“They are all coming in,” Morgan said. “Those that were Regulators for MacDonald and more besides.”
“Fair enough,” Clay said.
“What are you going to do?” Morgan said evenly. “Run for it?”
“Not for McQuown.”
“What are you going to do?” he repeated, not so evenly. “Lie down and die?”
“Not for McQuown,” Clay said. Suddenly he grinned. He looked like a boy when he grinned like that, and he said, “Have you got any whisky, Morg?”
“Have,” Morgan said. He got it and poured two glasses. “How?” he said, and chuckled with excitement.
“How,” Clay said, nodding, and they drank together.
“Remember that time in Fort James when Hynes and that bunch got the drop on you?”
“Well enough,” Clay said. He sat down, taking off his hat and dropping it on the floor beside him. His fair hair looked gold in the lamplight. “I swear, Morg, you were a sight coming out through those batwing doors. It looked like you had about six arms going like a windmill and a gun in every hand. I thought they would tramp each other to pieces getting out of there, and you and me yelling and shooting up the air behind them.”
Clay sounded excited, and reenforced his own excitement; he had never felt so pleased, or proud. But then Clay looked down at his lap, and frowned as he said, in a different voice, “There was some good times in Fort James.”
“Well, it looks like you will need some help again this time.”
He saw Clay’s hand tighten around the glass of whisky he had not finished. “No,” Clay said. “I won’t need help, Morg.”
Morgan swung away to face the window. The full moon hung in it like a jack-o’-lantern. All the pocks showed on the round, gold, blind face. He felt as though he could not get his breath as he stood there, following through Clay’s thoughts, trying to understand Clay’s judgment. It seemed a judgment on him, and it was something he had never known Clay to do before.
His voice sounded very flat when he spoke. “Clay, do you think it is just McQuown coming in? It is all San Pablo.”
“It is between McQuown and me.”
“Surely. The rest will faint at the sight of those gold-handles.”
He heard the paper rustle behind him. “I won’t need help this time, Morg,” Clay said.
Damned fool, he thought, not even angrily; damned fool. But there was no use in calling Clay a damned fool, no use arguing. He saw what he must do. He had told Kate he would not throw Clay down, but he must throw him down this time.
“Are you moving on, Morg?” Clay asked, in an expressionless voice.
Thank you, but no thanks, and why don’t you move on while you are at it? It must be Miss Jessie Marlow speaking. You used to be yourself, Clay Blaisedell, he thought bitterly, staring out at the moonlight pale as milk in Warlock. Now they have talked you into being Clay Blaisedell instead. “You don’t mind if I stay and watch, do you?” he said. “Buy you a drink of whisky after, to settle your nerves. Or pall-bear.”
“You understand about it, don’t you, Morg?”
“Surely. I can’t hurt you if I’m not in it, and I have hurt you enough here.”
Clay made a disgusted sound. “That’s foolishness. Don’t pretend you don’t understand about this. This is on me alone.”
Morgan did not turn from the window. The stars were lost in the moonlight; he could make out only a few dull specks of them. “Well, you won’t mind if I don’t move on right away, will you?” he said. “I have got business here still.”
“What’s that, Morg?”
He did not know why he should feel so ugly now. He turned to face Clay, and grinned and said, “It wasn’t jacks that burnt the Lucky Dollar, you know.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Haven’t you noticed Taliaferro lately? He has got that pistolero from the French Palace tied on his heels like a shadow.”
Clay nodded almost imperceptibly. “Did you shoot that dealer of his, Morg?”
“You mean Wax? That beat my Professor’s head in for him?”
Clay picked up his hat and held it in his lap while he dented the crown with blows from the heel of his hand, crosswise and then back to front, continuing it with a kind of abstracted attention as though there were nothing else in the world to do. But at last he said, without looking up, “I have never asked you a thing like this before.”
“Like what?”
“Leave it alone about Taliaferro.”
“All right.”
“For a favor,” Clay said. He got to his feet and put his hat on. He held the paper in his hand, and glanced toward the others on the bureau. “That’s a silly thing,” he said. “For me to be putting those up against myself. Do you know anybody you can get to do it?”
“I’ll get Basine.”
“Might as well get it over with,” Clay said. He moved toward the door.
“For a favor?”
Clay stopped. “Don’t go sour, Morg. This is nothing between you and me. I thought you would understand that.”
“Why, I suppose I do,” he said. He went to the bureau and took up the whisky bottle again. Standing with his back to Clay he poured whisky into his glass in a slow trickle until he heard the door close and Clay’s footsteps departing.
He stepped to the window then, and, in the darkness, watched the tall figure appear below him. He raised his glass and whispered, “How?” and drank deeply. “Why, Clay, I understand well enough,” he said. “But I won’t let you do it. Or McQuown.”
Abruptly he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Why, you damned sanctimonious school marm virgin bitch!” he said, to Miss Jessie Marlow. It was time he had a talk with her, and he addressed himself to her and to the whisky in his glass.
You, he said; you put Curley Burne on that list to crucify him, and I suppose you would let him stand alone against that pack of cowboys because he would look so fine? Don’t you know that McQuown has been sitting down there as patient and tricky as a hostile waiting for the right time to move? You handed him Curley Burne to move on.
“How you must hate yourself, Miss Jessie Marlow,” he mimicked, aloud. “Do you think they will curl up and die at the sight of him because he is so fine? He would curl up and die, they would blast him loose from his boots, backshot, sideshot, and frontshot too.
“Well, you saved my life, and with damned bad grace. And you wish I was gone, don’t you, and you have told him so, haven’t you? Are you satisfied with what you are making of him? You have got him so he doesn’t know himself any more. And I am the ugly toad whose life you saved because there wasn’t any way you could get out of it, and I will save his from McQuown. I suppose it would turn you to screaming to think of me doing it, and how, wouldn’t it? But what do you say, Miss Jessie Marlow?”
He laughed at her horrified face in his mind’s eye.
But damn you to hell, can you let him be, afterward? Can you ever let him be? You will have him alive. “Can you let him deal faro in a saloon?” he said aloud, mimicking her scorn again. Let be, Miss Jessie Marlow, before you have killed him dead trying to make him into a damned marble statue!
43. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE
April 17, 1881
WE HAVE returned this night to a Warlock seething with surmise. Posters appeared mysteriously this morning in several places about the town — one of them upon my wall! — to the effect that Blaisedell is condemned to death for foul murder, his victims listed as Curley Burne and Billy Gannon, and the posters signed by Abraham McQuown as Chief of Regulators!