Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Came in on the stage yesterday,” Buck Slavin said. He nodded back at the first grave. “With that one. Somebody said they were going to put up a dance hall here.”

“Married?” Fred Winters inquired.

“I don’t know.”

“Her name is Kate Dollar,” said Paul Skinner, Pike Skinner’s brother, as he limped up to join them. “That’s how she’s got it down at the hotel, anyhow.”

The doctor joined them and Winters said, “That is a good arm Miss Jessie is walking on, Doc. Did you see him in action last night?”

The doctor shook his head.

“I saw him,” Henry Goodpasture said. “He made fifty or sixty men run with their tails between their legs.”

“Who were they?” the doctor asked.

“The usual no-accounts. Slator and Grace among them. A bunch of drunken miners.”

“I see you will blame the miners for everything, too,” the doctor said.

Goodpasture rolled his eyes heavenward, and Kennon and Winters laughed. The new woman had moved away from Morgan to join Deputy Gannon. Slavin informed the others of this in a whisper, and each found occasion to glance back and confirm the fact.

“It seems Gannon has a friend after all,” Winters said.

Morgan passed and one or two of them nodded to him, but no one spoke. Morgan glanced from face to face with his contemptuous eyes, and nodded back with a kind of insulting deference.

“Damned hound,” Will Hart said, when Morgan was out of earshot. “There’s a man I wouldn’t trust my back to.”

“There’s talk Taliaferro’s man Wax trusted his to him,” Slavin said. “Damned if I don’t believe it, too.”

“Blaisedell seems to trust him well enough,” Goodpasture said.

“It does not say much for Blaisedell, I’m afraid,” Winters said. “Which is too bad.”

They all fell silent as the deputy and Kate Dollar caught up with them. The deputy’s eyes flickered at them as he passed. The woman walked with him, but separately too. Her face was pale and set.

No one spoke until these had gone on past, and they all stopped when they reached the doctor’s buggy. The fat bay mare swung her head from side to side, cropping stubble. Goodpasture and the doctor climbed into the buggy. “Is there a Citizens’ Committee meeting, Buck?” the doctor asked.

“Why, I hadn’t heard,” Slavin said. “Is there, Joe?”

“I don’t know,” Kennon said, glancing quickly away.

The doctor took up his whip, shook it, and clucked to the mare. They waited while the buggy rolled off. Hart looked at Kennon, who flushed. Hart said to Slavin, “You know damned well there is a meeting, Buck! MacDonald called it.”

“You know why he called it?” Kennon said. “He wants to vote Blaisedell to post some troublemaker at the Medusa out of town.”

“I don’t like that!” Hart said swiftly.

“Cheap,” Winters said. “Cheaper than hiring Jack Cade to do it, the way he did with that man Lathrop. This way we all foot the bill.”

“Well, I will go along with him,” Slavin said. “It’s that one called Brunk, Will. You have one man like that and he stirs everybody up. I think Doc is pretty friendly with him, is why I didn’t want to say anything.”

“Isn’t that pretty?” Paul Skinner said, pointing. Ahead of them, cutting across toward the Row, the whores with their pastel clothing fluttering in the wind looked like bright-colored birds.

“I wish Doc would leave those damned jacks alone,” Kennon said. “My God, he has got touchy about them.”

“Well,” Winters said, “in my opinion the troublemaker at the Medusa is Charlie MacDonald himself. Maybe he is the one that should be posted, and I don’t know that I wouldn’t vote for it.”

“I don’t like anything about this,” Hart said.

“I expect we’ll want the marshal to post those three of McQuown’s, won’t we?” Kennon said. “If they get off at Bright’s, I mean.”

“They will. They will.”

“Four of them,” Slavin said. “Friendly was with them, that’s for sure. Maybe it’d be better to post that Brunk then, come to think of it. I’ll tell Charlie.”

Hart was shaking his head worriedly. Winters slapped him on the shoulder. “Do you know what Warlock’s second industry is, Will? Coffin manufacture,” he said, and laughed. But no one else joined him in his joke, and now they all walked in silence back along the dusty track to Warlock, returning from the burial of yesterday’s dead.

CURLEY BURNE rode beside Abe up into Warlock from the rim. As they entered Main Street he could feel Abe’s tenseness ten feet away, see him sitting up straighter, his left hand stiff with the reins and his right braced upon his thigh, his green eyes flickering right and left at the almost empty street. Up in the central block there were a few horses tied before the saloons, and, beyond, two teams and wagons stood before Egan’s Feed and Grain Barn. Peter Bacon drove the water wagon across on Broadway, water slopping from the top of the tank.

“Got quiet in Warlock,” Abe said, in a flat voice.

“Surely has,” Curley said, nodding. He pulled his mouth organ from inside his shirt and started to blow on it — and saw Abe frown. He let it drop back. “Chunk of them gone to Bright’s for trial tomorrow, I expect,” he said. “I hear there’s a lot of feeling.”

Abe’s lips tightened in his red beard. He glanced toward the jail as they passed. The morning sun brightened the east face of the bullet-perforated, weather-beaten sign.

“Bud in there?” Abe asked.

“Didn’t see.”

“Probably gone up to witness against Billy,” Abe said bitterly. He swung his black into Southend Street, so evidently he meant to stop in Warlock instead of just riding through. Curley supposed he felt he had had to come through, and had to stop, just to show himself.

Goodpasture’s mozo was sweeping the boardwalk in front of the store; when he saw them he began to swing his broom in a burst of animation. A high, battered old Concord stood in the stageyard and a hostler was backing a wheeler into harness. He stared at them as they turned into the Acme Corral. Lame Paul Skinner came out to meet them, silent and hostile. Nate Bush spat on his hands and rammed the tines of his hayfork into the hay as though he were killing snakes.

Abe stood watching Paul Skinner lead Prince and the black off to water with his eyes cold and color burning in his cheeks. “Now, easy, Abe,” Curley whispered.

They moved out of the corral, Abe very straight in his buckskin shirt, his shell belt riding his hips low beneath his concho belt. “Easy, now, Abe,” Curley said sadly, again, and said it still again but not aloud.

“Sons of bitches!” Abe hissed, as they went along past the buckled, leaning plank fence toward Goodpasture’s corner. “They will turn on a man as soon as spit. They will lick up to a new dog and turn on the old every time.”

At the corner he started cater-cornered across Main Street toward the jail, and Curley followed a step behind him.

Inside the jail Bud Gannon sat behind the table. His stiff, dark brown hair was neatly combed and his hat lay on the table between his hands. Beside the alley door was a rusty, dented bucket with a mop handle leaning out of it, and the floor was still damp in spots.

Bud nodded to them. He looked tired, and thinner than ever. His star was pinned to the breast of his blue flannel shirt. Abe stopped just inside the door, and, standing at ease, glanced around the jail with careful attention. The cell was unoccupied, the door standing open.

“Well, how’s the apprentice deputy?” Curley said, squeezing in past Abe. He had liked Bud Gannon as well as anyone at San Pablo, quiet and sober as he had always been. He had been a top hand with the stock, and he was missed. The killing in Rattlesnake Canyon had hit Bud the worst, he knew; immediately after it he had left for Rincon. He knew Abe hated Bud for that, and for not coming back to San Pablo now.