“Sure is down on you,” he said. He felt for Abe. It was hard when everybody turned against you. It would be hard on any man, but it was a terrible thing on Abe.
“Sons of dirty whore bitches,” Abe said. “Damn them to burning hell and Bud Gannon the first of them!”
Reluctantly Curley said, “Abe, you shouldn’t have gone at him so. He is a cold one and no mistake, and I couldn’t see it the way he does and ever look at myself shaving again, but—” He broke off as Abe halted and swung toward him. Abe’s face was fierce again, his eyes like green ice. “—but you have got to hand it to a man that’s doing what he thinks is right,” he went on, staring straight back. “Whatever.”
“I’ll hand him what he handed me,” Abe said. “Which is shit.”
“Abe—” he started again, but Abe moved off across the street toward Goodpasture’s store. Following him, he felt a dull anguish, for Abe, for Bud, for everyone. He wondered how everything had got so messed up; worse, it seemed, all the time. Maybe it was Blaisedell after all.
He glanced down toward where Mosbie stood. He and Mosbie had drunk together many a time; now he felt the anguish sharpen to see the carefully blank expression on Mosbie’s face, and the same expressions on the faces of the other men watching. Why, they all hated Abe, he thought; and they hated him, too.
As he followed Abe through the dust to Goodpasture’s corner, and then down the boardwalk toward the Acme Corral, he felt anger begin to stir in him, and a retaliation of hate. What had done it to them all, he wondered? It must, he thought again, have been Blaisedell, after all.
17. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE
February 1, 1881
THE latest bag of road agents has been acquitted by a Bright’s City jury. There is high feeling here, and those who journeyed to Bright’s City to give evidence or as spectators are exceedingly violent in their anger against judge, jury, lawyers, Bright’s City in general, and Abraham McQuown in particular. Since Benner was the only bandit positively identified by his victims, the defense mounted the outrageous presumption that the other two were consequently innocent, and, that since both of these swore that Benner had been with them all day and that they had engaged in no crimes whatsoever, then Benner was also innocent. The witnesses who identified Benner were tricked into admitting that the main factor in their identification was his small stature, which was made to seem ridiculous. The posse itself, it was claimed, was responsible for Phlater’s death, since it had begun firing wildly at the “innocent cowboys” as soon as they were within range, and the Cowboys plainly could not be blamed for defending themselves from such a vicious assault. It was implied even further that the whole affair was staged by “certain parties,” and the strongbox carefully disposed where it would implicate the poor Cowboys most foully.
It is said that the prosecution was pursued with less than diligence. It is also said that judge and jury were bribed, and that the courtroom was crowded with McQuown’s men brandishing six-shooters and muttering threats. Along the way my credulity begins to fail, amongst all this evidence of perfidy, but the fact remains that the three men have been freed. They rode through here yesterday on their way back to San Pablo. They encountered a sullen and most unfriendly Warlock, and had sense enough not to linger here in their triumph.
I think next time it may be very difficult to discourage a lynching party from its objective.
Still, certain good has come out of the affair. Public opinion, as it did when our poor barber was killed and Deputy Canning driven out of town, has again congealed, so that the Citizens’ Committee feels itself in not so exposed and arbitrary a position in trying to administer some kind of law in Warlock.
The Citizens’ Committee has not met yet. We are not in a hurry to face the situation, and feel it best to move slowly. The question foremost in everyone’s mind is, of course, whether or not Blaisedell should be called upon to post the “innocent Cowboys” out of town, and, insofar as I can see, the great majority of the Citizens’ Committee, and of Warlock itself, is for this. There is much talk of a Vigilante Army convened to ride upon San Pablo and “clean the rascals out.” There is also talk of posting McQuown and all his men, and backing up Blaisedell in whatever action might ensue with a vigilante troop, which would be only operative within Warlock and for this one purpose.
As to the wholesale posting, you may hear it being argued on every hand, but with qualifications almost as numerous as the arguers. I think some of us are obsessed with the pleasure and presumption of dictating Life & Death.
There are also some who seem to be having grave second thoughts about the whole system of posting. Will Hart, I notice, is beginning to sound remarkably like the judge in his arguments. True, these say, posting worked in the case of Earnshaw, who is definitely reported to have left the territory — but is it not asking for trouble? Does not posting actually make it a point of honor that a man come in to fight our Marshal? What if a number come in against him at once and he is killed — are we not then still more at the mercy of the outlaws? What, if this be carried too far, is to prevent the enemies of each among us from seeing that he himself is posted?
I must face the fact, of course, that Public Opinion is not so unanimous as I would like to think. There are issues at stake, but as too often happens, we are apt to look to men as symbols rather than to the issues themselves. There are two sides here; one is Blaisedell, the other McQuown. So, alas, have the people chosen to see it. Blaisedell is, at the moment, the favored one by far; the profanum vulgus is solidly for him, and, as evinced by the lynch mob (which, curiously, Blaisedell had a large hand in putting down), against McQuown and the “innocents.” The Citizens’ Committee, of course, is behind Blaisedell too, but, as is usual when some are more violently partisan than we are, we edge away a little and restrain our own enthusiasms.
Still, McQuown retains some of his adherents. Grain, the beef butcher, who, I am sure, buys stolen beef from McQuown, remains loyal to him. Ranchers, such as Blaikie, Quaintance, and Burbage, view the outlaw as a necessary evil, point out that their problems would be greatly increased without the presence of a controlling hand, and in any case are apt to view Blaisedell, possibly because he is a townsman and an agent of townsmen, with suspicion.
I do not think the Citizens’ Committee intends to do more than post the three road agents (or more probably four, including Friendly) out of town, but that remains to be seen. There is some talk of posting at the same time a chronic malcontent and agitator among the miners, but I feel this would confuse the present issue. I presume a meeting will be called by this week’s end, at the latest.
February 2, 1881
I am sorry for Deputy Gannon. He must know that his brother’s fate is being decided, all around him, by the jury this town has become, and he looks gaunt and haunted, and as though he has not slept in days. He, Schroeder, and the Marshal have not had much to occupy their time of late. Warlock is in a fit of righteousness, and men are exceedingly careful in their actions. The presence of Death does not make us feel pity for the dead or the condemned, but only a keen awareness of our own ultimate end and a determination to circumvent it for as long as possible.
February 3, 1881
A despicable rumor is being circulated, to the effect that the Cowboys are truly innocent, and that the bandits actually were Morgan and one or more of his employees from the Glass Slipper; that Morgan was seen riding furtively back to town not long after the stage arrived here, etc. This is an obvious tactic of McQuown’s adherents here to backhandedly attack Blaisedell, as well as of Morgan’s enemies, of whom there are a great number. Why Morgan should have taken up road-agentry, when he has a most lucrative business in his gambling establishment, has not been stated.