Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 40 страниц)

40. BRIGHT’S CITY

BRIGHT’S City lay just to the east of the Bucksaws, along Bright’s Creek. There was a heavy traffic of wagons across the rumbling wooden bridge over the creek, where, straight ahead, on Main Street, lay the Plaza. To the right, half a mile down Fort Street, was Fort Jacob Collins, with its flag rippling and colorful in the wind, and, to the left, the three-storied red-brick courthouse, its tall windows shuttered against the sun, its copper-sheathed cupola raised like a helmeted dragoon’s head.

Soldiers from the fort paced the streets or stood upon corners. There were many women in Bright’s City, and many men in store suits among the more roughly dressed ranchers and cowboys. Townsmen and housewives kept to the north side of Bright’s City’s Main Street, while sporting women in their finery passed in promenade on the south side, accompanied by the whistling of cowboys and soldiers.

The delegation from the Warlock Citizens’ Committee exited from the Jim Bright Hotel. A Bright’s City deputy, chewing on a toothpick, greeted them pleasantly as he sauntered on his rounds.

“How enviable it is,” Will Hart said, “to see the same deputies on hand every time you come in here.”

“I wish we’d see a different sheriff,” Buck Slavin said irritably.

“Well, let’s go see what sheriff there is,” Goodpasture said, and they proceeded to the sheriff’s office, which adjoined the courthouse. Sheriff Keller was visible through the dusty glass of the window. He sat at ease with his scrolled boots propped up on his pigeon-holed desk, his fine, white, sugar-loaf hat tipped over his eyes.

Keller rose ponderously as they entered, a bull-necked, heavy man with the face of a jolly bloodhound, a tobacco-stained mustache, and a gold watch chain with links like barbed wire strung across his massive midsection. Behind him the cell doors stood open, and in one of them a number of prisoners were playing cards.

“Why, it’s some gentlemen from Warlock,” Keller said, removing his hat and smiling in greeting. Then his face turned sad as he said, “I certainly was distressed to hear about old Carl Schroeder. A good man.” He shook his head sadly, and clucked.

The prisoners dropped their cards and crowded into the door of the cell. “What’s happened?” one cried.

“Blaisedell throw down on McQuown yet?”

“You boys hush, now!” the sheriff roared. “You! Get back in there!” The prisoners moved back inside, and Keller went over to slam the door on them. “I’ll have a little peace and quiet in here!” he said severely, and turned back to the delegation again. Another deputy came in.

“Branch, you run for Jim Askew,” the sheriff said. “Here is some more news from Warlock and he’ll apoplexy sure if he gets gone to press before he hears it. Now; what’s up now, gentlemen?”

“We want some law in Warlock, Sheriff!” Slavin said. “The Citizens’ Committee has sent us up here to insist—”

“Well, now, hold on,” Keller said. “You people are all right. That young Gannon come up here ahead of you people, and told me he was going to resign, but I have talked him out of it. Anyway, you have got Blaisedell still, haven’t you?”

“Damn,” Slavin said.

“Well, we wanted to get rid of Gannon, Sheriff,” Will Hart said. “I must say we are a little sorry to hear you talked him out of resigning.

The sheriff sat down, frowning heavily. “Well, now, gentlemen; he said people was kind of down on him, thinking he had swore false over Curley Burne. Maybe he did too, but it come right in the end, now, didn’t it?” He eyed them each in turn. “You people down there have got to realize it is hard to get a decent man to deputy in Warlock. You don’t just chuck one out when he does something you don’t like once or twice; no, sir.” He scowled at the deputy, who had not left yet. “Run along now, Branch. Get Jim Askew here, boy.” The prisoners were whispering together excitedly.

“Like I say,” Keller went on. “It came right anyway what with Blaisedell cutting down Curley Burne, so I can’t see what you people are so excited about.”

“We insist that you fire Gannon!” Slavin said. “The Citizens’ Committee has sent us up here to tell you—”

“Huh!” Keller said. “Now, I mean! Who is the Warlock Citizens’ Committee to tell me who I am to fire? I mean, I like to get along with you folks, but it is hard to hire a man for that place down there.”

“What did he want here, Sheriff?” Goodpasture asked.

The sheriff leaned back in his chair, his face crinkling with amusement. “Why, he didn’t really want to resign. He was just trying to blackguard me with it. He wanted four more deputies down there. Four!” He held up four fat fingers. Well, he’s young, but he is all right. I promised him if he’d wait over a day or so, I’d get him a new sign made for that jail down there, though.”

“That will be an improvement,” Goodpasture said.

“Now, see here, Sheriff!” Slavin said heatedly, and then he stopped and sighed.

Keller sat rubbing his red-veined nose and glancing from face to face again. “You gentlemen ought to try to get on with your deputies down there. Down on him, are you? Well, let me tell you. Either he went and lied to get Curley Burne off, or else he didn’t lie. You gentlemen know for sure he went and lied?”

“Everybody knows he lied,” Slavin said.

“Well, now, I meant proof, Mr. Slavin. No, now, you don’t know for sure. You have got to look at it this way, anyhow. I mean, say he did lie; what’re you going to do if a man lies for an old partner of his? You’d do it; maybe I’d do it, though I won’t admit it straight out. I mean, that is a poor place to be down there, terrible bad pay, and a man doesn’t live long enough to take much of it home, either. Look at poor old Carl. And he lasted a coon’s age compared with most. I mean, you have got to give a man with a job like that a little leeway.”

“There’s another way of looking at it, too,” Hart said. “Burne probably would have gone free anyway if he’d come up here to trial.”

The prisoners broke out laughing. Keller scowled and scratched his nose. “Well, now!” he said. “You know what the man said when he saw the black-headed Swede, don’t you? That’s a Norse of a different color!” He roared with laughter, amid a further chorus from the cell. The delegation from Warlock looked at each other despairingly.

Then Keller’s face assumed a serious expression, and he said, “Well, now, about McQuown’s boys getting off up here. I might doubt it some. Things’ve gone and changed in people’s eyes up here a little. I don’t expect no jury here is going to let those Pablo ’cases run quite so pecker-up any more. What I mean – it looks like Abe’s just about run his string. People used to take a fright you just creep up behind them and whisper ‘ McQuown!’ It’s not so any more, not with Clay Blaisedell salting his tail for him and lopping his gun hands off like he is doing. It is like when the old general got after Espirato and made him run for cover.”

Hart said, “You make it sound almost safe enough for you to come down and be a proper sheriff, Sheriff.”

“Now it is not going to do any good for you to get insulting, Mr. Hart. I swear, you people come up here and play me the same tune every time, and all I can tell you is just any day now there is going to be a separate county set up down there. Peach County, I expect it’ll be called. You will have your own sheriff to pick at then. I was talking to Whiteside just last week, and he was saying any day now that—”

“I do hate to remind you, Sheriff,” Goodpasture said. “But it has been any day now for over a year.”

“Two years,” Hart said.

“Well, it is any day nowfor sure. I’d put money on it – not more than a month, for sure.”

“Bellywash!” Slavin cried. “I’ll tell you this, Keller. If we don’t get some satisfaction from you this time, we will see Peach himself!”

“See him!” Keller said, smiling, nodding. “Do that.”

“And if we don’t get any satisfaction from him we will by God go to Washington, if we have to!”

“Go,” Keller said. “You will probably have to. I’d sure like to go back there myself. I hear it is pleasant this time of year, back there.”

“We are asking for your help, Sheriff,” Goodpasture said. “The situation in Warlock is much more difficult than you realize.”

Keller’s eyes flickered a little. He hunkered forward in his chair, and spread his hands. “But what would you want me to do, Mr. Goodpasture? I mean! I’d be all my time riding back and forth between here and Warlock, and I am too old for that foolishness. And don’t mind saying I am scared. Mr. Goodpasture, I just don’t claim to be anything I’m not. I run for sheriff here, surely, but to my mind this county stops at the Bucksaws there and that is all I run for. That is so, now; you know I didn’t come down there beforehand, either. Now, I like this big belly here as it is and not all shot full of holes. Like Carl, and that feller Brown and how many others before that? I am not sheriff down there, that’s all. If it was put to me hard I had to be, why, I’d quit. What’s the matter with Blaisedell all of a sudden you are so dissatisfied again? Sounds from here like everything is going nice as pie.”

Will Hart said, “It has not worked out, Sheriff. He has had to kill too many men.”

“Why, my stars! You fellows aren’t shedding tears for those rustlers he is popping off, are you?”

“Sheriff,” Goodpasture said. “He has no authority. And we had none when we hired him. He and the Citizens’ Committee have had to take too much upon themselves.”

“It looks from here like it is going nicely. He has got McQuown tramped down and Pablo thinned out some. Those cowboys will stop getting their fingers burnt pretty quick, and settle down. I will give you gentlemen the same advice I gave Gannon. Let Blaisedell work it out. There is no better man nowhere, from what I have heard. I told Gannon to quit worrying, and you too. The time to worry’s when things is in bad shape, not—”

“They are in bad shape,” Hart said.

“You are an officer of the court!” Slavin cried.

“Not down there.”

Hart said, “Well, maybe if we had three or four more deputies, as Gannon suggested—”

Keller shook his head. “You would have to collect taxes down there to have your three or four, and that would take a dozen. And fighting men! Now, maybe you gentlemen wouldn’t mind paying taxes, and maybe Mr. Slavin wouldn’t even mind having it run into his franchise about transporting prisoners up here, but you gentlemen ought to know those ranchers down that way never even heard of taxes. They’d think a tax collector was a road agent! Why, it’d take Peach and the whole shooting match from the fort to collect taxes down there. All that for some deputies? Why, Blaisedell is serving you better than ten deputies could in a month of Sundays. Now, isn’t that so, Mr. Goodpasture?”

“Blaisedell is a very fine man,” Goodpasture said. “We have had no cause to be anything but highly satisfied with him. It is a matter of authority. We are in a position of ordering him to kill men. We are in a position of trying to administer severe laws that do not exist, when the responsibility is yours.”

“No, sir! It is not mine either. No, sir, you just take all the authority you need.”

Goodpasture sighed and said, “And the kind of thing that Blaisedell can deal with is necessarily limited. You should be able to understand that.”

“You mean those Cousin Jacks running wild and tearing things up? MacDonald was up here complaining about that just lately, but I thought you people had worked up some sort of regulation committee to deal with those wild men.”

“MacDonald has,” Hart said. “Please don’t connect us with that pack of mongrels.”

“I thought it was a Citizens’ Committee thing,” Keller said. “So did everybody. Well, it goes to show you.”

“Say!” one of the prisoners called. “Does it look like McQuown is going to make a play against Blaisedell? There is betting here he won’t.”

The sheriff regarded them questioningly too, but, sunk in gloom, no one of the delegation answered. The sheriff chuckled and said, “I’d ride down to see that.”

“Let’s get out of here and see Peach,” Slavin said. “I knew there was no damned use in our coming here.”

“See him,” Keller said, approvingly.

“We are going to! Right now!”

“Let me tell you something first,” Keller said, in a confidential tone. “Just like I told Gannon, that’s bound and determined he is going to see him too. Don’t mention about Blaisedell if you see him. Old Peach doesn’t like anything to do with Blaisedell for beans.” He winked hugely. “Jealous! Jealous as a lap dog. For you know what used to be the biggest thing in this territory? Peach cleaning out the Apaches. Now it’s been so long people’s forgotten there ever was Apaches, and new people coming in all the time that’s never even seen one. Why, now the biggest thing out here is Blaisedell. By a mile! Jim Askew is coining money from newspapers all over the country.

“He sends out stories by telegraph, for heaven’s sake! And those papers back east of here pay for it and beg for more, he says. Nothing new on Blaisedell, he writes about some fool gossip or other, anything. Back East Peach is only some has-been of a general, maybe he is dead by now, it’s been so long since anybody heard anything about him. But Blaisedell! Why, Jim got rich on that Acme Corral shoot-up alone, and never stopped a minute since. Jump, when he heard about Curley Burne! You should have seen him!

“Oh, Blaisedell has got to be the biggest thing that ever happened out here, and you remember what I say and keep kind of quiet if you have to mention him to the general. Or talk him down. Here comes Jim right now,” he said, nodding toward the window.

Jim Askew, editor and publisher of the Bright’s City Star-Democrat, came hurrying in. He was a little, wrinkled, side-whiskered man with a green vizor over his eyes, ink-smeared paper cuffs, and a canvas apron. The deputy was a step behind him, and the other deputy, whom the delegation had seen before the hotel, appeared also.

“What’s happened now? What’s happened now?” Askew demanded, taking a newsprint pad from beneath his apron, a pencil from behind his ear. He stared from one to the other of them with his eyes enlarged and rolling behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. “What’s happened in Warlock, fellows?”

“Warlock is gone, Jim,” Hart said. “It was a terrible thing. The old Warlock mine opened right up and the whole town fell in. Nobody left but the few miserable survivors you see before you.”

“Now, now, fellows,” the editor said reprovingly. “Now, seriously, what’s been going on lately? What’s Blaisedell been up to now?”

41. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

April 15, 1881

IT HAS been said, with the exaggeration by which truth is memorialized in a kernel, that the reason people remain in Warlock is that death is preferable to a journey to Bright’s City, and damnation better than the stage to Welltown. It is not quite so bad as that, although the trip is a long day’s horror, and upon arrival at Bright’s City the spine feels like a rock drill that has lost its temper.

This morning, then, to see Sheriff Keller. He is a shameful excuse for a sheriff, venal, cynical, and cowardly, and yet it is difficult to dislike him. Gannon, we found, had preceded us to Bright’s City – having ridden through the Bucksaws, a shorter route by half than the stage road – and Keller out-argued our demands for his dismissal, I think more from force of habit than from loyalty to his deputy. His reasoning was: 1) deputies for Warlock are hard to come by, good or bad; 2) Gannon is willing to be deputy in Warlock; ergo, 3) Gannon remains deputy in Warlock.

We are so used to being defeated and thwarted by Sheriff Keller that we no longer feel animus against him. Still, we were depressed by our encounter with him, and when we were kept from seeing General Peach by Whiteside at his most obstructionistic. We will try again tomorrow with renewed determination, revived by a night’s rest at the Jim Bright Hotel.

It is curious to talk to the inhabitants here about recent events in Warlock. Bright’s Citizens are defenders of Blaisedell to a man, and they are, indeed, surprised and insulted that we should feel there are two sides to the matter. They will not accept the fact that there are things in heaven, earth, and Warlock undreamt of in their philosophy. To them, Blaisedell is an uncompromised and untainted Hero, battling a Villain named McQuown. There are none of the shadows and underbrush that have so haunted us in Warlock. Morgan is Blaisedell’s right bower, and is somewhat revered himself. The miners and their quarrel with MacDonald are of no interest, although it is disturbing to hear the Regulators described as a band of eminent Warlockians convened in aid of Blaisedell.

April 16, 1881

Colonel Whiteside guards his lord like a lion. He is a colorless little man, thin, worried-looking, and nervous to infect the most placid. He is uneasy with civilians, and his manner alternates between chill command and an inept cajolery. He routed us again this morning. This afternoon we won through to the Presence.

I had not seen the General since November, when he passed through Warlock en route back from the border after one of his idiotic dashes after a rumor of Espirato. Since then, I think, he has not been out of Bright’s City. That he is insane, I have now no doubt.

Whiteside was fending us off again, although with increasing desperation, when the General himself stormed down the corridor of the courthouse where we were seeking to obtain an audience, shouting incoherently in his great blown voice. He was followed by a company of aides, orderlies, and sergeants, all in dress uniform, and was in dress uniform himself, although his blouse hung open and some kind of liquid had been spilled upon his shirt front. He waved his gauntleted hands and shouted something at Whiteside which seemed to have to do with the presence of dogs upon the post, and how they were to be dealt with. With him chaos came, as he roared meaningless sounds, and all his company sought to speak at once, while Colonel Whiteside, with pad and pencil in hand, called simultaneously for silence, sought to make sense of what his chief was saying, and watched us nervously for evidences of a flank attack.

Then, out of the uproar he himself had brought into the corridor, or out of the decay of his brain slipping into senilty or worse, or because of our unaccustomed presence, General Peach fell silent and confusion spread over his face. It was pitiful to see it. The little blue eyes, fierce and determined a moment past, wandered distraitly around, all but lost in the fat, red folds of his face. He stripped his gauntlets off hands as fat as sofa cushions, and, as soon as he had them off, struggled to put them on again, while all the time his eyes worried from face to face as though he did not know where he was, nodding from time to time as poor Whiteside tried to prompt and question him into repeating what the order, so urgent a minute before, was about – with a desperation that called forth pity not only for his master but for Whiteside himself, who must be the one to govern this territory under a madman while trying to conceal that madness from the world.

At last Peach’s eyes fixed themselves upon me with an enraged and defiant glare, and he cried, “Has headquarters sent out some more damned politicians to try to run my brigade for me, sir?”

I stammered that we were a deputation from Warlock with urgent business for his attention, to which he retorted even more forcibly that I was to tell them that the damned devil had hidden himself in the Sierra Madre and he could do nothing unless he was given permission to cross the border in pursuit. “Nothing, damn his red eyes!” he cried, while Will, Buck, and I tried to explain where we were from and something of our mission. Finally either some sense broke through or we were mistaken for still other emissaries, for all of a sudden we were swept into the inner temple beyond Whiteside’s desk.

It is a great room with westward-looking windows, crowded with the mementos of his career: an umbrella stand in which are tattered banners, bullet-torn regimental colors, a pair of confederate standards; on the wall a large painting of the Battle of the Snake River Crossing, with Peach leading his men through Lame Deer’s painted ranks and the teepees beyond them; on the wall also a varnished plaque on which was the scalp of some vanquished foe, with long, dusty braids; and there were quivers of arrows, moth-eaten war bonnets, Apache shields, war clubs, peace pipes, and framed photographs of Peach shaking hands with various chieftains. Upon his desk was the leather-wrapped stick he often carries, which is supposed to be the shaft of an arrow that almost killed him. The whole room seems a dusty and unkempt museum, or perhaps it is only a facsimile of his mind – a vacant space, inhabited by heroic memories.

Peach seated himself behind his desk, swept off his hat and flung it over the inkstand, stripped off his gauntlets again, transfixed us with his glittering, pale eyes, and said that he sympathized with our position, but that he could only fight a defensive campaign until those damned, do-nothing politicians in Washington decided to put it up to the Mexican government, and that there was no way, at present, he could go after the “murdering red rascal.”

I was, I remember, terrified lest Buck or Will blurt out that Espirato is presumably dead, and any threat from his renegades extremely improbable. They did not, however, and stood as stupefied as I, while Peach arose and paced the floor in an agitated manner. His actions are a series of mechanical and fustian gestures, each one anticipated by a slight pause, as though, inside him, gears and levers prepare the proper muscles for their roles – almost you can hear the whirr of the aged and imperfect clockwork. Then he will toss his head as though flinging back from his eyes the mane of white hair he no longer possesses (he is quite bald except for a matted ruff that gives his head the broad, flattened look of a badger’s), fold his arms with massive dignity, and stare down his nose; or fling himself into his chair with a crash that seems sure to smash it, or rise out of it with labored gruntings. He paces the floor with his hands locked behind his back like a man in a prison cell, or stands glaring at nothing with his great boots spread splay-footed apart and a hand held Bonaparte-like within his blouse, or strokes his beard with the expression of one giving birth to an infinitely cunning stratagem. Now, I find, I am able to sort out these various poses and attitudes one by one; yet, at the time, accompanied by the steely glare of his small, bright, mad eyes, there was a kind of majesty about them.

But it is a variety of dumb-show. The words that accompany these postures and gestures have no relation to them. The mildest words may be set to the most violent gesticulation, and conversely. His speech, gushing from the rusted pipes within him, is of the most monumental and dreadful nonsense.

From time to time poor Whiteside appeared at the door, to be waved away with irritable condescension. At least, when I was able to get a word in edgewise, I sought to tell the General of the plight of Warlock. He let me speak, flinging himself down in his chair again and studying me the while with his bearded chin propped upon his fist, and on his face an expression of terrible dismay, as though I were relaying to him news of some dreadful defeat and rout. But presently his attention wavered, and his eyes began to flicker confusedly around the room – and I to falter in my speech as the impression grew stronger that not a word of what I said was understood, and, moreover, if it had been, would be of no more import to him than reports of injustices among the sparrows to a Zeus brooding over Troy. Buck was of no assistance, paralyzed into dumbness, and Will has confessed that all his energies were taken with stifling a fit of giggles which had smitten him as though he were a schoolboy in church.

I was reduced, in the end, to stammering like a schoolboy myself. Peach made interjection only once. He reared back in his chair, frowning at something I said, took up his hat from the inkwell and cast it to the floor, snatched up a pen and scribbled furiously upon a piece of paper, and stared down at what he had written with an awesome concentration. Then he threw down the pen also, and muttered, “By God, if they come around that way, Miller and half a company could—”

It finished me. Buck gave me a wild, desperate glance. Will had already turned to go, and I retreated also, uttering apologies, statements that perhaps we should return another time, etc., that must have sounded as eccentric and irrational as what we had heard from him. But he spoke calmly behind us, saying, “Warlock,” as though my explanations had won through at last.

He was standing behind his desk now, glowering at us from under the white bushes of his eyebrows with eyes that looked sane at last, “Tell him he is getting too big for his boots,” he said. “Tell the scoundrel I am governor here. Tell—” he said, and once again confusion showed in his eyes and he was lost. But still he made an effort to recover his train of thought. He slapped a hand down on his desk and said we were to tell Whiteside we were to have fresh mounts and the best Indian Scouts he could furnish us!

We left the room. Before Whiteside’s desk there was still the clutter of aides and orderlies. Whiteside, writing busily, took no notice whatever of our exit, and we had nothing to say to him, nor to John Gannon, whom we met outside the courthouse and who seemed anxious to ingratiate himself with us. We ignored his overtures and walked back to the hotel more in awe than in black depression. “Mad as a hatter,” was all Buck could say, and it has seemed to me an understatement of shattering proportions.

We determined to send our telegrams to Washington, as we had been directed to do, all else failing. The wording had been set down, and we engaged ourselves in copying them out, and, further, in making up a statement in the form of a letter which Askew had offered to print for us, to be sent by mail to follow our telegrams, expanding upon our grievances. Whereupon Whiteside burst in on us (for we had made our threats to him before we had seen the General), seized a copy of the telegram, read it, and burst out with the most astonishing threats against us should we send them. He said he would hale us into military court and prosecute us to the full extent of his power, which he hinted was substantial; he said further that he would have us arrested immediately, that he would have the telegraph office closed down, etc. We were in no mood to be frightened, however, and said we knew perfectly well he could not arrest us, and that, if the telegraph office was closed to us, we would travel on to Rincon to send our telegrams.

Threats failing, he turned to pleading; his motivation was plain, and, indeed, he stated it. Obviously he is insanely loyal to his insane chief. The General is old, he said; a famous man, a great man, but failing now, obviously dying. Could we not see that he was a dying man? Could we not wait a little while? Will said that it looked to him as though Peach might live forever, and that we would not, Warlock remaining in its present state. Whiteside is not much impressed with the importance of Warlock or its inhabitants, but sought our sympathy and strove desperately not to offend us. He turned to procrastination. Give him a little time; a month or six weeks. General Peach was failing rapidly, he could see it day by day. The General had certain prejudices against Warlock, but if we gave him, Whiteside, six weeks, he would see that the necessary orders were given for the issuance of a town patent, and, indeed, the establishment of another county with Warlock, of course, the county seat (here I saw Buck’s eyes light up). He would do his utmost to bring the General to these dispositions, but, that failing, would forge the General’s name as he has evidently already done on various minor administrative documents.

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

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

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

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