Oakley Hall - Warlock

I think we were all moved with pity for Whiteside. At any rate we promised to wait six weeks, after which, if he failed us, we would bombard Washington with letters and telegrams detailing All. Whiteside thanked us most gratefully, and retired, and we drank a bottle of whisky together, most grim and depressed, wondering how many men we might have condemned to death in this delay and subjection of the public good to one man’s already engorged reputation. And I found myself wondering what we might be doing to Blaisedell’s reputation, which is precious to us, by making this concession to Peach’s, which is not.

We could comfort ourselves only in the hope, and I pray it is a legitimate one, that we had more to gain by enlisting Whiteside’s aid than by offending him, and that, though our telegrams could easily become lost among bureaucratic desks and wastebaskets, unsent they became a spur to hasten Whiteside to action.

Will and Buck have gone off to their own rooms, to their own dreams or nightmares. Bright’s City is gay tonight outside my window. I can feel strongly a difference in the atmosphere here, the presence of order and of the knowledge of, and trust in, order. Is it too much to hope that Warlock will be like this one day? Or will our mines play out and our town dissolve to an abandoned ruin before it has even come to peace?

We will return to Warlock, I am afraid, despite Whiteside’s promises, with heavy hearts and guilty ones, and with little appetite for the explanations we will have to give our fellows.

SITTING on the bed in his room in the hotel, Morgan unfolded the piece of stiff paper with steady fingers. He glanced up once at the frightened face of Dechine, in from San Pablo, and then held the paper under the lamp. The words were printed in large, carefully shaped letters:

3-7-77

CLAY BLAISEDELL

FOR THE FOUL MURDER

OF WILLIAM GANNON

AND CHARLES BURNE

3-7-77

BY THE HAND OF

ABRAHAM MCQUOWN

CHIEF OF REGULATORS

“What am I going to do, Tom?” Dechine whined. “Jesus, what am I going to do?”

Morgan refolded the paper carefully. Then, holding it with his thumb and forefinger at one end, snapped it open again with a loud pop. Dechine flinched.

“How many have you got?”

“Ten of them,” Dechine said. He rubbed his red nose. “Jesus! Three or four of them I’m supposed to post up somewheres — by the stage depot there, and by the Lucky Dollar and Goodpasture’s store. The rest’s for him, and you, and Buck, and some others — I got a list here.” He made motions toward a vest pocket. “I am supposed to see he gets one, for sure. Jesus, what am I going to do, Tom?”

Morgan studied the paper again. It was neatly done. He felt a kind of admiration for McQuown, that he had listed only Billy Gannon and Curley Burne. McQuown had known the cards that were high in Warlock; they were higher still with Clay, though McQuown could not have known that. McQuown had been smart enough not to overload a thing. Well, Clay, what do we do now? he said to himself.

Dechine’s voice rattled in his ears. “I was going to chuck them off somewheres and just make tracks. Give him one! Then I thought I’d bring them up here for you to see, Tom. I—”

“Who spelled them out like this for McQuown?”

“Joe Lacey. He can write good. Jesus, Tom! What am I going to do?”

“Like you were told. If you don’t, Joe Lacey will just have to run up another batch.”

“Oh, no! I am getting right on out of the territory. I know God- damn well I’m not going to give one of these to Blaisedell.” Dechine’s shoulders were hunched as though he were afraid someone was standing behind him; gingerly he placed the stack of papers on top of Morgan’s bureau. “I told Abe straight out that I wasn’t going to do it, but there’s no talking to him. He has got a look on him like he’s been chewing peyote berry. So I thought I’d just make like I was going to, and get scarce fast and far. I know I—”

“When are they coming in?”

“Not right away, I don’t expect. There was everybody there drinking and jawing when I left, but they was laughing there how they would let Warlock stew awhile. I guess not right off. They are all coming, though; that bunch the Haggins rounded up for MacDonald, and all Abe’s people this time. The old man even — they are going to bring him in the wagon to see the sport. You should have heard the old son of a bitch! But not me, no sir! Tom, I am not going to post up those damned things!”

“Put them out. If you don’t they’ll just have to send somebody else to do it.” He folded the paper again. His hands remained steady, but there was a taste of copper in his mouth as he wondered what Clay would do. But there was no way of stopping these, or others like them, from showing up.

“I don’t know whether I am scareder of Blaisedell or Abe, which,” Dechine went on. “Abe is on the prod for a caution!” He hesitated and licked his lips, his eyes flickering. “Well, I guess I ought to tell you, Tom. They almost put you down there too. But Abe said not. They was thinking of putting you and Blaisedell down for killing that Cletus—”

“Who?” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, he was that passenger that got killed that time Pony and Cal shot up the Bright’s City stage there. Abe was trying to figure on some way to make like you and Blaisedell did it, or just him. But finally Abe decided this was all he’d put there. I tell you he has gone crazy wild down there, and it’s not just over Curley either. Jesus, Tom, I will be glad to get out of this country. This country has went to hell. I’ll say this straight out, Tom, even knowing Blaisedell is a friend to you. And even if I have known Abe and liked him too. There’s times I’ve hoped to God they would come to it and burn each other dead so a man could get his breath out here again!”

Dechine jammed his hat on his head, and said, “I wonder if you couldn’t give me a little stake, Tom?”

“Why, surely. How much do you owe me — five or six hundred? Take that.”

“Tom, I—” Dechine swung around to face the door as footsteps sounded, on the stairs, in the corridor. There was a knock.

“Tom?” Clay said.

“Come on in,” Morgan said, and grinned at Dechine.

Dechine backed into the corner and took off his hat and began wrenching it between his hands. Clay glanced toward him as he entered.

Morgan handed Clay the piece of paper.

“I was nothing to do with it, Marshal!” Dechine cried. “They would have cold-cocked me there if I didn’t bring these in! But I brought them straight to Tom here!”

“I thought you were in a hurry to get moving, Dechine.”

Dechine made a sound like a leaky pump. He edged toward the door, nodding ingratiatingly; he went down the stairs at a heavy-footed run.

Clay stood reading the paper for what seemed a very long time. Finally he said, “The old vigilante sign. Three feet wide by seven long, by seventy-seven inches deep.” And then he said, “Chief of Regulators.” He folded the paper carefully.

“They are all coming in,” Morgan said. “Those that were Regulators for MacDonald and more besides.”

“Fair enough,” Clay said.

“What are you going to do?” Morgan said evenly. “Run for it?”

“Not for McQuown.”

“What are you going to do?” he repeated, not so evenly. “Lie down and die?”

“Not for McQuown,” Clay said. Suddenly he grinned. He looked like a boy when he grinned like that, and he said, “Have you got any whisky, Morg?”

“Have,” Morgan said. He got it and poured two glasses. “How?” he said, and chuckled with excitement.