Oakley Hall - Warlock

“What the hell would he do that for?”

“To be shriven,” the judge said. He smiled and stretched, smugly. “Ah, he listened after all, did he? Yes, to get it off himself.”

“Nothing on him, Christ’s sake.” Carl swung toward Gannon. “He only did what he had to do. Johnny, you heard him trying to talk Billy out of it!”

Gannon nodded with an incomplete and qualified assent. Carl was right to the boundaries of what he had said; Blaisedell had done what he had to do, given the circumstances. Yet the judge was right when he said that Blaisedell must be accountable. Billy would not have died had the Citizens’ Committee not decided to post him, and had Blaisedell not decided to honor their decision, as he had not in the case of the miner Brunk. But on the other hand Billy would not have been posted had McQuown not loaded the court in Bright’s City with perjured witnesses, tricked it with a clever lawyer, menaced it with gunmen and the threat inherent in his name. And, in the end, Billy would not have died had he not set himself to kill Blaisedell.

Carl furiously scraped his bootheel over the shredded stain that had been the scorpion. “By God!” he said thickly. He sounded as though he were in pain. “Johnny, what the hell did he think he had to go for?”

“The law is the law, Mister Malfeasor of Duty,” the judge said smugly. “And no good getting hysterical—”

Carl took a long stride toward him, swung an arm, and slapped him on the side of the head. The judge screamed and toppled; Carl caught him by the shirt front and set him upright, slapped him again, forehand and backhand. The judge snatched for his derringer and Carl knocked it aside. The judge screamed and tried to cover his face. Gannon leaped out of his chair, caught Carl around the waist, and pulled him away.

“Witness!” the judge cried. “Assault and battery and—”

“Shut up!” Carl shouted. He stopped struggling in Gannon’s grip, but when Gannon released him Carl darted for the judge again.

This time he only bent down close to the judge’s blotched face. “The law is the law!” he panted. “But there isn’t enough of it to go around out here. So when we get a good man protecting this town from hell with its door open I am not going to see him choused and badgered and false-sworn and yawped at fit to puke by a one-legged old son of a bitch like you!

“Until he gets fed up and rides the hell somewheres else and this town left pie on the table again for those San Pablo cowboys to pick it clean and kill anybody fool or awkward enough to get in their way. A good man, God damn you! That gives some of us here some pride and gets our peckers up for a change. God damn you, if by God because of you he has went up there to court and gets frazzled out of patience by it and sets his back against us here I will tear your other leg off and bust it around your God-damned neck for a God-damned necktie and run your God-damned crutch through it for a Goddamned stickpin!” He stopped, panting.

“Witness!” the judge said hoarsely, covering his face with his hands.

“Shut up!” Carl yelled. “You don’t know what assault and battery is yet, and by God I want witness to what I am saying! Because that’s the word with the bark on it — if you have got him turned against us here with your law’s-the-law bellywash, I swear to God people will walk ten miles out of their way around what happened to you, so as not to see the mess!”

Carl stepped back from the table. The judge snatched up his whisky bottle and tilted it to his mouth; whisky trickled over his chin.

Carl leaned back against the wall, chewing furiously on a mustache end. “By God, Johnny, it is a shameful thing,” he said, in a shaky voice. “Here I am making a damned yelling fool of myself, and you with your brother killed. I am sorry.”

“That Blaisedell killed,” the judge whispered.

“It wasn’t Blaisedell killed him,” Gannon said, and Carl gave him a confused look.

Bootheels racketed on the planks outside and Pike Skinner came in. “Where the hell’s Blaisedell gone to?”

“Bright’s, it looks like,” Carl said.

The judge said, in a loud, trumpeting voice, “He knew he had to go, because no man can set himself above the law!” He turned toward Gannon suddenly. Red marks showed on his pale, stubbled cheeks. “That’s why, isn’t it, Deputy?”

“I guess so,” Gannon said.

“You two have been drinking out of the same bottle,” Carl said, disgustedly.

“It is the only bottle there is,” the judge said.

Pike stared at Gannon with wide eyes in his red face. Pike came forward around the table. “I don’t know,” he said, with difficulty. “I don’t know what’s happened or what’s going to happen. But Johnny Gannon, I know if you throw Blaisedell down some way because of Billy I will—”

Carl caught Pike by the shoulder and jerked him around. “Shut your face!” Carl drew and jammed his Colt into Pike’s side. His face was contorted with fury. “You have shot your mouth one too many times!”

Pike backed up a step and Carl moved after him. “Johnny, I will hold on him and you can beat the holy piss out of him for that if you want.”

“Never mind it, Carl,” Gannon said.

“Take it back then!” Carl said, through his teeth. “I say back down, you bat-eared ignoramus! You don’t know what you are talking about even!”

“I’ll not!” Pike said stiffly.

“It doesn’t matter, Carl,” Gannon said, and Carl cursed and holstered his Colt.

“Pus and corruption,” the judge said, in the smug voice. “Small men bickering and quarreling and killing at each other, a whole world full and not one worth the trouble it is to law them. But there is one did a right thing one time in his life.”

“Shut up!” Carl cried. He hit his fist back against the wall. “Just shut that up. I’m warning you! Just shut up about it!”

February 10, 1881

THE pipers play “The World Turned Upside Down.” Clay Blaisedell is in Bright’s City awaiting trial. He took himself there upon his own warrant, evidently preferring not to present himself to the deputies here for arrest, as is fitting his Dignity & Station.

The rumors fly. His action has astounded everyone. We cry that there is no need for him to seek justification in court, and further that he puts himself in grave danger by thus surrendering himself to the mercies of a judge and jury too often proved weak creatures of McQuown’s will. Yet perhaps I do see a need. Blaisedell must have come to suspect immediately after the fight what is being more and more widely bruited about here — that Billy Gannon was not one of the road agents. And he must have felt that the fact that Billy Gannon had killed a posseman and had joined with those who were actually and clearly the road agents in order to ambush him (Blaisedell), does not alter this original case. If this is true, I must feel that he has acted correctly and honorably.

I wonder if Blaisedell realizes that he will stand trial for us of the Citizens’ Committee as well as for himself.

February 15, 1881

It is too bad that Blaisedell left so soon for Bright’s City and was not here to enjoy the luster of his feat in the Acme Corral while that luster remained intact. For within a week his triumph has become somewhat tarnished. Ah, the pure shine of a few moments of heroism, high courage, and derring-do! In its light we genuflect before the Hero, we bask in the warmth of his Deeds, we tout him, shout his praises, deify him, and, in short, make of him what no mortal man could ever be. We are a race of tradition-lovers in a new land, of king-reverers in a Republic, of hero-worshipers in a society of mundane get-and-spend. It is a Country and a Time where any bank clerk or common laborer can become a famous outlaw, where an outlaw can in a very short time be sainted in song and story into a Robin Hood, where a Frontier Model Excalibur can be drawn from the block at any gunshop for twenty dollars.