“He sends out stories by telegraph, for heaven’s sake! And those papers back east of here pay for it and beg for more, he says. Nothing new on Blaisedell, he writes about some fool gossip or other, anything. Back East Peach is only some has-been of a general, maybe he is dead by now, it’s been so long since anybody heard anything about him. But Blaisedell! Why, Jim got rich on that Acme Corral shoot-up alone, and never stopped a minute since. Jump, when he heard about Curley Burne! You should have seen him!
“Oh, Blaisedell has got to be the biggest thing that ever happened out here, and you remember what I say and keep kind of quiet if you have to mention him to the general. Or talk him down. Here comes Jim right now,” he said, nodding toward the window.
Jim Askew, editor and publisher of the Bright’s City Star-Democrat, came hurrying in. He was a little, wrinkled, side-whiskered man with a green vizor over his eyes, ink-smeared paper cuffs, and a canvas apron. The deputy was a step behind him, and the other deputy, whom the delegation had seen before the hotel, appeared also.
“What’s happened now? What’s happened now?” Askew demanded, taking a newsprint pad from beneath his apron, a pencil from behind his ear. He stared from one to the other of them with his eyes enlarged and rolling behind his steel-rimmed spectacles. “What’s happened in Warlock, fellows?”
“Warlock is gone, Jim,” Hart said. “It was a terrible thing. The old Warlock mine opened right up and the whole town fell in. Nobody left but the few miserable survivors you see before you.”
“Now, now, fellows,” the editor said reprovingly. “Now, seriously, what’s been going on lately? What’s Blaisedell been up to now?”
41. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE
April 15, 1881
IT HAS been said, with the exaggeration by which truth is memorialized in a kernel, that the reason people remain in Warlock is that death is preferable to a journey to Bright’s City, and damnation better than the stage to Welltown. It is not quite so bad as that, although the trip is a long day’s horror, and upon arrival at Bright’s City the spine feels like a rock drill that has lost its temper.
This morning, then, to see Sheriff Keller. He is a shameful excuse for a sheriff, venal, cynical, and cowardly, and yet it is difficult to dislike him. Gannon, we found, had preceded us to Bright’s City — having ridden through the Bucksaws, a shorter route by half than the stage road — and Keller out-argued our demands for his dismissal, I think more from force of habit than from loyalty to his deputy. His reasoning was: 1) deputies for Warlock are hard to come by, good or bad; 2) Gannon is willing to be deputy in Warlock; ergo, 3) Gannon remains deputy in Warlock.
We are so used to being defeated and thwarted by Sheriff Keller that we no longer feel animus against him. Still, we were depressed by our encounter with him, and when we were kept from seeing General Peach by Whiteside at his most obstructionistic. We will try again tomorrow with renewed determination, revived by a night’s rest at the Jim Bright Hotel.
It is curious to talk to the inhabitants here about recent events in Warlock. Bright’s Citizens are defenders of Blaisedell to a man, and they are, indeed, surprised and insulted that we should feel there are two sides to the matter. They will not accept the fact that there are things in heaven, earth, and Warlock undreamt of in their philosophy. To them, Blaisedell is an uncompromised and untainted Hero, battling a Villain named McQuown. There are none of the shadows and underbrush that have so haunted us in Warlock. Morgan is Blaisedell’s right bower, and is somewhat revered himself. The miners and their quarrel with MacDonald are of no interest, although it is disturbing to hear the Regulators described as a band of eminent Warlockians convened in aid of Blaisedell.
April 16, 1881
Colonel Whiteside guards his lord like a lion. He is a colorless little man, thin, worried-looking, and nervous to infect the most placid. He is uneasy with civilians, and his manner alternates between chill command and an inept cajolery. He routed us again this morning. This afternoon we won through to the Presence.
I had not seen the General since November, when he passed through Warlock en route back from the border after one of his idiotic dashes after a rumor of Espirato. Since then, I think, he has not been out of Bright’s City. That he is insane, I have now no doubt.
Whiteside was fending us off again, although with increasing desperation, when the General himself stormed down the corridor of the courthouse where we were seeking to obtain an audience, shouting incoherently in his great blown voice. He was followed by a company of aides, orderlies, and sergeants, all in dress uniform, and was in dress uniform himself, although his blouse hung open and some kind of liquid had been spilled upon his shirt front. He waved his gauntleted hands and shouted something at Whiteside which seemed to have to do with the presence of dogs upon the post, and how they were to be dealt with. With him chaos came, as he roared meaningless sounds, and all his company sought to speak at once, while Colonel Whiteside, with pad and pencil in hand, called simultaneously for silence, sought to make sense of what his chief was saying, and watched us nervously for evidences of a flank attack.
Then, out of the uproar he himself had brought into the corridor, or out of the decay of his brain slipping into senilty or worse, or because of our unaccustomed presence, General Peach fell silent and confusion spread over his face. It was pitiful to see it. The little blue eyes, fierce and determined a moment past, wandered distraitly around, all but lost in the fat, red folds of his face. He stripped his gauntlets off hands as fat as sofa cushions, and, as soon as he had them off, struggled to put them on again, while all the time his eyes worried from face to face as though he did not know where he was, nodding from time to time as poor Whiteside tried to prompt and question him into repeating what the order, so urgent a minute before, was about — with a desperation that called forth pity not only for his master but for Whiteside himself, who must be the one to govern this territory under a madman while trying to conceal that madness from the world.
At last Peach’s eyes fixed themselves upon me with an enraged and defiant glare, and he cried, “Has headquarters sent out some more damned politicians to try to run my brigade for me, sir?”
I stammered that we were a deputation from Warlock with urgent business for his attention, to which he retorted even more forcibly that I was to tell them that the damned devil had hidden himself in the Sierra Madre and he could do nothing unless he was given permission to cross the border in pursuit. “Nothing, damn his red eyes!” he cried, while Will, Buck, and I tried to explain where we were from and something of our mission. Finally either some sense broke through or we were mistaken for still other emissaries, for all of a sudden we were swept into the inner temple beyond Whiteside’s desk.
It is a great room with westward-looking windows, crowded with the mementos of his career: an umbrella stand in which are tattered banners, bullet-torn regimental colors, a pair of confederate standards; on the wall a large painting of the Battle of the Snake River Crossing, with Peach leading his men through Lame Deer’s painted ranks and the teepees beyond them; on the wall also a varnished plaque on which was the scalp of some vanquished foe, with long, dusty braids; and there were quivers of arrows, moth-eaten war bonnets, Apache shields, war clubs, peace pipes, and framed photographs of Peach shaking hands with various chieftains. Upon his desk was the leather-wrapped stick he often carries, which is supposed to be the shaft of an arrow that almost killed him. The whole room seems a dusty and unkempt museum, or perhaps it is only a facsimile of his mind — a vacant space, inhabited by heroic memories.