Oakley Hall - Warlock

He beat his fist down on the arm of the chair. And so we fell into the trap we had set for ourselves when we brought Blaisedell here, he thought. “It was so well done!” he cried. “But Jessie, if you had been at the meeting, they could not have done it.”

“Posting men from Warlock is nothing I can—”

“You should have gone!”

“I will go to see every one of them now.”

“It will do no good. Each one will lay it on the rest.” He slumped back in the chair; he told himself firmly that he would not hate Godbold, Buck Slavin, Jared Robinson, Kennon, or any of the others; he would only try to understand their fears. What angered him most was the knowledge that they were, in part, right about Frank Brunk. But he knew, too, that he himself was now inescapably on the side of the miners. Heaven knew that a blundering, stupid leader such as Brunk was no good to them; but Brunk was all, at present, that they had. It was as though he had, at last, come face to face with himself, and, at the same moment, saw that the man who was his own mortal enemy was Charles MacDonald of the Medusa mine.

“Poor Clay,” he heard Jessie whisper.

“Poor Clay! Not poor Frank? Not those poor fellows—” He stopped. She had said it was a mistake, and he saw now what she meant. The miners’ angel had become the guardian of Blaisedell’s reputation. All at once he could regard her more coldly than he had ever done before.

“Yes,” he said. “It is a terrible mistake. Do you think you can persuade Blaisedell that he must do no such a thing?”

“I must try,” she said, nodding as though Clay Blaisedell were the object of both their concerns.

“Yes,” he said. “For if he does this to Brunk, how is he any better than Jack Cade, who was hired to do it to Lathrop? And you know what Frank is like as well as I do. I think he would not go if ordered to, and how would Clay deal with him then? Frank is no gunman.”

He glanced at her from under his brows. She was sitting very stiffly, with her hands clasped white in her lap. Her great eyes seemed to fill the frail triangle of her face. “Oh, no,” she said, with a start, as though she had not been listening but knew some reply was called for. “No, he can’t be allowed to do it. Of course he can’t. It would be terribly wrong.”

“I’m glad we agree, Jessie.”

She frowned severely. “But if I can’t persuade him to — to disobey the Citizens’ Committee, then Frank will have to go. That’s all there is to it. He will go if I ask him to, won’t he, David?”

He did not know, and said so. She announced decisively that she wished to speak with Brunk first, and he left her to find him. In the entryway, with her door closed behind him, he stood with a hand to his chest and his eyes blind in the solid dark. He had thought she was in love with a man, but now he saw, with almost a pity for Blaisedell, that she was in love merely with a name, like a silly schoolgirl.

The doctor moved slowly along the tunnel of darkness toward the lighted hospital room. The faces in the cots turned toward him as he entered. Four men were playing cards on Buell’s cot — Buell, Dill, MacGinty, and Ben Tittle. The boy Fitzsimmons stood watching them, with the thick wads of his bandaged hands crossed over his chest.

There was a chorus of greetings. “What about the road agents, Doc?” someone called to him.

“Did Blaisedell post those cowboys yet?”

He nodded curtly, and asked if anyone had seen Brunk.

“Him and Frenchy’s up in old man Heck’s room, I think,” MacGinty said.

“You want him, Doc?” Fitzsimmons said. “I’ll go tell him.” He went out, his bandaged hands held protectively before him.

“Hey, Doc, how many got posted?” a man called.

“Four,” he said. Someone laughed; there was a swell of excited speculation. He said. “Ben, could I see you for a minute?”

He stepped back out into the dark hall. When Tittle came out, he told him to go find Blaisedell in half an hour. Then he went back down to Jessie’s room; she glanced up at him and apprehensively smiled when he entered, and he went over and put out a hand to touch her shoulder. But he did not quite touch it, and, as he stared down at the curve of her cheek and the warm brown glow of the lamplight in her hair, his throat swelled with pain, for her. He turned away and his eye caught the dark mezzotint of Bonnie Prince Charlie, kilted, beribboned, gripping his sword in noble and silly bravado.

He heard heavy footsteps descending the stairs. “Come in, Frank,” he said, as Brunk appeared in the doorway.

Brunk came inside. “Miss Jessie,” he said. “Doc. What was it, Doc?”

“The Citizens’ Committee has voted to have you posted out as a troublemaker,” he said, and saw Brunk’s eyes narrow, his scar of a mouth tighten whitely.

“Did they now?” Brunk said, in a hoarse voice. All at once he grinned. “Is the marshal going to kill me, Miss Jessie?”

“Don’t be silly, Frank.”

Brunk held out his hands and looked down at them. Then, with a ponderous, triumphant lift of his head Brunk looked up at the doctor and said, “Why, I expect he is going to have to, Doc. Do you know? The boys wouldn’t move for Tom Cassady, but maybe they will if—”

“Don’t be a fool!” he said.

“Now, Frank, you are to listen to me,” Jessie said, in a crisp, sure voice, and she rose and approached Brunk. “I am going to ask him not to do this thing, whatever the Citizens’ Committee has decided. But if I—”

“Ah!” Brunk broke in. “The miners’ angel!”

“You will be civil, Brunk!”

A flush darkened Brunk’s face. He took hold of his forelock and pulled his head down, as though in obeisance. “Bless you, Miss Jessie,” he said. “I am beholden to you again.”

“I have promised to try,” Jessie went on. “But as I was saying when you interrupted me — if I cannot, then you must promise to leave.”

“Run for it?” Brunk said. “Run?”

“Do you have to go out of your way to be offensive, Brunk?”

“Doc, I am trying to go out of my way to be a man! But she won’t let me, will she? She will nurse me off this. She is too heavy an angel! She wouldn’t let Tom Cassady die when he was begging to. She won’t let me—” He stopped, and his mouth drew sharply down at the corners. “If I had courage enough,” he said. “But maybe I don’t.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Frank.”

“I don’t know what I am talking about either. Because they would not move even for me, and I would be a fool. But what would you do, Doc?”

“I think I would do as she asks,” he said, and could not meet Brunk’s eyes.

“Why, I have to, don’t I?” Brunk said. “She has kept me since I was fired at the Medusa. Put up with me, and fed me. But, Miss Jessie — you said Jim Lathrop didn’t have courage enough. Why won’t you let me have it? Maybe I have got enough.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” Jessie said. “But if you will not do this for your own sake — and I understand that men must have their pride, Frank — then you must do it for mine. I hope it will not be necessary.”

Brunk stared at her. “Why, I would be a fool, wouldn’t I?” he said in his heavy, infinitely bitter voice. “And ungrateful too, since it is for your sake, Miss Jessie. But don’t you see, Doc?”

The doctor could say nothing, and Jessie put a sympathetic hand on Brunk’s arm. But Brunk drew away from her touch and backed out the door. His heavy tread slowly remounted the stairs.

“I don’t understand,” Jessie said, in a shaky voice.

“Don’t you?” he said. “Brunk was just wishing he might be a hero, and knows he cannot be. It is difficult for a man to bring himself to be a martyr when he is afraid he might look a fool instead. Do you think you can persuade Blaisedell?”