Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Why, I can hear you, Judge,” Blaisedell said. He stood looking down at the judge with his eyebrows hooked up, and his mouth, beneath the fair mustache, flat and grave. “But saying what?”

“Saying there is nothing you are accountable to any more,” the judge said. “You have got no status, you have chucked it away. No blame to you for that, Marshal, but it is gone. What I am saying is you can’t post those four fellers out. You are no law-making body. You can’t make laws against four men. Neither could the Citizens’ Committee, but they had a better claim than you. Mister Blaisedell, you are running up a banishment-or-death ukase and it is illegal and outlaw and pure murder. There is no law behind you!”

“Fry your head in your God-damned law!” Skinner said. “We saw enough of it, up in Bright’s City.”

The judge massaged his eyes with his hands again. Then he squinted cunningly up at Skinner. “You saw lynch law here in town just before that,” he said. “You didn’t like that either, did you? Liked that some less, didn’t you?” he cried. Pressing down on the table top, he half-raised his thick body, and cords stood out on the sides of his neck. “Did you like that mob? I tell you he is a one-man lynch mob if he goes on like he is headed!”

“By God!” Bates whispered, admiringly. “I bet he could beller a brick wall down.”

The judge sank back into his seat. Blaisedell’s intense blue stare inspected, one by one, the men in the room. They fastened last upon the judge again, and he said, coldly, “One man is a different thing from a mob. If a man runs with a pack like that he is only a part of the pack and the whole thing hasn’t got a brain or anything. I say what you said just now is foolishness, and I think you know it. I am not scared of myself so I have to look around every second to make sure the Citizens’ Committee is standing right behind, nodding to me. Or the town either,” he said, glancing at Hasty. “Because in a thing like this I know best and can do best by myself.”

“You have said it out loud!” the judge whispered. “You have said it. You have set yourself above the rest in your pride!”

Blaisedell’s face tightened. “If I am hired to keep the peace in this town,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “why, I will do it and the best I can. Judge, I would keep those four birds out of town whether anyone told me to or not.”

“You are not going to keep them out! You are going to kill them! You are going to shoot them down dog-dead in the street, or them you. Keep the peace! Why, if that don’t make somebody a murderer and somebody dead that didn’t need to be then I can’t see across my nose! Keep the peace! Why, you will bust it wide open with your hail-to-the-king ukase!”

“Maybe,” Blaisedell said. “But most likely they won’t come in.”

“They will come!” the judge said. “I’ll tell you why they will come. Because now they are guilty-as-sin road agents to every man, and they know it. They are that if they stay out, and yellow-bellies besides. If they come in they will think they are honest-to-genuine, gilt-edged heroes proving they are innocent to all, and striking a blow for freedom too. Men have died for that many’s the time, and God bless them for it!”

“They know better than to come,” Skinner said.

“They will have to come. And you, Mister Marshall of Warlock Blaisedell, have made it so. There is no way out of it. So you will have to kill them. And that will put you wrong. You will fall by it, son.”

“Don’t call me son, Judge,” Blaisedell said, very quietly. A vein began to beat in his temple.

The judge said in a blurred voice, “Marshal, if you understand me and go your way anyhow, God help you. You will be killing men out of pride. You will be doing foul murder before the law, and you will stand trial in Bright’s City for it or these deputies here ought to throw their badges in the river. For you will be an illegal black criminal and outlaw and murderer with the blood fresh on you as bad as any of McQuown’s and worse, and every man’s hand should be against you. Murder for pride, Marshal; it is an ancient and awful crime to go to book for.”

Blaisedell backed up a step, to stand in the patch of sunlight just inside the door. He put his hat back on and tapped it once, and glanced around the jail again. This time no one met his eyes.

Blaisedell said gravely, “Maybe somebody will get killed, Judge. But that is between them and me, for who else is hurt by it?”

“Every man is,” the judge whispered.

Blaisedell flushed, and the arrogant, masklike expression came over his face again. But his voice remained pleasant. “You have been going on about pride like it was a bad thing, and I disagree with you. A man’s pride is about the only thing he has that’s worth having, and is what sets him apart from the pack. We have argued this before, Judge, and I guess I will say this time that a man that doesn’t have it is a pretty poor specimen and apt to take to whisky for the lack. For all whisky is, is pride you can pour in your belly.”

The judge flushed too, as Bates snickered and Schroeder grinned. “That was a mean thing you said, Marshal,” the judge said. “But I won’t say it isn’t so, so maybe I am honester than you. And I don’t have to be scared of you, either, Marshal.”

Skinner said disgustedly, “You a poor, one-legged, loud-mouthed old—”

The judge raised a finger toward Blaisedell’s face. “Being decent like you are — and I didn’t say you wasn’t! — I think you can brace no man that has got right on you; I think you know that. It is what I am warning you. What you are working toward in your pride is some day meeting a man that has got to kill you or you him, only he is righter and you know it. Because you have gone wrong. And what are you going to do then?” His voice sank until it was almost inaudible. “That is the box, Clay Blaisedell. What are you going to do then?”

There was a taut silence. Blaisedell’s face had paled, except for the spots of color on his cheeks. “Judge Holloway,” he said, in his deep voice. “I think you haven’t only been drinking.” He paused ominously. “I think you have been drinking out in the hot sun.”

Everyone laughed explosively in the sudden release of tension, and Blaisedell himself grinned. “Well, I guess I will go have a glass of whisky for my bruised-up pride,” he said, and turned to go out.

“Marshal,” Pike Skinner said. “I just want to say—” His angular, ugly face reddened furiously. “I just wanted to say the judge wasn’t speaking for me just now, and I know he wasn’t speaking for Carl Schroeder. I expect he wasn’t speaking for anybody but Taliaferro’s bad whisky.”

“That’s right, Marshal,” Schroeder said.

“That goes for me, Marshal,” Hasty said, and got to his feet.

Peter Bacon said nothing. His brown, lined face was sad. The marshal glanced at him. Then he nodded silently to the others and went on outside.

The judge rubbed his hands over his face. Then he turned to Schroeder; his dark face was drawn and puckered around the wart on his cheek. “You mark what I have said, Carl Schroeder. He is going to kill men and it will be on you to arrest him for it. Hear?”

“I don’t hear,” Schroeder said. “You are acting like a damned virgin, Judge. Like you have never known a man to be shot down before. It’ll be a day when I try to arrest Blaisedell.”

The judge bent, grunting, to recover his crutch, and then, red-faced with effort, thrust himself upright and hooked the crutch under his armpit. He set his hat, which was too small for him, on his head. He said contemptuously, “Maybe you will see, some day, how if you are bound to arrest some of McQuown’s people for a thing, you are bound to arrest another man the same. So if Blaisedell goes out and murders—”