Oakley Hall - Warlock

In the lobby of the hotel Ben Gough, Pugh’s clerk, nodded distantly to him from behind the counter. It was late and the dining room was deserted except for the woman who had come in on the Bright’s City stage. She sat at a table near the window, and he moved uncertainly over toward her.

He took off his hat. “Mind if I sit here, ma’am?”

She looked up at him through long lashes that were very black against her white skin. She glanced around at the empty tables, then at the star pinned to his shirt. She said nothing, and he sat down opposite her. Obsidian eyes watched him over her cup as she drank coffee.

“Catch them?” she said finally, setting her cup down in its saucer with a small clatter.

“No, ma’am. At least the posse’s not back yet.”

“Do they catch them here?”

“I expect they might this time. They got off fast.”

She nodded, uninterested. She was a handsome woman, except that her nose was too big. The black cherries on her hat shone overripe with red tints in them in the lamplight.

The waiter wandered over, switching a cloth at the flies and crumbs on the tables he passed.

“Supper,” Gannon said. When the waiter had gone switching away again, he said, “Maybe you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions?”

“All right.”

“Well, I’ll ask your name to start off with.”

“It’s Kate Dollar.”

Her eyes regarded him hostilely, and he hesitated. He had hardly talked to a woman before he had gone to Rincon, and very few there except in the course of his duties. He didn’t know whether to call her Mrs. Dollar or Miss. You said Mrs. to a sporting woman, if you wanted to be polite, but he was uncertain whether this one was or not. It was not that she was better dressed than a whore, for some of them wore finery to put your eye out, but her dress was expensive looking without being flashy and eye-catching, and there was a certain dignity about her. She was young, but her face was wary and there were bitter lines at the corners of her eyes.

“And yours?” she said.

“Gannon,” he said, and added, “John Gannon.”

“Oh,” she said. “One of them was supposed to be your brother.”

He felt his face burn painfully. He looked down quickly and nodded.

“What was it you wanted to ask, besides my name?”

“Why, there seems to be some mix-up, miss. About how many road agents there was. The driver—”

“I saw three of them,” she said. “But there might’ve been four.”

“There was one up on top of the ridge there, you mean? You are sure? I mean—” He stopped.

“I saw a rifle barrel up there clear enough,” she said. “And gun-smoke.” She raised a finger and pressed it to the beauty mark at the corner of her mouth. “When I heard the shot I didn’t know who had fired, because I could see the other two road agents, and it wasn’t either of them. Then I happened to look up at the top of the ridge and saw the smoke. And I saw the rifle barrel pull back out of sight.”

“You didn’t see the man?”

“No.”

The waiter brought a plate of steak, fried potatoes, and beans. He pushed at the potatoes with his fork. His eyes were burning again. Kate Dollar patted at the corners of her mouth with her handkerchief.

“The driver said you got on with this Cletus at Bright’s City.”

“So did that little bank clerk, and the drummer.”

“I heard the drummer say you called him Pat.”

“Maybe I did.”

“You wouldn’t want to say, then?”

“Say what?”

“Whether you’d been coming out here with this Pat Cletus, or what for. Or who he was.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know,” he said, hopelessly. He forked a mouthful of potatoes, chewed, and tried to swallow; they were at the same time greasy and dry as dust.

“What do you want me to say?” Kate Dollar asked, in a different voice. “That there were only two of them? Because then one might not have been your brother?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The driver and the shotgun seem pretty sure it was Pony Benner and Calhoun. But the third one could’ve been Friendly. Or— I don’t know,” he said again. “I just thought you might’ve got mixed up — with everything happening so sudden and all. I guess you didn’t.”

“What were you trying to blackguard me into, asking about the man that was killed?”

“I don’t know,” he said dully. “Just — deputies’re supposed to ask questions about a thing. I was just trying to find out what happened,” he said. He put his fork down.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I guess not,” he said, and pushed the plate away from him.

Kate Dollar said, “From what I’ve heard, it sounds like nobody gets convicted of anything at the Bright’s City court. Why are you so worried? Because of being deputy?”

“It’s not that. I guess they would probably get off in Bright’s, all right. If they get caught.”

Kate Dollar was frowning a little; she looked at him questioningly.

“Well,” he said, “that’s it, you see, miss. I expect they will get off all right. But then they’ll get posted out of town.”

There was a slow tightening around her mouth. Suddenly her face seemed filled with hate, but the expression was gone so quickly that he could not be sure what he had seen. She said, in a curiously flat voice, “I knew Clay Blaisedell in Fort James.”

“Did you?” he said.

“So you are worried about him posting your brother out of town,” she said. “He is just a boy, I heard somebody say.” He saw that she looked very tired.

“He is eighteen. No, he’s not a boy.” He was embarrassed that he had let the subject of Billy come up. But it was big in him and there was, it seemed, no one else he could speak to like this. He said, “Have you ever seen a gambler in a game of cards and you can tell he knows just where every card is?”

She nodded, as though immediately she had caught his thought; and he went on. “Well, I guess I am like that right now. Cards have been dealt out and they are face down yet, but I know what they are.”

Kate Dollar continued to regard him with her black eyes, her expression one of expectant interest. But now he was confused and jarred by the thought that she was estimating him, and was not interested in Billy at all. He thrust his chair back and got to his feet.

“Well, I didn’t mean to bother you with all that, Miss Dollar. I just came to ask you some things, and I thank you.”

“You are welcome, Deputy.”

Halfway to the lobby he realized he had forgotten his hat, and he had to return for it, apologizing to her again. She did not speak this time, although she smiled a little; he noticed that her eyes looked pink and swollen in her tired face, and he thought, as he started back to the jail to begin the long night’s wait, that the man Cletus must have been more to her than she wanted to admit.

I

MORGAN had been waiting for her to come all evening, but still he started at the knock on the alley door, which he knew was her knock. He rose and smoothed his hands back along the sides of his head, pulled down the tabs of his vest, buttoned his coat. He slid back the bar and opened the door; at first he could see nothing, and he didn’t speak, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the dark.

She was standing back and a little to one side, where the light did not touch her.

“I’ve told you tommies to quit bothering me,” he said, and made as though to slam the door.

“Tom,” she said, and moved closer. “It’s Kate.”

He was supposed to blow to pieces at the sight of her. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now they are following me out from all over.”