When he looked up to meet the eyes that watched him from the glass behind the bar, no longer friendly, he saw that what had been bound to pass had already quickly passed.
23. GANNON WITNESSES AN ASSAULT
GANNON stood in the doorway of the carpintería staring at the greasy tarpaulin furred with sawdust and fine curls of wood. It was so stiff that the separate shapes beneath it were not discernible. He could not even tell which of the three pairs of boots that protruded beyond its edge was Billy’s.
Old Eladio, with a maul and chisel, was cutting dovetails in a yellow pine board, and beyond him the other carpenter pushed his long plane along the edge of another board, freeing crisp curls of wood, which he shook from the plane from time to time. One of the coffins was already finished, and Gannon seated himself upon it. He tried to keep his eyes from those three pairs of narrow-toed boots. Eladio fitted an end and a side together, and meshed the dovetails with sharp raps of his maul.
“Va bien?” Gannon said, just to be saying something.
“Si, bien,” Eladio said. He bowed his bald, wrinkled brown head for a moment. “Que lástima, joven.”
Gannon nodded and closed his eyes, listening to the clean scuff of the plane and the tapping of the maul. Then abruptly he went out into the hot sunlight, and started up Broadway toward the jail. His Colt felt very heavy upon his thigh, his star heavy where it was pinned to his vest; his boots scuffed and tapped along the boardwalk. The men he passed watched him with carefully indifferent side glances.
In the thick shadow of the arcade on Main Street a knot of them, standing before the Billiard Parlor, moved aside to let him by, and he saw a horseman swing out of Southend Street, turning east. It was the marshal, riding a big-barreled black with white face and stockings. Blaisedell rode stiff-backed and heavy in his black broadcloth, trouser legs tucked into his boots, black hat tipped forward against the sun. The black’s hoofs danced in the dust. Blaisedell glanced toward Gannon briefly, and he felt the intense blue stare like a physical push. The horse broke into a trot. He heard the men before the Billiard Parlor whispering as the black danced on down Main Street, horse and horseman gradually smaller and more and more dimly seen in the dust, until they disappeared on the Bright’s City stage road.
As he went on again, toward the jail, he felt relieved; he had not been sure that Blaisedell had believed him.
The judge sat at the table, his crutch leaning beside him, before him his hard hat, his pen, bottle of ink, Bible, rusty derringer, and a half-empty pint of whisky — all the accoutrements of his office, which he brought out when he sat to fine or jail an evening’s transgressors. He frowned when he saw Gannon; he had not shaved, and there was a thick gray stubble on his cheeks and chin. Carl sat on his heels against the wall, teasing a scorpion with a broomstraw. His jaw was shot out and he looked sullen and stubborn.
“Deputy Schroeder has resigned,” the judge said.
“I haven’t either, you old fool!” Carl got up and smashed the scorpion with his heel. “Damn, how you badger a man!”
“Badger you to do your duty like you are sworn to,” the judge said. “You won’t, so you have resigned.” He looked up at Gannon and said, “Will you do your duty, Deputy?”
“Damned old bastard!” Carl cried. “Murderer, hell!” Then he said apologetically, “Johnny, I am sorry talking this way now, but he has drove me to it. What kind of judge are you?” he said to the judge. “Four hardcases trying to burn down a peace officer and it isn’t self-defense? I never heard—”
“Not for you to judge what it is,” the judge said.
“Or you!”
Gannon sat down beside the cell door and leaned back. Watching the two angry faces, his eyes felt as though they were bleeding.
“Warned him!” the judge said. “Warned him what he was doing. Making a murderer out of himself, issuing ukases and banishments like a duke. Now he has to stand trial like any ordinary mortal man and poor sinner, and I will witness against him if I have to crutch it into Bright’s City.”
“You couldn’t,” Carl said. “There is no place to buy whisky on the way.”
“I’ll witness against you for malfeasance of duty while I am at it. Will you arrest Blaisedell, Deputy Gannon?”
“He’s gone,” Gannon said.
The judge stared at him.
“Gone where?” Carl said.
“He rode out toward Bright’s City. I expect he’s gone up to court.”
“What the hell would he do that for?”
“To be shriven,” the judge said. He smiled and stretched, smugly. “Ah, he listened after all, did he? Yes, to get it off himself.”
“Nothing on him, Christ’s sake.” Carl swung toward Gannon. “He only did what he had to do. Johnny, you heard him trying to talk Billy out of it!”
Gannon nodded with an incomplete and qualified assent. Carl was right to the boundaries of what he had said; Blaisedell had done what he had to do, given the circumstances. Yet the judge was right when he said that Blaisedell must be accountable. Billy would not have died had the Citizens’ Committee not decided to post him, and had Blaisedell not decided to honor their decision, as he had not in the case of the miner Brunk. But on the other hand Billy would not have been posted had McQuown not loaded the court in Bright’s City with perjured witnesses, tricked it with a clever lawyer, menaced it with gunmen and the threat inherent in his name. And, in the end, Billy would not have died had he not set himself to kill Blaisedell.
Carl furiously scraped his bootheel over the shredded stain that had been the scorpion. “By God!” he said thickly. He sounded as though he were in pain. “Johnny, what the hell did he think he had to go for?”
“The law is the law, Mister Malfeasor of Duty,” the judge said smugly. “And no good getting hysterical—”
Carl took a long stride toward him, swung an arm, and slapped him on the side of the head. The judge screamed and toppled; Carl caught him by the shirt front and set him upright, slapped him again, forehand and backhand. The judge snatched for his derringer and Carl knocked it aside. The judge screamed and tried to cover his face. Gannon leaped out of his chair, caught Carl around the waist, and pulled him away.
“Witness!” the judge cried. “Assault and battery and—”
“Shut up!” Carl shouted. He stopped struggling in Gannon’s grip, but when Gannon released him Carl darted for the judge again.
This time he only bent down close to the judge’s blotched face. “The law is the law!” he panted. “But there isn’t enough of it to go around out here. So when we get a good man protecting this town from hell with its door open I am not going to see him choused and badgered and false-sworn and yawped at fit to puke by a one-legged old son of a bitch like you!
“Until he gets fed up and rides the hell somewheres else and this town left pie on the table again for those San Pablo cowboys to pick it clean and kill anybody fool or awkward enough to get in their way. A good man, God damn you! That gives some of us here some pride and gets our peckers up for a change. God damn you, if by God because of you he has went up there to court and gets frazzled out of patience by it and sets his back against us here I will tear your other leg off and bust it around your God-damned neck for a God-damned necktie and run your God-damned crutch through it for a Goddamned stickpin!” He stopped, panting.
“Witness!” the judge said hoarsely, covering his face with his hands.