Oakley Hall - Warlock

He can be awesome enough on occasion, in his wrath, although he usually ends by making a fool of himself, when he is pitiable. Yet he is, to me at least, more often than not an admirable man, and Warlock owes a debt of gratitude to him. As judge “on acceptance” he has long dealt successfully with our minor disputes and misdemeanors, and he has, almost singlehandedly, as the deputies have come and gone and Sheriff Keller has done neither, maintained at least an awareness of the law here, where there has been no law.

March 28, 1881

Blaisedell has returned. He has resigned his position as Marshal and is dealing faro at the Glass Slipper. Disappointed and heartsick as I am at this turn of events, I cannot find it in my heart to blame him.

GANNON was alone in the jail when he heard the pound of bootheels on the boardwalk, and Carl hurried in. Carl sailed his hat toward the peg and grunted with satisfaction when it caught and swung there. But he said, “Trouble,” as he sat down at the table.

“What?”

“They are dropping wages at the Medusa and the Sister Fan,” Carl said. One end of his mustache was wet where he had been chewing on it. “They are going to do it,” he said. “And the others’ll follow what the Porphyrion and Western Mining Company does, sure as shooting. MacDonald just told me. He is worried about it; he by God ought to be!”

“They knew it was coming.”

“Not by a dollar a day, they didn’t!”

Gannon whistled.

“Cutting them a dollar a day. MacDonald says it’s got to be that much because the price of silver’s went down, partly, and partly because they are getting all that water down on the thousand-foot level. Unprofitable labor, getting rid of water, he says. There is going to be hell broke loose when they hear about it.”

“They don’t know about it yet?”

“He’ll tell them payday.” Carl took a dirty, irregularly bitten piece of plug out of his pocket, and wrenched a corner off with his teeth.

“That’s almost twenty-five per cent.”

“It is, and there is going to be hell. MacDonald’s not likely to step out of his way to miss any trouble, either. Well, and easy enough to wreck a mine, to give him his due. Charge of giant powder somewhere, or a fire in the stope. There was that one on the Comstock burned for three years and then had to be all retimbered before they could work it again. So MacDonald is getting ready to bust them before they bust him.”

“Bust them how? Did he say?”

“He has got his mind set on running out that Brunk he fired a while back, the one he tried to get Blaisedell to post. And Frenchy Martin and old Heck, and some others he says’re agitators too. Wants us to run them out for him.” Carl looked up at him and grinned a little.

“No,” Gannon said.

“What I told him,” Carl said. The lump of tobacco moved in his cheek like a mouse. “So Mister Mac is down on me; he is a man that doesn’t take kindly to anybody saying him no. I told him we would come out to the Medusa Saturday when they announced it — try to stop trouble. But he’d got other ideas by then.”

Carl sighed and said, “And I think what he’s got in mind now is rounding up a crew of hardcases to do his dirty work for him. Regulators was what he said, and I thought he meant some Citizens’ Committee people he’d get together. But now I wonder if he wasn’t thinking San Pablo.”

“It’s what he did before.”

“Cade,” Carl said. “By God, I forgot about that. Damn it to hell!” he burst out. “I wish we could count on Blaisedell if MacDonald intends on pulling something like that. By God if I want to see Warlock run by MacDonald and a bunch of San Pablo hardcases any more than McQuown and Curley and the same. What the hell’s got into Blaisedell, you suppose, anyhow?”

Gannon went over to sit down beside the alley door, and Carl scraped his chair around to face him. “Maybe he is just waiting for McQuown to come in,” Carl went on. “Maybe that’s what he is doing. Except why’d he quit marshaling?”

“Maybe he is sick of killing.”

Carl stared at him; he licked his lips. “Johnny, you haven’t gone and turned against him because of Billy? I thought you hadn’t.”

Gannon shook his head, patiently. He had prayed that he could remain patient. Always he could feel the accusations, from both sides, picking at him like knives whenever he walked the streets. He had ignored them so far, but he was afraid he was not always going to be able to.

“Well, somebody’s got to be peace officers,” Carl said. “And killing is part of it. I don’t see—” He stopped, and shook his head and said, “I wonder if it wasn’t that Miss Jessie went and turned against him. That’d sour a man. He is not rooming there any more, and they say he don’t see her any more. That would turn a man sour.”

He rose and paced the floor, his hands gripping his shell belt, his face puzzled and angry. “There is Blaisedell banking faro for Morgan and a glass of whisky right near all the time — and why? And there is McQuown keeping down to San Pablo. Scared to death, some say, but I think he is just waiting like a damned coyote. Everything is too quiet. It is so quiet it sets my nerves to banging like a dinner bell. Everybody just sitting around waiting for something to happen. What to happen?”

“I’ve felt it too.”

“Well, there’s going to be fireworks and the band playing with this pay drop, anyhow.”

Carl went over and kicked the cell door; it swung slowly shut. Carl stood facing the cell, his head bent down dejectedly. “Well, I never said I wasn’t a scaredy-cat,” he said. “But it sure comes on me hard sometimes. If we just had Blaisedell to yell for if MacDonald starts up anything, or those jacks either. Like that night they tried to lynch Billy and the other two, out of here. That was a night! A man knew what he had to do that night, and it was surely a comfort to have Blaisedell by.”

Gannon kept silent while Carl brooded — over Blaisedell, he knew, more than that there might be trouble at the mines. Gannon found himself almost looking forward to trouble. It had been too quiet. More than once, faced with the fact that some thought him one kind of coward, and some another, one kind of traitor, or another, it had all seemed hopeless and he had thought of quitting. Now, he thought, he might be of some use.

THE doctor sat opposite Jessie with the checkerboard between them. He watched her take his king; he was used to letting her win because he loved to hear her laugh and clap her hands in triumph. But these days she did not laugh, nor even smile much. She had been this way since Blaisedell had come back from Bright’s City, and had not come back to the General Peach. Blaisedell had not even been to see her, so far as he knew. But still she kept his room for him, and still she turned expectantly toward the door whenever anyone entered.

Her white, nervous hand moved her checkers out, and his own square, short, hairy hand retreated. She took his last king. “Oh, I have beaten you again, David!” she said.

“You can’t do it three times in a row,” he said, and began spreading the checkers out on the squares for another game. Footsteps sounded; her eyes swung toward the door. He turned too, and saw that it was only a miner, who leaned heavily upon the rail as he mounted the stairs.

“There are many of them drunk tonight,” Jessie said. “Almost every one.”