“Mind if I sit?” Blaisedell asked.
Gannon indicated the chair beside the cell door, and pivoted his own around to face it. Blaisedell seated himself, tipped the chair back against the wall, and grasped one of the bars of the cell door to balance himself. “Quiet lately,” he said.
“Been some rustling. Blaikie’s lost a few head.”
“I meant in town.”
“Oh; yes.”
Blaisedell frowned and said, “I wanted to ask you about Haggin’s brother.”
“Chet? Well, he came in that day to say he didn’t hold it against — anyone,” Gannon said, and wondered if that was what Blaisedell had meant.
“But Cade means to take it on himself?”
“He said so.” Gannon licked his lips.
“A mean-looking one,” Blaisedell said, and Gannon felt the full force of his blue eyes. “Backshooter,” Blaisedell went on. “Worried about him?”
“I guess you can’t worry about every man that’s down on you.”
“Some can.” Blaisedell’s lips bent into a stiff, almost shy grin. “Maybe you are just not the worrying kind.”
“Why, I can worry with the best of them, Marshal.” He forced a laugh, and Blaisedell chuckled too. It occurred to him all at once that Blaisedell was trying to make contact with him in some way, and immediately what he had hoped was going to be an easy conversation for him grew taut with strain.
“Go home and puke afterwards?” Blaisedell asked. He did not ask it humorously; it was a question of consequence.
“Not till night.”
Blaisedell nodded as though satisfied. “About Cade,” he said. “If he has taken it on against you I guess the Citizens’ Committee would want to post him. If—” He stopped as Gannon shook his head.
“I guess not, Marshal,” he said.
“No?” Blaisedell said, and now his voice had an edge to it. “Standing on your own feet now, is it?”
“It is not that so much,” he said with difficulty, looking down at his bandaged hand. “It is posting I am starting to balk at. It seemed it worked for a while and it was all we had here. But something happened — I don’t know what happened. I guess I don’t know how to say this very well, Marshal.”
“Just say it,” Blaisedell said.
He felt the strain again, and he grimaced down at his hand. “I don’t say it is the killing that’s so bad in itself,” he went on. “I mean, when people wear guns like they do, they are going to use them. But it is that after some point the killing makes people turn against what was supposed to be done for them in the first place. It is hard, and it is unfair, but it is so. I guess I mean you, Marshal. You have stood for law and order here, so if they turn against you, they—”
“I know all that,” Blaisedell said. It seemed a rebuke, and it angered Gannon that this thought, so hard to put into words, should be brushed aside. He glanced up to see a bitterness in Blaisedell’s face that shocked him; but instantly it was gone, so that he could not be sure he had really seen it.
“Go on, Deputy,” Blaisedell said easily. “I guess there is more.”
“It would be a poor thing if this town was to turn against you,” he said. “Because Warlock is a safer place since you came here. And there is more to it than that, for people have got some starch into them to stand up to things. Like Carl. Why, like the other day! There was others than you that let me make that play, and come out of it. But those others wouldn’t have been standing by if you hadn’t done what you’ve done in this town.
“But there is that point, Marshal,” he went on. He managed to meet the impassive blue stare. “It is like a kid with a big brother to run the bad kids off him. Some time the big brother is going to have to let the kid fight for himself. I mean even if he gets whipped—”
“That is you you are talking about,” Blaisedell broke in.
“No, it is the deputy here. Which only happens to be me.”
“Do you think you are ready to take it on, Deputy?”
He almost groaned, for it was the question. He shook his head tiredly and said, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t think you are ready yet,” Blaisedell said. “But then I didn’t think you were before the Regulators came in, either.”
He saw Blaisedell smile a little, and he supposed it had been a compliment. “I think I will stay on awhile,” Blaisedell said. “It is not time yet.” He said it with a certain inflection and Gannon thought he might be talking of himself now.
He remembered Blaisedell’s telling the judge that he would know when it was time to go, but now he wondered what time Blaisedell had meant, Warlock’s or his own. “Surely,” he said quickly. “I don’t think it is time yet, either. But I have got to be ready sometime. I couldn’t ever have been ready at all if you hadn’t been here.”
Blaisedell blinked. After a long time he said, “I see you have taken up with Kate Dollar.”
Gannon felt himself blushing, and Blaisedell continued, still gazing at the names on the wall. “She is a fine woman. I knew her back awhile.”
“She said.”
“Down on me,” Blaisedell said. “I killed a friend of hers in Fort James.”
She said; this time he did not say it aloud.
“It was shoot or get shot,” Blaisedell said. “Or I thought it was. I had been edgy about things.” He was silent for a time, and Gannon remembered what Kate had told him about it. He had thought she must be telling the truth because she had sounded so certain; but now he wondered about it just because Blaisedell sounded so uncertain.
Then Blaisedell said, “I remember when I killed a man the way you did the other day. And it was clear and had to be done, though I went home afterwards and puked my insides out. The way you did.” His voice sounded removed and musing, and, after another pause he went on again. “But there was a lesson I learned. It is that a man can’t ever be careful enough. Even careful as a person can be is not enough. For there will be a man you don’t want to come against you, and that shouldn’t, but all the same he will—”
He stopped and shook his head a little, and Gannon thought he had been speaking of Curley Burne.
Blaisedell said, “I knew a man once who said it was all foolishness — that if you want to kill a man, why, kill him. Shoot him down from behind in the dark if you want to kill him. But don’t make a game with rules out of it.”
This time it was Morgan; it hit Gannon like a picture slapped across his sight and then drawn back into focus so he could study it: Morgan standing masked in the doorway in the dark, and Abe McQuown with his back turned.
“But he doesn’t understand,” Blaisedell said. “It is not that at all, for you don’t want to kill a man. It is only the rules that matter. It is holding strict to the rules that counts.”
Blaisedell let his chair down suddenly, and the legs cracked upon the floor; he leaned forward with his face intent and strained, and Gannon felt the full force of his eyes. “Hold to them like you are walking on eggs,” he said. “So you know yourself you have played it fair and as best you could. As right as you could. Like you did with Haggin. I admired that, Deputy, for you did just what it was put on you to do, and did it well.”
Then the muscles along the edges of his jaw tightened. “So it was all clear for you,” he said, with the bitter edge to his voice again. “But there are things to watch for. Watch yourself, I mean. Don’t be too fast. I have been too fast two times in different ways, and it is why I asked you about Cade. For after the first time, there are people out after you, and you know it and worry it, unless you are not the worrying kind. So then, you think, if you don’t get drawn first and them killed first — do you see what I mean?”