Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 40 страниц)

42. MORGAN IS DEALT OUT

SITTING on the bed in his room in the hotel, Morgan unfolded the piece of stiff paper with steady fingers. He glanced up once at the frightened face of Dechine, in from San Pablo, and then held the paper under the lamp. The words were printed in large, carefully shaped letters:

3-7-77

CLAY BLAISEDELL

FOR THE FOUL MURDER

OF WILLIAM GANNON

AND CHARLES BURNE

3-7-77

BY THE HAND OF

ABRAHAM MCQUOWN

CHIEF OF REGULATORS

“What am I going to do, Tom?” Dechine whined. “Jesus, what am I going to do?”

Morgan refolded the paper carefully. Then, holding it with his thumb and forefinger at one end, snapped it open again with a loud pop. Dechine flinched.

“How many have you got?”

“Ten of them,” Dechine said. He rubbed his red nose. “Jesus! Three or four of them I’m supposed to post up somewheres – by the stage depot there, and by the Lucky Dollar and Goodpasture’s store. The rest’s for him, and you, and Buck, and some others – I got a list here.” He made motions toward a vest pocket. “I am supposed to see hegets one, for sure. Jesus, what am I going to do, Tom?”

Morgan studied the paper again. It was neatly done. He felt a kind of admiration for McQuown, that he had listed only Billy Gannon and Curley Burne. McQuown had known the cards that were high in Warlock; they were higher still with Clay, though McQuown could not have known that. McQuown had been smart enough not to overload a thing. Well, Clay, what do we do now? he said to himself.

Dechine’s voice rattled in his ears. “I was going to chuck them off somewheres and just make tracks. Give himone! Then I thought I’d bring them up here for you to see, Tom. I—”

“Who spelled them out like this for McQuown?”

“Joe Lacey. He can write good. Jesus, Tom! What am I going to do?”

“Like you were told. If you don’t, Joe Lacey will just have to run up another batch.”

“Oh, no! I am getting right on out of the territory. I know God– damnwell I’m not going to give one of these to Blaisedell.” Dechine’s shoulders were hunched as though he were afraid someone was standing behind him; gingerly he placed the stack of papers on top of Morgan’s bureau. “I told Abe straight out that I wasn’t going to do it, but there’s no talking to him. He has got a look on him like he’s been chewing peyote berry. So I thought I’d just make like I was going to, and get scarce fast and far. I know I—”

“When are they coming in?”

“Not right away, I don’t expect. There was everybody there drinking and jawing when I left, but they was laughing there how they would let Warlock stew awhile. I guess not right off. They are all coming, though; that bunch the Haggins rounded up for MacDonald, and all Abe’s people this time. The old man even – they are going to bring him in the wagon to see the sport. You should have heard the old son of a bitch! But not me, no sir! Tom, I am not going to post up those damned things!”

“Put them out. If you don’t they’ll just have to send somebody else to do it.” He folded the paper again. His hands remained steady, but there was a taste of copper in his mouth as he wondered what Clay would do. But there was no way of stopping these, or others like them, from showing up.

“I don’t know whether I am scareder of Blaisedell or Abe, which,” Dechine went on. “Abe is on the prod for a caution!” He hesitated and licked his lips, his eyes flickering. “Well, I guess I ought to tell you, Tom. They almost put you down there too. But Abe said not. They was thinking of putting you and Blaisedell down for killing that Cletus—”

“Who?” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, he was that passenger that got killed that time Pony and Cal shot up the Bright’s City stage there. Abe was trying to figure on some way to make like you and Blaisedell did it, or just him. But finally Abe decided this was all he’d put there. I tell you he has gone crazy wild down there, and it’s not just over Curley either. Jesus, Tom, I will be glad to get out of this country. This country has went to hell. I’ll say this straight out, Tom, even knowing Blaisedell is a friend to you. And even if I have known Abe and liked him too. There’s times I’ve hoped to God they would come to it and burn each other dead so a man could get his breath out here again!”

Dechine jammed his hat on his head, and said, “I wonder if you couldn’t give me a little stake, Tom?”

“Why, surely. How much do you owe me – five or six hundred? Take that.”

“Tom, I—” Dechine swung around to face the door as footsteps sounded, on the stairs, in the corridor. There was a knock.

“Tom?” Clay said.

“Come on in,” Morgan said, and grinned at Dechine.

Dechine backed into the corner and took off his hat and began wrenching it between his hands. Clay glanced toward him as he entered.

Morgan handed Clay the piece of paper.

“I was nothing to do with it, Marshal!” Dechine cried. “They would have cold-cocked me there if I didn’t bring these in! But I brought them straight to Tom here!”

“I thought you were in a hurry to get moving, Dechine.”

Dechine made a sound like a leaky pump. He edged toward the door, nodding ingratiatingly; he went down the stairs at a heavy-footed run.

Clay stood reading the paper for what seemed a very long time. Finally he said, “The old vigilante sign. Three feet wide by seven long, by seventy-seven inches deep.” And then he said, “Chief of Regulators.” He folded the paper carefully.

“They are all coming in,” Morgan said. “Those that were Regulators for MacDonald and more besides.”

“Fair enough,” Clay said.

“What are you going to do?” Morgan said evenly. “Run for it?”

“Not for McQuown.”

“What are you going to do?” he repeated, not so evenly. “Lie down and die?”

“Not for McQuown,” Clay said. Suddenly he grinned. He looked like a boy when he grinned like that, and he said, “Have you got any whisky, Morg?”

“Have,” Morgan said. He got it and poured two glasses. “How?” he said, and chuckled with excitement.

“How,” Clay said, nodding, and they drank together.

“Remember that time in Fort James when Hynes and that bunch got the drop on you?”

“Well enough,” Clay said. He sat down, taking off his hat and dropping it on the floor beside him. His fair hair looked gold in the lamplight. “I swear, Morg, you were a sight coming out through those batwing doors. It looked like you had about six arms going like a windmill and a gun in every hand. I thought they would tramp each other to pieces getting out of there, and you and me yelling and shooting up the air behind them.”

Clay sounded excited, and reenforced his own excitement; he had never felt so pleased, or proud. But then Clay looked down at his lap, and frowned as he said, in a different voice, “There was some good times in Fort James.”

“Well, it looks like you will need some help again this time.”

He saw Clay’s hand tighten around the glass of whisky he had not finished. “No,” Clay said. “I won’t need help, Morg.”

Morgan swung away to face the window. The full moon hung in it like a jack-o’-lantern. All the pocks showed on the round, gold, blind face. He felt as though he could not get his breath as he stood there, following through Clay’s thoughts, trying to understand Clay’s judgment. It seemed a judgment on him, and it was something he had never known Clay to do before.

His voice sounded very flat when he spoke. “Clay, do you think it is just McQuown coming in? It is all San Pablo.”

“It is between McQuown and me.”

“Surely. The rest will faint at the sight of those gold-handles.”

He heard the paper rustle behind him. “I won’t need help this time, Morg,” Clay said.

Damned fool, he thought, not even angrily; damned fool. But there was no use in calling Clay a damned fool, no use arguing. He saw what he must do. He had told Kate he would not throw Clay down, but he must throw him down this time.

“Are you moving on, Morg?” Clay asked, in an expressionless voice.

Thank you, but no thanks, and why don’t you move on while you are at it? It must be Miss Jessie Marlow speaking. You used to be yourself, Clay Blaisedell, he thought bitterly, staring out at the moonlight pale as milk in Warlock. Now they have talked you into being Clay Blaisedell instead. “You don’t mind if I stay and watch, do you?” he said. “Buy you a drink of whisky after, to settle your nerves. Or pall-bear.”

“You understand about it, don’t you, Morg?”

“Surely. I can’t hurt you if I’m not in it, and I have hurt you enough here.”

Clay made a disgusted sound. “That’s foolishness. Don’t pretend you don’t understand about this. This is on me alone.”

Morgan did not turn from the window. The stars were lost in the moonlight; he could make out only a few dull specks of them. “Well, you won’t mind if I don’t move on right away, will you?” he said. “I have got business here still.”

“What’s that, Morg?”

He did not know why he should feel so ugly now. He turned to face Clay, and grinned and said, “It wasn’t jacks that burnt the Lucky Dollar, you know.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Haven’t you noticed Taliaferro lately? He has got that pistolero from the French Palace tied on his heels like a shadow.”

Clay nodded almost imperceptibly. “Did you shoot that dealer of his, Morg?”

“You mean Wax? That beat my Professor’s head in for him?”

Clay picked up his hat and held it in his lap while he dented the crown with blows from the heel of his hand, crosswise and then back to front, continuing it with a kind of abstracted attention as though there were nothing else in the world to do. But at last he said, without looking up, “I have never asked you a thing like this before.”

“Like what?”

“Leave it alone about Taliaferro.”

“All right.”

“For a favor,” Clay said. He got to his feet and put his hat on. He held the paper in his hand, and glanced toward the others on the bureau. “That’s a silly thing,” he said. “For me to be putting those up against myself. Do you know anybody you can get to do it?”

“I’ll get Basine.”

“Might as well get it over with,” Clay said. He moved toward the door.

“For a favor?”

Clay stopped. “Don’t go sour, Morg. This is nothing between you and me. I thought you would understand that.”

“Why, I suppose I do,” he said. He went to the bureau and took up the whisky bottle again. Standing with his back to Clay he poured whisky into his glass in a slow trickle until he heard the door close and Clay’s footsteps departing.

He stepped to the window then, and, in the darkness, watched the tall figure appear below him. He raised his glass and whispered, “How?” and drank deeply. “Why, Clay, I understand well enough,” he said. “But I won’t let you do it. Or McQuown.”

Abruptly he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why, you damned sanctimonious school marm virgin bitch!” he said, to Miss Jessie Marlow. It was time he had a talk with her, and he addressed himself to her and to the whisky in his glass.

You, he said; youput Curley Burne on that list to crucify him, and I suppose you would let him stand alone against that pack of cowboys because he would look so fine? Don’t you know that McQuown has been sitting down there as patient and tricky as a hostile waiting for the right time to move? You handed him Curley Burne to move on.

“How you must hateyourself, Miss Jessie Marlow,” he mimicked, aloud. “Do you think they will curl up and die at the sight of him because he is so fine? Hewould curl up and die, they would blast him loose from his boots, backshot, sideshot, and frontshot too.

“Well, you saved my life, and with damned bad grace. And you wish I was gone, don’t you, and you have told him so, haven’t you? Are you satisfied with what you are making of him? You have got him so he doesn’t know himself any more. And I am the ugly toad whose life you saved because there wasn’t any way you could get out of it, and I will save his from McQuown. I suppose it would turn you to screaming to think of me doing it, and how, wouldn’t it? But what do you say, Miss Jessie Marlow?”

He laughed at her horrified face in his mind’s eye.

But damn you to hell, can you let him be, afterward? Can you ever let him be? You will have him alive. “Can you let him deal faro in a saloon?” he said aloud, mimicking her scorn again. Let be, Miss Jessie Marlow, before you have killed him dead trying to make him into a damned marble statue!

43. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

April 17, 1881

WE HAVE returned this night to a Warlock seething with surmise. Posters appeared mysteriously this morning in several places about the town – one of them upon my wall! – to the effect that Blaisedell is condemned to death for foul murder, his victims listed as Curley Burne and Billy Gannon, and the posters signed by Abraham McQuown as Chief of Regulators!

I did not see any of these, for they have been torn down, but there are tack holes in the adobe to the right of my door, and Kennon says he saw the one upon the Feed and Grain Barn. Dechine, a small rancher and neighbor of McQuown’s, was seen in town last night, and it is presumed that he was the one who affixed the posters. It is not known who tore them down, possibly they were merely wanted for keepsakes; it is variously rumored, though, that either Morgan is responsible for their disappearance, or the lamed miner who works for Miss Jessie, or Blaisedell himself.

The name of McQuown, springing to everyone’s lips again, is like the reappearance of a ghost long thought laid. Many think it is all only a practical joke, perpetrated by some townsmen, but for most of us the phrase “Chief of Regulators” rings most ominously. If it is a joke, it is a cruel one; it strikes too close to our fears, the names of Billy Gannon and Curley Burne are too aptly chosen.

There has been talk of nothing else since we returned early this evening. The town is crowded; somehow news of this nature is disseminated instantaneously throughout the valley. We, the delegation, returned full of defense and explanation of our defeat in Bright’s City; what happened to us there is of no interest to anyone.

The feeling among the more intelligent here is that these posters are probably more than a joke, but less than an open declaration of war – that it may be a gambit, a bluff, a theatrical gesture of righteousness. They have certainly done their work in arousing and confirming suspicions over the Curley Burne tragedy. The seeds they may have been intended to broadcast have fallen on rich soil. On the other hand can McQuown afford to make such a bluff if it is to be an empty one? Or is this an attempt to rouse Warlock against Blaisedell so that we ourselves will run him out, thus saving McQuown the trouble and the danger? If so, McQuown has woefully misjudged our tempers.

The miners, I understand, feel this is some trick of MacDonald’s, since MacDonald was the proprietor of the original Regulators. They feel that McQuown may have been won over by MacDonald, but that they, the Medusa strikers, are the actual quarry, and Blaisedell only a ruse.

The town seethes with argument, speculation, and fearful expectation. Yet many in Warlock are eager for a showdown, and, in their minds, this can only satisfactorily be a street duel between Blaisedell and McQuown. McQuown would surely not be such a fool (ah, but I said this of Curley Burne!), and yet McQuown may feel he has some moral advantage now.

There will be a Citizens’ Committee meeting in the morning.

44. THE NEW SIGN

PIKE SKINNER swung into the jail doorway and stopped there, with his red face set into a scowl. Inside, Peter Bacon sat at the table spooning juice from a can of peaches into his mouth, and Tim French sat beside the cell door, just outside the circle of light cast by the lamp. A flat, square, newspaper-wrapped package leaned against the wall.

“Gannon back yet?” Skinner demanded.

“Come and gone,” French said.

“I am deputying tonight,” Bacon said, wiping his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “But I don’t want to hear about any trouble. I am just what you might say sitting here so nobody can look in and see nobody’s sitting here.”

“Where the hell’d he go now?”

“Pablo,” French said.

“Threw us again, did he?” Skinner cried. “Gone down there so’s he can come in with those Regulators—”

“Hold on!” French said.

“You get down on a man he can’t do nothing right, can he?” Bacon said. “He went down there to stop them from coming in here.”

“He told you that, did he?”

“Did,” Bacon said.

“You believed it, huh?”

“Did.”

“There was a time before I didn’t believe him,” French said. “But it looks like I was wrong about it.”

“I still say he was lying in his damned teeth!” Skinner said.

Bacon shrugged. “Well, anyway, I told him I’d sit it out till he got back. Or till somebody brought his poor, shot-up, hacked-on, chewed-to-pieces corpse back to bury.”

“How’s he think he’s going to stop them?” Skinner sneered.

“Didn’t say. He come in blown from riding it down from Bright’s, and when he heard the news he just said he’d better go stop them, and borrowed Tim’s mare and went.” Bacon began spooning peach juice into his mouth again.

Skinner kicked the door jamb. “Buck and them just got back from Bright’s,” he said. “Buck said Johnny got Keller to half-believing what Carl was supposed to’ve told him.”

“Some do,” Bacon said.

“God damn it, Pete; I thought Carl was a friend of yours! God damn it, it played right to McQuown, didn’t it?”

“That don’t make it not so, Pike,” French said.

Skinner shook his head and said, “You mean to say Gannon went down there all by himselfto tell them not to come in here?”

“Bound to go he was bound to go by himself, I guess,” Bacon said. He looked at Skinner with his pale eyes.

“Catch megoing down there,” Skinner said. He glanced almost furtively down the wall to where the names were scratched in the whitewash. “What’s that wrapped up there?”

“New sign Keller gave him,” Bacon said. He stared down into the empty can. “Would’ve pleased Carl.”

Skinner went over to where the package leaned, picked it up, and stripped off the string and newspaper. The sign was square, with black letters on a white ground within a black border:

WARLOCK JAIL

DEPUTY SHERIFF

Skinner turned it over; it was the same on the reverse. “Nice piece of work,” he said. “The old one’s got so you can’t hardly make it out any more.”

“Looks like we might hang it for Johnny tomorrow,” French said. “While we’re waiting.”

Skinner set the sign back where it had been. “I see Gannon got his name scratched on the wall there,” he said, straightening and turning away.

“He’s deputy,” French said. “Deputies get to set their names down there. Why shouldn’t he?”

“I just noticed he had it down there, was all.”

“You had better quit looking at them names there, Pike,” Bacon said, not quite humorously. “Or they will reach out and grab you one of these times.”

45. GANNON VISITS SAN PABLO

GANNON counted the horses as he reined up before the ranch house – ten, eleven, twelve of them. Light shone out on the glossy sweep of manes and rolling eyewhites. The dogs began to bark down by the horse corral.

In the lamplit windows he could see the shadows of the men. He heard the sour, thin chording of a guitar. A voice was raised in drunken song, and was lost in laughter.

He dismounted slowly, leaden with fatigue. He tethered Tim’s mare to the rail with the others, sighed, hitched on his shell belt, and started up the steps. On the porch he paused to wipe the palms of his hands on his jeans; then with anxious haste he knocked on the door. It swung inward under the pressure of his knuckles, and the voices died. The guitar chorded on for a moment longer; then it too ceased, in a strum of strings.

The faces were all turned toward him, pale and oily-looking in the lamplight. Abe was leaning on the pot-belly stove with his hand gripped around the neck of the whisky jug. Old man McQuown lay on his pallet on the floor. Chet Haggin was slumped, spread-legged, on the buggy-seat sofa beside Joe Lacey, and Wash sat on the floor before them with a crockery cup in his hand. Beyond Abe were Pecos Mitchell, hunched over the guitar, Quint Whitby, with his fat face and cavalry mustaches, the breed Marko cleaning his nails with a knife, Walt Harrison, Ed Greer, Jock Hennessey, and five or six others he did not know – all staring at him. Standing behind Chet was Jack Cade, his round-crowned, leather-banded hat pulled low upon his forehead, his prune of a mouth bent into a disagreeable smile.

“Why, it’s Bud Gannon come back to San Pablo,” Abe said, and put the whisky jug down.

“Bud,” Joe Lacey said. No one else spoke. Mitchell began to strum the guitar again, humming to himself and watching Gannon with an eyebrow cocked in his smallpox-pitted face. The old man hunched himself up on his pallet.

“Well, come on in, Bud,” Abe said. “Don’t stand there acting like you mightn’t be welcome.” He wore a buckskin shirt that reached below his hips and was belted with a concho belt from which hung his knife, in a silver-chased scabbard. He looked drunk, but bright-eyed, keen, young – Abe looked as he had when he had first known him.

“Blaisedell run him out!” the old man said suddenly.

Gannon shook his head. He met Jack Cade’s eyes and nodded. He nodded to the others. “Joe,” he said. “Chet. Wash. Pecos. Quint. Dad McQuown.” He knew them better than he knew anyone in Warlock, he thought; he had known them to get drunk with, work with, rustle with, play cards with. He had fought and whipped Walt Harrison, fought and been whipped by Whitby, had had for his special friends Chet and Wash Haggin, for his enemy Jack Cade; with his brother Billy, and perhaps with all of them, he had hero-worshiped Curley Burne and held Abe McQuown in awe. With all of these except the new ones he did not know, he had killed Mexicans in Rattlesnake Canyon.

Now, he knew, every one of them was contemptuous of him, and more than Jack Cade hated him.

“Where is that big old shotgun, Bud?” Wash said, and laughed.

“Where’s Billy, Bud?” someone said, behind him.

Dad McQuown said, “It is kind of bad manners coming in here with that star hanging on you, Bud Gannon.”

“Whisky, Bud?” Abe said.

“Thanks,” he said, and shook his head.

“Didn’t come to drink? Nor talk either? Just come to stand there tongue-tied?”

Mitchell strummed on the guitar, and Joe Lacey glanced at it and then significantly back at Gannon. “Always favored a mouth organ myself,” he said. Jack Cade folded his arms and grinned, and Abe grinned too, his teeth showing in his red beard.

“Nothing to say, Bud?”

“Are these your Regulators?”

Abe nodded curtly. “Regulators.”

“You are all coming into Warlock?”

“Planned to,” Abe said. He raised an eyebrow. “Why? Any objection, Deputy?”

Gannon nodded, and watched the color rise in Abe’s cheeks.

“Why, you pissant son of a bitch!” Cade cried.

“Rip that star off him, boys!” the old man said.

“Are we posted out already, Bud?” Wash said, in a mock whining voice. Cade continued to curse.

“If there’s names to be called I’ll call them,” Abe said, and Cade stopped. “Objection, Bud?” he said, grinning again. “Are we posted?”

“Nobody’s posted. But no wild bunch calling themselves Regulators is coming in to make trouble, Abe. Not so long as I’ve got power to deputize every man in Warlock against them.”

“That’s the way it is?” Abe said, in a level voice. “That way, Bud?”

Gannon nodded, and there was a rising muttering around him.

“But I can come alone, you mean?” Abe said. “Surely, that would be fine, with Blaisedell and Morgan and half a dozen other gun-slinging pimps to burn me down. No; not likely. I am coming in with some friends to back my play, is all. Like he has got them to back his.” Abe rubbed a hand over his bearded chin. “I am going to kill him for murdering your brother, Bud,” he said, more quietly. “And kill him for murdering Curley down.” His voice began to shake. “What the hell do you mean?” he cried. “Coming down on my place and telling me I’m not to go in there?”

Gannon stood very stiffly facing Abe McQuown, and said, “I say you are not to come, Abe.”

“You damned snot pup!” the old man yelled.

“Run and hide, Abe,” Whitby said. “Look out! Bud is getting mad!”

“You know the trouble with you, Bud?” Abe said easily. “You are so yellow of him you can’t bear it for everybody not to be yellow of him too. It makes you look too bad if they aren’t. Shot down Billy and all you did was lick his boots for him. Shot down Curley,” he said, his voice rising. “After you had swore Curley didn’t go to kill Carl. And what’d you do, that’d sworn to it? Licked his boots some more. You are a fine deputy.”

Abe took a step toward him. “A whole town-full of them like you. Your hats shy off in the wind when he blows a breath. You can’t call yourself men so you can’t let anybody else be one either. But there won’t be a manleft anywhere unless somebody kills that black foul devil out of hell! You damned—”

“You are not bringing a bunch of Regulators into Warlock, Abe,” he said, raising his voice over Abe’s. “I came down to warn you I will have to deputize every man jack in Warlock against you.”

“You have sure turned hard against us, Bud,” Chet Haggin said.

“I’m deputy, Chet. There’s things I’m bound to do.”

“For Blaisedell,” Chet said.

He shook his head.

“Yeah, for Blaisedell!” Wash Haggin cried, and everyone began to talk at once until Abe shouted angrily for quiet.

But Chet went on. “Just one more thing I want to ask him, Abe. Bud, you think Blaisedell isn’t going to choose us out and cut us down one by one unless we go in there against him all together?”

“He’s got nothing against you. That’d be a thing I’d be bound to stop too, I expect.”

Chet grinned contemptuously and Wash shouted with laughter. They all laughed.

Abe leaned his hands on his concho belt and tilted back on his heels. “Like you stopped him from cutting Curley down, Deputy?”

Gannon felt himself flush painfully. “It was a fair fight, Abe. But you don’t mean to fight him fair. You are going in to—”

“Why, you are a liar,” Abe broke in. “Fair fight.”

“There will be no fight. You are not to bring these people in.”

“Be damned to you!” Walt Harrison said.

“Stop us, Bud!” Whitby said.

“I will stop you.”

“Let me talk to him a minute, Abe,” Jack Cade said, in his grating voice. Cade came forward toward Gannon, his thumbs in his shell belt. Gannon stared back into his hard eyes.

“ You,” Cade said, and paused for a long time. His dirty teeth scraped on his lower lip. “You are,” he said, “a yellow-belly suck-up.” He grinned and hitched at his belt. “You are a pureyellow, pissant, chicken-livered, coyote-bred, no– cojonesson of a bitch. I say that’s what you are. I say—”

Gannon stood listening to the level, grating voice taunting him, mouthing increasing foulness. He was not especially frightened of being forced into a fight, for he did not think it was Abe’s wish. He hardly heard the words, for they did not matter to him, but he realized that they would have to be stopped because where the law was merely a man there had to be some respect for that man or the law did not exist and so his journey down here had been worse than useless. He glanced from face to face around him and his heart sank to see them not merely contemptuous, but pleased and crudely eager. Only Wash Haggin looked a little ashamed, and Joe Lacey embarrassed. Chet had turned his face away. Abe was grinning faintly, watching out of the corners of his eyes.

The vile words droned on, without meaning. He unhooked the star from his jacket, and reached over to hand it to Chet Haggin. “Hold it,” he said. “I don’t want him to be able to say he killed another deputy.”

“I’ll say it!” Cade said, triumphantly. “Outside, Deputy!”

“Here,” Gannon said. “So it will be a fair fight.” He untied the bandanna from around his neck, and rapidly fixed a knot in either end. “You count for us,” he said to Chet. “We will draw on three.” He bit down on one knotted end of the bandanna, and held the other out; he saw immediately that Cade would not do it.

“I’m no God-damned fool for a handkerchief fight!” Cade said hoarsely.

It was enough, Gannon thought, and quickly he stuffed the bandanna into his pocket and took his star back. No one spoke.

It had meant nothing, and yet he hoped he had recovered something in their eyes. But he knew that Abe saw his bluff and the necessity for it, and with dread he realized that in backing Cade down he had challenged Abe himself. Now he wondered if Abe was sure enough of his own authority to let his recovery stand.

“Man doesn’t have to be a damned fool!” Cade said. “Come on outside and fight decent!”

“Pure iron,” Abe said. “Why, a man with iron in him like that deserves a medal.” He swung toward the breed. “Where’s the medal, Marko?” The breed looked confused. Abe made a gesture toward his mouth and Marko produced something from his pocket. Abe took it, and, with a swift movement, plucked off Gannon’s hat and dropped a cord around his neck. From it was suspended a mouth organ. “Curley won’t be needing this any more,” Abe said loudly. “How is that for a medal for Bud, boys?”

He recognized the release of tension in their laughter; what had passed between him and Jack Cade was set at nothing and he was a fool to them again as well as a traitor. He stripped the cord from around his neck and handed the mouth organ back to Abe, and took his hat back. “I think you’d better have it,” he said, and saw Abe’s eyes narrow dangerously.

“I’ll be going,” he said. “Abe, you have heard me about the Regulators. That’s the word with the bark on it.” It gave him a start to hear Carl’s phrase on his own lips.

“Abe!” the old man cried. “Are you going to let the son of a bitch walk out like that?”

“Just a minute,” Abe said. The others leaned forward, attentive and expectant. They were all afraid, Gannon thought suddenly. Maybe they felt, as Chet had said, that Blaisedell would destroy them one by one if they did not destroy him.

“What right have you to stop us?” Abe said quietly. “When you didn’t stop Blaisedell from killing Curley? Tell me that, Bud. How are you going to tell me I can’t post Blaisedell and kill him if he don’t run, when you didn’t stop him with Curley? That was my friend,” he said, more quietly still.