Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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53. AT THE GENERAL PEACH

I

UPSTAIRS in the General Peach a group of miners had collected in old man Heck’s room. Heck was standing; his skinny neck stuck out as he spoke. “If there is any trouble we will stand behind Blaisedell,” he said. “That’s what we have to do, every man jack of us. He said to me there wasn’t going to be any trouble and no reason looking for any, and how the deputy’d just left Ben in Miss Jessie’s custody. But I notice Miss Jessie didn’t look so sure. I told him we would stand right behind him all the way. It is something we got now.”

“That deputy’s gone and got too big for his britches,” Bull Johnson said.

“Jimmy said MacDonald called Miss Jessie a whore,” Frenchy Martin said.

They all looked at Fitzsimmons, who stood before the door. He placed one disfigured hand in the other and nodded.

“Why, God damn him!” Bull Johnson said, with awe in his voice. “He did? Did you hear him, Jimmy?”

Fitszsimmons told them what he and Ben Tittle had heard MacDonald say to Miss Jessie and the doctor.

“Dirty God-damned buggering rotten son of a bitch!” Bardaman cried. Patch added his curses, and each man cursed MacDonald in turn, formally, as though it were a kind of ritual.

“We should’ve burnt the Medusa long since!” old man Heck said. “And run MacDonald right out of the territory.”

“It’s not too late,” Bull Johnson said. “There’s matches still.”

“Is Ben hurt bad, Jimmy?” Patch asked.

They all looked to Fitzsimmons again. “He has got some shot in him. In his legs mostly.” Fitzsimmons looked as though he could hardly restrain a smile.

“I’ll break Lafe Dawson in half!” Bull Johnson said.

Fitzsimmons laughed, then, and said, “Do you know what is funny? MacDonald thinks he is way ahead of us now.”

“How’s that, Jimmy?” Daley asked.

“Why, because Ben shot him. He thinks he can hold it up to everybody now how we are a bunch of wild men.”

“What’s so funny about that?”

“I believe,” Bull Johnson said, squinting at Fitzsimmons. “I do believe that sonny-boy here is going to lecture the grownups again, and going around the barn to do it.”

Fitzsimmons flushed. “Well, MacDonald does, and he is wrong. You fellows should have seen him downstairs. Miss Jessie asked him to his face if he’d got orders to settle, and you should have heard him yell. He yelled too much,” he said, and grinned. “I would just make a bet he hadgot orders to settle, and he is scared to death we can sit him out. But now he thinks he is way ahead of us, on account of getting shot. Do you know the best thing that could happen to us? If Ben got taken to the judge and heard. And better yet if he got sent up to Bright’s City to court. We would be the worst kind of tom-fools to try to stop them from taking him out of here. Because then it would come out in court what MacDonald said to Miss Jessie. Threatening her like he did, and calling her what he did. You see?”

“I see we ought to cut his balls for him,” Bardaman said uncertainly.

Fitzsimmons shook his head and leaned easily against the door. “No, for if we just tread soft for a while he has ruined himself for good. There’ll be others to cut his balls for us when this gets out. And if it came to trial at Bright’s! I expect Mister Mac might hear more from Willingham. People think high of Miss Jessie, and not just here. MacDonald is gone out in the bucket if we just play it right. If we can just last it out.”

“I think maybe Jimmy is talking sense,” Bardaman said.

“Good sense,” Daley added quietly.

“By God, maybe we are not plowed under yet!” Patch cried.

Frenchy Martin leaned forward. “You think we might pull it off yet, eh, Jimmy?”

“I know so.”

“What about the union, Jimmy?” Bardaman said. He leaned forward too. Old man Heck was scowling a little, and Bull Johnson gnawed on a knuckle, but he was watching Jimmy Fitzsimmons too. They all watched him, waiting to hear what he had to say, and he smiled triumphantly from face to face, and began to speak.

II

In the hospital room, Ben Tittle lay on his cot like a bas-relief figure beneath the bedclothes. The whisky bottle the doctor had left was on the floor beside him. When Miss Jessie and Blaisedell appeared Tittle raised his head and grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth. The flesh on his bony face was an unhealthy, tender-looking white. “They going to hang me, Miss Jessie?” he said.

“No, they are not going to hang you, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. She came forward to sit on the edge of his cot, while the marshal remained in the doorway.

“Why, heck, and I was just in the mood for a hanging, too,” Tittle said. “Hello, Mr. Blaisedell.” The drunken grin looked pasted to his face. He said in a quieter voice, “Mister Mac cashed in yet?”

“Nobody’s heard,” Blaisedell said.

“You are to quiet down, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. “You have been drinking too much of that whisky. The doctor left it to stop the pain.”

“What did you want to take a shot at MacDonald for, fellow?” Blaisedell asked gravely. “That didn’t do anybody any good.”

The pasted smile disappeared. Tittle pouted. “Well, I know what is owed around here, Mr. Blaisedell. Even if no other ungrateful mutts don’t. I can pay my debts as well as any man.”

Blaisedell frowned. Miss Jessie, however, patted Tittle’s hand, and he seemed relieved. He lay back on his pillow with the smile returning.

“Why, I don’t like to make trouble for nobody, Marshal,” he said. “Excepting for a man who would talk to a lady like that. Said dirty things,” he said, and his voice fell with embarrassment. Then his voice grated as he said, “I hope he goes out painful, if I get lawed for it or not.”

“Said what things?” Blaisedell said.

“He threatened me, Clay,” Miss Jessie said quickly. “For feeding them here.”

“I know that. Said what dirty things, fellow?”

Cords drew tight in Tittle’s neck as he raised his head again. “Why, I guess – I guess I knew it was your place, Marshal,” he said. “But it come on me so, you see. But I guess you would have got him square, and finished him.” He looked pleadingly at Miss Jessie. “Did I do wrong, ma’am?”

She patted his hand. “No, Ben.”

“I did it for you. The only thing I ever found to show—” He stopped, and drew a deep breath and said, angrily now, “For all of us! And if I hang for it that is fine too, and little enough.”

“We won’t let them hang you, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. She gazed at Blaisedell with her great eyes. Blaisedell moved aside as footsteps hurried down the hall and the doctor appeared. His gray, crop-bearded face was grim.

“MacDonald?” Blaisedell asked.

“He is all right,” the doctor said. He stood frowning down at Tittle. “As a matter of fact he has left for Bright’s City. Ben, you have not done the Medusa strikers much good today.”

Ben Tittle laughed shrilly. “I run him out!”

“Maybe you did,” the doctor said, but he shook his head at Miss Jessie, and strain showed suddenly in her face. “Well, I will give you a little laudanum, Ben,” the doctor said. “And start picking the lead out of your hide.” He put his bag down and rummaged through it. “Jessie, you had better leave.”

Miss Jessie rose quickly. She went over to join Blaisedell, and took his arm as Tittle cried happily, “Go ahead and dig, Doc. A man can stand a lot to know that he has run Mister Mac out of Warlock!”

54. MORGAN MAKES A BARGAIN

MORGAN sat in his chair in his room at the hotel, reading the magazine by the late sunlight that came in the window. From time to time he chuckled, and frequently he turned back to the cover where, on the cheap gray paper, there was a crude woodcut of a face that was meant to be his face. Beneath it was the inscription: The Black Rattlesnake of Warlock.

It was a narrow, dark face with Chinese-slanted eyes, a drooping mustache, and lank black hair combed like a bartender’s. There was a wart high on the right cheek, close to the nose. Maybe it was only an ink smear, he thought, and brought the face closer to his eyes; it was a wart. He raised a hand to touch his own mustache, his own hair, his his own cheek where the wart was shown. “Why, you devil!” he said, with awed hilarity. “The Black Rattlesnake of Warlock!” He whooped and beat his hand on his thigh.

He skipped rapidly through the account of the Acme Corral shooting again, grinning, shaking his head. “Well, that will teach them to stand around with their backs to the Black Rattlesnake,” he said. There was a knock, and he rose and stuffed the magazine under his pillow. “Who’s that?”

“It’s Kate, Tom.”

He stretched and yawned, and went to open the door. Kate came in. She closed the door behind her and he nodded approvingly. “Dangerous,” he said. “Dangerous for anybody to know you are creeping in to see Tom Morgan. That’s a handsome bonnet, Kate.”

“Are you going?” she asked abruptly. Her eyes were very black in her white face, her jaw seemed set crookedly.

“Why, one of these days,” he said. “When I get through bleeding Taliaferro. I will have the price of the Glass Slipper back from him before long.”

“Where are you going?”

“North, or east. I might go west, though, or south. Or up, or down.”

She seated herself on the edge of the bed. She said, “I know you killed McQuown.”

“Do you? Well, you don’t miss much, do you, Kate?”

“You did it so they would blame the deputy for it.”

“Here! I don’t give a damn about—”

“I know you did!” she said. She bit her lip, breathing deeply. “But it went wrong. People know you did it and they are saying Blaisedell sent you. It is so wonderful when some dirty thing you do goes wrong.”

He sat down again, and propped his boots up on the bed beside her. “I know I am everything bad that’s ever happened in this town. I’ve just been reading about it. Look under the pillow there.”

She felt under the pillow as though there might be a rattlesnake there, which, in fact, there was. She looked at the picture on the cover without interest. After a moment she let the magazine drop to the floor.

“I’m famous, Kate!” he went on. “I’m probably the evilest man in the West.” He felt his finger touch his cheek, where the picture had showed the wart. “Women will use me to scare their babies with.”

“I know you killed McQuown,” Kate said. “You did it for Clay, too, didn’t you?”

“I forget whyI did it, Kate. Sometimes I just can’t keep track of why I do things.” He took out a cheroot and scratched a match. He blew smoke between them and regarded her through the smoke as she slowly inclined her face down away from his eyes, to stare at her clasped hands in her lap.

“Tom,” she said. “I will ask you to do something for me for once.”

“What do you want? The Glass Slipper for you and Buck and Taliaferro to turn into a dance hall? It is in pretty poor shape.”

“No, I don’t want anything to do with a dance hall. I want you to do something for me. I am asking you a favor, Tom.”

“Ask it.”

She spoke rapidly now, and her voice sounded frail and thin. “You’ve heard about this afternoon. I don’t know what happened exactly but – but all of a sudden everybody seems to know there is going to be trouble between the deputy and Clay.”

He leaned back and blew more smoke between them.

“Not only that,” Kate went on. “But there istalk you killed McQuown. Whether you did or not, there is talk.”

“You are back on that again.”

“Because I think – I think he has an idea you did it. He—”

“Who?”

“The deputy! I think he thinks you did it. I think he will be after you about it. Tom, don’t you see that sets him against Clay again?” He watched her eyes begin to redden, and her nose. He took the cigar from his mouth and examined it. “I am not going to let Clay Blaisedell kill him!” Kate continued. Now she sounded as though she had a cold in her head.

“Another Bob Cletus,” he said. “Well, I am nothing to do with it this time, Kate.”

“You can stop Clay.” Her eyes glistened with tears, and the tears made little tracks in the powder on her cheeks.

“Why, Kate, you have gone and got yourself in love with that ugly clodhopping farmer of a deputy. Again. What do you want to do, marry him and raise a brood?”

She didn’t answer.

“Why, you pitiful old whore,” he said, and it twisted within him like a big wrench forcing a rusty bolt.

“There is no word for you!” she whispered.

“Black rattlesnake?” he suggested. “Evilest man in the West?” He stopped; he did not know why he should suddenly feel so angry at her.

“Tom,” she begged. “You could ask Clay the way I am asking you. How would it hurt you to do something for me? Make Clay go with you.”

“He has got Miss Jessie Marlow to hold him. And she won’t go; she is prime angel here.”

“You could do something!”

“I might make a bargain with you.”

“What?”

“Since your deputy is the only one that matters. If youwent with me I might be able to do something.”

He saw her close her eyes.

“I know you would like to marry up with a famous hardcase-killer, now that your deputy has got to be one. Like Miss Angel Marlow with Clay. But I have got to come out of it with something, so you and me is the bargain. Why, you would be a mistress to the evilest man in the West and famous in your own right. We will go around in sideshows and charge admission to see the worst old horrors there are, make a fortune at it. We’d make a pair.”

She did not speak, and he went on. “If I can figure some way to get Clay out of line toward killing your deputy, this is. I might as well set it all out for you to agree to, or not. For instance, things might get bad from time to time so that we needed a stake. It would be up to you to apply yourself to your line of work and make us one. Now and then.”

“Yes,” Kate whispered.

His voice hurt in his throat; his grin hurt his face. “Well, and you would be party to my evil schemes. Murder people together, you and me. Rob stages. Corrupt innocent people to our evil ways – all that sort of thing.”

She did not speak, but she was looking up at him. He rose to stand before her, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why, Kate,” he said shakily. “You act like you don’t believe what I’m saying.”

She shook her head a little.

“You have gone and got yourself in terrible shape over that deputy, haven’t you? Pretty decent, is he, Kate?”

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

He took his hand from her shoulder. He felt as though he had been poisoned. “Not to me?” he said viciously. “Pretty good in your bed, is he? That lean, hungry-looking kind.”

Slowly, silently, she bent her head still farther until all he could see was the top of her hat. “Tell me what you want, Tom.”

“We’ll make our bargain right here and now, then. You are sitting in the right place.”

Sour laughter coiled and wrenched inside him as he watched one of her hands rise to her throat. It fumbled at the top cut-steel button of her dress. The button came open and her hand dropped to the second one. Her shoulders were shaking. “Oh, stop it,” he said. “I don’t want you.”

He stooped and picked up the magazine, where she had dropped it. He rolled it and slapped it hard against his leg as he sat down in the chair again. Kate had not moved. Her hand fumbled at the top button again; then she folded her hands in her lap.

“You have touched my black heart,” he said. When he released his grip on the magazine it sprang open, but he did not want to see the picture again and he brushed it off onto the floor. He touched the place on his cheek. It occurred to him that he was making a mannerism of this, and it seemed strange that it should be like the one of Kate’s he knew so well.

“So I have to give you Johnny Gannon for Bob Cletus,” he said.

Her head jerked up, her wet eyes slid toward his. He said harshly, “Clay would no sooner go after him than—” He stopped.

“I am afraid Johnny will make him,” Kate said. “Or – they will make him.”

“They?”

She shrugged, but he nodded.

“ She,” he said. “More likely. Miss Angel,” he said, nodding matter-of-factly. That would be it, although that was a part of it that Kate didn’t know enough to worry about yet.

He said, “Well, Gannon for Cletus and square,” and laughed a little. “All right, Kate.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

“Get out of here now. People will think you are not a lady.”

Obediently she rose and moved to the door. She was very tall; with her hat on she was taller than he was. She looked back at him as she started to pull the door closed, and he said, “You don’t need to worry, Kate. I expect Clay would rather shoot himself than your deputy.”

The door shut her face from him. He sat slumped in the chair, chewing on his cigar and listening to her retreating footsteps. He was tired of it all, he told himself. He had no interest in Kate, less in her deputy; what did he care what happened to Clay? He did not care to see how it would all come out. Nothing ever ended anyway. He sat there brooding at the sunlit window, sometimes raising a finger to his cheek with an exploratory touch. He was the evilest man in the West, he told himself, and tried to laugh. This time it would not come.

After a while he rose reluctantly. It was time to go and try himself against Lew Taliaferro again. Last night he had let Taliaferro beat him. But no one could beat him if he did not want it, and he was tired of that, too.

55. JUDGE HOLLOWAY

IN THE jail Judge Holloway sat at the table with his arms crossed on his chest and his whisky bottle before him, his crutch leaning against his chair. Mosbie sat with his hat tipped forward over his eyes. In the cell a Mexican snored upon the floor, and Jack Jameson, from Bowen’s Sawmill, waited out his twenty-four hours looking through the bars. Peter Bacon whittled on a crooked stick in his chair beside the alley door.

Pike Skinner, standing with his hands on his hips, turned as Buck Slavin came into the doorway. Slavin was in his shirtsleeves and wore a bed-of-flowers vest with a gold watch chain across it.

“Where is the deputy?” Slavin demanded.

“Rid out somewhere,” Bacon said, without looking up from his whittling.

“Run with his tail between his legs,” Jack Jameson said, from the cell. Everyone looked at him, and he winked dramatically, stooping to thrust his narrow, lantern-jawed face between the bars. “Run from the pure hypocritter of it,” he said. “To see a man hoicked in the lock-up for drunk and disorderly by a judge with a whisky bottle tied on his face.”

“You will have another twenty-four hours for contempt before you are through,” the judge said mildly.

“Scaring all those poor girls at the French Palace with a mean old six-shooter,” Mosbie said. “You ought to be ashamed, Jack.”

“’Twasn’t any six-shooter that scared them,” Jameson said. “It was a dommed big gatling gun. By God, what’s things come to when a man hasn’t seen hide nor hair of a woman for two months and comes busting into town for it, and then has to spend the night with a puking dommed greaser.”

“Rode out where?” Slavin said.

“What’s fretting you?” Skinner said. “Somebody pop another stage?”

“They’ve popped enough, and I’m sick of it. It’s God-damn time Gannon got out of town and did something about it!”

“Tell it to him to his face!” Skinner said angrily.

“I’ve told him to his face! I’ve told him he doesn’t earn his keep here. He thinks he did his job forever, shooting Wash Haggin!”

The judge sighed and said, “Buck, let me tell you the sad, sad facts of life. There will be no justice for you or for those poor ranchers weeping over their lost stock, without cash paid on the barrelhead for it. You wail and gnash your teeth for policing, but are you willing to pay for it yet? Are those ranchers I hear screaming down there willing yet? How much louder will they wail and gnash when they see the tax collector coming? Let me tell you, Buck; the deputy is doing his job exactly right. Those Philistines down there are going to be cleaned out when the sheriff is forced to do it, and that will be when the bellyaching gets so loud it hurts General Peach’s ears.”

“Seven stages thrown down on since McQuown got killed!” Slavin said. “When McQuown was—”

“McQuown!” Mosbie broke in, and, in a rasping voice, he cursed McQuown at length.

Jameson said, “By God if it don’t look like everybody is escared of old Abe yet.”

“Let him stay buried,” Bacon said gloomily. “If he gets dug up he will stink to heaven.”

“Morgan’ll stink,” Slavin said.

Skinner said uncomfortably, “I just don’t see how everybody got so certain all at once it was Morgan did it.”

“Johnny rode out to see Charlie Leagle,” Bacon said.

“He supposed to’ve seen Morgan?” Slavin asked, and Bacon nodded.

“Supposed to be more than Leagle saw him,” Mosbie said.

Skinner paced the floor with his hands locked behind his back. He glared at the names scratched on the wall; he swung around and glared at the judge, who had picked up the whisky bottle. “Well, tell us about it, you righteous old son of a bitch!” Skinner cried. “I remember how you used to blister Carl, and you are blistering kind of different lately. Tell us how Johnny has to go after Morgan if it looks like Morgan was the one! Tell us how Johnny has to yank Tittle out of Miss Jessie’s place under Blaisedell’s nose, if a warrant comes down. I saw you charging down to get him out of dutch with Blaisedell like you was trying to bust the pole-vault champeenship, you damned drunken fraud. Come on, tell us, Judge! You won’t, will you? You are as sick as any man here, that used to preach at us till it came out our ears. Let’s hear you preach now!”

The judge tipped his whisky bottle to his lips and drank.

“Has to pour whisky in itself before it can talk,” Jameson commented.

“Shut up!” Skinner said. He leaned back against the wall with his arms folded.

But the judge did not speak, and Mosbie said, “Surely Johnny has got sense enough not to buck up against Blaisedell.”

“Hasn’t,” Skinner said, “is the trouble.” He glared at the judge. “Well, what do you say? Preach us about how he is only doing his damned duty!”

The judge nodded, and glanced up at Skinner from under his eyebrows.

“I noticed you stopping him from it the other day fast enough.”

“Wheels within wheels,” the judge said.

Skinner snorted. He swung around to face Slavin. “And you’d like to see him kiting off down valley so they could snipe him off from behind some rock. I suppose you can’t see around a Concord far enough to see it is just what theywant him to do.”

“What they are doing,” Bacon said. “They are using McQuown getting killed for an excuse for hell-roaring all over the place. So I expect Johnny figures maybe he can quiet them by sticking who did it.”

“Which is Morgan,” Mosbie said.

“It’s a cleft stick for you,” Bacon said, and shook his head.

“It is a cleft stick for Johnny Gannon,” Skinner said. “Well, what do you say now?” he said to the judge. “Maybe you like all this?”

“No,” the judge said thickly. “I don’t like it, and don’t you scorn me, you great lumbering lout! I wasn’t liking it before you ever saw it.”

“Say Morgan did it,” Mosbie said, in his rasping voice. “Say he did and he is a dirty dog, and I won’t deny it. But he is Blaisedell’s friend, and I say this town owes Blaisedell one or two things, or two hundred – what he has done here. I say we can give him Morgan.”

“Blaisedell has to go,” Slavin said firmly. “Not just because of the friends he picks, either.”

“Buck!” Mosbie said. “I want to hear you say out loud that Blaisedell has done no good here. I want to hear you say it.”

“Why, I don’t deny he has, fellows,” Slavin said. “Nobody does. It is just time for him to move on, and mostly it is time because of Morgan.”

“Tell you what you do, Buck,” Skinner said. “Next meeting you make a motion he is to post Morgan out. Since you are starting to speak up so bold.”

Slavin stood there biting his lip and frowning. “One thing,” he said. “One thing I have got against Blaisedell that isn’t Morgan. He makes people take sides hard against him or for him. He makes bad contention.” He nodded to the others, turned, and departed.

“Well, I am for the marshal,” Bacon said sadly. “But it certainly makes a man sick and tired – and makes him think. How Johnny is coming against him. Want it or not, looks like.”

“Johnny can go his way and Blaisedell his,” Skinner said. “I can’t see why they can’t go along and not scratch each other. Blaisedell has never made a move to set himself against Johnny. Not one!”

“I guess Johnny hasn’t gone and made any move against Blaisedell, for that,” Bacon said. “I guess it just looks like he is going to have to, one of these days.”

“Over Morgan,” Mosbie said.

“You boys are starting to make me feel real sorrowful over the deputy,” Jameson said. “It looks like he is in dommed bad shape.”

They all watched a fly circling in flat, eccentric planes over the judge’s head. The judge waved it away. “It is the awkward time,” he said. “It is where this town don’t know yet whether it still needs a daddy to protect it, or not.”

“You don’t have to kick your daddy in the face when you have got your growth,” Bacon said.

Jameson said, “You know what my old dad did to me once? I—”

“Shut up!” Skinner yelled at him.

Mosbie stirred in his chair. “There’s some things I wish I knew about Johnny,” he said. “I wish I knew how he felt about it when Blaisedell shot Billy. I wouldn’t want to think—”

“He don’t hold it against Blaisedell,” Skinner said. “I can say that for sure.”

Mosbie nodded.

Then Bacon spoke. “Man doesn’t like to talk about him when he is not here,” he said, in an embarrassed voice. “But there’s something been bothering me too I’d better speak up about. Maybe somebody can—” He paused, and his wrinkled face turned pink. “Well, that Kate Dollar he is seeing pretty good. There is that talk how she is down on Blaisedell, and why, from Fort James. And Johnny seeing so much of her, you know.”

“Set Johnny against the marshal, you think?” Skinner said worriedly. He began to shake his head. “I don’t think—”

The judge slapped the palm of his hand down on the table. “If you boys would accept my judgment,” he said. “I would say that Johnny Gannon wouldn’t do anything any of you wouldn’t, nor hold to a reason you wouldn’t. And I would say he is more honest with himself than most, too.”

Skinner was scowling. “Only—” he said, in a husky voice. “Only, God damn it to hell, if it comes to it, and pray God it don’t, Blaisedell is the one I would have to side with. Because—”

“That’s where you are wrong,” the judge broke in. “Thinking you can put it so you are choosing between two men.”

“Well, Judge,” Skinner said. “Maybe us poor, simple, stupid common folks has to look at it that way. Us that sees more trees than forest.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” the judge said. He let his head hang forward; he gripped the neck of his whisky bottle. “But maybe you have to see by now that the deputy here is only doing what the deputy here is going to have to do.”

Skinner’s red gargoyle’s face grew redder still, and deep corrugations showed in his forehead. He took a deep breath. Then he shouted, “Yes, I can see it! But damned if I want to!” He swung around and stamped out the door.

“He’s one for getting upset,” Jameson commented. “That one.”

“You know what I get to thinking about?” Bacon said. “I get to thinking back on the old days in Texas droving cattle up to the railroad. Didn’t own a thing in the world but the clothes I had on and the saddle I sat. So nothing to worry about, and nothing but hard work day in and day out sort of purifies a man. No forests there,” he said, smiling faintly at the judge. “It is the forests that wear a man down dead inside, Judge.”

“It is the lot of the human race,” the judge said. He raised his bottle and shook it. Staring at the bottle he said, “And it is terrible past the standing of it. But I have here the universal solvent. For wine is the color of blood and the texture of tears, and you can drink it to warm your belly and piss it out to get rid of it. And forget the whole damned mess that is too much for any man to face.”

“That’s not wine,” Jameson said. “That’s raw whisky.”

The judge looked at him with a bleared eye. “I will sleep in a cask of raw whisky,” he went on. “Wake me up and pump me out when everyone is dead.” His voice shook, and his hand shook, holding the bottle. “What are deputies to me?” he said hoarsely. “Deputies or marshals. They are nothing, and I will not be a hypocrite to sentimentality when I can drink myself above it all. Wake me up when they have killed each other off! Miner and superintendent, vigilante and regulator, deputy and marshal. They are as dead leaves falling and nothing to me. Nothing!” he shouted. He banged the whisky bottle down on the table top, raising it high and crashing it down again, his face twisting and twitching in drunken horror. “Nothing!” he shouted. “Nothing! Nothing!”

They watched him in awe at his grief, as he continued to cry “Nothing!” and bang the bottle. The Mexican’s swollen, sleepy face appeared, a square below and to the right of that of Jameson, who whispered, “Listen to the dommed old bastard go!”