

As he entered through the alley he saw Lew Taliaferro’s dark, mole-spotted face watching him from the alley door of the Lucky Dollar. He tipped his hat and grinned, and would have spoken, but Taliaferro’s face disappeared and the door closed. He was still grinning when he went in through the back door of the Glass Slipper, and stripped off his dusty clothes and began to wash. But he should, he thought, have been more careful, especially since Taliaferro was down one faro dealer named Wax to him. Still, he knew, his luck was good. His luck would stand as long as he believed in it.

THE Bright’s City coach turned into Main Street with its body swinging far over on the thoroughbraces, the team running scared, and the coach sucking a whirlwind of dust behind it. It came fast down the street with the driver yelling, the popper of the whip snapping out alongside the lead team, and the shotgun messenger swaying on his seat with a hand clasped to his shoulder.

Schroeder, walking along before the Glass Slipper, stopped and stared. Then he spat his chew of tobacco into the street and vaulted the rail, coming down hard in the dust with his knees buckling. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted at Chick Hasty, who was standing in his dirty canvas apron before Goodpasture’s store, “Chick! Get the posse together! Get Pike!”

Hasty went around the corner toward the Acme Corral at a run. “ The Doc! ” Foss, the driver, yelled, standing now as he set the brake. The coach skidded and slowed, and came to a stop before the Assay Office, the lathered, muddy horses crowding and shifting together. Foss leaped down, and, with Schroeder’s assistance, helped down Hutchinson, whose sleeve was soaked with blood. They sat him on the rail; holding him, Foss said, “Threw down on us at Road Agent Rock. Shot a passenger, and the team took out, so we run for it.”

A crowd began to collect, men running up from all directions. Old Man Parsons halted his team of mules at the corner of Southend Street and Carl yelled at him, “Old Man, you are deputized. We are going out instanter!”

“One of them was Pony Benner, I hope to spit!” Hutchinson said, leaning limply against a post. The doctor came up, panting, his valise slapping against his leg as he ran; he and Sam Brown helped Hutchinson into the Assay Office.

The door of the coach opened and the pale face of a drummer appeared, his sidewhiskers standing out like the fur of a scared cat. He descended, followed by Pusey, the bank clerk, and they both turned to hand a woman down. She looked like a sporting woman, in her fancy clothes, but she did not carry herself like one, and the men on the boardwalk greeted her politely. Her face was chalk white beneath a hat covered with black cherries. Her eyes were black, her nose long and straight, her mouth reddened with rouge. There was a crescent-shaped court-plaster beauty mark at the corner of her mouth.

“The little one was Pony, all right,” Foss said to Schroeder.

“Two of them,” little Pusey broke in. “They got the strongbox.”

“More than two,” Foss said. “Couple up on top the ridge. It was one of them killed that big feller.”

“I only saw two,” the drummer said.

“There were three,” the woman said. She looked at Schroeder’s star, and up into his face with her hard black eyes. Her face was stiff with shock. “There was one on top of the ridge.”

“Shot what big feller?” Schroeder said to Foss.

“Passenger that was with this lady here,” Foss said. “We had to leave him lay, for the team took out wild when he got shot. He was dead, miss,” he said, apologetically. “You going after them, Carl?”

“Surely am,” Schroeder said.

“Went down valley. We could see them raising dust coming up the grade to town.”

John Gannon forced his way in through the crowd. There was a lull in the excited talk around them.

“Stage got run, Johnny,” Schroeder said. “Hutch shot and a passenger killed and still out there at Road Agent Rock.”

“Pony and Calhoun and Friendly and Billy Gannon,” someone in the crowd said. “Headed out of here like they was going back to Pablo, and went up valley to agent the coach instead.”

“By God if it wasn’t!”

Gannon licked his lips. He looked from Foss to Schroeder with his deep-set eyes in his bone-thin face. “Are we going after them, Carl?”

“Well, I thought maybe I’d ask you to ride out after that passenger.” Gannon flushed, and Schroeder went on quickly, his voice loud in the hush. “What was his name? Anybody know?”

Everyone looked at the woman, who said, “I think it was Cletus.”

“Thought I heard you calling him Pat, ma’am,” the drummer said politely. The woman did not reply.

“What’d they kill him for?” someone asked.

“He drawed, looked like,” Foss said.

“Fool thing to do,” Schroeder said.

The woman said, “He didn’t draw till he’d been shot.”

Tim French and Chick Hasty, mounted, came into Main Street. Then Peter Bacon appeared, leading an extra horse, and, a moment later, Pike Skinner, Buchanan, and Phlater. Each of them had a rifle in his saddle boot, and Pike Skinner had belts of rifle and shotgun cartridges slung over his saddlehorn, and a shotgun hanging from a saddle strap. Old Owen Parsons came after them in a hurry, on a rat-tailed bay, his hat brim blown back flat against the crown.

“Come on, Carl!” Skinner shouted.

“You go bring the dead one in, Johnny,” Schroeder said. “And watch things here.” He clapped Gannon on the shoulder. Buck Slavin came through the crowd crying, “Foss! God damn it, Foss!”

“Out of my way fellows,” Schroeder said. The crowd parted before him as he hurried out into the street to mount the extra horse.

“Looks like one we’re after’s Billy,” Tim French said.

“Maybe,” Schroeder said. “Chick, you ride out with Johnny and track back down valley after them. So we’ll have that squarer in court this time. Watch for them shedding the strongbox, too.”

Hasty nodded, and Schroeder surveyed the others. He grinned suddenly. “Well, boys,” he said. “We will ride to hit the river low down, and try to head them.”

They all nodded. Schroeder set his spurs and his horse leaped forward. The posse fell in behind him and went out of Warlock at a fast trot. There were cheers from the crowd standing around the dusty coach in Main Street.

IT WAS after dark when Gannon brought back the body of the big man whose name seemed to be Pat Cletus, and left it, covered with a tarpaulin, at the carpintería , where old Eladio would make a coffin for it in the morning.

He went home to Birch’s roominghouse to wash, and stopped at the jail to sit at the table in the dark for a while; then he went up to the Western Star for dinner, carefully oblivious under the silent stares of the men he passed upon the way.

But his eyes felt hot and gritty as he listened to them whispering behind him. They were sure that Billy had been one of the road agents, and probably they were right.