Oakley Hall - Warlock

“No.”

“Lean toward Blaisedell then, like most here? Seeing he is against McQuown?”

“I don’t guess I lean either way. I don’t take it as my place to lean any way.”

Footsteps came along the boardwalk and Blaisedell turned into the doorway. “Judge,” he said, nodding in greeting. “Deputy.”

“Marshal,” Gannon said. The judge turned slowly toward Blaisedell.

“Any word from the posse?” Blaisedell asked. He leaned in the doorway, the brim of his black hat slanting down to hide his eyes.

“Not yet,” he said. He felt Blaisedell’s stare. Then Blaisedell inclined his head to glance down at the judge, who had muttered something.

“Pardon, Judge?” Blaisedell said.

“I said, who are you?” the judge said, in a muffled voice.

“Why, we have met, Judge, I believe.”

“Who are you?” the judge said again. “Just tell me, so I will know. I don’t think it’s come out yet, who you are.”

Gannon stirred nervously in his chair. Blaisedell stood a little straighter, frowning.

“Something a man’s got a right to know,” the judge went on. His voice had grown stronger. “Who are you? Are you Clay Blaisedell or are you the marshal of this town?”

“Why, both, Judge,” Blaisedell said.

“A man is bound by what he is,” the judge said. “An honest man, I mean. I am asking whether you are bound by being marshal, or being Clay Blaisedell.”

“Both, I expect. Judge, I don’t just know for sure what you are—”

“Which first?” the judge snapped.

This time Blaisedell didn’t answer.

“Oh, I know what you are thinking. You think I am a drunk, one-legged old galoot pestering you, and you are too polite to say so. Well, I know what I am, Mister Marshal Blaisedell, or Mister Clay Blaisedell that is incidentally marshal of Warlock. But I want to know which you are.”

“Why?” Blaisedell said.

“Why? Well, I got to thinking and it seems to me the trouble in a thing like law and order is, there is people working every which way at it, or against it. Like it or not, there has got to be people in it. But the trouble is, you never know what a man is , so how can you know what he is going to do? So I thought, why not ask straight out? I asked Johnny Gannon here just now what he was and where he stood, and he told me. Are you any better than another that you shouldn’t?”

Blaisedell still did not speak. He looked as though he had dismissed the judge’s words as idle, and was thinking of something else.

The judge went on. “Let me tell you another thing then. Schroeder has gone after those that robbed the stage and killed a passenger. I expect him and that posse would just as soon shoot them down ley fuga as bring them back. But say he will catch them, and say he gets them back whole. Well, there will be a lynch mob on hand, like as not, from what I’ve heard around tonight. But say the lynch mob doesn’t pan out, or Schroeder sort of remembers what he is here for and stops them. Then those road agents will go up to Bright’s City to trial, and likely get off just the way Earnshaw did.

“Then it is your turn, Mister Marshal, or whatever you are. Which is why I am asking you now beforehand if you know what you are, and what you stand for. If a man don’t know that himself, why, nobody does except God almighty, and He is a long way off just now.”

“Judge,” Blaisedell said. “I guess you don’t much like what you think I stand for.”

“I don’t know what you stand for, and it don’t look like you are going to tell me, either!” Gannon heard the judge draw a ragged breath. “Well, maybe you can tell me this, then. Why shouldn’t the Citizens’ Committee have gone out and made itself a vigilante committee like some damned fools wanted to do, instead of bringing you here?”

Blaisedell spread his legs, folded his arms on his chest, and frowned. “Might have done,” he said, in his deep voice. “I don’t always hold with vigilantes, but sometimes it is the only thing.”

“Don’t hold with them why?”

“Well, now, Judge, I expect for the same reason you don’t. Most times they start out fine, but most times, too, they go bad. Mostly they end up just a mob of stranglers because they don’t know when to break up.”

“Wait!” the judge said. “You are right, but do you know why they go bad? Because there is nothing they are responsible to. Now! Any man that is set over other men somehow has to be responsible to something. Has to be accountable . You—”

Blaisedell said, “If you are talking about me, I am responsible to the Citizens’ Committee here.”

“Ah!” the judge said. He sat up very straight; he pointed a finger at the marshal. “Well, most ways it is a bad thing, and it is not even much of a thing, but it is an important thing and I warrant you to hang onto it!”

“All right,” Blaisedell said, and looked amused.

“I am telling you something for your own good and everybody’s good,” the judge whispered. “I am telling you a man like you has to be always right, and no poor human can ever be that. So you have got to be accountable somehow. To someone or everybody or—”

“To you, you mean, Judge?” Blaisedell said.

Gannon looked away. His eyes caught the names scratched on the wall opposite him, that were illegible now in the dim light. He wondered to whom those men, each in their turn, had thought they were responsible. Not to Sheriff Keller certainly, nor to General Peach.

The judge had not spoken, and after a moment Blaisedell went on. “Judge, a man will say too often that he is responsible to something because he is afraid to face up alone. That is just putting off on another man or on the law or whatever. A man who has to always think like that is a crippled man.”

“No,” the judge said; his voice was muffled again. “No, just a man among men.” He drank again, the brown bottle slanting up toward the base of the hanging lamp above him.

Blaisedell stood with his long legs still spread and his hands upon his shell belt beneath his black frock coat. Standing there in the doorway he seemed as big a man as Gannon had ever seen. When he examined Blaisedell closely, height and girth, he was not so tall nor yet so broad-chested as some he knew, yet the impression remained. Blaisedell’s blue gaze encased him for a moment; then he turned back to the judge again.

“Maybe where you’ve been the law was enough of a thing there so people went the way the law said,” he said. “You ought to know there’s places where it is different than that. It is different here, and maybe the best that can be done is a man that is handy with a Colt’s — to keep the peace until the law can do it. That is what I am, Judge. Don’t mix me with your law, for I don’t claim to be it.”

“You are a prideful man, Marshal,” Judge Holloway said. He sat with his head bent down, staring at his clasped hands.

“I am,” Blaisedell said. “And so are you. So is any decent man.”

“You set yourself as always right. Only the law is that and it is above all men. Always right is too much pride for a man.”

“I didn’t say I am always right,” Blaisedell said. His voice sounded deeper. “I have been wrong, and dead wrong. And may be wrong again. But—”

“But then you stand naked before the rest in your wrong, Marshal,” the judge said. “It is what I am trying to say. And what then?”

“When I have worn out my use, you mean? Why, then I will move along, Judge.”

“You won’t know when it is time. In your pridefulness.”

“I’ll know. It is something I’ll know.” Gannon thought the marshal smiled, but he could not be sure. “There’ll be ones to tell me.”