Warlock

1. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

August 25, 1880

DEPUTY CANNING had been Warlock’s hope. During his regime we had come to think, in man’s eternal optimism, that progress was being made toward at least some mild form of Law & Order in Warlock. Certainly he was by far the best of the motley flow of deputies who have manned our jail.

Canning was a good man, a decent man, an understandably prudent man, but an honorable one. He coped with our daily and nightly problems, with brawling, drunken miners, and with Cowboys who have an especial craving to ride a horse into a saloon, a Cyprian’s cubicle, or the billiard parlor, and shoot the chimneys out of the chandeliers.

Writing of Canning now, I wonder again how we manage to obtain deputies at all, who must occupy a dangerous and frequently fatal position for miserly pay. We do not manage to keep them long. They collect their pittance for a month or two, and die, or depart, or do not remain long enough even to collect it at all. One, indeed, fled upon the first day of his employment, leaving his star of office awaiting his successor on the table in the jail. We have had bad ones, too; Brown, the man before Canning, was an insolent, drunken bully, and Billy-the-kid Gannon gained a measure of fame and gratitude by ventilating him in a saloon brawl down valley in San Pablo.

Canning, too, must have known that some day he would be thrown up against one of that San Pablo crew, incur, prudent as he was, the enmity, or merely displeasure, of Curley Burne or Billy Gannon, of Jack Cade or Calhoun or Pony Benner, of one of the Haggin brothers, or even of Abe McQuown himself. I wonder if, in his worst dreams, it ever occurred to him that the whole down valley gang of badmen would come in against him at once.

There is no unanimity of opinion even now amongst those of us who believe them at least to be a regrettable element in Warlock. There are those who will say that of the lot only Cade is truly bad, and possibly Calhoun when in his cups; who will say that Luke Friendly may be something of a bully, and Pony Benner scratchy at times, but that Billy Gannon is, if you know him, a fine boy, Curley Burne a happy-go-lucky, loyal friend, and McQuown not actually an outlaw, since his forays after stock into Mexico are not really rustling.

However many good men die at their hands, or are driven out for fear of them, there will, it seems, always be their defenders to say they are only high-spirited, mischievous, fun-loving, perhaps a little careless—and even I will admit that there are likeable young fellows among them. Yet however many Saturday evenings are turned into wild carnivals of violence and bloodshed, however many cattle are rustled and stages held up, there will always be their champions to claim that they steal very little from their neighbors (I must admit, too, that Matt Burbage, whose range adjoins McQuown’s, does not blame McQuown for depredations upon his stock); that they confine their rustling raids to below the border; that the stages are robbed not by them, but by lonesomers hiding out here from true-bills further east; that, indeed, matters would be much worse if it were not for Abe McQuown to keep the San Pablo hardcases in hand, and so forth and so forth. And it may be so, in part.

McQuown is an enigmatic figure, certainly. He and his father possess a range as large and fertile as that of Matt Burbage, and, it would seem, could be ranchers as eminent and respected. Certainly they seem no more prosperous, in their lawlessness. Abe McQuown is a red-bearded, lean, brooding fellow, who has about him an explosive aura of power and directionless determination. He has protruding green eyes, which, it is said, can spit fire, or freeze a man at fifty feet; is of medium height, almost slight, with long arms, and walks with a curious, backward-leaning gait, like a young cadet, with hands resting upon his concho belt, his beard tipped down against his chest, and his green eyes darting glances right and left. Yet there is about him a certain paradoxical shyness, and a certain charm, and in conversation with the man it is difficult not to think him a fine fellow. His father, old Ike, was shot through the hips six months or so ago on a rustling expedition, is paralyzed from the hips down, and is, reportedly, a dying man. Good riddance it will be; he is unequivocably a mean and ugly old brute.

I say, Deputy Canning must have known the clash would come. In retrospect I suffer for him, and at the same time I wonder what went on in McQuown’s cunning and ruthless mind. What kind of challenge to himself did he see in Canning? Merely that of one strong man as a threat to the supremacy of another? The two were, to all appearances, friendly. Certainly Canning never interfered with McQuown, or with McQuown’s. He was too prudent for that. Canning was widely liked and respected, and a man as intelligent as McQuown must have had to take that into consideration, for is there a man of stature anywhere who does not wish to be the more admired? And will any such man commit a despicable act without attempting to color it in his own favor?

I will put down, then, what I think: that McQuown carefully chose the time, the place, the occasion; that this was deeply premeditated; that McQuown is not merely high-spirited, mischievous, careless, that he is not simply a spoiled and willful youth; that, further and specifically, McQuown was jealous of what his henchman Billy Gannon had won for himself by dispatching an obnoxious bully of a deputy, and sought to repeat a winning trick.

About a month ago, Canning buffaloed a young Cowboy named Harms. It was a Saturday night and Harms was in town with a month’s pay, which he promptly lost over Taliaferro’s faro layout. With whisky under his belt and no more money in his pocket, and so nothing to do for excitement, Harms vented his feelings by proceeding to the center of Main Street and firing off his six-shooter at the moon—for which he is not much to be blamed. Canning, however, accosted him, for which the deputy was not to be blamed either, and, at some danger to his person, grappled with Harms in order to relieve him of the offending Colt’s. In the end he had to clout the boy over the ear with the weapon to quiet him, which is acceptable practice. Canning then bore Harms off to see Judge Holloway, who presented him with a night’s accommodation in the jail. Released the next morning, Harms started back down valley, but was thrown from his horse en route, was dragged, and died. No doubt his death was in good part brought about by the buffaloing he had received.

It was too bad. We felt badly, those who thought of it at all, and I am sure Canning was as sorrowful as anyone. Still, in this rough-and-tumble corner of creation, such things will happen, and are usually considered no more than too bad.

I think there is some East Indian doctrine to the effect that our fate is shaped in the most inconsequential of our acts, and so it was with poor Canning. Enter, then, a further minister of providence, a week or ten days later, in the person of Lige Harrington, a braggart, blow-hard fellow more ridiculous than dangerous, but a minor hanger-on of McQuown’s. Harrington announced himself a bosom friend of Harms, and his avenger. Harrington was patently seeking to make himself a reputation at Canning’s expense, and to give himself prestige among the San Pabloites. Well primed with liquid courage, Harrington sought Canning’s demise, but was dispatched in short order, crated, and immured upon Boot Hill.

Again, I think, no one was much concerned. This sort of asinine bravado must be the bane of any peace officer’s existence. Yet I wonder if Canning did not have a fearful vision of how Right carries the seeds of Wrong within it, and Wrong its particular precariousness for a man in his position. For what are Right & Wrong in the end, but opinion held to? Certainly there were men who said that Canning had murdered the unfortunate Harms, and so had murdered Harrington his avenger, bad rubbish or not. Is not the semblance of guilt, however slight the tinge, already a corruption?

And I wonder if Canning did not feel the web beginning to encase him and the red spider gently shaking the strands. For soon rumors started. Canning had better get out of town. The threat was nameless at first, but after a time it was joined with McQuown’s name. What other name would do?

I had heard rumors of impending trouble between Canning and McQuown, and dismissed them as idle gossip. At some point, I cannot say when, I realized they were not; I realized it as Warlock itself did, with a jerk to deadly anxiety as of a rope pulled suddenly tight and singing with strain. I have said that Canning was a prudent man. Had he been prudent enough he would have left town as soon as these rumors started, while still he could have done so without too great a loss of face. Yet he had come too far along the course. He had his own reputation as man and gunman now. He was caught in his own web as well as in McQuown’s. He did not get out in time, and McQuown came in from San Pablo day before yesterday with all his men.

They hurrahed the town that night. Not so wildly, though, as to be much out of the ordinary, and I see that, too, as cunning upon McQuown’s part: there was cause, but perhaps not urgent or completely justifiable cause (by our standards!), for Deputy Canning to step in. But Canning made no trouble; we did not see him abroad that night.

By then, however, the handwriting was etched upon the wall for all to see, and early yesterday men were loitering in the street, and Canning was early at the jail. I watched from my window as avidly as the rest of Warlock, in that crackling deadly tension, waiting for the trouble to start.

It was noon before McQuown came down the center of Main Street in his shining sugar-loaf hat and his buckskin shirt, stepping with disdain through the powdery dust. He fired into the air and shouted his taunts, such as, Come out into the street, for you have murdered too many good men! etc. Canning came out of the jail and I retreated—no more cowardly, I say in defense of myself, than any other citizen of Warlock—from my store to my rooms upstairs where I could watch from a more protected coign of vantage. There I watched Canning advance unfalteringly down the street toward McQuown. Once he looked back, and I saw behind him, almost hidden in the shadows under the arcade—two men. One from his short stature I knew to be Pony Benner, the other I have heard since was Jack Cade, both henchmen of McQuown’s.

Canning came on still, but a few yards more and his steps slowed. They quickened again, but not with courage. He ran down Southend Street and got his horse from the Skinner Bros. Acme Corral, and fled Warlock.

My eyes smarted with rage and shame that there was not a man in Warlock to get out in the street with a Winchester and face down those devils behind him, and to see McQuown tip his white hat back on his head and laugh, as though he had won a trick at cards. My eyes smart still.

Last night honest men barricaded their doors, and no lights were left burning for fear they would be shot at. The Cowboys roamed the street and quarreled, and loudly joked, and shot at the moon to their hearts’ content. They only quieted, like stallions, when they trooped off to the French Palace and the cribs along Peach Street. After a brief respite their unholy din began again, and lasted until morning, when the wagons that transport the miners out to the mines were held up, and the mules set loose and chased out of town. The doctor’s buggy was commandeered and put to a wild race down Main Street against the water wagon, and many other pranks were played. Before noon they had departed for San Pablo with much hilarity, leaving our poor barber dying at the General Peach with a bullet through his lungs. Pony Benner shot him, evidently because he cut Pony’s cheek while shaving him.

So the wild boys have had their fun, and played their mischievous games, driving a good man from this town, and murdering a poor, harmless fellow whose razor slipped because he was deadly afraid.

I think we would have done nothing about Canning, for his shame was ours. McQuown must know our cowardice well, and count on it, and despise us for it. So he should, and so should we despise ourselves. Yet, as with Canning, an inconsequential act may have set in train forces of adversity against McQuown. Our little barber’s death has caused a congealing of feeling and determination here such as I have never seen before. If we cannot give voice to our indignation over Canning’s shame, since it is too much our own, we can cry out in righteous wrath against the murder of the barber.

The Citizens’ Committee meets tonight, called upon to defend Warlock’s Peace & Safety, not righteously, only sensibly, for as this town is affected adversely by anarchy, violence, and murder, so are we, its merchants. Furthermore, Warlock has no other possible protector. It is to be hoped that the Citizens’ Committee can, on this occasion, pull itself together and gain for itself, at last, the name of action.

The original organization, from which the Citizens’ Committee sprang, was perhaps more fittingly titled the Merchants of Warlock Committee, including Dr. Wagner in his capacity as proprietor of the Assay Office, Miss Jessie in hers as boardinghouse mistress, and the judge as the operator of a commercial enterprise in his judgeship.[1] Some time ago, however, when it became obvious that the granting of a town patent, and so of some measure of government, to Warlock, was not imminent, it was resolved that the original committee be expanded into something more. Since we were the only organization that existed, except for the Mine Superintendents Assn., we, the merchants, seemed the ones to initiate some sort of pro-tem governing assembly.

The old town-meeting style of government was immediately proposed. The suggestion was met with high democratic enthusiasm, which, however, waned rapidly. I, who made this proposal myself, immediately came to regard it as patently unworkable here, in a place where passions in all things run high, and men go armed as they wear hats against the sun, and where such a large proportion of the inhabitants is of the ignorant and unwashed class, if not actual renegades from the law elsewhere.

There are, for instance, the miners, the bulk of the town’s population. Are they intelligent and responsible enough to be entrusted with the vote? They are not, we feel, perhaps a little guiltily. Then there are the brothel, gambling, and saloon interests; it is true that Taliaferro and Hake belonged to the Merchants Committee, but could we afford to give them and their disreputable employees proportionate power over the more decent citizenry? The question also arose as to how extensive the city-state should be. If it were to include ranchers from the San Pablo valley, what of such as Abe McQuown, not to speak of the Haggins, Cade, and Earnshaw, all of them landholders at least in a small way, and at the same time Warlock’s scourges?

Our projected state was thus gradually whittled down, to become a kind of club restricted to the decent people, the right-thinking people, the better class of citizens; became, ultimately, restricted to the merchants of Warlock—ourselves; with a few additions, for Warlock had grown meanwhile; and a new name: The Citizens’ Committee of Warlock. Now we must act, or abandon all claim to that name.

The situation is indeed fantastic. Keller[2] never appears here. We are none of his concern, he says firmly. When given argument by various volunteers passing through Bright’s City, or by any of the numerous subcommittees that have been assigned to plead with him and General Peach[3] himself on the subject of law enforcement here, Keller gives it as his opinion that the country beyond the Bucksaws is not properly Bright’s County at all, and that General Peach and his aides are presently working on boundaries of the new county, which will soon be established. Warlock will then be given a town patent, and will, of course, be the county seat. This will be any day, he says; any day, he repeats, and again repeats—but it has not been yet. Keller points out, when badgered further, that he did not campaign for our votes when running for his office, and promised us nothing, which is true; and that he has given us deputies, when they could be hired, which also is true enough.

Despairing, consequently, of aid from above, savaged beyond patience by McQuown and his San Pablo crew, some of us of the Citizens’ Committee have decided that we must put it strongly in meeting tonight that our only solution is to hire a Peace Officer on a commercial basis. This is common enough practice, and there are a number of renowned gunmen available for such positions if the pay is high enough. They are hired by groups such as we are, or by town councils in luckier and more legitimate localities, and paid either a monthly fee or on a bounty system.

Something must be done, and there is no one to do it but the Citizens’ Committee. It will be seen tonight whether the determined among us outnumber the timid. I think not a man of us has not been badly frightened by Canning’s flight, and fear can engender its own determination.

August 26, 1880

At last, it seems, Something Has Been Done. The meeting last night was quiet and brief; we were of one mind, except for Judge Holloway. We have sent for a man, a Marshal, and have obliged ourselves to open our pocketbooks in order to offer him a very large sum of money monthly. He is Clay Blaisedell, at present Marshal in Fort James. I know little of his deeds, except that it was he who shot the Texas badman, Big Ben Nicholson, and that his name at present is renowned—names such as his flash up meteor-like from time to time, attaching to themselves all manner of wild tales of courage and prowess.

We have made him a peerless offer, for what we hope will be a peerless man. Such, at least, is our prospective Marshal’s reputation, that he was one of the five famous law officers to whom Caleb Bane, the writer, recently presented braces of gold-handled Colt’s Frontier Models, as being most eminent in their field, and so, no doubt, most lucrative to Bane as a chronicler of deeds of derring-do. A fine act of gratitude on Bane’s part, certainly, although it is cynically rumored that he asked for their own many-notched pacifiers in return, and from the sale of these to collectors of such grim mementoes realized a very tidy profit on the transaction.

So Clay Blaisedell has been sent for—not to be Marshal of Warlock, for there is no such place, and no such position, legally; but to be Marshal acting for the Citizens’ Committee of an official limbo.[4] This is our third, and most presumptuous, action as the government-by-default of this place—the local government on acceptance, a term Judge Holloway often uses to refer to himself as a judge, who has no legal status either. Our first act was to build Warlock’s little jail by subscription among ourselves, in the hope that the presence of such a structure might have a steadying influence upon the populace. It has had no such effect, although it has proved useful on at least two occasions as a fortress in which deputies were able to seek refuge from murderously-inclined miscreants. Our second was to purchase a pumping wagon, and to guarantee a part of the salary of Peter Bacon as jointly the driver of Kennon’s water wagon and as Fireman in Chief. Taxes are no less painful under another guise.

I write with levity of what have been serious decisions for small men to make, but I am elated and hopeful, and the members of the Citizens’ Committee, if I am representative, feel a great pride in having overcome our fears of offending the Cowboys, and our natural reluctance to part with any of the profits we extract from them, from the miners, and from each other, and at last having made an attempt to hire ourselves a Man. It will be the luck of the camp to have its savior ventilated by road agents en route, and arrive here boots before hardware.

He is to be hired, as we said last night, to enforce Law & Order in Warlock. He is actually to be hired, as no one said aloud, against the San Pabloites. What one man is to do against the legion of wild Cowboys of McQuown’s kin or persuasion, we have, of course, asked ourselves. The question being unanswerable, like sensible men we have stopped asking it. We do not demand Law & Order so much as Peace & Safety, and a town in which men can go about their affairs without the fear of being shot down by an errant bullet from a gun battle no concern of theirs, or of incurring in a trifling manner the murderous dislike of some drunken Cowboy. Warlock’s Marshal will have to be a Warlock indeed.[5]

It is not known when Blaisedell will arrive here, if he accepts our offer, which we are certain he will. At any rate we pray he will. He is our hope now. I think we must have, in him, not so much a man of pure, daredevil courage, but a man who can impart courage to this town, which is, in the end, no more than the sum of every one of us.

September 1, 1880

Evidently Canning managed to pass on some of his limited portion. Carl Schroeder, who was, I understand, Canning’s closest friend, has given up his position as shotgun messenger for Buck Slavin’s stage line, to undertake the post of deputy here at one-third the pay. He is a fool. God protect such fools, for we will not.

September 8, 1880

Blaisedell has accepted our offer! He will be here in about six weeks. This delay is unfortunate, but presumably Fort James must be possessed of a suitable substitute before he departs. On the other hand, McQuown and his gang are reported in Mexico on a rustling expedition, so Warlock may still be inhabited when our new Marshal arrives.

September 21, 1880

A gambler named Morgan has arrived, and purchased the Glass Slipper from Bill Hake, who has departed for California. The new proprietor of Warlock’s oldest gambling and drinking establishment has brought with him two attendants; a huge, wall-eyed fellow who serves as lookout and general factotum; and a tiny, bright, birdlike man of whose function I was uncertain until it developed that Morgan had imported for his shabby and run-down establishment (besides a fine chandelier, which much enhances the interior of the Glass Slipper), a piano, and the Little Man is its professor. It is Warlock’s first such instrument, and the music issuing from the saloon is a wonder and joy to Warlock, and a despair to Taliaferro and the Lucky Dollar. It is rumored that Taliaferro will now bring in a piano himself, either for the Lucky Dollar or the French Palace on the Row, to meet the competition.

Morgan is a handsome, prematurely gray fellow, of a sardonic aspect and reserved nature. His deportment, as a newcomer, has been subject to much comment, and his manner with his customers seems bad business practice, in a place where men are apt to be friends or enemies. But his professor’s music remains much admired.

October 11, 1880

McQuown and several of his comrades have been back in town twice now—not including Benner, the barber-killer. They have been very much on their good behavior, as though ashamed of their last excesses here, and aware of the hostile attitude toward them that now generally obtains. Or else McQuown may be aware that we have hired a Nemesis.

[1] The Citizens’ Committee at this time consisted of the following members: Dr. Wagner, Miss Jessie Marlow, Judge Holloway, Goodpasture (the General Store), Petrix (Warlock and Western Bank), Slavin (the Warlock Stage Co.), Pike Skinner (the Acme Corral), Hart, Winters (Hart and Winters Gunshop), MacDonald, Godbold (superintendents, respectively, of the Medusa and Sister Fan mines), Egan (the Feed and Grain Barn), Brown (the Billiard Parlor), Pugh (Western Star Hotel), Kennon (Kennon’s Livery Stable), Rolfe (Frontier Fast Freight), Swartze (the Boston Café), Robinson (lumber yard, carpenter shop, and Bowen’s Sawmill), Hake (the Glass Slipper), and Taliaferro (owner of the Lucky Dollar and the French Palace).

[2] Sheriff Keller of Bright’s County.

[3] General G. O. Peach, the military governor in Bright’s City.

[4] Warlock’s situation was much as Goodpasture has described it. General Peach was a notoriously inept administrator, sulking because he felt his fame and services to the nation justified a more exalted position than military governor of the territory. Despite repeated pleas and demands, no town patent had been issued Warlock, which had a population almost as large as that of Bright’s City, both the county seat and territorial capitol; and the rumor was so strong that the western half of Bright’s County was to be formed into a new county, that Sheriff Keller was able to ignore almost completely, and evidently thankfully, the Warlock and San Pablo Valley area. There was, however, provision for a deputy sheriff in Warlock.

[5] The town took its name from the Warlock mine, which was inoperative by this time. One story of the naming of the Warlock mine is as follows: Richelin, who made the silver strike, had been prospecting in the Bucksaws under exceedingly dangerous conditions. The inhabitants of Bright’s City, to which he returned from time to time for supplies and with specimens for assay, viewed him as mad, and his continued existence, in close proximity to Espirato’s band of marauding Apaches, as miraculous. On the occasion of his actual strike, he had, on his journey into Bright’s City, an encounter with some Apaches in which his burro was killed. He managed to reach town, however, and, when news of his escape was heard, someone remarked to him that he must have flown back, riding the handle of his shovel like a witch. Richelin is supposed to have made an obscene gesture in reply to this, and cried, Warlock, damn you! Be that as it may, he named his first mine the Warlock, his second the Medusa. The Warlock, after producing over a million dollars’ worth of ore, played out, and was closed down in 1878, shortly after the Porphyrion & Western Mining Company had purchased Richelin’s holdings.

2. GANNON COMES BACK

WARLOCK lay on a flat, white alkali step, half encircled by the Bucksaw Mountains to the east, beneath a metallic sky. With the afternoon sun slanting down on it from over the distant peaks of the Dinosaurs, the adobe and weathered plank-and-batten, false-fronted buildings were smoothly glazed with yellow light, and sharp-cut black shadows lay like pits in the angles out of the sun.

The heat of the sun was like a blanket; it had dimension and weight. The town was dust- and heat-hazed, blurred out of focus. A water wagon with a round, rust-red tank moved slowly along Main Street, spraying water in a narrow, shining strip behind it. But Warlock’s dust was laid only briefly. Soon again it was churned as light as air by iron-bound wheels, by hoofs and bootheels. The dust rose and hung in the air and drifted down in a continuous fall, onto the jail and Goodpasture’s General Store, onto the Lucky Dollar and the Glass Slipper and the smaller saloons, onto the Billiard Parlor, the Western Star Hotel, the Boston Café and the Warlock and Western Bank, onto the houses in the Row, the cribs along Peach Street, Kennon’s Livery Stable and the freight yard, onto Buck Slavin’s stage yard and the Skinner Brothers Acme Corral in Southend Street, onto the Feed and Grain Barn and the General Peach boardinghouse in Grant Street, onto the tarpaper shacks of the miners and the wagons and the riders passing through and the men in the street. It got into men’s eyes and irritated their dry throats, it dusted them all over with a whitish sheen, and turned to mud in the sweat of their faces.

Trails, and stage and wagon roads, led into the town like twisted spokes to a dusty hub—from the silver mines in the nearer Bucksaws: the Medusa, Sister Fan, Thetis, Pig’s Eye, and Redgold: from the hamlet of Redgold and the stamp mill there; from the more distant hamlet of San Pablo in the valley and on the river of that name; from Welltown to the northwest, where the railroad was; from Bright’s City, the territorial capitol.

Dust rose, too, where there were travelers along the roads: a prospector with his burro; a group of riders coming in from San Pablo; great, high-wheeled, heavy-laden ore wagons descending from the mines; loads of lagging timbers for the stopes being hauled from the forests in the northern Bucksaws; a stage inbound from Bright’s City; and, close in on the Welltown road, a single horseman slowly making his way up through the huge, strewn boulders toward Warlock’s rim.

John Gannon rode bent tiredly forward against the slope, his hand on the dusty, sweated shoulder of the gray he had bought in Welltown, urging her up this last hill out of the malpais and over the rim, where she increased her gait at the sight of town. He glanced down the rutted trail to his right that led out to the cemetery called Boot Hill, and to the dump, where he could see the sun glinting on whisky bottles and a skirl of papers blown up by a wind gust.

The mare plodded heavy-footed past the miners’ shacks on the edge of town. Beyond, and looming above them, was the tall, narrow-windowed rear of the French Palace. A woman waved a hand at him from one of the windows and called something lost in the wind. He looked quickly straight ahead of him, and laid his hand on the mare’s shoulder once more. At Main Street he swung to the left and the mare’s hoofs sucked and plopped in thicker dust.

The sign over the jail swung and creaked in a gust of wind as he passed it. The sign was barely legible; weathered, thick with dust, dotted with clusters of perforations, it humbly located the law in Warlock:

DEP. SHERIFF

JAIL

Gannon reined left into Southend Street and turned at last into the Acme Corral. Nate Bush, the Skinner brothers’ hostler, came out to meet him. Bush took the reins as he dismounted, spat sideways, wiped his mustache, and, without looking at Gannon directly, said, Back, huh?

Back, he said.

McQuown pulling them back in from all around, I guess, Bush said, in a flat, hostile voice, and immediately turned away and led the mare clop-hoofing toward the water trough.

Gannon stood looking after him. He felt heavy and tired after a day in the murderous sun, heavy and tired with coming back to the valley as he watched Nate Bush’s back carefully held toward him. He had tried to hope he was not coming back to trouble, but he had heard in Rincon that Warlock had hired Clay Blaisedell as town marshal, had known without hearing it that the Fort James man had been hired against Abe McQuown; and he knew Abe McQuown. He had ridden for McQuown—even in Rincon they had known it—and in Warlock they would never forget it. Billy, his brother, rode for McQuown still.

He spat into his bandanna and closed his eyes as he tried to scrub some of the dust from his face. Then he walked slowly up to Main Street, stopping on the corner before Goodpasture’s store as a wagon rolled by in the street, dust rising beneath the mules’ hoofs in clouds and streaming from the wheels like liquid. He turned his face away and blew his breath out against Warlock’s dust, remembering its smell and prickly taste; as it settled behind the wagon he saw a thin figure appear and lean against the arcade post before the jail. It was Carl Schroeder; in his depression at the hostler’s greeting he had forgotten that there were a few men in Warlock he would be glad to see. He started catercornered across the street as Carl stared, and then raised a hand.

Well, Johnny Gee! Carl said, as Gannon came down toward him along the boardwalk. Carl’s lean, hard-calloused hand wrung his. How’s the trains running over in Rincon, Johnny?

Coming and going. What’s that on your vest there, Carl?

Carl Schroeder glanced down and thumbed the star out where he could see it. He did not smile. His plain, sad-mustached face was older than Gannon had remembered it, tired and strained. He said, Bill Canning got run out and I kind of fell into the hole he left. You knew Bill, didn’t you?

I didn’t know him.

I guess you have been gone a good while at that. Carl’s eyes flickered at him, not quite casually, and then away. Canning come in after Jim Brown got shot.

He nodded. His brother Billy had shot Jim Brown. The only letter he had had from Billy during the six months he had been in Rincon had been a strange mixture of brag and apology for having shot a deputy. Dirty-mouth, bull-ragging son of a bitch, Billy had written. He had it coming bad. Everybody says he had it coming. Abe says he’d choose him himself if I didn’t choose him out first, Bud.

Come on in and sit, Carl said, turning and moving into the jail. As he followed Carl inside he read the legend neatly lettered on the square of paper fastened to the adobe beside the door:

2ND DEPUTY WANTED

SEE SCHROEDER

The sign above his head creaked in another gust of wind. Judge Holloway was staring up at him from the shadow inside the jail, his sick face darker, thinner, more closely hatched with red veins than ever, on one cheek the wart or mole like a peg driven into the flesh, his bloated body hunched over the battered pine table that was his bench. The crutch that substituted for the leg he had lost at Shiloh leaned against the wall behind him with his hard-hat hung from its armrest. Peter Bacon, the water-wagon driver, sat at the back, beside the alley door, with a knife and a bit of gray wood in his hands.

Well, Bud Gannon, Peter said, raising an eyebrow.

Peter, he said. Judge.

The judge didn’t reply. Peter said, How’s the telegraphing going, Bud?

No one had called him Bud for a long time now, but the name was as familiar and disagreeable as Warlock’s dust. He felt a silly, apologetic grin cramp his face. Well, I gave it up, he said.

Come back for good, then? Carl asked, turning toward him. He hitched at his shell belt. Here or San Pablo, Johnny? he asked quietly.

Gannon rubbed his hands on the dusty thighs of his store pants. Why— he said, and paused as he saw something very hard, very sharp, show for an instant in Carl’s eyes. Why, San Pablo, I guess. The only thing I know besides telegraphing’s running a branding iron.

Peter bent to his whittling. The judge stared, darkly brooding, at the line of late sunlight that came a little way into the jail. Carl propped a boot up on the chair beside the cell door. How come you to give it up, Johnny? he asked. Looked like you was going to make something of yourself.

Laid off, he said. He could feel their unspoken questions. Although there was no call to answer them, he said, Fellow I was apprentice to went and died, and they brought in another had his own apprentice. And he was pretty sure they had brought in another because it was known he had once run with McQuown, which was what Carl and Peter were surmising. But he had said enough, and he watched them both nod, almost in unison, apparently without interest.

Carl turned away from him to gaze at the wall where former deputies of Warlock had scratched their names brown in the whitewash. Carl’s name had been added at the bottom. Above it was WM. CANNING, above that, in big, crooked letters, JAMES BROWN, above that, B. EGSTROM. Higher on the list was ED. SMITHERS, whom Jack Cade had shot in a cruel fuss at the Lucky Dollar. Gannon had seen that.

Matt Burbage might be needing some hands, Peter Bacon said, without looking up from his whittling. Usually comes in town Saturday nights, too.

Thanks, he said gratefully. Well, I guess I’ll go have myself a drink of whisky. No one volunteered to accompany him. The judge’s fingers drummed on the table top.

Got ourself a marshal now, Peter said.

I heard. Did Peach come around to giving Warlock a town patent?

Carl shook his head. No, the Citizens’ Committee hired him.

Gunman from Fort James, Peter said. Name of Clay Blaisedell.

Gannon nodded. A gunman from Fort James hired against Abe McQuown, against McQuown’s people, against Billy, who was one of them. The town had turned against McQuown. The taste and smell of Warlock was not merely that of its dust, but the taste of apprehension, the smell of fear and anger like a dangerous animal snarling and stinking in its cage. He had come back to it, that had changed only for the worse since he had run from it. And now the town was waiting. He said quietly to Carl, Trouble?

Not yet, Carl said, quietly too, his hand rising to pick at the dull five-pointed star limply hanging from his vest, his face, in profile as he still stared at the names on the wall, showing clearly anger and fear, determination and dread.

As Gannon started out the judge’s hot, bloodshot eyes with their yellow whites slanted up to meet his own. No one spoke behind him. Outside, in the sun that came in under the arcade, his bootheels resounded on the planks as he started down toward the central block.

He would look up Matt Burbage tonight, he thought, doggedly. He knew it was useless. He had been one of McQuown’s, and he would have to go back to McQuown, in San Pablo. Once he had thought he was quit of them.

3. THE JAIL

THE sun, misshapen and red, was resting on the jagged spine of the Dinosaurs when Pike Skinner turned into the jail. Halting in the thick arch of the doorway, he cleared his throat and said, I guess McQuown’s coming in tonight.

Inside were Judge Holloway and Peter Bacon, Carl Schroeder, leaning back in the chair beside the cell door, with a hand grasping one of the bars to balance himself, and old Owen Parsons, the wheelwright at Kennon’s Livery Stable, squatting against the wall at the back.

Schroeder nodded once, gently let his chair down, and stretched one leg out with a slow, careful motion. Heard about it, he said. Then he said, Bound to come in some time.

Peter Bacon said, We was just saying it was none of Carl’s worry. He bent down to sweep his whittlings into a neat pile between his boots.

It’s sure none of your put-in, Carl, Skinner said quickly.

No one looked at Schroeder. At a sound of hoofs and wheels in the street Parsons spat. The spittoon rang deeply. Bacon glanced up at the door, and Skinner turned to watch a buggy roll by in the street, its yellow and red striped wheels bright with motion in the last of the sun.

Skinner hooked his thumbs into the sweat-stained shell belt that hung over his broad hips, and teetered on his bootheels. He was a tall, heavy, slope-shouldered man and he filled the doorway. The others watched him remove his hat and slap it once against his leg. He scowled sideways at the square of paper tacked to the wall before he turned back inside. He had a clean-shaven, red, ugly face, and great protruding ears.

Blaisedell buggy-riding Miss Jessie again, he said.

Peter Bacon nodded. Fine-looking man.

Him and Morgan is friendly, Old Owen Parsons said disapprovingly. Heard they are partners in the Glass Slipper, and was before in a place in Fort James.

Signifies what, if they are? said Skinner, who was a member of the Citizens’ Committee, scowling.

He stood aside as Arnold Mosbie, the freight-line mule skinner, came in. Mosbie’s handsome, blackly sunburnt face was marred by a great scar running down his right cheek.

Heard Dechine was in town saying McQuown and them was maybe coming in tonight, he said, to no one in particular.

Schroeder said nothing. The judge raised his eyes to the round, dented bowl of the lamp suspended above his head. Peter Bacon sighed and said, What Owen here was saying.

Abe’s been a while making up his mind to come, Mosbie said.

Skinner said to Parsons, What’s it to you if Blaisedell is friendly with Morgan, old man?

Parsons spat, rang the spittoon, and jerked his fingers through his tobacco-stained beard. Morgan is a damned high-rolling son of a bitch.

It don’t make Blaisedell one.

Maybe it don’t.

A man has got a right to a friend, Bacon said.

Why, what if it does make Blaisedell one? Mosbie said, in his heavy, rasping voice. What he is here for is against sons of bitches, and maybe a man has got to be one himself to make it. A real son of a bitch that shot Ben Nicholson loose from his boots and chased those wild Texas men out of Fort James till they are running yet, I hear—that’s the kind we need here bad.

The judge folded his hands over his belly and turned his muddy-looking eyes to watch Schroeder plucking at the star on his vest. Milky dust drifted into the jail as riders passed in the street.

Five hundred dollars a month, I hear the Citizens’ Committee is paying him, Parsons said. "Five hundred, and what’s Carl here—"

Four hundred, God damn it! Skinner broke in. By God, how the talk in this town makes everything something it isn’t. Old man, you’d set yourself where he sets for four hundred a month?

Tim French, who worked at the Feed and Grain Barn, squeezed inside past Skinner. He had a round, cheerful, bright-eyed face, like a boy’s. Heard the news, Carl?

Schroeder nodded tightly, and, with the same slow, careful movement, tipped his chair back again. Heard it. Some fellow named McQuown’s coming in.

There was a silence. Then French said, Saw Bud Gannon down the street. I thought he was over at Rincon.

Come back, Schroeder said. Just came in an hour ago.

Expect McQuown figures he needs all the help he can get, Mosbie said. Pleasant to see Abe with the nerves.

If Bud Gannon’s any shakes of a gunhand I never heard anything about it, Skinner said scornfully.

Johnny’s all right, Schroeder said. I don’t care he’s Billy’s brother or whose. He quit them down there.

Come back, though, Parsons said, grinning sourly.

He got laid off over at Rincon, Bacon said.

I wait and see, Parsons said. Looks like he come back at the right time for McQuown. He grunted and said, I wait and see on Blaisedell, too. Maybe he’s no son of a bitch, but all I’ve seen so far is him hanging over a faro layout or whisky-drinking with Morgan. Or buggy-riding Miss Jessie Marlow. He—

He broke off, for the judge was speaking. Any man, the judge said, and paused for their attention. Any man, he went on, who has got himself set over others and don’t have any responsibility to something bigger than him, is a son of a bitch. He stared from face to face, his cheek twisting around the great wart, his mouth drawn out flat and contemptuous. Bigger than all men, he said, which is the law.

Then he looked at Schroeder again. And those the same that take the law for a fraud. For the law is for all, not just against some you hate their livers.

Schroeder had flushed, but he said without heat, Can’t see everybody’s livers from where I sit, Judge.

See just toward San Pablo from where you sit, the Judge said. So where is the law?

In a book, Judge, Tim French said gravely.

Never been a man yet to know what it was he swore when he put on that badge, the judge said. Maybe you thought you swore blood on Abe McQuown and his people, Deputy. But that wasn’t what you swore.

The front legs of Schroeder’s chair tapped to the floor; his hand, where it still clutched a bar of the cell door beside him, was white with strain. In the easy voice he said, Judge, I went up to Sheriff Keller and told him I’d come in here because Bill Canning got run and not a man to stand up for him. I come in here against Abe McQuown and people getting run or else burnt down by sons of bitches like him and Cade and Benner and Billy Gannon and Curley Burne. That’s what I swore to, and your law for Warlock’s in a book still, the way Tim said, if you don’t like it. Then he laughed a little and said, Though I have kind of got this ice water in my bowels right now.

The others silently avoided his eyes, except for Peter Bacon, who was watching his friend steadily. Bacon said, I guess you could leave things up to Blaisedell, Horse.

None of your put-in, Carl, Tim French said.

Never said it was, Schroeder said. Only— He was silent for a time, and the others stirred nervously. He drew a long breath and said, Only if they run him. If they run him and think they are going to whoop this town like they did before. He paused again and his face stiffened. I guess that’d be my put-in. I guess you’d say I was looking the right way if I took that for my put-in, wouldn’t you, Judge?

The judge moved his head in what might have been a nod, but he didn’t speak. Skinner said, in an embarrassed, too-loud voice, Well, now, I expect you can count on Clay Blaisedell not running, Carl.

There was Texas men tried to run him out of Fort James, French said. I expect maybe Abe is going to bust a few teeth on Blaisedell, and choke on them too.

I just wait and see, Parsons said.

Every man is waiting to see, Owen, Bacon said.

Well, Blaisedell looks a decent one to me, Mosbie said. Don’t look to be holding himself above a man, being what he is and all. I expect he will make out tonight. I expect he will make a fine marshal here, and Carl an easy job out of it.

Schroeder’s lips twitched beneath his colorless mustache as he glanced up at the names of predecessors scratched in the whitewash. The judge was shaking his head.

No, the judge said. Not an easy job for Carl if he does his job. No, and not enough for Blaisedell to look decent either. For he has set himself to kill men and judge men to kill. And the Citizens’ Committee has. He glared up at Skinner as Skinner started to interrupt. No, not enough! he said.

Blow! Skinner said. By God, you are on the Citizens’ Committee the same as me. It seems like you could go along with what the rest of us decided had to be done or shut up about it. Blaisedell isn’t costing you nothing.

He costs me, the judge said hoarsely.

You damned drunken old fraud! Skinner cried. Nobody ever got any money out of you for anything yet but whisky. I am sick of your damned blowing! You are no more judge than I am, anyhow!

On acceptance, the judge said. He looked flustered. Clumsily he opened the table drawer against his belly, took out a bottle of whisky and started to pry the cork out with his thumbnail. Then, as he saw the others all watching him, he changed his mind and only set the bottle down before him. On acceptance only, in this law-forsaken place, he said.

Tim French said suddenly, Well, I will sure say this, Carl. How you ought to let Blaisedell take on what he is paid good money for. It is his showdown tonight and none of yours.

Surely, Schroeder said.

Mosbie, his dark face flushing more darkly, said, There is others but you have come hard against McQuown now, Carl.

Not a man here that isn’t with you, Pike Skinner said heavily. Me included. And not a man here that won’t back off when it comes time to scratch, I guess. That has been proved on us hard.

No one spoke. The judge sat staring at the whisky bottle before him.

But with you all the same, Skinner said. He slapped his hat against his leg and turned to leave, but stopped.

Got a help-wanted sign outside there, Schroeder said, with an edge to his voice. Keller says I can have another deputy in here, can I hire one.

Skinner grunted explosively and flung on outside. His heels hammered away on the boardwalk. Owen Parsons rose and stretched, and Peter Bacon bent forward to sweep up his shavings. His face hidden, he said, People have been shamed, Horse. I expect next time a man needs help, there’ll be help.

Uh-huh, Schroeder said. His mustache twitched again, but his voice still held the bitter edge. There’ll maybe be help, but I haven’t heard much about anybody offering it to Blaisedell tonight. That might need it bad. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Me included, he said.

4. MORGAN AND FRIEND

IN HIS office at the rear of the Glass Slipper, Tom Morgan changed into a clean linen shirt and tied his tie by the dim last dregs of daylight. From the mirror the image of his pale face with the silver-white sleek hair and the black slash of mustache gazed back at him, expressionless and shadowy. He put on a bed-of-flowers vest, his shoulder harness, and short holster that carried his Banker’s Special flat against his side, and his fine black broadcloth coat.

Then he poured a quarter of an inch of whisky into a glass from the decanter on his desk, and rinsed it through his mouth, gazing up now at the dull painting of the nude woman sprawled lushly on a maroon coverlet that hung, slanting sharply, on the wall over the door into the Glass Slipper. He raised his empty glass to her in a formal salute, and swallowed the whisky in his mouth. As though it had been a signal, the piano began to fret and tinkle beyond the door, the notes muted sourly in the increasing busy hum of evening.

He went out into the Glass Slipper. The big chandelier was still unlighted. To his right the long bar was lined with men’s backs, the mirror behind it lined with their faces, but the miners had not started coming in yet and only one faro layout was going. Two barkeeps were hustling whisky and beer. The professor sat erect and narrow-shouldered at the piano, his hands prancing along the keys, a glass of whisky before him. He turned and smiled nervously at Morgan, the little tuft of whiskers on his chin popping up. Murch, brooding over the faro layout, his shotgun lying across the slots in the arms of his highchair, nodded down at him. Morgan nodded back, and, as he passed on, nodded to Basine, and to the case keeper, and to the dealer, shadowy-eyed in his green eyeshade; to Matt Burbage and Doctor Wagner. He sat down at an empty table in the corner to the left of the louvre doors, and raised two fingers to one of the barkeepers.

There was a deck of cards on the table, and he began to sort the cards by suit and number, his pale, long hands moving rapidly. When he had finished the sorting he quickly cut, recut, and shuffled. He frowned as he examined the result. The barkeeper arrived with a bottle and two glasses, but he did not look up, sorting, cutting and shuffling as before. This time the cards had reformed in proper order. He regarded them more with boredom than with pleasure. He was thirty-five, he thought suddenly, for no reason; half done. He poured a little whisky in his glass and touched it to his lips, but only to taste it, and his eyes glanced around the Glass Slipper. It was the same, here as in Fort James, here as anywhere. He had been pleased to sell out there and come ahead when Clay had told him he was going to take the place as marshal in Warlock; he had been eager to move on, eager for a change, but there was no change. It was the same, and he was only half done.

The batwing doors swung inward and Curley Burne and one of the Haggins came in. They did not see him, and he watched them go down along the bar, Curley Burne with his sombrero hanging against his back from the cord around his neck. They shouldered their way up to the bar, McQuown’s first lieutenant and McQuown’s cousin. And McQuown himself was coming in tonight, Dechine had said. He felt an anticipatory pleasure, and, almost, excitement.

He sat regarding the slight nervousness within himself as though it were some organic peculiarity, watching the heads turning covertly toward the newcomers and listening to the heavy conglomerate noise of men drinking, quarreling, whispering, gossiping, and to the little silences from the nearby layout when a card was turned and then the sudden click of chips and counters. The piano notes flickered through the noise like shards of bright glass. The sounds of money, he thought, and raised his glass again.

Here’s to money, he said, not quite aloud. After a time you discovered that it was all that was important, because with it you could buy liquor and food, clothes and women, and make more money. Then, after a further time, you went on to discover that liquor was unnecessary and food unimportant, that you had all the clothes you could use and had had all the women you wanted, and there was only money left. After which there was still another discovery to be made. He had made that by now, too.

Still, though, he thought, putting his glass down untouched and turning again to gaze at the two at the bar, there was a thing or two worth watching yet. The eyes that chanced to meet his in the mirrors behind the bar glanced away; they all disliked him already, as always, and he could enjoy that, and enjoy, too, their displeasure and surprise that Clay should associate with him, that Clay was his friend. There were a few tilings yet.

Basine had lowered the chandelier and was lighting the wicks with the long-handled spill. As each flame climbed and spread, the room lightened perceptibly. He noticed that the piano notes no longer filtered through the sounds around him; the professor was coming toward him, in his shiny black suit.

Well, sir! the professor said, sitting down opposite him. Place should be filling up pretty soon now, shouldn’t it? His eyes were like bright beads.

Why, yes, sir, Professor. I believe it should.

Well, now, this place has done fine here, Mr. Morgan. I wouldn’t have believed it, coming in here cold like we did. Nice town too, but noisy. He leaned forward, conspiratorially. However, I see that a couple of McQuown’s people are in tonight. Expecting trouble, sir?

Always expect trouble, Professor, he said, conspiratorially too. That’s my practice.

The professor cackled, but he seemed distressed. The professor leaned toward him again as he shuffled the cards once more and dealt them out for patience.

I’ve been thinking, Mr. Morgan.

Now, why is that, Professor?

You know me, Mr. Morgan. I have worked for you for two years now, here and Fort James, and I’m an honest man. You know, I have to speak my mind when I see a thing that’s wrong. Well, sir, money is being wasted here. By you, Mr. Morgan, on me!

The professor had spoken dramatically, but Morgan did not look up from his cards. How is that, Professor?

Mr. Morgan, I am an honest, outspoken man, and I have to say it. No one can hear that piano going, with the runkus in here. It is a waste of money, sir, and I made up my mind I was just going to say it to you.

Play louder, he said; now he saw, and was bored. Taliaferro, who owned the Lucky Dollar and the French Palace, had been after the professor again. He flipped the cards rapidly, red onto black, black onto red, the aces coming out one by one; cheating yourself, he thought, as the kings appeared, queen to king, and jack to queen, and ten to jack—what use to play it out? But he continued to turn and place the cards, cheat himself, and laugh at himself for it. The last day, he thought, would be the day when he could laugh at himself no longer.

The professor was staring at him