Oakley Hall - Warlock

“Oh, he said it all right,” Wash Haggin said, evading Kate Dollar’s gaze.

The judge shifted his attention to Chet Haggin.

“I didn’t hear him say it,” Chet Haggin said.

“You are saying he didn’t say it, then?”

“I didn’t say that. I just didn’t hear it. He might’ve said it without me hearing it.”

“Uh-huh,” the judge said. “Now,” he said to old McQuown. “You are not claiming Blaisedell was with him, are you?”

“Might’ve been. I claim Blaisedell put him up to it.”

“Swear it, you mean?” the judge said. “You can’t—”

“Damned right I swear it!” old McQuown yelled. “And these boys’ll swear it too! It stands to reason, don’t it?”

“Ike, I have told you once I’m not going to have any cussing in here. There is a lady present.”

“What’s she doing here, anyhow?” Whitby growled.

Kate Dollar smiled, and said in a clear voice, “I am trying to see if any of you boys will look me in the eye when you lie.”

The judge slapped his hand down on the table. “Ma’am, you will keep hushed or I will clear you out of here!”

Chet Haggin said, “Cousin Ike, I don’t see how you are going to swear to a thing like that. We don’t—”

His brother swung around toward him angrily. “Chet, you know well enough Blaisedell put him up to it!”

Old McQuown raised himself on his elbow again. “There is not a man in the territory that don’t know Blaisedell was out to kill my boy, and was out for it ever since he came here. Abe a peaceable, law-abiding boy that—”

Someone in the doorway snickered loudly. The judge swung around and pointed a finger at the offender. “You! Get!”

Old McQuown’s breathing sounded very loud in the silent room. He rubbed a hand roughly over his eyes. His voice shook as he continued. “Abe wouldn’t give him cause to pick a fight, not wanting to kill a man that was marshal even if he was pure devil. So Blaisedell couldn’t get at him, and he had to send a dirty, rotten, nose-picking backshooter of a—”

“Never mind that,” the judge said. “That’s irrelevant and a matter of opinion too. Now, you say every man knows Blaisedell put Johnny Gannon to it?”

“Said so.”

“Well, now, Ike, maybe everybody knows it. But I will put it to you that everybody knows too how you and these same boys here, and your son, has gone up to Bright’s City to court and swore false I don’t know how many times to keep some of yours from prison or hanging for what they did and what everybody knew they did. Now what do you say to that?”

“By God!” old McQuown whispered. “By God, George Holloway, you are calling us liars!”

“I am,” the judge said calmly. “Maybe not this time, but I say you have been other times. You just swore to me on the Bible to tell the whole truth, and I am asking you on your oath if you people haven’t been liars in court before this time.”

Old McQuown didn’t speak.

“You going to answer, Ike, or not?”

“Be damned to you!” old McQuown said hoarsely.

“Judge,” Chet Haggin said. “If you make us out liars it don’t make Bud there not one.”

“No, it don’t. But the point I am making is that it don’t signify that the bunch of you is swearing one way, and him another.” The judge took off his glasses and tapped the earpiece against the Bible. Carefully he pushed the stack of six-shooters farther along the table. “Now, the next thing,” he said, “is how you all saw Johnny firing in through the door. Kicked it open, you said? And went right to shooting? He was seen clear?”

“Swore to that already,” old McQuown said, in the hoarse voice.

“You don’t mind if we run through it again, though — since I wasn’t there. Now there was light enough to see by, was there?”

“Three lamps burning. Ought to’ve been.”

“It was light enough, all right,” Whitby said.

“But he didn’t come inside, did he? Thought you said he stayed outside and just kicked the door open.”

“Said he was outside.”

“Dark outside, though, wasn’t it?”

Old McQuown did not reply. He looked from face to face around him, twisting his head so as to look Kate Dollar in the eye. He grunted scornfully, and lay back on his pallet, panting from the exertion.

“Now, what I am trying to get at here,” the judge said, “isn’t just that every man knows how a man outside can see fine into a lit-up room, but a man in a lit-up room can’t see outside when it’s dark anywhere near as good. That’s not what I’m getting at.” He scowled and held up a hand as Whitby started to speak.

“I am just trying to make certain you are sure of your man, is all,” he went on. “Now I am asking you to think back hard, Ike, and you, boys — in view of the fact there’s been some talk that Blaisedell rode down there himself the night Abe McQuown got murdered. I am asking you if you are absolutely dead certain sure that the man you saw shoot Abe McQuown down was Johnny Gannon here. I mean, since everybody knows Blaisedell was out to kill Abe by hook or crook, like you say. Now!”

There was a sudden excited rustle of comment in the doorway. Whitby whispered triumphantly, “Why, by God, maybe it was at that! Say! Neckerchief pulled up over his face, but—” His eyes narrowed cunningly as he swung toward the old man. “Say, what do you think, Dad McQuown? By God if it wasn’t Blaisedell himself, come to think of it!”

“You was closer to the door than the rest, huh, Quint?” the judge said.

“Cousin Ike!” Wash Haggin said. “It is a trick!”

“Hold on there!” old McQuown shouted. Pike Skinner grinned suddenly, and there was laughter from the men in the doorway. Whitby’s brown, fat face paled.

The judge said mildly, “It is hard to see a man clear when he is out in the dark and you in the light.”

“I say it was Bud Gannon!” old McQuown cried. “By God, if you have threw us down with this fool—”

“Hush up, now,” the judge said. They shouted back and forth at each other until old McQuown gave up and lay back on his pallet in exhaustion again.

“You just listen to me,” the judge said. “I am going to sum things up now, and I will have quiet in here to do it. Now, here is Johnny Gannon to swear one thing, and four to swear against him — and more outside that’ll do the same, I guess. But—”

“Damned right they’ll swear the same!” Wash Haggin cried.

“—but as I said before, it doesn’t signify. So now I’ll take up things brought in against Johnny Gannon. First how he and Blaisedell planned to kill Abe McQuown in a conspiracy. Dismissed. No evidence whatsoever, except everybody’s supposed to know it’s so.

“Then there is that Johnny Gannon went down there and tried to pick a fight with Abe McQuown spang in front of fifteen or so of his friends and kin, drew on him, and all that. I just can’t believe it. No man with a speck of sense would do such a thing. Say he killed Abe like that, it’d been pure suicide in front of all those. It doesn’t stand to reason and I just don’t believe it is so.”

“He did it!” old McQuown shouted.

“Hush. Now the next thing, that he got stabbed through the hand somehow and went out swearing he would get even for it — that sounds reasonable, and I might believe it. And he might have said that he and Blaisedell was going to get even, knowing the people he was talking to was edgy about Blaisedell.

“But this don’t get him to killing Abe McQuown, which is what is primary here. Whitby, and you, Ike, swear you saw him and it was Gannon. Only Whitby went and changed his mind a little — and I will admit I tried to fuddle him saying that about Blaisedell, who was in town that night for all to see, whatever rumors have got started about him. But now it turns out Whitby didn’t see quite so clear as he first made out, and now it turns out that the killer had a neckerchief over his face, as would be natural. Only the neckerchief got forgot about, first time you told it. So now it looks to me that since Whitby thinks it might be nice if it was Blaisedell after all, it must be he didn’t really see who it was, Gannon and Blaisedell not being two that look much alike. And so I figure that if Whitby didn’t see who it was at all, then nobody did, and I think you people have accused Johnny Gannon wrong and I think you know it!”