Warlock

Blaisedell said, “If you are talking about me, I am responsible to the Citizens’ Committee here.”

“Ah!” the judge said. He sat up very straight; he pointed a finger at the marshal. “Well, most ways it is a bad thing, and it is not even much of a thing, but it is an important thing and I warrant you to hang onto it!”

“All right,” Blaisedell said, and looked amused.

“I am telling you something for your own good and everybody’s good,” the judge whispered. “I am telling you a man like you has to be always right, and no poor human can ever be that. So you have got to be accountable somehow. To someone or everybody or—”

“To you, you mean, Judge?” Blaisedell said.

Ga

The judge had not spoken, and after a moment Blaisedell went on. “Judge, a man will say too often that he is responsible to something because he is afraid to face up alone. That is just putting off on another man or on the law or whatever. A man who has to always think like that is a crippled man.”

“No,” the judge said; his voice was muffled again. “No, just a man among men.” He drank again, the brown bottle slanting up toward the base of the hanging lamp above him.

Blaisedell stood with his long legs still spread and his hands upon his shell belt beneath his black frock coat. Standing there in the doorway he seemed as big a man as Ga

“Maybe where you’ve been the law was enough of a thing there so people went the way the law said,” he said. “You ought to know there’s places where it is different than that. It is different here, and maybe the best that can be done is a man that is handy with a Colt’s — to keep the peace until the law can do it. That is what I am, Judge. Don’t mix me with your law, for I don’t claim to be it.”

“You are a prideful man, Marshal,” Judge Holloway said. He sat with his head bent down, staring at his clasped hands.

“I am,” Blaisedell said. “And so are you. So is any decent man.”

“You set yourself as always right. Only the law is that and it is above all men. Always right is too much pride for a man.”

“I didn’t say I am always right,” Blaisedell said. His voice sounded deeper. “I have been wrong, and dead wrong. And may be wrong again. But—”

“But then you stand naked before the rest in your wrong, Marshal,” the judge said. “It is what I am trying to say. And what then?”

“When I have worn out my use, you mean? Why, then I will move along, Judge.”

“You won’t know when it is time. In your pridefulness.”

“I’ll know. It is something I’ll know.” Ga

“Maybe they will be afraid to tell you,” the judge said.

Blaisedell’s face grew paler, colder; he looked suddenly furious. But he said in a polite voice, “I expect I’ll know when the time comes, Judge,” and abruptly turned and disappeared. His bootheels cracked away to silence outside.

The judge raised his bottle to drain the last of the whisky in it. With a limp arm he reached down to set it beside his chair, and knocked it over with a drunken hand. It rolled noisily until it brought up against the cell door, while the judge leaned forward with his face in his hands and his fingers working and scraping in his hair.

After a long time he rose and clapped his hat on his head, staggering as he fitted the crutch under his arm. Ga

II

It was well after midnight when the posse returned. Ga

The street seemed filled solid with horsemen and men on foot milling around the horses. Someone was swinging a lantern to illuminate the faces of the riders — he saw Carl’s face, Peter Bacon’s, Chick Hasty’s; the lantern showed Pony Be

The lantern swung again to show a riderless horse; but not riderless, he saw, for there was a body tied over the saddle.

“Ted Phlater!” someone said, in a sudden silence.

Immediately a roar went up. “Hang them!” a drunken voice screamed. “Oh, hang the sons of bitches! Hang them, boys!”

“Shut that up!” Carl shouted. Ga

“Got Ted Phlater shot and lost Friendly, damn all,” he said.

Another drunken voice was raised. “Where’s Big Luke, Carl?”

“Where is McQuown? You went and forgot Abe and Curley, boys!”

“They got the barber-killer!”

There was laughter, more shouting. “Hang them, boys! Hang them!” the first voice continued, shrill and mechanical, like a parrot.

“Horse!” Carl called to Peter Bacon. “You and Pike bring them inside.” He started for the jail, and Ga

“Hang them! Hang them!”

Ga

Inside they put Ted Phlater’s stiffening body on the floor at the rear of the jail, and Peter appeared unfolding a blanket, with which he covered it. Pike Ski

Chick Hasty and Tim French came inside with the strongbox from the stage, which they shoved under the table. The hanging lamp swung like a pendulum when one of them brushed against it, and shadows swung more wildly still. The dusty window was crowded with bloated, featureless faces pressed against the glass, and men were pushing in at the door.

“Out of here!” Carl shouted. His face was lined with fatigue and gray with dust. “Isn’t any damned assembly hall. Out of here before I get mad! You!” Pike Ski

“Hang the murdering sons of bitches!” someone yelled from outside. Pony’s scared face appeared at the cell door, and Calhoun’s lantern-jawed, cadaverous one; Ga

“Expect they mean to try something, from the sound of them,” Peter Bacon said calmly.

“No they won’t,” Carl said. He stretched and rubbed his back, and gri

“You going to want some of us here tonight, Carl?” Parsons said, and Ga