Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Back off!”

The miner retreated a step, grinning. Past him, over the heads of the men in the street, Gannon saw riders coming down Main Street from the direction of the rim. They were riding abreast, two ranks of them, and they filled the street. Heads began turning toward them. Abruptly the miners fell silent.

“It’s MacDonald!” Carl said.

MacDonald was in the lead, on a white-faced horse, wearing a checked suit and his hard-hat. In the gathering dust Gannon began to recognize the other riders: Chet and Wash Haggin, and Jack Cade, Walt Harrison, Quint Whitby, Jock Hennessey, Pecos Mitchell, and more, and still more in the second rank. Some of them had Winchesters over their arms, and belts of cartridges hung from their saddle-horns.

Abe McQuown was not with them, Gannon saw, straining his eyes; nor Curley. The big miner near him was now flattened against the wall as though he wished he could push back on through it.

“He has brought his Regulators in to do us all down!” Gannon heard someone say. The miners in the street began to retreat, some, on the fringes of the crowd, fading back into Southend Street. Now there was no sound but the pad of oncoming hoofs in the dust.

“MacDonald’s come to run his agitators out himself,” Carl said. “Damned if he isn’t, and damned if it is pleasant to be bailed out by such a bunch.”

Someone yelled, “Morgan already did your dirty work for you, Mister Mac!”

“Hold together, fellows!”

“Damned if we will run before a pack of rustlers, MacDonald!”

Carl said mournfully, “What the hell are we going to do, Johnny?” and Gannon took a deep breath and then ducked under the tie rail and jumped down into the street. He moved through the miners as rapidly as he could, pushing right and left with the shotgun butt as though it were an oar. Sweating, dusty faces turned to stare at him. There was muttering behind him. A hand reached out to grasp his shotgun.

“Let me by,” he said, and the hand fell away.

“Let the deputy through, boys,” a voice said, and the miners began to move more rapidly aside before him. He came out of the mob not fifty feet from the riders, and he walked on through the dust straight toward MacDonald.

“Pull up!” he said, bringing the shotgun muzzle up to bear on the white-faced horse. MacDonald reined in and the horse stood steady, swinging his head around to feign a bite at MacDonald’s leg. The others reined up also. Wash Haggin gazed contemptuously down at him, Chet Haggin grinned a little, Jack Cade lifted his round-crowned hat and ran his fingers through his hair, his dark, whiskered face sullen. Gannon looked from face to face. Those in the rear rank were the kind of San Pablo scum that even Abe McQuown was too proud to ride with. Except for the Haggins they were all bad ones, but after the first glance around he looked only at MacDonald. He felt calm enough.

“What’s going on here, Mr. MacDonald?” he said.

“This has nothing to do with you, Deputy,” MacDonald said coldly. “We have constituted ourselves a regulation committee and we know our objectives. It is none of your business. Stand aside.”

“It is my business. You are not coming in here with these people.”

“You caught this posting people out from the marshal, Bud?” Chet Haggin asked.

Gannon saw Cade casually draw his Colt and rest it on his thigh. He kept the shotgun trained on MacDonald. “Take them out, Mr. MacDonald.”

“You fool!” MacDonald said. His mouth looked like a trap in his ascetic, coldly handsome face. “We intend to round up some agitators who are bent on making trouble at the Medusa. You won’t stop us. You—”

“Take them out,” he said again. His ribs ached where the butt of the shotgun was clamped against his side, his hand sweated on the barrel. “Out,” he said.

“We’ll come through shooting if we have to, Bud,” Wash said.

Gannon heard the iron snap as Cade cocked his Colt; he tried not to flinch, not to look. He stared straight at MacDonald over the muzzle of the shotgun, and MacDonald licked his lips.

“Morgan already killed Frank for you, Mister Mac!” a miner yelled, and MacDonald scowled.

“Take your people out of town, Mr. MacDonald,” Gannon said once more. “There will be no rounding up done in Warlock.”

“Schroeder!” MacDonald cried. “Tell this idiot to get out of the way.”

“Do like he says, Mister Mac!” Carl called back. His voice was shrill. “And Jack Cade, you had better hang up that hog leg, for I am laid in on your belt buckle.”

Gannon stood watching MacDonald and he thought he had won.

“What do you say, Mister Mac?” Cade said, in his flat, harsh voice. “Shoot in or crawl out?”

Wash said, “You had better back off and let us handle it, MacDonald.”

“He doesn’t go unless you all go,” Gannon said.

“Very well!” MacDonald said. “Your piece there speaks with more authority than you do. I’m forced to honor it, since I want no bloodshed. You will hear more about this from Sheriff Keller.” He stood in his stirrups and called to Carl, “This is not the end of this, Schroeder!” He sawed viciously with the reins, and the white-faced horse bucked, scaring Chet’s mare sideways. Gannon swung the shotgun toward Wash and Jack Cade. Cade nodded once, thumbed his teeth, nodded again. The Regulators became, for a moment, a milling mass of horsemen, cursing and muttering among themselves as they turned away. Then they sorted themselves out into the same two ranks, and, with MacDonald again at the head, faded into hazy shapes in the twilight as they retreated. A roar went up from the miners; taunts were shouted after them. Gannon made his way back to the boardwalk and mounted it once more. Pike Skinner was standing with Carl; Pike watched him come up with his mouth pursed, and his hat brim shadowing his eyes. Carl was laughing.

“They’ll be back, deputy!” someone yelled from among the miners in the street. “Don’t think they won’t be back!”

Gannon leaned against the adobe wall. The sign above his head creaked a little. He let the shotgun barrel droop.

“Why, I guess you had better clear out of the street then,” Carl said. “So they won’t ride you down.”

“We want Morgan!” someone shouted. A few took it up, but soon the cry died away. Gannon leaned against the wall and watched the miners drift off. A tension had gone out of the air. “Meeting!” somebody was yelling. “Meeting!” The crowd began to break up into small clots of men. A wagon came across on Southend, breaking it up still further.

“You had better go scratch your name on the wall in there, Johnny,” Carl said. “You have done smart work tonight. I thought we was due for two falls at once, but damned if you didn’t take them both instead. What’s that you say, Pike?” he said, turning toward Pike Skinner, who had said nothing.

“It isn’t done with yet,” Pike said grouchily.

“Well, I expect you are right,” Carl said. “And you are deputized, you and Pete and Chick and Tim. Hunt them up for me, will you? There’s a good fellow.”

Pike went off along the boardwalk. Carl slapped Gannon on the back as he followed him into the jail. Morgan was leaning against the cell door, almost invisible in the darkness.

“Hanging off?” he said.

“For a spell anyway,” Carl said. He pulled down the pulley lamp and lit it. Now Gannon could see Morgan’s face; it looked as gray and tired as he himself felt. “I wouldn’t say clear off, no,” Carl went on. “Well, you surely went and roused things up. What’d you want to kill this Brunk for?”

“Bled his dirty blood all over me,” Morgan said, distantly. Gannon sat on the table edge with the shotgun leaning against his leg and his arms folded, watching the gambler’s face. For all the expression that was there Morgan might have meant what he said.