Oakley Hall - Warlock

“I should have quit before I started.”

“Chew on yourself!”

Clay said, “Abe McQuown is sitting bad on their stomachs and I am supposed to give them a purge. I want no part of it. For it is me that is poisoned every time. Every time now. Who am I to do their killing for them? I just want shut of it, but I can feel them at me all the time. And Jessie—” He did not go on.

“Well, you have quit,” Morgan said. “You did the right thing, Clay.”

Clay’s mustache lifted, as though he were grinning, and his eyes crinkled a little. He said, “There was a time when I thought I could do the right thing.”

Morgan poured himself a quarter of an inch of whisky, and, turning it in his hand, frowned carefully at the flat tilt of the liquor. “You were going to say something about Miss Jessie.”

“What she says,” Clay said heavily. “She says there is a thing a man needs to be—” Morgan saw something uncertain and almost frightened cloud his eyes. “It is hard to say, Morg,” Clay said, and sighed and shook his head.

So it was Miss Jessie pushing Clay; his mind closed down on it like a trap. It was as though in a card game with strangers he had picked on sight the one he must play against as most dangerous, and had seen himself proved right on the first hand.

“But she is wrong,” Clay said. “For it has gone past and the rest is poison.”

“And you have quit.”

Clay nodded; Clay’s clouded eyes met his for a moment. “But it is not so easy here, Morg. With Kate to see every time I turn around. I see she has taken up with Billy Gannon’s brother. Came out with Cletus’s brother, and now she has taken up with Gannon. It is a thing to scare me screaming, isn’t it?”

“Scare you?” Morgan said, and didn’t know if he should laugh at that or not.

“Why, yes. If every man I shot down wrong had a brother, and every one came after me, I would have to die that many times.”

“Hard to do,” he said, and still he did not know. Anxiously he watched Clay’s face. He felt a quickening lift as he saw the rueful smile starting.

“Surely,” Clay said. “But I could do it the way I feel now. Like a cat.”

“Listen to me now,” he said to Clay. “For a change. First thing where you have gone wrong is worrying over what everybody wants of you, or thinks. To hell with them! That is the nugget of it, Clay. And look at it like this — like a hand of cards. It is like throwing in your hand because you made one bad play.”

“No, not one,” Clay said. “Take your card game another way. The stakes are too high now, it has got too big for me. It was jacks to open once, now it is kings.”

Queens, he thought; he felt as though Clay were arguing with Jessie Marlow, through him. “Clay, I don’t know what we are quarreling over,” he said. “You have quit it.”

“That’s so,” Clay said, and sighed again.

A racket was starting up in the Glass Slipper. It was time for the miners to be coming in, but it sounded to Morgan as though every one of them in Warlock were crowding into the Glass Slipper at once. He heard their raised voices and the confused tramp and scuffle of boots on the floor. Clay turned to glance at the door. “What the hell is going on?” Morgan said, and rose just as the door opened.

Al Murch looked inside; behind him the racket was louder. “There is some jacks here to see you, Blaisedell,” Murch said. He stood barring the door with his broad frame, but behind him Morgan could see the big miner, Brunk, and another one with a red welt along the side of his head.

“What about?” he said, as Clay rose.

“Proposition to put to Blaisedell, Morgan!” someone called.

“Let us in, Morgan,” Brunk said, and Morgan nodded to Murch, who let four of them in.

“That’s enough, Al,” he said, and Murch fought the door closed against the rest.

Brunk looked as though he would rather be somewhere else. With him was an old miner with a goat beard, another heavy-set one with a black waxed and pointed mustache, and a fourth, the one with the bruise on his head, who was bald and had an Adam’s apple like a billiard ball.

“You do the talking, Frank,” Goat-beard said. He said to Clay, “We have went out at the Medusa, Marshal.”

“He is not marshal any more,” Morgan said, and Goat-beard looked at him with dislike.

Brunk, who had a rough-cut, square face and hands the size of shovels, pointed to Bald-head’s bruise. “Wash Haggin did that,” he said. “They have dropped wages at the Medusa a dollar a day, and MacDonald’s hired himself about fifteen hardcases in case there was any complaint about it. Wash Haggin did that to Bobby Patch.”

“Don’t do to complain,” Bald-head said, and grinned toothily. But he looked scared.

“Winchesters and shotguns around to fit out an army,” Waxed-mustache said. “Both Haggins was there, and Jack Cade and that one Quint Whitby.”

Morgan said, “McQuown?”

Brunk shook his head. “Not him or Curley Burne.”

“Put it to him, Frank,” Goat-beard said, and nudged Brunk.

“Well, MacDonald’s got these people up there to try to scare everybody to going back to work,” Brunk said. “We kind of think they will do more, too. We think MacDonald is going to send them in here to run some of us out of town. Like he did with Lathrop last year.”

“Run you out, you mean?” Morgan said, and Brunk’s big, red face twisted angrily.

“What did you want to see me for?” Clay asked. “It sounds like you had better see the deputies.”

Waxed-mustache said, “They are no good for us, Marshal.” He spread his hands out. “You are the man for us.”

“We’ve got to keep those hardcases off us some way,” Brunk said stolidly. “They’ve got too much artillery. We need a gunman.” He stopped and swallowed; it looked, Morgan thought, as though it swallowed hard.

“You are the one that could do it,” Brunk went on. “Schroeder is not much friendly with us, and him and Gannon couldn’t do anything against that bunch even if they wanted to. We are having a meeting tonight as soon as we see what’s happened at the Sister Fan and the rest.” He licked his lips. “And we’ll get organized and the union will collect dues. We can pay you for kind of marshaling for us,” he said. “That’s our proposition, Marshal.”

“I guess not, boys,” Clay said. “Sorry.”

“Told you,” Bald-head said. “Told you he wouldn’t.”

“I guess MacDonald got to him first,” Goat-beard said. “MacDonald is a step ahead of us all the way, looks like.”

Morgan watched Clay shake his head, apparently without anger. “Nobody’s got to me, old man. I am not against you or for you either. I’m just not in it.”

Morgan nodded to Murch, who caught hold of Brunk’s arm. “Let’s skin out, fellows,” Murch said, in his rasping voice. “Mr. Morgan and Mr. Blaisedell’s busy.”

“Told you he wouldn’t,” Bald-head said, starting for the door.

“Why should he?” Brunk said, and jerked his arm away from Murch.

“What do you mean by that?” Clay said.

“Well, why should you?” Brunk said loudly. “We can’t pay you like any rich-man’s Citizens’ Committee, with MacDonald sitting on it. We don’t want killing done to hire you for. Only killers kept off us. So why would you be interested?”

“Al!” Morgan said, and Murch caught hold of Brunk’s arm again. Waxed-mustache was grimacing violently.

“Let him be,” Clay said. More color showed in his pale face. “Let him have his say out.”

Brunk glanced down at Clay’s shell belt, which showed beneath his coat; he glanced quickly at Morgan. He said in a stifled voice, “I’m not saying anything but that we need help, Blaisedell.”