16. CURLEY BURNE TRIES TO MEDIATE
CURLEY BURNE rode beside Abe up into Warlock from the rim. As they entered Main Street he could feel Abe’s tenseness ten feet away, see him sitting up straighter, his left hand stiff with the reins and his right braced upon his thigh, his green eyes flickering right and left at the almost empty street. Up in the central block there were a few horses tied before the saloons, and, beyond, two teams and wagons stood before Egan’s Feed and Grain Barn. Peter Bacon drove the water wagon across on Broadway, water slopping from the top of the tank.
“Got quiet in Warlock,” Abe said, in a flat voice.
“Surely has,” Curley said, nodding. He pulled his mouth organ from inside his shirt and started to blow on it — and saw Abe frown. He let it drop back. “Chunk of them gone to Bright’s for trial tomorrow, I expect,” he said. “I hear there’s a lot of feeling.”
Abe’s lips tightened in his red beard. He glanced toward the jail as they passed. The morning sun brightened the east face of the bullet-perforated, weather-beaten sign.
“Bud in there?” Abe asked.
“Didn’t see.”
“Probably gone up to witness against Billy,” Abe said bitterly. He swung his black into Southend Street, so evidently he meant to stop in Warlock instead of just riding through. Curley supposed he felt he had had to come through, and had to stop, just to show himself.
Goodpasture’s mozo was sweeping the boardwalk in front of the store; when he saw them he began to swing his broom in a burst of animation. A high, battered old Concord stood in the stageyard and a hostler was backing a wheeler into harness. He stared at them as they turned into the Acme Corral. Lame Paul Skinner came out to meet them, silent and hostile. Nate Bush spat on his hands and rammed the tines of his hayfork into the hay as though he were killing snakes.
Abe stood watching Paul Skinner lead Prince and the black off to water with his eyes cold and color burning in his cheeks. “Now, easy, Abe,” Curley whispered.
They moved out of the corral, Abe very straight in his buckskin shirt, his shell belt riding his hips low beneath his concho belt. “Easy, now, Abe,” Curley said sadly, again, and said it still again but not aloud.
“Sons of bitches!” Abe hissed, as they went along past the buckled, leaning plank fence toward Goodpasture’s corner. “They will turn on a man as soon as spit. They will lick up to a new dog and turn on the old every time.”
At the corner he started cater-cornered across Main Street toward the jail, and Curley followed a step behind him.
Inside the jail Bud Gannon sat behind the table. His stiff, dark brown hair was neatly combed and his hat lay on the table between his hands. Beside the alley door was a rusty, dented bucket with a mop handle leaning out of it, and the floor was still damp in spots.
Bud nodded to them. He looked tired, and thinner than ever. His star was pinned to the breast of his blue flannel shirt. Abe stopped just inside the door, and, standing at ease, glanced around the jail with careful attention. The cell was unoccupied, the door standing open.
“Well, how’s the apprentice deputy?” Curley said, squeezing in past Abe. He had liked Bud Gannon as well as anyone at San Pablo, quiet and sober as he had always been. He had been a top hand with the stock, and he was missed. The killing in Rattlesnake Canyon had hit Bud the worst, he knew; immediately after it he had left for Rincon. He knew Abe hated Bud for that, and for not coming back to San Pablo now.
“All right,” Bud said, nodding. “How are you, Curley?”
“Fine as paint.”
“We are going up to Bright’s,” Abe said.
Bud nodded again.
“Where’s your big-chief deputy?”
“Bright’s City.”
“Looks like half Warlock’s gone up.” Curley flipped his hat off, so that it hung down his back by its cord. Whistling through his teeth, he stepped over to the cell door and batted it back and forth between his hands.
“Lot of yours going up, Abe?” Bud asked.
“Some,” Abe said gravely. “Some people down there are interested pretty good.”
“Be jam-packed up there,” Curley said, pushing the door in faster, shorter arcs. “People all squunched together in court there and everybody calling everybody else a liar.” He laughed to think of it, and to think of the fat, sweaty-faced townsmen in the jury box.
Abe leaned back against the wall and crossed his legs. “You look worried, Bud,” he said. “Don’t worry about Billy. It’ll come right.”
“Will it?” Bud said, and he sounded hoarse. “I’m glad to hear that.” His thin face had paled. “How will it?” he said.
“Because I will see it does,” Abe said. “Because they are friends of mine and I intend to see they are not blackguarded and false-sworn into hanging for something they didn’t do — by people that’s after me. I will stand up for my own, Bud.”
Curley looked down as Bud’s eyes turned toward him; he knew Abe had meant what he said, not just about Billy, but about Pony and Calhoun as well. But Luke had told them that Pony and Calhoun had planned to stop the stage. It was all right to stand up for your own, it was the first principle; but there was no need to throw up a dust cloud about what they had or had not done. It was as though Abe were trying to fool himself as well as the rest.
“You wouldn’t see what you are doing to your own,” Bud said, in the hoarse voice.
“Doing!” Abe said. With a lithe movement he leaned his hands on the table and stared into Bud’s face. “What would you do, let them hang? Let your own brother hang? By God, I think you would do it, just so Blaisedell would pat you on the head and call you a good boy.”
“I’d let them have a fair trial,” Bud said.
“Fair trial!” Abe said, and straightened and grinned. “I hear Buck is running passengers up free so everybody in Warlock can go swear against them. Fair trial?”
Bud said nothing, and it came over Curley with a sickening shock that Bud would not do anything, that he would let Billy hang and not make a move. “Holy smoke, Bud!” he said. “I believe you— What the hell has happened to you?”
Bud swung toward him. “Do you think I want—”
“I know what’s happened to him,” Abe broke in. “Clay Blaisedell is what’s happened to him.”
He went on, but Curley didn’t listen, staring at Bud who was, in turn, watching Abe. It came on him strongly, all at once, that Bud did not hate Abe, that maybe Bud felt something of the way he did toward Abe. Yet there was some cold lack in him, where friends didn’t matter, or even his brother.
“Whose town is it?” Abe was saying. “I mean, who was here to begin with? You know who, when Warlock was nothing but Cousins’ store and Bill Hake’s saloon. But then Richelin got his silver strike and everybody comes crowding in, and now it’s beginning to look like there is no more room for the ones that was here first.”
“There is room, Abe,” Bud said.
“Just if I make room, it looks like. Bud, I was friendly with people and took care of my own and got along, and people looked up to me some. But not any more. Because there is someone come in that is trying to run me off like you would a dirty, stinking dog. Turning people against me—” His voice began to shake, and he stopped.
Bud said, “So now you are going up to Bright’s City and have your own lied free, or the jury scared off, one. Or both. You will trick and mess the law around like you want it until—” He hesitated. “Until you get Clay Blaisedell brought in against you, and then you can’t understand it.”