Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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Gannon and Schroeder did collaborate to capture a road agent when an attempt was made on the Bright’s City stage a week or ten days ago. The stage, although under fire, ran for it and gained the town quickly, where Schroeder immediately organized a posse including Gannon and a number of Schroeder’s friends, who happened to be passing the time of day at the jail. The posse lost one of the bandits, but captured the other, one Nat Earnshaw. Schroeder then took Earnshaw to Bright’s City for trial, where he now resides, awaiting court session. Great praise has been heaped upon Schroeder for his quick action, and his courage – for Earnshaw, although not actually a member of McQuown’s band, is a San Pabloite, a rustler, and a badman of some repute.

Possibly Schroeder’s triumph has been made the more of because Blaisedell has had a failure of sorts. Wax, one of Taliaferro’s dealers, was shot in the alley behind the Lucky Dollar, and his murderer has not been apprehended. It could have been almost anyone, since the victim was a gunman himself, quarrelsome and overbearing. Wax is not widely mourned. There has been some hint, however, that Morgan was the murderer, in some unnoticed and growing feud between the Lucky Dollar and the Glass Slipper, whose rear doors both open upon the same fatal alley. Morgan has made a great number of enemies here. He can be most unpleasant, brusque and rude, and has a way of looking at a person that expresses all too explicitly an almost unbounded contempt for his fellow man.

January 10, 1881

There has been a Social Event, a Wedding, and we are stuffed with punch and wedding cake, and, perhaps, with envy. Ralph Egan[2] has married Myra Burbage, and the happy couple is by now entrained from Welltown to a honeymoon in San Francisco at Matt’s expense, the bride’s fondest wish having been to see the ocean before she settled down in Warlock.

I wonder how many of us have realized the change inherent in this event, the first such a one that we have had. Civilization is stalking Warlock.

The bride was very attractive indeed, particularly, I am sure, to the unsuccessful swains, Jos. Kennon, Pike Skinner, and Ben Hutchinson. There have been a horde of others along the way, including Chet Haggin, but these were the ones who galloped cheek by jowl down to the finish line, with Ralph, in the opinion of the pretty judge, the winner.

Curley Burne was on hand, as pleasant, humorous, and eminently likable as always; with him the Haggin twins, the bantering Wash and the silent Chet – alike as two peas, they are commonly identified by the side upon which they wear their six-shooters, Wash being left-handed, his brother right. All three were very much upon their good behavior, and Curley in particular went out of his way to ingratiate himself to one and all. It is difficult to think badly of the fellow. As Blaikie puts it, who is something of a philosopher, McQuown is like a coin, with Curley Burne imprinted upon one side, and the evil physiognomy of Jack Cade upon the other. A man’s attitude toward McQuown depends upon which side of the coin he has seen.

Matt Burbage fixed me with his glittering eye; I was the wedding guest in fact. He tells me not only of the dangers he has passed, but of those that beset him on every hand. He has lost much stock, he says, but is not inclined to hold McQuown responsible. He says he has never known McQuown to steal from his neighbors, and that he has heard that McQuown recently brought back from Mexico nearly a thousand head, which he will fatten and drive up to sell to the reservation at Granite. He has seen McQuown very little of late. He thinks – this in a most discreet whisper – that Benner, Calhoun, and possibly Friendly have been responsible for a good part of the road-agentry.

Matt is worried about squatters coming in, a good proportion of downright outlaws among them. San Pablo, he says, has grown, and has become even more tough-town, calky, and dangerous than ever. He intends to do all his purchasing in Warlock now, a much longer trip for him, but good news for me. I think Matt longs for the peaceful past (he was one of the first to settle along the San Pablo River) when he had only Apaches to worry about. He has heard that Bright’s City is about to unleash hordes of tax collectors upon us; on the other hand he bewails the lack of law officers to pursue his lost stock. Some of us love Freedom not so much as Safety, but are given pause by Safety’s Cost.

Miss Jessie attended as bridesmaid, and afterward played on the melodeon, which tended to wheeze and rattle under her ministrations but still produced most pleasant harmonies. She has a high, sweet soprano, and it was wonderful to hear her render such favorites as: “She Wore A Wreath of Roses”; “Days of Absence”; and “Long, Long Ago.” All joined in with a will on “Tenting Tonight” and “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” etc.

It is rare to see her without Blaisedell these days. (I should imagine that Matt did not wish to offend his neighbor McQuown by inviting the Marshal.) The occasion of Myra Burbage’s wedding was a romantic one to a populace of bachelors, for Ralph is a well-liked young fellow, and his spouse has long been the belle of the valley. Still, they are as nothing compared to Miss Jessie and the Marshal, who are as romantic a match as Tristram and Isolde.

The Angel of Warlock is a fascinating woman, not beautiful certainly, although she has a wealth of ringleted brown hair and fine eyes. She arrived in Warlock during the first boom, perhaps six months after I did. She was preceded by a lawyer, who purchased the old Quimby boardinghouse from the crippled prospector who was the proprietor of that riotous and unsavory place. The lawyer remained to have it refurbished into a decent boardinghouse, repainted, and rechristened in honor of the governor, upon which Miss Jessie herself arrived, in a clamor of speculation. She quickly won our hearts, as much by her gentle demeanor and apparent defenselessness, as by her actions during the typhoid epidemic of that summer, when she converted a part of her establishment to a hospital, which she has maintained as such ever since on what must be some regular and not inconsiderable income which she receives from elsewhere, for surely the money paid by her boarders cannot support the General Peach.

The doctor, who knows her best, says she comes from St. Louis, and that her father was a wealthy sickly man, whom she nursed until he died, which was shortly before she came to Warlock. This is all the information the doctor will give, and is perhaps all he possesses. Beyond this I have only my own speculations.

I would deduce, for instance, that she began nursing her father on an intensive basis, so that she was completely occupied with him, before she reached her twentieth year. Her girlish mannerisms and dress, which at first I thought affected, now seem to me to indicate that before this age she was removed from the normal social contacts of feminine society, to become so preoccupied with her duties to her parent that many of her habits of dress, speech, etc., remain those of a young girl.

Beneath her gentleness is a great strength of character. We have had occasion to see this in Citizens’ Committee meeting, where she often locks horns with MacDonald, a bullheaded and rude man, over matters pertaining to the miners. Indeed, upon occasion she can don an almost repellent schoolmarmish attitude. To continue with my deductions about her, however: she has a strong will, she is a romantic, she is also quite plain. I think she came to Warlock in order to be Someone. Possibly she came, too, because this is the Frontier, which term I understand is a romantic one to those not there residing. I imagine she had been a nonentity in her own locality and society. If this is true, she has achieved entirely her object in coming here. She is certainly unique, a Personality, and her stature here is immense.

Her reputation is spotless, which is, in itself, astonishing in this place where foul rumor is a favorite pastime, and gossip vicious and pervasive. Indeed, I think one of the quickest ways to commit suicide in Warlock would be to cast aspersion against her good name. She lives with one fat Mexican maid in a house full of the roughest kind of ignorant, crude, dishonorable fellows, with only the doctor in one of her rooms as, I suppose, a sort of duenna. She walks streets which rock with catcalls when such an old harridan as Mrs. Sturges passes by, and where women from the Row are all but physically assaulted if they dare to promenade, and is greeted always in the most polite and gentlemanly manner. She can nurse miners mouthing dreadful obscenities in their pain, and yet find men completely tongue-tied before her for fear they will utter some slight impropriety of speech that might offend her ears. She is a miracle without being in the least miraculous.

She is also, now that I find myself thinking of her, a lonely and slightly pitiful figure, and I am pleased by Blaisedell’s attentions to her, and by her reception of them.

The Marshal has, very recently, taken up residence at the General Peach, takes tea with Miss Jessie in the afternoon, and, the doctor says, submits amiably to having poetry read him. All in all, Blaisedell’s courtship of her is fitting, and I think there will be few to resent it. This romance is an ennobling thing for this foul-minded, whore-ridden town, a showing-forth to limited minds that there can be more to the conjunction of men and women than a befouled and sweating purchased trick in bed.

January 15, 1881

Blaisedell has posted a man from town. We knew it must come eventually, and I have dreaded it. For if he posts a man out, and that man comes in, he comes under threat of death. If it is carried out are not we of the Citizens’ Committee, who have hired Blaisedell and directed the posting, executioners? So I have waited in dread for this to happen, and waited in more dread still to see if the edict would be honored. Earnshaw, however, has reportedly left the territory.

Earnshaw had been acquitted by a jury of supposedly good men and true in Bright’s City. I suppose there is no reason to damn the jurors, who were bound to abide by the evidence; and ten witnesses had ridden in from San Pablo to swear that Nat Earnshaw was seen by all of them in San Pablo on the day that the prosecution claimed he had tried to rob the Bright’s City stage, and that he had been mistakenly apprehended by the posse while innocently riding into Warlock. It was not stated why he sought to flee the posse with his accomplice, who was not named.

Unfortunately, no one on the stage could identify Earnshaw as one of the bandits, for both had been masked, and the only witnesses for the prosecution were Schroeder and the possemen, whose evidence that they had followed the tracks of Earnshaw’s horse from the scene of the assault upon the stage to the point of capture, was not given as much credence as that of the San Pablo hardcases, whose threatening demeanor was no doubt more effective than their verbal testimony.

The Citizens’ Committee met upon the subject of Earnshaw, and discussed posting him with a considerable lack of resolution. Blaisedell spoke to the effect that if we ever intended to post anyone, Earnshaw was a good place to begin. Upon which we entrusted our consciences to the Marshal’s capable hands. There was no dissent, although Miss Jessie was not present, nor Judge Holloway, who, I am sure, would have loudly damned the illegality of our action. Luckily the judge had drunk himself into insensibility that day, and was not heard from for several days thereafter.

We would have heard from him had Blaisedell been forced to ventilate Earnshaw, I am sure. He can be as nettlesome as various of the wild-eyed Jewish prophets must have been to their rulers. But thank God the fatal day when we must look at each other and try to shrug off some stubborn fellow’s death as being only his own doing, is put off a little longer.

[1] The Sister Fan and Pig’s Eye were already at this time having difficulty disposing of the water encountered at the lower levels.

[2] Proprietor of the Feed and Grain Barn.

9. GANNON CALLS THE TURN

IT HAD turned chilly with the sun gone down and some quality in the atmosphere did not hold the dust, so that the air was clear and sweet now as Gannon walked back from supper at the Boston Café. The stars were already showing in the soft, violet darkness that shaded off to a pale yellow above the peaks of the Dinosaurs, where the sun had disappeared. Men lounged in groups along the boardwalk in the central block, leaning against the saloon fronts or seated on the tie rail, where a number of horses were tied. They talked in quiet voices and here and there among them was the orange glow of a cheroot or a match flame – wool-hatted miners, and cowboys in flannel shirts and shell belts, striped pants or jeans, and star boots, with the shadows cast by their sombreros making of their faces only pale ovals. They fell silent as Gannon passed. No one spoke to him, or spoke at all; there was only the stamp and snort of a horse at the rail, the hollow clumping of his bootheels.

He walked through the thin stripes of light thrown out by the louvre doors of the Glass Slipper. Other groups of men fell silent before him. Unwillingly he felt his steps hasten a little, his wrist brushed against the butt of his Colt, and his stomach twisted with its own cold colic. He glanced down to see a little light glitter on the star pinned to his vest.

It was quiet tonight, he told himself calmly, quiet for a Saturday night; the concentrated jumble of sound from the Lucky Dollar faded behind him.

When he descended into Southend Street dust prickled in his nostrils. To his right were the brightly lit houses of the Row; to his left, across Main Street, the second-story window above Good-pasture’s darkened store was a dim yellow rectangle. Light from the jail spread out across the planks of the boardwalk, beneath the hanging sign.

Carl sat alone at the table, one hand on the shotgun. “Seen the marshal?” he asked.

“I expect he’s in at the Glass Slipper.”

“Pony and Calhoun and Friendly’s in town,” Carl said. He leaned back in his chair, stiffly. “See them?”

“No.”

“And your brother,” Carl said.

Gannon went over and sat down in the chair beside the cell door. The key was in the lock and he withdrew it, and hung the ring on the peg above his head.

“They are in the Lucky Dollar, I heard,” Carl said. He chewed on the end of his mustache; he stretched. “Well,” he said, in a shaky voice. “He handled the whole bunch at once, I don’t know why he can’t four of them.”

“I expect he can,” Gannon said. At least Cade was not in, he thought, and despised himself.

“I don’t know,” Carl said, rubbing a hand over his face. “Seems like I face up to it every night as soon as I close my eyes. But damn if I can—” He shook his head, and said, “When you see a real man it surely shames you for what you are, don’t it?”

“Meaning Blaisedell?”

“Meaning Blaisedell. You know, I had got to thinking that if I didn’t go up against McQuown sometime I would know I was dirt. But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe heis the one – I don’t know, maybe I mean big enough or clean enough or something – to do it. My God damnhow I have chewed myself to ribbons over that bunch. But maybe McQuown is Blaisedell’s by rights.”

Gannon said nothing. It seemed to him that hate was a disease, and that he did not know a man who didn’t have it, turned inward or outward. He had felt the hate when he had walked along Main Street tonight, hate for him because he was suspected of being friendly with McQuown; he wondered if McQuown, in San Pablo, could not feel the hate all the more. Maybe McQuown had gotten used to it long ago. Carl hated both McQuown and his own self, and that was the worst kind, the pitiful kind.

“Dirt,” Carl said. “Me”—he laughed breathlessly—“that thought I was the finest thing to walk the earth when I put this star on here. Not because of Bill Canning exactly, either,” he said. “But because I was ashamed of every damned man in Warlock. And hating that red-bearded son of a bitch so much. And Curley.”

Gannon looked down to examine the little scar in the fold of flesh stretched between his thumb and forefinger. It had healed quickly. “Why, Carl, I believe you have the Saturday night jim-jams!”

“Something awful,” Carl said, laughing and stretching again. “Well, I have never seen one yet that didn’t pass on by come Sunday morning. And a damned comfort when they do.”

After a long time Carl spoke again. “Had a delegation from the Citizens’ Committee come to call this afternoon. Buck and Will Hart.”

“What did they want?”

“Wanted some action about all this road-agenting. I told them there’d been some starch took out of us running any more posses, since Keller hadn’t got pay sent down yet for those boys that run the last one for me. It turned out they had a proposition, which was the Citizens’ Committee guaranteeing posse pay.”

“That will make things easier,” Gannon said. “It is good to know we can jump if we get another clear shot.”

“It is,” Carl said. He leaned back in his chair again. “I told them it was fine and public-spirited and all, but Buck is hard to get along with sometimes. We got along better when I rode shotgun for him; he was always afraid I was going to quit. We had some words.”

Gannon saw that Carl had flushed; Carl avoided his eyes, and he thought that Carl and Buck Slavin might have had words over him.

“Well, I told him if he didn’t like the way I did my job he could hang this star on himself and welcome,” Carl went on. “I told him and Will to look at those names over there,” he said, nodding toward the scratchings in the whitewash. He glanced toward Gannon now, and his deep-set eyes looked very hot. “Like I have to every time I turn around in here. See if they could count a man on there didn’t turn in his star and run, or get shot out from behind it. And I told them they wouldn’t see me run. I might not maybe go out on the prod for Curley Burne or any of them, but I won’t ever run. Made a damned fool of myself,” he said, flushing more darkly.

“Curley?” Gannon said carefully.

“Well, there is a lot that thinks high of Curley. Will Hart is one. Said he didn’t think Curley ever robbed a coach in his life. We had some words on that, too.” Carl scrubbed his hands up over his face. “I don’t know – I am pretty down on Curley, Johnny,” he said, in a washed-out voice. “I guess it is a laughing backshooter makes me madder than any other kind. I don’t know. Or maybe it is McQuown is Blaisedell’s size, but maybe Curley is mine.”

Speaking very carefully again, Gannon said, “Like you said, there are a lot that don’t think bad of Curley.”

Carl nodded jerkily. “Part of it, too. For he is what the rest is and can fool folks to think he is not. And so he is worse.” He glanced at Gannon again with his hot eyes, and Gannon knew enough had been said.

He nodded noncommittally.

Carl sighed and said, careful-voiced now in his turn, “Well, it was sure a surprise to me when it was you come in here with me, Johnny. I guess you know there is some that won’t take to you kindly, right off.”

“Surely,” he said, and he felt the questions Carl wanted to ask, but hadn’t yet.

“Well, you come in and that’s the main thing,” Carl said. “But I guess you don’t really hate San Pablo the way I do, do you?”

“I guess not, Carl.”

“Don’t mean anything by mentioning it,” Carl said apologetically. “But I remember there was some talk at the time – I guess it was Burbage. How what happened to that bunch of greasers down in Rattlesnake Canyon that time wasn’t Apaches’ doing.”

Gannon didn’t reply as footsteps came along the planks outside. Carl stiffened in his chair, slapped his hands on the shotgun, started to rise. Pony Benner came in, with the marshal a step behind him.

“This one is getting a little bit quarrelsome,” Blaisedell said, putting Pony’s Colt down on the table before Carl. “Maybe he’d better cool off overnight, Deputy.”

Carl got to his feet. The Colt rattled as he slid it into the table drawer and closed the drawer with a slap. Pony looked past Carl to meet Gannon’s eyes. He spat on the floor.

Blaisedell said, “If the judge comes in tell him this one was picking away at Chick Hasty in the Lucky Dollar. It looked like trouble so I took him out of circulation.”

“Surely, Marshal,” Carl said. Blaisedell nodded to Gannon, turned, and went out, tall in the doorway before he disappeared.

“Well, Mister run-chicken, pee-on-your-own, Deputy Bud Gannon,” Pony said, his small, mean face contorted with fury and contempt. “Why didn’t you get down and kiss his boots for him?” he cried, swinging toward Carl. “Gimme that damned hogleg back, Carl!”

Carl straightened his shoulders, hitched at his shell belt, and, with a swift motion, picked up the shotgun and slammed the muzzle against Pony’s belly. Pony yelped and jumped back. Carl said, “G-get in there before I blow you in!”

Pony retreated into the cell before the shotgun, and Carl slammed the door. His face, when he turned to take the key Gannon handed him, was blotched with color.

In the cell Pony was cursing.

“Hear anything?” Carl said, winking at Gannon. “I believe it is those rats moaning in there again. One of these days we are going to have to clean them out, I expect.”

“All right!” Pony cried. “All right, Carl, you have chose the way you are going to choke yourself. All right, Bud Gannon, God damn you to hell – we’ll see, God damn you all!”

“Damned if that one rat don’t squeak just like old Pony Benner,” Carl said.

“You will chew dust, you stringy, washed-up old bastard!” Pony yelled. His face disappeared. Immediately it returned. “And that gold-handled, muckering, God-damned long-haired son too!” Pony shouted. “He has threw his weight around for the last time, the last God-damned rotten time. We give him his chance and now he’ll eat dust, too. You hear I said it, you kiss-boot sons of bitches!”

He retreated into the cell, and the cot creaked.

“Quieted down,” Carl commented. “Sounds like somebody set a cat after those rats.” There was a triumphant flush to his face, but Gannon saw the flicker of fear in it, and was embarrassed to see it there. He went to lean in the doorway and stare out into the street.

“No reason to bother the judge, I guess,” Carl said, behind him. “Judge was taking on freight heavy this afternoon, and he would need a lot of sobering up by now. We’ll just leave this one wait the night, and sweep him out with the cockroaches in the morning.”

Gannon watched Billy coming down the boardwalk. “Billy,” he said.

“Bud,” Billy said, casually. Gannon stepped back inside and Billy followed him in. Pony’s face reappeared between the bars.

“Some day you will get just too feisty,” Billy said to Pony. He would not look at Gannon. He said to Carl, “What’s the fine, Schroeder? I guess I can make it up.”

“Judge hasn’t been in,” Carl said. “I’m holding him for disturbing the peace till he comes, or morning, one.”

“He wasn’t disturbing it that much,” Billy said. “Let him out and we’ll settle when the judge shows.”

“I guess not, son.”

“Kiss-boot bastards!” Pony cried, and kicked the door. Gannon stood watching his brother’s face. It was sullen and hard, with only the shadowy mustache to show the youth in it.

“Let him out,” Billy said to Carl. He dropped his hands to his shell belt, as though to hitch at it; in an instant his Colt was in his hand, and trained on Carl behind the table.

Gannon heard Carl’s sudden ragged breathing, and Pony’s laugh, but he stared still at Billy’s face. Those cut-steel eyes might have been Jack Cade’s, and they were eyes that had looked at Deputy Jim Brown with the same expression in the San Pablo saloon, just before Billy had shot him dead for making too much fun of his youth and his claim to being the best marksman in San Pablo.

But it was a copy of Abe McQuown’s shy grin that twisted the corners of Billy’s mouth, and a copy of Curley Burne’s bantering tone in which he said, “ Por favor, Carl. Por favor.”

“Go to hell,” Carl whispered.

“Listen to the rats squeaking now!” Pony crowed. “Squeaking awful quiet, seems like.”

Billy said, “Get the keys, Bud.”

Gannon stepped between Billy and Carl, as though he were going for the key. He stopped there, blocking Billy’s Colt. Billy started to jump sideways and Pony yelled, “ Watch the shotgun!”

Gannon stepped out of the way. Pony was cursing again.

“Buckshot,” Carl said.

“Birdshot,” Billy said, and again there was a reflection of Curley Burne in his tone. He grinned slightly. “I know what you carry in that piece.”

“Buckshot,” Carl said. “On Saturday nights.” His voice was stronger. “Son,” he said. “Buckshot beats a Colt’s just like a full house does a pair.”

Billy slipped his Colt back into its scabbard. He gave Gannon a blank look, not so much of anger as appraisal.

“You threw me, Bud,” he said. “And took kind of a chance too.”

“You wasn’t going to go to shooting. Whoever it was.”

“Maybe I wasn’t, but it wasn’t a bluff you had to call. I had you and Carl covered fair enough.”

“Get out of here,” Carl said. “Before I decide to chuck you in there with Mister Squeaky.”

Billy said, “The marshal doesn’t run this town.”

“Looks like he does tonight,” Carl said.

“Nah, he doesn’t. Just some cowardy-cats in it.” Billy inclined his head almost imperceptibly at Gannon, and went out.

Pony yelled, “You, Mister throw-your-brother! I guess maybe next time he won’t be so quick to take big Jack off you!”

Carl slammed the barrel of the shotgun against the wooden bars, just as Pony leaped back away from the door.

Gannon cleared his throat. “Well, I guess I will take a walk around town, Carl.”

“Feel easy,” Carl said, grinning at him hugely. “It is a quiet night after all.”

Gannon went out along the boardwalk. Billy was a lean shadow slanted against the wall just around the corner on Southend Street. “We had better talk some, Bud,” Billy said.

He stepped down off the boardwalk into the dust. Up the street behind Billy were the lighted windows of the French Palace, and there were men passing on the far side of the street, laughing and talking. He heard Pony’s name, and Blaisedell’s.

Billy had turned to face the adobe wall beside him; he kicked a boot against it. “What’s gone and got into you, Bud? Went off to Rincon to be a telegrapher and then come back, only not going back to Pablo, you said. Warlock is no kind of place to come back to. And deputying. What’s got into you, Bud?”

Gannon shrugged.

Billy kicked the wall again. “Well, maybe I know why you lit out. But what the hell, Bud! What would you have done else, let them shoot us down and run that stock back?”

“I guess if you steal stock you have got to shoot to keep it sometimes. But not the way it was done, Billy.”

“You’ve stole before that.”

“I never saw it run all the way through like that before, though.”

“So you come back and went to deputying to stop it, huh?” Billy sneered. “Well, you have changed, Bud. Got religion or something.”

“I guess you have changed, too, Billy, since you made your score. People change.”

“Ah, Christ, Bud!” Billy said, and now for the first time in the darkness it sounded like his brother again, and not some awkward and snarling boy-man out of San Pablo. “Well, I wanted to say I didn’t blame you for what you did just now, which was slick, and– Hell, I knew it was what you had to do in there! But this is the bad thing, this God-damned marshal that thinks he is Lord God of Creation here. Where does he think he gets off, posting Nat out like that and running Pony into jail?”

“I don’t know what Pony was doing, Billy,” he said. “I didn’t see what happened. But I know Pony – so do you.”

“Christ, you have sure gone over, haven’t you?” Billy said. He leaned back against the wall. “Like Blaisedell pretty good now, do you? Think he is pretty fine?”

“I don’t know him, except to say hello to.”

“Well, sometime when you get real good sucked up to him, ask him something for me! Ask him who the hell he thinks he is. Lording it over everybody. Running everybody around and telling them when they can come and go and all. This is a free country, isn’t it? God damn it!”

“Billy,” he said. “It’s been free the way you mean, maybe, but it is going to have to be free the other way. So people are free to live peaceable, and free of being hurrahed and their property busted up, and their stock run off, and stages robbed. And killed for no more—”

“Who’s the killer?” Billy broke in. “It is him! He got those gold-handled guns for the grand turkey-shoot prize for killing, didn’t he?”

“I guess he is what we have to have here, then. For people like I am afraid you have got to be.”

He had meant to say the people Billy has got to be like, but he didn’t try to correct himself, and Billy whispered, “Jesus!” A group of horsemen turned into Southend Street and rode up toward the Row. They were laughing, and without even listening to what they were saying he knew they were laughing about Pony Benner.

“I don’t mean to take up preaching,” he said. “But I guess if I have changed it’s because I’ve seen there has got to be law. It seems like you were always quicker and smarter to see a thing than I was. Can’t you see it, Billy?”

“I can see this much,” Billy said, in a contemptuous voice. “Who your law is for. Petrix at the bank and Goodpasture’s store, and Buck’s God-damned stages and Kennon’s livery stable and all.”

“Not just them. It is decent people running things, not rustlers and road agents and hardcase killers.”

“Blaisedell isn’t a hardcase killer? I heard he killed ten men in Fort James. Ten!”

“You can hear anything you want to hear. But there is something I saw, and got a hammer pin through my hand to prove it. Jack would have shot him in the back if I hadn’t stopped it.”

“Oh, I know Jack is a son of a bitch,” Billy said. “Everybody knows that.”

“Do you think Abe didn’t put him to it?”