Oakley Hall - Warlock

He moved out past her into the dark entryway. Blaisedell stood across from him, his legs apart, hands behind his back, his head bent down — as still as a statue. Morgan sat on the bottom step, smoking.

“He’s gone,” he said again. Still Blaisedell didn’t move. The doctor came out of the shadows near the front door and followed Miss Jessie into her room. Gannon knew these out here had not heard Carl’s last words; he wondered if even Miss Jessie had.

“They went on down toward San Pablo,” Morgan told him. “Skinner said he thought you would just as soon not go anyway.”

He nodded dumbly, and went on outside. There was no one now in the street before the General Peach. He walked to the jail and in the darkness there sank down in the chair at the table, with his head in his hands. He did not know if he could face telling them what Carl had said. They would say he lied, with utter condemnation and contempt, and the lie thrown in his face until he would have to fight back. But how would he be able to blame them for thinking that he lied? He could only pray that the posse would not catch Curley. Surely they would not catch Curley Burne.

He groaned. Finally he rose, with broken glass scraping beneath his boots, and lit the lamp, staring, in the gathering light, at the names scratched on the wall. He slid open the table drawer and took out Carl’s pencil. With his ribs aching, he squatted before the list of the deputies of Warlock, and, carefully, in small, neat lettering, he added, beneath Carl’s name, the name of John Gannon.

CURLEY was half asleep in the saddle when the sun came up, sudden and painfully bright just above the peaks of the Bucksaws. As he cut in from the river his eyes felt sandy and his spine jarred into the shape of a buttonhook. The gelding he had taken plodded along, stiff-legged, and he was grimacing now at every jolt.

“That is some gait you got, horse,” he complained, leaning both hands on the pommel to ease his seat. “I never heard of a horse without knee joints before.” He reached for his mouth organ inside his shirt; somehow the cord had got broken, and he had to dig for the mouth organ inside his shell belt. He blew into it to wake himself up, and now he began to feel a growing elation. For now he could go, now he must move on, and there was good news for Abe about Blaisedell’s comedown for him to leave on.

The elation faded when he thought of Carl Schroeder. Carl had been an aggravating man, and more and more aggravating and scratchy lately, but he had not wanted to see Carl dead. He wondered if there was a posse out yet, and he looked back for dust; he could see none.

“Poor old Carl,” he said aloud. “Damned scratchy old son of a bitch.” In his mind’s eye he saw Carl go down with the front of his pants afire, and he winced at the sight. He knew that Carl was dead by now.

The gelding went grunting pole-legged down a draw, and labored up the rise beyond it. He had a glimpse of the windmill on the pump house with the blades wheeling slowly in the sun, and the tall chimney of the old house. He pricked the gelding’s flanks with his spurs. “Let’s run in there with our peckers up, you!” The gelding maintained the same pace. “Gait like banging an ax handle on a fence post,” he said.

By dint of jabbing in his spurs, yelling, and flapping his hat right and left, he got the gelding into a shambling, wheezing run down the last slope. He fired his Colt into the air and whooped. The gelding fell back into a trot. Joe Lacey and the breed came out of the bunkhouse and waved to him. Abe appeared on the porch of the ranch house in an old hat and a flannel shirt, and no pants on. The legs of his long-handled underwear were dirty and baggy at the knees.

Curley gave one last half-hearted whoop and jumped off the gelding; his knees gave beneath his weight and he almost fell. Abe leaned on the porch rail, sleepy and cross-looking, as Curley mounted the steps.

“Where’d you get that bottlehead?”

“Stole him, and a bad deal too.” He leaned against the porch rail beside Abe. “I’m leaving, Abe,” he said. “Things look like they’ll be getting hot for me here.”

Abe said incuriously, “Blaisedell?”

“Carl and me come to it.”

A shadow came down over Abe’s red-bearded face, and he blew out his breath in a whisper like a snake hissing.

“Abe!” the old man called from inside. “Abe, who is that rode in? Is that you, Curley?”

“It surely is,” he called back. “Coming and going, Dad McQuown. I’m on the run.”

“Killed him?” Abe said sharply.

“Looked like it. I didn’t stay to see.” When he flipped his hat off, the jerk of the cord against his throat made his heart pump sickly.

“Killed who?” Dad McQuown cried. “Son, bring me out so’s I can see Curley, will you? Killed who, Curley?”

“Carl,” Curley said. He tried to grin at Abe. He said loudly, for the old man’s benefit, “Run the road-agent spin on him. Neat!”

The old man’s laughter grated on him insupportably, and Abe cried, “Shut up, Daddy!” One of Abe’s eyes was slitted now, while the other was wide; he looked as though he were sighting down a Winchester. Curley saw Joe Lacey coming toward the porch.

“You are not needed here!” Abe snapped, and Joe quickly retreated. “What happened?” Abe said.

“Why, it seems like they get a new set of laws up there every time a man comes in. Now you can’t even talk any more. And scratchy! Well, I was there by Sam Brown’s billiard place, minding my own business and talking to some boys, and Carl comes butting in and didn’t like what I was saying. We cussed back and forth some, and—”

“God damn you!” Abe whispered.

Curley stiffened, his hands clenching on the rail on either side of him as he stared back at Abe.

“You did it now,” Abe said. He didn’t sound angry any more, only washed-up and bitter.

“What’s the matter, Abe?”

Abe shrugged and scratched at his leg in the dirty longjohns. “Where you going?” he asked.

“I guess up toward Welltown, and then— quién sabe? ”

“In a hurry?”

“I don’t expect they got a posse off till sun-up. But it’s not something I better count on. Why’d you get so mad, Abe?”

“People liked Carl,” Abe said. He hit his fist, without force, down on the porch rail, and shook his head as though there were nothing that was any use. “They’ll hang this on me too,” he went on. “That I put you to killing Carl. But you’ll be gone. It’s nothing to you.”

“Ah, for Christ’s sake, Abe!”

“They have got me again,” Abe said.

“Sonny, you shut that crazy talk!” the old man shrilled. “Now, you bring me out there with you boys. Abe!”

“I’ll get him,” Curley said. He went inside to where the old man lay, on his pallet on the floor by the stove, and picked him up pallet and all. The old man clung to his neck, breathing hard. He didn’t weigh over a hundred pounds any more, and the smell of him was the hardest part of carrying him.

“Got the deputy, did you, Curley?” the old man said, blinking and scowling in the sun as Curley put the pallet down on the porch. “Well, now; I always thought high of you, Curley Burne!” His mouth was red and wet through his white beard. “Well now,” he went on, glancing sideways at Abe. “That’s all there is to it. Man’s pushing on you, all you do is ride in there—”

“By God, you talk,” Abe said, in a strained voice. “Daddy, I’ve told you I don’t mind dying, if that’s what you want of me. I just mind dying a damned fool!”

“Abe,” Curley said. “I guess I had better be moving.”