Abe made a sound that was a fair try at a laugh. The old man yelled, “Hollow pure yellow son of a bitch!” He began fretting and cursing to himself, and scratching viciously at his legs. They itched all the time now, he said.
“Well, now,” Dechine said. “I didn’t get up to the trial there, but I heard Blaisedell had himself an awful hard time up there.” His little red eyes sought Curley’s. “Isn’t that right, Curley?”
“Joy to see it. I wished you’d been there, Abe.”
Abe said nothing.
“Well, I mean,” Dechine said. “What I come by to tell you, Abe. I was talking to Tom Morgan, kind of talking around it to him there, and he sounded like Blaisedell wasn’t going to stand for being pissed on up there at Bright’s like he was. Sounded like he thought Blaisedell might move on.”
“He won’t move on,” Abe said. “He’s got work to do still.” Curley watched him stretch, and knew it was a fraud. “Killing to do yet,” Abe said.
Curley averted his eyes to see Dechine scowling down at his knees, and the old man grimacing horribly.
Dechine said, “There is this new woman up in Warlock. Kate Dollar her name is, and high-toned as that madam they used to have at the French Palace there. Won’t have anything to do with anybody, but I see her passing the time there with Johnny Gannon the other day. Never thought of him much as being a long-boy, before.”
“Hope she gives him the dirty con,” the old man said. “Any son of a bitch that would stand by and see his brother burnt down by that hog butcher.”
“Dog killer,” Abe said, in that way he had, as though he were talking to no one. “He will come back because he didn’t get all the dogs killed yet.”
“I swear!” Dad McQuown cried. “It makes a man want to puke to hear a son of mine talk like you do!”
Abe didn’t even appear to hear. Dechine was studying his knees some more.
“Son, what’s got into you?” the old man said. “I never heard such fool talk.”
Curley heard snarling beneath the porch. One of the dogs dashed off around the corner; it was the big black bitch, with the little feisty brown one after her. Abe stirred a little, and moved his shoulders in his grease-stained buckskin shirt.
“Why, they make you out a dog,” Abe said. “Run everything onto you. Then they put the dog killer after you and it crosses out everything. I see how it works,” he said, nodding like that, to himself.
Curley said, “Maybe they will take it far enough back so they can make out it was you all the time, instead of Apaches out here.”
Abe looked at him with his green marbles of eyes. “Do you think you are joking, Curley? They could do it if they tried. Because time was when every foul thing any man did it was Paches did it. And so old Peach came dog-killing down and cleaned them out. And so start all over clean. It is like a woman every month. Now it’s Abe McQuown is the dog and Blaisedell dog killer so they can start clean again. I see how it works.”
“Jesus!” the old man said.
“Watch I’m not right, Daddy,” Abe said. “They have piled all the foul on me now. Then they will bleed it out and start clean. A man’d been educated he could follow it all the way back through history, I expect. How it’s worked just like that. You can’t blame them. Can’t blame Blaisedell even.”
“Jesus Christ!” Dad McQuown said. Curley looked at Dechine and shook his head a little, and Dechine found a place on the back of his hand that needed studying more than his knees.
Curley said, “Abe, I guess I never knew a man with as many friends as you. And talking this crazy stuff.”
Abe blinked and stared off at the mountains. After a long time he said, “You think I have gone yellow. But I’m not scared. I just feel like one of those calves in the Bible that’s going to get its throat cut by a bunch of wild Jews set on it. Only those calves never knew what was happening to them.”
“Holy Jesus Christ, son!” the old man yelled. “You have been chewing on the wrong weed. Son—”
But Abe continued, not even raising his voice. “Can’t blame Blaisedell even. He is just doing what all the rest want. He is just the one with the knife to do the cutting.”
Dechine said, “I never heard about Blaisedell being any shakes with a knife.”
Abe’s eyes glittered with anger as he glared at Dechine. But he did not speak, and Curley sighed to see him.
“Son,” the old man said. “Now listen here, son. Why, God-damned right it looks like Blaisedell is itching to kill you. But the thing you have to do is kill him first.”
“He’ll kill me if he gets a chance,” Abe said. “I’d be a fool to give him the chance.”
Curley said slowly, “Blaikie would surely like to buy this spread, Abe.” He met Abe’s eyes that blazed at him, sorrier for Abe than he had ever been for anyone else; Abe’s eyes wavered away from his, and he was sorry for that, too.
“Do you think I would run out like Luke?” Abe said hoarsely.
“What’re you going to do, Abe?” Dechine asked.
“Only one thing for a man to do,” Dad McQuown said, “that’s being chased out of his own country.”
“Wait it out,” Abe said.
“Why, son, there’s them that fought your fight for you moldering on Boot Hill in Warlock! Why, if I was anything but half a man myself I’d—”
“You’re not,” Abe snapped.
Curley said, “I’ve been thinking of moving on myself, Abe.”
“Run then.”
“I wouldn’t look at it I was running. Things have gone bad here, is all. I wouldn’t look at it that you was running either.”
“I don’t run,” Abe said. He shook his head, his face in shadow beneath his hatbrim, the sun red-gold in his beard.
“Or fight,” the old man said contemptuously. “Or anything.”
“Wait it out, that’s the best thing, Abe,” Dechine said. Curley saw Abe’s face twist again, as though with pain, and Curley stood up a little straighter, where he leaned against the rail. He could feel the strangled violence in Abe and he was afraid that if Dechine said one more stupid thing Abe would jump him.
But Abe only shrugged and said, “Can’t go against what everybody thinks of you.” Then, after a time, he said, “Can’t run and I can’t go against him. He is fast. He is faster than anybody in the country. He’s— He’d—”
He stopped, staring, and Curley turned to see the brown dog trotting around the corner of the house, his dark-spotted tongue lolling from his mouth. Abe leaned back stiffly. His hand flicked down, and up; his Colt crashed with a spit of fire and smoke and the dog was knocked rolling in the dirt with about a half a yelp. The Colt crashed and spat again and again, and with each shot the brown, bloody, dusty body was pushed farther away as though it were being jerked along on the end of a rope.
“Like that!” Abe whispered, as the gunsmoke blew away around him. He holstered his Colt. “Like that,” he said again.
28. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE
March 12, 1881
I HAD thought this affair of only local importance. It did not occur to me that it had spread beyond the territory. I was surprised to read a long account of it in a San Antonio paper which someone brought here, and now I have come into possession of a magazine called the Western Gazette. This so-called journal combines cheapjack writing with smudged print upon coarse paper, and is devoted almost entirely to an affair vaguely resembling, and called, “The Battle in the Acme Corral.” It is a strange experience to read an account such as this, where an occurrence one is closely acquainted with is transformed into something wild, woolly, and improbable, with only the names true, and not all of them by any means. There is a crude illustration upon the cover, depicting a huge St. George of a man whose six-shooter is almost as long as a sword, confronting a host of sombreroed dragons. The execrably written text might be the more infuriating if Blaisedell were held to be the villain of the piece, but possibly nothing could be more intolerable than the fulsome praise, the impossible prowess and nobility, and the heroic speeches that make the gorge rise. The author listed nine dead, of whom Morgan was credited with three. It is fantastic to think of people reading, and believing, this vile fiction, which is solemnly presented as Truth. Buck says there were a number of newspapermen at the trial, however, some of whom had come from great distances to attend it. Presumably Warlock will now go down in History as the site of “The Battle in the Acme Corral,” as well as of the Medusa Mine. Blood is as stirring to the human imagination as silver.