He went out to the Boston Café, after a while, for a pot of coffee to take back to the jail, and sat the night, sleepless himself, watching Carl and Pike fighting sleep. In the morning Buck Slavin furnished a special coach, and Carl, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Tim French took the prisoners into Bright’s City for trial.
15. BOOT HILL
WARLOCK’S Boot Hill was not a hill at all, but a knoll protruding from the plateau next to the town dump, where flies hovered in great black swarms. From Boot Hill itself the valley all the way to the Dinosaurs was visible: near at hand the jumble of great rocks of the malpais, farther down the cottonwoods lining the river in irregular stretches, the greasy-green mesquite thickets, and the drier green of the grama grass along the bottoms. To the south were the barren, tan sides of the Bucksaws, marked here and there with winding mine roads, the neat ugly smears of tailings below the gallows of the shafthead frames. Farther to the west were the chimneys of the stamp mill at Redgold, with the smoke blowing southwest in gray chunks.
Today there were two open graves, two pine coffins resting on the stony ground beside them. It was windy among the mounded graves. Men stood hatless and their hair blew askew and their trouser bottoms flapped — groups of townsmen, a few cowboys, two women in deep bonnets, and a number of curious Mexicans standing close by. A little apart stood Miss Jessie Marlow, with her hand on Marshal Clay Blaisedell’s arm, and, on the other side of her, Dr. Wagner in his old black suit. Further along, all in black and standing alone, was the new woman, who, it was rumored, had paid for the coffins. Beyond her were six women from the Row, bunched close together as though for protection, from time to time one painted, powdered face or another glancing curiously sideways at the strange woman. Morgan was also alone, his hat in his hands like the rest of the men, his sleek hair shining in the sun and undisturbed by the wind, standing with one foot up on a rock and brooding down at the first coffin.
The four gravediggers, who had been assigned a month’s duty as such by Judge Holloway in penance for being drunk and disorderly on various occasions, leaned on their shovels while Bill Wolters, one of Taliaferro’s barkeepers, recited the service from memory in a loud, sing-song, former-Baptist-preacher’s voice, that was broken into snatches of sound by the wind. The coffin was let down into the first grave with new yellow ropes, and Wolters moved to the second grave and recited again. The second coffin was lowered, and the gravediggers began shoveling dirt and rocks into the holes. The Mexicans, the strange woman, and one of the women from the Row crossed themselves. Morgan brought a cheroot from his pocket and chewed on it. Some of the other men took turns with the shovels. Dick Maples produced the two crosses he had fashioned and painted — it was his hobby. On the first was:
PATRICK CLETUS
Murdered by Bandits
January 23, 1881
“How long, oh Lord?”
On the second:
THEODORE PHLATER
Shot by Billy Gannon
January 23, 1881
“A time of war—”
A group of Citizens’ Committee members began moving away from the graves together. “Who is the tall woman?” asked Joseph Kennon.
“Came in on the stage yesterday,” Buck Slavin said. He nodded back at the first grave. “With that one. Somebody said they were going to put up a dance hall here.”
“Married?” Fred Winters inquired.
“I don’t know.”
“Her name is Kate Dollar,” said Paul Skinner, Pike Skinner’s brother, as he limped up to join them. “That’s how she’s got it down at the hotel, anyhow.”
The doctor joined them and Winters said, “That is a good arm Miss Jessie is walking on, Doc. Did you see him in action last night?”
The doctor shook his head.
“I saw him,” Henry Goodpasture said. “He made fifty or sixty men run with their tails between their legs.”
“Who were they?” the doctor asked.
“The usual no-accounts. Slator and Grace among them. A bunch of drunken miners.”
“I see you will blame the miners for everything, too,” the doctor said.
Goodpasture rolled his eyes heavenward, and Kennon and Winters laughed. The new woman had moved away from Morgan to join Deputy Gannon. Slavin informed the others of this in a whisper, and each found occasion to glance back and confirm the fact.
“It seems Gannon has a friend after all,” Winters said.
Morgan passed and one or two of them nodded to him, but no one spoke. Morgan glanced from face to face with his contemptuous eyes, and nodded back with a kind of insulting deference.
“Damned hound,” Will Hart said, when Morgan was out of earshot. “There’s a man I wouldn’t trust my back to.”
“There’s talk Taliaferro’s man Wax trusted his to him,” Slavin said. “Damned if I don’t believe it, too.”
“Blaisedell seems to trust him well enough,” Goodpasture said.
“It does not say much for Blaisedell, I’m afraid,” Winters said. “Which is too bad.”
They all fell silent as the deputy and Kate Dollar caught up with them. The deputy’s eyes flickered at them as he passed. The woman walked with him, but separately too. Her face was pale and set.
No one spoke until these had gone on past, and they all stopped when they reached the doctor’s buggy. The fat bay mare swung her head from side to side, cropping stubble. Goodpasture and the doctor climbed into the buggy. “Is there a Citizens’ Committee meeting, Buck?” the doctor asked.
“Why, I hadn’t heard,” Slavin said. “Is there, Joe?”
“I don’t know,” Kennon said, glancing quickly away.
The doctor took up his whip, shook it, and clucked to the mare. They waited while the buggy rolled off. Hart looked at Kennon, who flushed. Hart said to Slavin, “You know damned well there is a meeting, Buck! MacDonald called it.”
“You know why he called it?” Kennon said. “He wants to vote Blaisedell to post some troublemaker at the Medusa out of town.”
“I don’t like that!” Hart said swiftly.
“Cheap,” Winters said. “Cheaper than hiring Jack Cade to do it, the way he did with that man Lathrop. This way we all foot the bill.”
“Well, I will go along with him,” Slavin said. “It’s that one called Brunk, Will. You have one man like that and he stirs everybody up. I think Doc is pretty friendly with him, is why I didn’t want to say anything.”
“Isn’t that pretty?” Paul Skinner said, pointing. Ahead of them, cutting across toward the Row, the whores with their pastel clothing fluttering in the wind looked like bright-colored birds.
“I wish Doc would leave those damned jacks alone,” Kennon said. “My God, he has got touchy about them.”
“Well,” Winters said, “in my opinion the troublemaker at the Medusa is Charlie MacDonald himself. Maybe he is the one that should be posted, and I don’t know that I wouldn’t vote for it.”
“I don’t like anything about this,” Hart said.
“I expect we’ll want the marshal to post those three of McQuown’s, won’t we?” Kennon said. “If they get off at Bright’s, I mean.”
“They will. They will.”
“Four of them,” Slavin said. “Friendly was with them, that’s for sure. Maybe it’d be better to post that Brunk then, come to think of it. I’ll tell Charlie.”
Hart was shaking his head worriedly. Winters slapped him on the shoulder. “Do you know what Warlock’s second industry is, Will? Coffin manufacture,” he said, and laughed. But no one else joined him in his joke, and now they all walked in silence back along the dusty track to Warlock, returning from the burial of yesterday’s dead.