June 5, 1881 (continued)

THE fire in the Lucky Dollar has been quenched, and just in time, for a strong wind has come up. Thank God it did not arise earlier, or this town would have burned as swiftly as dry paper — a burnt offering after a man’s reputation, or his sanity. A town to form Morgan’s funeral pyre, and Blaisedell’s parting salute. Or is it of parting? Those who saw him say he was quite insane. Almost, as I write this, I find I wish he had burned us all out: Warlock gone and ourselves scattered, leaving Blaisedell to brood here alone in his madness.

There will be no sleep this night.

The news of the death of General Peach comes as no shock. Neither have I taken it as a sign of New Hope, as Buck Slavin seems to. It is only a meaningless bit of information. Perhaps it is not even true.

I have had a stream of callers. I suppose they have seen my light and sought a fellow human to talk to. Kennon says he has heard that the strike has been settled. Mosbie’s arm is broken, but he is not seriously wounded; I had thought he was dead. Kennon says he will resign from the Citizens’ Committee; he does not say why. I feel the same. All reason is gone. Egan says that Morgan had got the drop on Gannon and locked him in the jail, which was why our brave deputy was so little in evidence this evening. He did appear during the fire, and helped organize a bucket brigade, the pumper having broken down. Egan says we will have to have a proper fire department; I stare at him stupidly as he says it.

Buck Slavin has come in again and told me the latest news. It is true, evidently, that General Peach is dead at the border. A Lieutenant Avery was here with a detachment — unobtrusively, for I did not see nor hear of them until now — to dispatch back to Bright’s City the wagons that had been brought here to transport the miners to the railroad at Welltown. Peach’s body is with the main train, which has hastened back up the valley. Whiteside is now presumably acting governor, and Buck is overjoyed. Avery told him, however, that Whiteside seemed a man in a trance. Evidently he was very close to the General when he fell (as he was always protectively close), and was much shocked by the incident, which was, however, a fortunate one. Avery said it was obvious to all but Peach by the time they reached the border that the massacre had been perpetrated by Mexicans in revenge upon the rustlers, and it had taken place, as well, upon Mexican soil. Peach, however, was determined that it was his old antagonist, Espirato, and seemed prepared to pursue him to South America, if necessary. But before he had passed onto Mexican soil, his horse slipped in a narrow defile at the mouth of Rattlesnake Canyon, he fell and died instantly, and mercifully. Whiteside, accompanying him, was the only man to see it. Afterwards his only concern was to get the cavalry and Peach’s body back to Bright’s City in order to give him a military funeral before decomposition of the remains begins.

Buck has no doubt that Whiteside will now, according to his promise, rectify all our wrongs and wants, and sees Warlock as a future metropolis of the West. Buck is an optimistic and public-minded man. To his mind Blaisedell is only a small and temporary blight upon the body politic; with all else healthy and aright, he will automatically disappear. Like the rest of us, but perhaps for different reasons, he too is no longer interested in the Citizens’ Committee. I am apathetic of his ambitions, I am contemptuous of his optimism. The old, corrupt, and careless god has been replaced in his heaven, and so, he feels, all will be well with the world, which is, after all, the best of all possible ones. It is a touching faith, but I am drawn more to those who wander the night not with excitement for the future but with dread of it.

I can see many of them through my window, unable to sleep now that the fire is out. For what fire is out, and what is newly lighted, and what will burn forever and consume us all? We will fight fire with futile water or with savage fire to the end of this earth itself, and never prevail, and we will drown in our water and burn in our preventive fire. How can men live, and know that in the end they will merely die?

Pike Skinner, who is frantic, says that Gannon has warned Blaisedell that he intends to arrest him at sun-up. Skinner says that Blaisedell will kill him, and I cannot tell whether he feels more horror that Blaisedell should kill the Deputy, or that the Deputy, who is Pike’s friend, should be killed. Once I would have stupidly said that the Deputy would not be such a fool. I have been shown fatuous in my skepticism too many times. Now I neither believe nor disbelieve, and I feel nothing. There is nothing left to feel.

It is four in the morning by my watch. Mine is the only light I can see, the scratching of my pen the only sound. Here astride the dull and rusty razor’s edge between midnight and morning, I am sick to the bottom of my heart. Where is Buck Slavin’s bright future of faith, hope, and commerce? What is it even worth, after all? For if men have no worth, there is none anywhere. I feel very old and I have seen too many things in my years, which are not so many; no, not even in my years, but in a few months — in this day.

Outside there is only darkness, pitifully lit by the cold and disinterested stars, and there is silence through the town, in which some men sleep and clutch their bedclothes of hope and optimism to them for warmth. But those I love more do not sleep, and see no hope, and suffer for those brave ones who will fall in hopeless effort for us all, whose only gift to us will be that we will grieve for them a little while; those who see, as I have come to see, that life is only event and violence without reason or cause, and that there is no end but the corruption and the mock of courage and of hope.

Is not the history of the world no more than a record of violence and death cut in stone? It is a terrible, lonely, loveless thing to know it, and see — as I realize now the doctor saw before me — that the only justification is in the attempt, not in the achievement, for there is no achievement; to know that each day may dawn fair or fairer than the last, and end as horribly wretched or more. Can those things that drive men to their ends be ever stilled, or will they only thrive and grow and yet more hideously clash one against the other so long as man himself is not stilled? Can I look out at these cold stars in this black sky and believe in my heart of hearts that it was this sky that hung over Bethlehem, and that a star such as these stars glittered there to raise men’s hearts to false hopes forever?

This is the sky of Gethsemane, and that of Bethlehem has vanished with its star.

68. GANNON SEES THE GOLD HANDLES

I

GANNON came awake with a start and stared at the outline of the window that was emerging gray from the surrounding darkness. He raised himself carefully on one elbow and looked down at Kate’s sleeping face, with the soft mass of hair beneath it on the pillow like a heavy shadow, the soft curves of her lashes on her cheeks, and her lips, which looked carved from ivory. He watched the rounding and relaxation of her nostrils as she breathed, and the slow, deep rise and fall of her breast. One arm was thrown across it and her fingers almost touched him.

Slowly, watching her face, he began to slide away from her, stopping when her lips tightened for a moment and then parted as though she would speak. But she did not waken, and he eased himself from her bed, and carried his clothing, shell belt, and boots into the living room to dress. His holstered Colt thumped upon the oilcloth-covered table as he set it down, and he held his breath for a moment, but there was no sound from the bedroom.