Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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The judge flushed too, as Bates snickered and Schroeder grinned. “That was a mean thing you said, Marshal,” the judge said. “But I won’t say it isn’t so, so maybe I am honester than you. And I don’t have to be scared of you, either, Marshal.”

Skinner said disgustedly, “You a poor, one-legged, loud-mouthed old—”

The judge raised a finger toward Blaisedell’s face. “Being decent like you are – and I didn’t say you wasn’t! – I think you can brace no man that has got right on you; I think you know that. It is what I am warning you. What you are working toward in your pride is some day meeting a man that has got to kill you or you him, only he is righter and you know it. Because you have gone wrong. And what are you going to do then?” His voice sank until it was almost inaudible. “That is the box, Clay Blaisedell. What are you going to do then?”

There was a taut silence. Blaisedell’s face had paled, except for the spots of color on his cheeks. “Judge Holloway,” he said, in his deep voice. “I think you haven’t only been drinking.” He paused ominously. “I think you have been drinking out in the hot sun.”

Everyone laughed explosively in the sudden release of tension, and Blaisedell himself grinned. “Well, I guess I will go have a glass of whisky for my bruised-up pride,” he said, and turned to go out.

“Marshal,” Pike Skinner said. “I just want to say—” His angular, ugly face reddened furiously. “I just wanted to say the judge wasn’t speaking for me just now, and I know he wasn’t speaking for Carl Schroeder. I expect he wasn’t speaking for anybody but Taliaferro’s bad whisky.”

“That’s right, Marshal,” Schroeder said.

“That goes for me, Marshal,” Hasty said, and got to his feet.

Peter Bacon said nothing. His brown, lined face was sad. The marshal glanced at him. Then he nodded silently to the others and went on outside.

The judge rubbed his hands over his face. Then he turned to Schroeder; his dark face was drawn and puckered around the wart on his cheek. “You mark what I have said, Carl Schroeder. He is going to kill men and it will be on you to arrest him for it. Hear?”

“I don’t hear,” Schroeder said. “You are acting like a damned virgin, Judge. Like you have never known a man to be shot down before. It’ll be a day when I try to arrest Blaisedell.”

The judge bent, grunting, to recover his crutch, and then, red-faced with effort, thrust himself upright and hooked the crutch under his armpit. He set his hat, which was too small for him, on his head. He said contemptuously, “Maybe you will see, some day, how if you are bound to arrest some of McQuown’s people for a thing, you are bound to arrest another man the same. So if Blaisedell goes out and murders—”

“Great God, Judge!” Schroeder cried. “You are getting it all switched around who is murderers here!”

The judge hobbled toward the door, his crutch tip racketing. Pike Skinner glared at him. At the door the judge turned again, the hat slipping forward over one eye. “We all are, boys,” he said. He swung on outside on his crutch and his one good leg.

20. GANNON HAS A NIGHTMARE

IT IS a dream, he told himself; it is only a dream. Sweating, naked, daubed with mud, he crouched behind a crag upon the canyon wall and watched against the curtain of his memory the sandy river bottom of Rattlesnake Canyon, listening in the waiting silence to the pad of hoof irons in the sand and the sharper, urgent sound as a hoof struck stone, and, nearer, the musical clink of harness, and nearer still, voices soft-mouthed with Spanish; his heart turning over on itself as the first one came around the far bend upon a narrow-faced white horse, looking very tall at first in his high, peaked sombrero, but small, compact, brown, watchful-eyed, with pointed mustachios, behind him another and another, some with striped serapes hung over their shoulders and all with rifles carried underarm; seven, eight, and more and more, until there were seventeen in all, and Abe’s Colt crashed the signal. The echo was instantaneous and continuous. Smoke drifted up from all around the canyon where the other mud-daubed figures were concealed, and it was as though an invisible flash flood had in that instant swept down the canyon: horses reared and screamed, swept backward in the flood, and died; men were thrown tumbling, a rifle flung up in a wide arc turning end over end with weird slowness, and there were gobbling Apache cries mixed with the screams of dying men. There was the white horse lying on the reddening sand, there was the leader in his high, silver-chased hat crawling in the stream; then the hat gone, then a part of his head gone, and he lay still in the channel with his jacket shiny and bloated in the water that ran red over him. And now the half-naked, muddy Apache figures stood all around the canyon, yelling as they fired into the mass of dying men and horses below them, the faces magnified and slowly revolving before his eyes – Abe, and Pony and Calhoun and Wash and Chet, and on the far side Billy and Jack Cade, Whitby and Friendly, Mitchell, Harrison, and Hennessey.

And at the end there came the Mexican running and scrambling up the steep bank toward him, hatless, screaming hoarsely, brown eyes huge and rimmed with white like those of a terrified stallion, and the long gleam of the six-shooter in his hand, slipping and sliding but coming with unbelievable rapidity up the canyonside toward him, John Gannon. He changed as he came. Now he came more slowly; now it was a tall, black-hatted figure walking toward him through the dust, slow-striding with the massive and ponderous dignity not of retribution but of justice, with great eyes fixed on him, John Gannon, like ropes securing him, as he cried out and snatched in helpless weakness at his sides, and died screaming mercy, screaming acceptance, screaming protest in the clamorous and horrible silence.

It is only a dream, he told himself, calmly; it is only the dream. But there was another reverberating clap of a shot still. He died again, in peace, and waked with a jolt, as though he had fallen. There was another knock in the darkness of his room.

“Who is it?” he called.

“It’s me, Bud,” came a whisper. He swung off his cot in his underwear and went to open the door. Billy came in, stealthily. A little moonlight entered through the window, and Billy was visible as he moved past it, wearing a jacket and jeans, his hatbrim pulled low over his face.

“What are you doing in town?”

“Come to see you, Bud.” Billy laughed shakily. “Sneaked in. Tomorrow I don’t sneak in.”

Billy took off his hat and flung it down on the table. He swung the chair around and sat down facing Gannon over its back. The moonlight was white as mother-of-pearl on Billy’s face.

Gannon slumped down on the edge of the bed, shivering. “Just you?” he said.

“Pony and Luke and me. Calhoun weaseled.”

“Why Pony?”

“What do you mean, why Pony?”

“He hasn’t any right to come – he was at the stage. Was Luke in on it, or not?”

“Not,” Billy said shortly. Then he said, “It doesn’t matter who was at the stage or not.”

“No, it doesn’t matter now. They were lied off and you with them, so it is too late to tell the truth.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Billy said. Gannon could see that he was shivering too. “But I have got to do it, Bud.”

“Got to get yourself killed?” He had not meant to speak so harshly.

“Don’t be so damned sure about that!”

“Got to kill Blaisedell then?”

“Well, somebody’s got to, for Christ’s sake!”

Gannon closed his eyes. It might be the last time he saw Billy; probably it was; he knew it was. And they would wrangle meaninglessly over who was the son of a bitch, Blaisedell or Abe McQuown. It seemed to him that if he was any kind of man at all he could let Billy have his way tonight.

“Listen, Bud!” Billy said. “I know what you think of Abe.”

“Let’s not talk about it, Billy. It’s no good.”

“No, listen. I mean, what is different about him? He goes along the way he always did that used to be all right with everybody, but everybody’s got down on him. He gets blamed for everything! He—”

“Like the Apaches used to,” he said, and despised himself for saying it.

Billy said in a husky voice, “I know that was a piss-poor thing. Do you think I liked that? But you make too much of it.”

“I know I do.”

“Well, like the Paches; surely,” Billy went on. “But you know what it’s like all around here. Every son with a true-bill out against him ends up here, and he has got to eat so he swings a wide loop or tries to agent a coach or something. And Abe gets blamed for it all! But you know damned well—”

“Billy, you are not coming in tomorrow because of Abe.”

“Coming in because a man has to stand up and be a man!” Billy said. “That suit you? Because it is a free country and sons of bitches like Blaisedell is trying to make it not.”

He looked at Billy’s taut, proud young face with the glaze of moonlight on it, and slowly lowered his head and massaged his own face with his hands. Billy’s voice had been filled with righteousness and it tore him to hear it, and to hear Abe McQuown behind it furnishing the words that were true enough when Billy spoke them and yet were lies because they came from Abe McQuown.

“But I guess you don’t think that way,” Billy said.

Gannon shook his head.

“He is after Abe,” Billy went on. “He is after all of us! A person can’t stand it when there is somebody on the prod for him all the time. Trying to run him out or kill him. A man has got to stand up and—”

“Billy, Blaisedell saved your life when he backed off that lynch party. And Pony’s, and Cal’s, and maybe mine. And he could have killed Curley that night in the Glass Slipper, if that was what he was after. And you too. And Abe.”

“He just wanted to look good, was all. And us to look bad. I know how it would’ve been if he’d had us alone and nobody to see.”

“What if he kills you tomorrow?” he whispered.

“I’ve got to die some day, Christ’s sake!” Billy said, with pitiful bravado. “Anyway he won’t. I figure Pony and Luke can stand off Morgan and Carl, or that Murch or whoever he’s got to back him. I figure I can outpull him and outshoot him too. I’m not scared of him!”

“What if he kills you?” he said again.

“You keep saying that! You’re trying to scare me. You want me to run from him?”

“Yes,” he said, and Billy snorted. “Billy—” he said, but he knew it was useless even before he said it. “You weren’t at the stage and you shot Ted Phlater in self-defense, but not the way it looked in court. Billy, I can’t see you die a damned fool. I—”

“Don’t you ever say a thing to anybody about any of that,” Billy said coldly. “I am with them, whatever way it happened. That is gone past now. You hear? That’s all I ask of you, Bud.”

That hurt him, as part of the long hurt that Billy had never been able to think much of him. He sat shivering on the edge of the bed, and now, when he didn’t look at his brother, Billy seemed to him already to have become just another name on Blaisedell’s score, and just another mound on Boot Hill marked with one of Dick Maples’ crosses. With horror he looked back to Billy’s moonlit face.

“Billy, I don’t mean it any way and you don’t have to say if you don’t want to, but – do you want to die?”

Billy was silent for a long time. He leaned back and his face was lost in shadow. Then he laughed scornfully, and one of his bootheels thumped on the floor. But his voice was not scornful: “No, I am afraid of dying as any man, I guess, Bud.” He rose abruptly. “Well, I’ll be going. Pony and Luke are camped out in the malapai a way.” He started toward the door, pushing his hat down hard on his head.

“Sleep here if you want. I’m not going to try to argue with you any more. I know you are going to do what you are set on doing.”

“Surely am,” Billy said. He sounded childishly pleased. “No, I’ll go on out there, I guess. Thanks.” At the door he said, “Going to wish me luck?”

Gannon didn’t answer.

“Or Blaisedell?” Billy said.

“Not him because you are my brother. Not you because you are wrong.”

“Thanks.” Billy pulled the door open.

“Wait,” he said, getting to his feet. “Billy – I know if somebody shot me down you would take after them. I guess I had better tell you I won’t do it. Because you are wrong.”

“I don’t expect anything of you,” Billy said, and was gone. He left the door open behind him.

Gannon crossed to the door. He couldn’t see Billy in the darkness of the hallway, but after a moment he heard the slow, stealthy descent of bootheels in the stairwell. He waited in the darkness until the sounds had ceased, and then he closed the door and returned to his cot, where he flung himself down with his face buried in the pillow and grief tearing at his mind like a dagger.

21. THE ACME CORRAL

I

( From the sworn testimony of Nathan Bush, hostler in the Acme Corral, as reprinted in theBright’s City Star-Democrat.)

NATE BUSH was alone in the Acme Corral when Billy Gannon, Luke Friendly, and Pony Benner rode in. Calhoun wasn’t with them. They had come in up Southend from Medusa Street. It was about nine o’clock in the morning, maybe a little later.

“Go tell Blaisedell we have come in,” Billy Gannon said to him. Billy Gannon was wearing two guns. Pony Benner did some fancy swearing about what they were going to do to Blaisedell and Morgan. Friendly didn’t have anything to say.

When Bush left the corral they were dismounting. He went to find Blaisedell, and met Carl Schroeder and Paul Skinner coming out of the Boston Café. Schroeder told him to go on and tell Blaisedell. Blaisedell was shaving in his room at the General Peach. Bush told him, and the marshal only asked where they were and said he would be along directly, and went on shaving.

Bush went back then, and told some others he met that the cowboys had come in. There was already a good-sized crowd of people collected at the corner of Southend and Main, by Goodpasture’s store.

II

( From the testimony of Deputy Carl Schroeder)

It was a little after nine o’clock when Deputy Schroeder saw the marshal come around the corner from the General Peach. Blaisedell wasn’t wearing a coat and he had on his pair of gold-handled Colts. It was the first time, so far as Schroeder knew, that anybody had seen them in Warlock.

He told Blaisedell that there were three of them, and said he stood ready to help any way he could, but Blaisedell said, “Why, thank you, Deputy, but I guess it is my fight.”

Schroeder wanted to help, but it did not seem strange to him that the marshal did not accept him. He was no gunman, he knew that.

Blaisedell went on up the center of Main Street toward Southend. There were four or five horses tied to the rail along by the Lucky Dollar, and some men there. A few of them called out to Blaisedell as he passed, warning him to watch out and wishing him well. A wind had come up and dust was blowing, which was worrisome. Schroeder didn’t see Morgan till Morgan was out in the street and buckling on his shell belt as he ran after the marshal.

III

( From the testimony of S. W. Brown, proprietor of the Billiard Parlor.)

Sam Brown was standing before the Lucky Dollar with some others when he saw Morgan run out of the Glass Slipper, vault the rail, and, with his vest flapping and buckling his shell belt on, run after Marshal Blaisedell.

The marshal was walking straight up the street toward the corner, and men were calling out to him such things as, “Don’t give those cowboys any break this time, Marshal” and “Watch out for some trick of McQuown’s, now,” “We are holding for you, Blaisedell,” and “Good luck, Marshal!”

The marshal didn’t act like he heard any of it. He didn’t look worried, though. He had on his gold-handled pair everybody had heard about, and they looked fine in the sunshine. His shirt sleeves were gartered up like a bank clerk’s. He was a sight to see, plowing toward the corner of Southend Street. Morgan caught up with him before he got there.

Brown heard Morgan say, “Hey, wait for a man!” Morgan fell into step beside the marshal. He had his shell belt hooked on now, and he was coatless like Blaisedell. Usually Morgan wore a shoulder gun, but it seemed more proper to see him this way, and he and the marshal looked pair enough to go against any three cowboys.

He heard Morgan say, “I am always one for a shooting match.” Blaisedell said, “It is none of your fight, Morg,” and Morgan said, as though he was hurt, “That is a hell of a thing to say to me, Clay!”

They went on up the street to the corner and Morgan was still talking, but by then they were out of Brown’s hearing.

IV

( From the testimony of Oliver Foss, driver for the Warlock Stage Co.)

Oliver Foss was on the corner by Goodpasture’s store, along with Buck Slavin, Pike and Paul Skinner, Goodpasture, Wolters, and some others, when the marshal and Morgan walked up Main Street. There was a wagon coming up Southend, Hap Peters driving a team of mules. Dust was blowing from the team and wagon and there was a dog running and yelping at an offside wheel. Foss called to Hap to hurry it along because the dust was bad and it had better have time to clear before the marshal went down to the Skinner Brothers’ corral.

Foss couldn’t see into the Acme, where Billy Gannon, Pony Benner, and Luke Friendly were supposed to be. He heard Morgan say to the marshal, “Maybe there are only three, or maybe there is a nigger in the woodpile.” Morgan was grinning in that way of his, like he didn’t think much of anybody but Tom Morgan and didn’t mind rubbing it in either. They both stopped when Deputy John Gannon came at a run across from the jail, calling to the marshal.

John Gannon said to the marshal, “Can you give me five minutes to try and get them out?” He didn’t say it like he expected anything to come of it, and a man had to feel sorry for him.

Blaisedell said he had warned the road agents they weren’t to come into Warlock any more, but he didn’t move on right away and it sounded to Foss as though he were willing to listen to reason. Gannon said, “Marshal, give me five minutes and I will go down there and—” He didn’t finish saying what he would do; he talked in fits and starts, and he looked like he was chewing on something that had got gummed in his mouth. A man had to feel sorry for him. Finally he said to the marshal how he might disarm them, but by then his voice had got so low you could hardly hear it.

Blaisedell asked him if he thought he could disarm them but John Gannon didn’t answer, and Morgan nudged the marshal with his elbow. Then Gannon looked about to say something more, but he never did, and the marshal and Morgan went on down Southend Street, past the old, bowed-out corral fence there. Morgan walked spread out from the marshal a little, so when they came up even with the corral gate he and the marshal were about ten feet apart; and Morgan went on a few steps after the marshal had turned toward the corral gate, so he was a little behind and maybe ten or fifteen feet beyond the marshal when the two of them stood facing into the Acme.

It was a little while yet before the shooting started.

V

( From the testimony of Clay Blaisedell and of Thomas Morgan.)

When Clay Blaisedell and Thomas Morgan faced the gate of the Acme Corral, halfway across the street from it, they both saw Luke Friendly first. He stood on the south side of the corral about twenty feet inside. There were three horses tied behind him, and the one nearest him had a rifle in the boot on the near side. Friendly was bent forward so he looked smaller than he really was, and had his hands held out at his waist for a fast draw. Crouched like that, with his hands like that, he looked to be backing away, though he didn’t move. He looked to both Blaisedell and Morgan as though he didn’t much want a fight, now that he had stopped to think about it.

Billy Gannon stood in the center and Pony Benner on the north side, close by the gate. Billy Gannon was wearing two guns, Benner one. They were both outlined against the wall of the Billiard Parlor at the back of the corral. Dust was blowing straight out of the corral in gusts of wind, but both Blaisedell and Morgan noticed that a door to the Billiard Parlor there stood a little way open.

Blaisedell considered Billy Gannon to be the leader, though Benner might be the more dangerous one. Friendly was not much to worry about unless he went for the rifle in the saddle boot. Blaisedell called to Billy Gannon by name and said, “You don’t have to fight me, Billy.”

Billy didn’t answer. They could hear Benner cursing to himself. Morgan saw Friendly look toward the door to the Billiard Parlor and he said to Blaisedell behind his hand, “I will hold on that door. Don’t you worry about it.”

Blaisedell tried to talk to Billy Gannon again. “You don’t have to fight me, Billy. You and your partners just mount up and ride out.”

Billy said, “Go for your guns, you son of a b—!”

Blaisedell started moving forward then. He still thought the road agents might be backed out. This time he spoke to Benner. “Don’t make us kill you, boys. Clear on out of here.”

Billy Gannon yelled at them again to go for their guns, but did not start to draw his own yet, and Blaisedell kept moving forward. He thought he might get close enough to buffalo the boy, and then the others might fold. He had seen they had no stomach for it.

Morgan saw the door of the Billiard Parlor flung open, and yelled to Blaisedell. Blaisedell had seen it too, and he stepped sideways as a man with a Winchester showed there. He didn’t know that it was Calhoun till later. The man let fly with the rifle and Morgan fired back, three times. Those were the only times that Morgan fired. The man yelled and fell sprawled out into the corral. Morgan swung around to cover Friendly, in case Friendly thought of going for the rifle in the boot, but he could see that Friendly had lost interest in the whole business.

When Calhoun had fired from the back, Benner had started for his Colt, and Blaisedell drew and fired. Pony went back hard with his hat rolling off, and didn’t move again. Billy Gannon had looked back over his shoulder and seemed to be trying to dodge when the rifle went off. It sounded to Blaisedell as though he yelled, “No! No!” and when Billy turned back to face him he thought that Billy was going to put his hands up. But then Billy changed his mind, or else it had been a trick, and made his move. Blaisedell called his name again, but Billy was too close to count on his missing, and Blaisedell fired just as Billy got his six-gun clear of the holster. Billy spun around and dropped his Colt. His right arm was hanging broken, but he grabbed for his left-hand Colt and got a shot off.

Morgan saw Blaisedell stumble back, and jumped forward to try to get out from behind Blaisedell for a shot at Billy. But then Blaisedell fired again and Billy went down.

Friendly came running and yelling toward them with his hands held up. He caught hold of Blaisedell, crying out that he hadn’t had anything to do with Calhoun being there and hadn’t wanted anything to do with any of it. He was crying like a baby. They had made him come, he said, and he hadn’t had anything to do with robbing the stage.

Blaisedell shook him off and said, “Get to shooting or get out of town!”

Friendly went running back toward the horses, still holding his hands up. Morgan thought he looked like he was going to dive into the horse trough. He could see that Blaisedell had been shot in the shoulder, but it looked no more than a crease. He saw Billy trying to get his six-shooter out, where he had fallen on top of it.

Blaisedell walked over to Billy and took the Colt away just as he pulled it free. Billy said to him, “I could have killed you if they hadn’t done that.” And he said, “I didn’t know they was going to do that. Oh, the dirty sons of b–es!”

Morgan went over to the man who had fallen out the door of the Billiard Parlor and turned him over. He called to Blaisedell that it was Calhoun. Calhoun was already dead, and so was Benner. Friendly took out on his horse and went down Southend Street at a run.

Men were starting to come into the corral now, and Blaisedell called to them to get the doctor.

VI

( From the testimony of Deputy Carl Schroeder.)

Deputy Schroeder was one of the first into the Acme Corral after the shooting stopped. He saw Luke Friendly light out on his horse as though the fiends were after him. Pony Benner was dead just inside the corral gate and Blaisedell was standing by Billy Gannon, who was still alive. Blaisedell handed Schroeder Billy’s Colt, and pointed out another where Billy had dropped it. Blaisedell had been creased on the right shoulder and it was bleeding some.

Billy Gannon was gasping and choking, and Johnny Gannon ran in and knelt beside him. Blaisedell moved off then. Morgan was over toward the back of the corral, where Calhoun was lying dead on a little adobe walkway outside the open side door of Sam Brown’s Billiard Parlor. There was a rifle beside Calhoun. He was shot three times, once through the throat and the other two not a finger apart on the left side of his chest.

Schroeder asked Morgan if Calhoun had tried to ambush them from there, and Morgan said he had, and pushed Calhoun back over on his face with his foot.

Some others came over to look at Calhoun and congratulate Morgan, who moved off. A good lot of others were standing around Blaisedell. Dr. Wagner had shown up and was bending down over Billy Gannon, but anybody could see there wasn’t anything to do.

After a while the doctor went to bind up Blaisedell’s shoulder, and Johnny Gannon laid Billy flat on the ground. Then Gannon went up to Blaisedell, and some seemed to think there was going to be trouble, for they backed away. But Gannon only said to Blaisedell that Billy hadn’t known about Calhoun, and Blaisedell answered that he was sure of it.

Schroeder busied himself asking if anybody had seen Calhoun come in, or hiding in the Billiard Parlor or anything. The Billiard Parlor didn’t open till eleven o’clock, except Sundays, but Sam Brown told him the corral door was open sometimes in the mornings. Nobody had seen Calhoun at all, which didn’t particularly mean anything as far as he, Schroeder, was concerned; because the fact was that Calhoun had been in the Billiard Parlor to try to dry-gulch Blaisedell, and it didn’t have to be proved how he had got in there.

Maybe Billy Gannon and the rest of them hadn’t known about Calhoun being there in the Billiard Parlor; he didn’t see that it made any difference. For it was all McQuown’s doing, any man could tell that.

VII

( From the testimony of Lucas Friendly, cowboy.)

Lucas Friendly had come into town with William Gannon, Thaddeus Benner, and Edward Calhoun, to protest to Marshal Clay Blaisedell that they had been unfairly and illegally posted from Warlock.

They had not come in to make trouble. They had only wanted to reason with the marshal. There had been no cause for posting them out of Warlock, which everybody knew was illegal anyway, except that some people had got down on them and their friends. They had heard that the marshal was a reasonable man, and had felt they could convince him that they had had no part in the stage robbery of which they had been so foully accused, and justly acquitted by a Bright’s City jury. There had been some talk among them on the way up that their entrance into Warlock might be dangerous, but they had felt they had to talk it over with the marshal man to man.

Calhoun’s horse had gone lame just before they reached Warlock, so the rest of them had got into town ahead of him. They told Nate Bush to go for the marshal and ask him to come to the Acme Corral so they could talk. They had not wanted to go abroad in Warlock, fearing trouble with certain townsmen who were unjustly set against them, and edgy toward them.

Calhoun had arrived while Bush was gone. They waited a long time, but the marshal did not appear, so, fearing that Bush had gone astray, Calhoun had gone into the Billiard Parlor to try to find someone there to send for the marshal.

But just then the marshal came down Southend Street. When they saw Morgan with him they knew it looked bad, and he, Lucas Friendly, was sick to see the marshal with that high-roller and both clearly coming after trouble.

Both he and Billy Gannon tried to reason with Blaisedell, but the marshal only shouted at them to go for their guns, and called them foul names.

Billy was a hot-headed boy, and Friendly was afraid that he and Benner would not stand for being called names like that. He had cautioned them to hold steady, while he tried to argue with the marshal some more. But he could see it was no use, and that the marshal and Morgan had murder in their hearts. Morgan began to curse them for being yellow – trying to get them to draw so it would be on them for starting the trouble.

Unluckily it was just then that Calhoun came back out of the Billiard Parlor, and right away Morgan started shooting, and Blaisedell drew and shot at Billy and Pony Benner. Billy and Pony started shooting back, but Blaisedell and Morgan had got first draw and shot them down as they had already shot Calhoun.

He, Friendly, kept yelling at Blaisedell that they had not come to make trouble, and trying to stop the shooting. But it was too late. They had killed the others by then, and he could not draw himself for both Blaisedell and Morgan had their six-shooters aimed at him. So he ran for his horse because he could see they were going to shoot him down whatever he did. He heard them arguing behind him which one was going to shoot him. Luckily for him, a lot of people came down Southend Street toward the corral just then, thinking the shooting was over, and the marshal could not backshoot him for all these others to see it.

There had been nothing for him to do but jump his horse and ride for his life. They would have found some way to kill him if he hadn’t.

He thought they would find some way to kill him yet. He had heard that both of them had sworn to do it. He knew they would try to shoot him down in cold blood as they had three fine young fellows with nothing in the world against them except that they had somehow got the marshal of Warlock down on them.