“There is talk Miss Jessie had a hand in the marshal changing his mind about Brunk,” Hasty said.
“Lot of talk up our way them two is going to come to matrimony right quick,” Bates said from the cell. “Make a fine-looking couple.”
Nobody spoke for a time, and finally Bacon sighed and said, “You suppose the four of them is going to come against him? Or not?”
“They won’t come,” Schroeder said again, grimly. He began to jab his pencil at the table top once more.
Standing in the doorway Skinner worriedly shook his head. He turned as there was an approaching cracking sound on the board-walk.
“Here comes old Judge,” Bates said. “Charging along on that crutch of his to give everybody pure hell again.”
The judge entered past Skinner. With his shoulders hunched up by the crutch and his claw-hammer coat hanging loose, the judge looked like a big, awkward, black bird. He halted and his bloodshot eyes glared fiercely around the jail. “Where’s the deputy?”
“Here!” Schroeder said. He raised himself reluctantly from the judge’s chair, and leaned against the cell door.
“Not you. The other one.”
“Sleeping, I guess. He was on late last night.”
“There’s no sleep any more,” the judge said. He shifted his weight from the crutch to a hand braced on the table, and sat down with a grunt. His crutch clattered to the floor.
“Aw, please, Judge,” Hasty said. “Leave us sleep sometimes. We got little enough else.”
The judge scraped his chair around to face the others. “You would sleep through the roof of the world caving in and not even know it,” he said. He removed his hat, using both hands, and set it before him. He glared around the room.
“By God, you stink, Judge,” Skinner said. “Why don’t you come down to the Acme and me and Paul and Nate’ll scrape you down in the horse trough?”
“I don’t stink like you all stink.” The judge rubbed at his eyes, muttering to himself. “Where is Blaisedell?” he said suddenly. “He is running from me!”
Everyone laughed. “Laugh!” the judge cried. “Why, you poor, ignorant pus-and-corruption sons of bitches, he is afraid of me!”
“He’s went for his gold-handles, Judge,” Schroeder said. “Then he’ll show.”
They laughed again, but the laughter broke off abruptly as a shadow fell in the door. Blaisedell came in, bowing his head a little as he stepped through the doorway. He was coatless, wearing a clean linen shirt and a broad, scrolled-leather shell belt, with a single cedar-handled Colt holstered on his right thigh.
“Judge,” he said. He nodded to each of them. “Deputy. Boys. Looking for me, Judge?”
“I was,” the judge said, and Bates snickered. The judge said, “I am warning you, Marshal. You are now standing naked and all alone. The Citizens’ Committee has gone and disqualified itself plain to everyone from pretending to run any kind of law in this town. Ordering you to something that wasn’t only illegal and bad but was pure damned outrage besides. And you have gone and disqualified yourself from them by refusing to do it. Now!” he said, triumphantly.
Blaisedell took off his hat and idly slapped it against his knee. He looked at once amused and arrogant. “You are speaking for who, Judge?” he asked politely.
“I am speaking—” the judge said. His voice turned shrill. “I’m speaking for— I’m just warning you, Marshal!”
“Listen to him go at it!” Bates whispered. “By God, he is a real Turk, that old Judge.”
Blaisedell glanced at him and he looked abashed.
“For what you have done,” the judge went on, more calmly, “you have run up a ukase on those four boys all by yourself now.”
“Pardon?” Blaisedell said.
“Now, hold on, Judge—” Schroeder began.
“Ukase!” the judge said. “That is a kind of imperial king I-want. What the king does when he makes the rules as he goes along. You have run one up the flagstaff and yourself with it. For what was behind you has blown itself out to nothing, and you have walked off away from it anyhow. I told you it was the only thing you had! And a poor thing, but even it gone now.”
“Don’t listen to the old cowpat, Marshal,” Skinner said placatingly. “He has got a load on and raving. He is not talking for anybody. He is surely not talking for the Citizens’ Committee.”
“I am talking for his conscience,” the judge said. “If he can hear it talking in his pride!”
“Why, I can hear you, Judge,” Blaisedell said. He stood looking down at the judge with his eyebrows hooked up, and his mouth, beneath the fair mustache, flat and grave. “But saying what?”
“Saying there is nothing you are accountable to any more,” the judge said. “You have got no status, you have chucked it away. No blame to you for that, Marshal, but it is gone. What I am saying is you can’t post those four fellers out. You are no law-making body. You can’t make laws against four men. Neither could the Citizens’ Committee, but they had a better claim than you. Mister Blaisedell, you are running up a banishment-or-death ukase and it is illegal and outlaw and pure murder. There is no law behind you!”
“Fry your head in your God-damned law!” Skinner said. “We saw enough of it, up in Bright’s City.”
The judge massaged his eyes with his hands again. Then he squinted cunningly up at Skinner. “You saw lynch law here in town just before that,” he said. “You didn’t like that either, did you? Liked that some less, didn’t you?” he cried. Pressing down on the table top, he half-raised his thick body, and cords stood out on the sides of his neck. “Did you like that mob? I tell you he is a one-man lynch mob if he goes on like he is headed!”
“By God!” Bates whispered, admiringly. “I bet he could beller a brick wall down.”
The judge sank back into his seat. Blaisedell’s intense blue stare inspected, one by one, the men in the room. They fastened last upon the judge again, and he said, coldly, “One man is a different thing from a mob. If a man runs with a pack like that he is only a part of the pack and the whole thing hasn’t got a brain or anything. I say what you said just now is foolishness, and I think you know it. I am not scared of myself so I have to look around every second to make sure the Citizens’ Committee is standing right behind, nodding to me. Or the town either,” he said, glancing at Hasty. “Because in a thing like this I know best and can do best by myself.”
“You have said it out loud!” the judge whispered. “You have said it. You have set yourself above the rest in your pride!”
Blaisedell’s face tightened. “If I am hired to keep the peace in this town,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “why, I will do it and the best I can. Judge, I would keep those four birds out of town whether anyone told me to or not.”
“You are not going to keep them out! You are going to kill them! You are going to shoot them down dog-dead in the street, or them you. Keep the peace! Why, if that don’t make somebody a murderer and somebody dead that didn’t need to be then I can’t see across my nose! Keep the peace! Why, you will bust it wide open with your hail-to-the-king ukase!”
“Maybe,” Blaisedell said. “But most likely they won’t come in.”
“They will come!” the judge said. “I’ll tell you why they will come. Because now they are guilty-as-sin road agents to every man, and they know it. They are that if they stay out, and yellow-bellies besides. If they come in they will think they are honest-to-genuine, gilt-edged heroes proving they are innocent to all, and striking a blow for freedom too. Men have died for that many’s the time, and God bless them for it!”
“They know better than to come,” Skinner said.
“They will have to come. And you, Mister Marshall of Warlock Blaisedell, have made it so. There is no way out of it. So you will have to kill them. And that will put you wrong. You will fall by it, son.”