Oakley Hall - Warlock

“I thank you,” he said, to Blaisedell’s back, and walked on. He looked neither right nor left now but kept his eyes fixed on the black and white sign over the jail doorway. Kate’s face appeared there briefly. He had made his turn through Warlock, as was his right, as was his duty; but his knees felt weak and the sign over the jail seemed very distant. He could feel the blood dripping from his fingers, and his wrist brushed the butt of his Colt as his arm swung.

“Hallelujah!” Pike Skinner whispered, as he came to the corner. He did not reply, and crossed Southend Street, feeling the stares of the men — not vigilantes — who were stationed there. Again he saw Kate appear in the jail doorway, but when he approached she disappeared back inside, and, when he entered, she stood with her back to him.

The judge sat hunch-shouldered at the table, his crutch leaning beside him, his bottle and hard-hat before him, his hands clasped between them. Buck’s face was framed in the bars.

“Got you in the hand, did he?” Buck said, in a matter-of-fact voice.

“I just broke it open again.”

The judge didn’t speak as he moved in past the table. He heard Kate gasp. “Your belt!” she cried. He reached back to feel a long gap in the leather and some cartridge loops gone. He sat down abruptly in the chair beside the cell door.

Kate stood facing him. He saw her stocking as she pulled up her skirt. She tore at the hem of her petticoat and then stooped to bite on the hem and pull loose a long strip. She took his hand and roughly bound the strip of smooth, soft cloth around it, and tore it again and tied the ends.

Then she stepped back away from him. “Well, now you are a killer,” she said, with her lips flattened whitely over her teeth.

“Who was it, Johnny?” Buck said.

“Wash.”

“What’re they going to do now?”

“I expect they’ll go out.”

“He’s got a brother, hasn’t he?” Kate said. The judge was regarding the whisky bottle, his face a mottled, grayish red, his hands still clasped before him.

Buck cleared his throat and said, “Well, you have made some friends this day, Gannon.”

“Friends!” Kate cried. “You mean men to think he is a wonder because he killed a man? Friends!” she said hoarsely. “A friend is someone who will say he did right and what he had to do, and hold to it. They will stew on this until they have figured he murdered this one like he murdered McQuown. I have seen it done too many times. Friends! They will—”

“Now, Kate,” Buck said.

“I didn’t murder Abe McQuown, Kate.”

“What difference does that make?” she cried at him. “Friends! A friend lasts like snow on a hot griddle and enemies like—”

“You are bitter for a young woman, miss,” the judge said.

Gannon hung his head suddenly, and bent down still farther. He felt faint and his stomach kept rising and swelling against his laboring heart, and he could taste bile in his throat. In his mind’s eye he saw not Wash Haggin’s wooden face, but the frantic dark face of the Mexican sweeping up the bank toward him still. “Bitter?” he heard Kate say, above the humming in his ears. “Why, yes, I am bitter! Because men have found some way to crucify every decent man, starting with Our Lord. No, it is not even bitter — it is just common sense. They will admire him for a wonder because he killed a man they wouldn’t’ve had the guts to go against. But they will hate him for it, because of that. So they will say he murdered him like he murdered McQuown. Or they will say it was nothing, with Blaisedell there to back him, and those others. They will say it for they are men. Don’t you know they will, Judge?”

“You are bitter,” the judge said, in the same dull voice. “And scared for him too. But I know men better than you, I think, Miss Dollar. They are not so bad as that.”

“Show me one that isn’t! Show me one. But don’t show them . Or they will kill him for it!”

“There are men that love their fellow men and suffer for their suffering,” the judge said. “But you wouldn’t see them for hatefulness, it looks like, miss.”

Gannon raised his head to look at Kate’s face, which was turned toward the judge — and it was hard and hateful, as he had said.

“I would show you Blaisedell for one,” the judge said.

“Blaisedell,” Kate whispered. “No, not Blaisedell!”

“Blaisedell. Hard as I have judged him, he is a good man. That knew better than you, miss, what had to be done just now. That let Johnny take his play and glory just now, for he needed them, with McQuown took from him. He is a good man. And I will show you Pike Skinner that thought Johnny threw this town down with Curley Burne, but backed him now all the same. And the rest of them out there. Good men, Miss Dollar! The milk of kindness is thick in them, and thicker all the time!”

“Thick as blood!”

“Thicker than blood. And will win in the end, miss — for all your sneering at a man that says it to you. So this old world remakes itself time and time again, each time in labor and in pain and the best men crucified for it. People like you will not see it, being bitter; as I have been myself, and so I know. So they can say a town like this one has its man for breakfast every morning—” He slammed his hand down on the table top, his voice rose. “But not killed to eat for breakfast any more! Not burnt on crosses to the glory of God any more! Not butchered up—”

The judge stopped and swung around in his chair as footsteps sounded outside. Gannon rose as Chet Haggin came into the doorway. Chet wore no shell belt, and there was a smear of blood on the breast of his blue shirt. He stood in the doorway staring at Gannon with burnt, dark eyes in his carefully composed face.

“I’m sorry, Chet,” Gannon said.

Chet nodded curtly. He glanced from Gannon to Kate, to Buck, to the judge, and then his burnt eyes returned. “I never thought you come back and shot Abe,” he said, in a harsh, flat voice. “I have known you some, Bud. So I know just now you killed Wash because there wasn’t anything else you could do, the way it was put. I come up here to tell you I knew that.”

Chet made as though to hook his thumbs in his belt, and grimaced and looked down. “Thought I’d better not start up here heeled,” he said, in an apologetic tone. “Things are scratchy out.”

The judge sat motionless with his chin on his hands. Kate stood tall and straight with her hands clasped before her and her eyes cast down.

Chet said, “Bud, we thought pretty low of you when Billy got killed. And said low things. Now I guess I know how you felt, for when you press to kill a man and he kills you to keep you from it, who is to blame? Anyway, I guess I know how you wouldn’t go against Blaisedell, and scared nothing to do with it.” His eyes filled suddenly. “For I won’t brace you, Bud. And I’m not scared of you!”

“I know you’re not, Chet.”

“They will say it. Be damned to them. I won’t come against you, Bud. But they will try to kill you, Bud. Jack— They won’t rest till they do it now. I won’t go against you, but I can’t go against what’s my own kin and kind! I can’t go against my own and side with Blaisedell like you have done. I can’t!” he cried, and then he stumbled back outside and was gone.

“Always said he was the white one,” Buck commented, and the judge gave him a disgusted look.

Gannon stood staring at the dusty sunlight streaming in the door. Presently he heard the creaking of the wagon wheels. He moved slowly past Kate to stand in the doorway. The team and wagon were coming down Main Street toward him, and the riders following in the dust it raised. Pike Skinner, who was still standing before Goodpasture’s store, waved to him to get back inside.