“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.
Gannon looked away. His eyes caught the names scratched on the wall opposite him, that were illegible now in the dim light. He wondered to whom those men, each in their turn, had thought they were responsible. Not to Sheriff Keller certainly, nor to General Peach.
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 Gannon had ever seen. When he examined Blaisedell closely, height and girth, he was not so tall nor yet so broad-chested as some he knew, yet the impression remained. Blaisedell’s blue gaze encased him for a moment; then he turned back to the judge again.
“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.” Gannon thought the marshal smiled, but he could not be sure. “There’ll be ones to tell me.”
“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. Gannon had a glimpse of his face as he swung out the door. Hectically flushed, it was filled with a sagging mixture of pride and shame, dread and grief.
II
It was well after midnight when the posse returned. Gannon stared at the doorway with aching eyes as he heard the tramp of hoofs and shouting. Men began running in the street past the jail, and he felt his heart swell in his chest as though it would smother him. He thrust down hard on the table with his hand, forcing himself to his feet, and went outside.
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 Benner’s scowling, frightened face, and the men in the street howled his name. The pale light revealed Calhoun, and another shout went up. Then Gannon saw Billy sitting straight and hatless in the saddle, with his hands tied behind him.
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. Gannon swung off the boardwalk and made his way through the crowd as Carl dismounted. Carl looked into his face and gripped his arm for a moment.
“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 Gannon made his way toward Phlater’s horse, to help Owen Parsons with the body. Men surged and shouted, mocked and joked and threatened as Pony, Calhoun, and Billy were dismounted. The crowd pressed toward the jail now, as the prisoners came up on the boardwalk, where a man held a lantern high as they moved past him.
“Hang them! Hang them!”
Gannon and Parsons lifted Phlater down and tried to make their way to the jail. “Get the God-damned jumping hell out of the way!” Parsons cried hoarsely. “Got any respect for the dead?”
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 Skinner was untying Calhoun’s arms; he thrust him roughly into the cell with Billy and Pony, and Carl slammed and locked the door.
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 Skinner swung around and with his arms outstretched forced the men back.
“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; Gannon could see Billy’s hand on Calhoun’s shoulder.
“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 grinned suddenly. “Well, three out of four,” he said. “That is better than one out of two like we made last time, anyhow.”
“You going to want some of us here tonight, Carl?” Parsons said, and Gannon saw that he tilted his grizzled head in his direction. He looked quickly away, to meet Calhoun’s eyes. Calhoun pursed his slack mouth, hawked, and spat.
“Go home and get some sleep,” Carl said, and slumped down in the chair at the table. “We are all right here.”