“Charlie—” Jessie said. She spoke in a clear, loud voice, and her tone was condescending; she might have been speaking to an obstreperous boarder. “Charlie, you must be terribly afraid of losing your position. To speak to me like this.”

MacDonald made a shrill sound. “The miners’ angel!” he cried. “The gunman’s whore, is better; and her eunuch!”

Tittle cried out, and Dawson clutched MacDonald’s arm. MacDonald glanced frantically from face to face. “You — have been warned,” he said, in a voice so hoarse his words were barely understandable. He backed away, then swung around, and, with Dawson close to his heels, hurried outside.

The doctor stared at Tittle’s wild eyes in his gaunt, bony face. Tittle’s mouth hung half open and he did not struggle now, in Fitszsimmons’ grasp. He looked as though he were in agony as he glanced at Jessie, wordlessly; abruptly he hobbled away down the hall.

Jessie turned back into her room. The doctor had thought she would be shattered, but her face was only a little pink. He wanted to cry out to her to deny it, swear to him that it was not true. He knew that she could not deny it, for, although she had lied that once to Blaisedell, she would not lie to him. The gunman’s whore, and her eunuch; he stood staring at her and in his mind’s eye saw his heart swelling and stretching until he thought he must faint with it. Motionless, hardly breathing, he waited for the tight pain to recede.

“He was very frightened, Jessie,” he said, surprised at the calmness of his voice, “or he would not have spoken as he did.”

“Yes,” Jessie said, nodding, her face pink still. “Charlie was very foolish to say those things.”

In the hall he heard the uneven crack of Tittle’s footsteps return and break into a run. With a steady, anguished grunting Tittle hurried outside; the doctor stepped out into the entryway just as Fitzsimmons came down the hall.

Then in the street he heard the shots, and the cry, and the answering deeper blast of Dawson’s shotgun. “Why didn’t you stop him?” he cried, as he ran for the door.

“He got away from me, Doc,” Fitzsimmons said blandly, behind him.

52. GANNON BACKS OFF

GANNON had just come back from lunch at the Boston Café when he heard the shots — four of them in rapid succession, and the harsh cough of what sounded like a shotgun. He went out of the jail at a run, vaulted the tie rail, and ran down the street. The hot wind plucked at his hat. Morgan sat in his rocking chair on the veranda of the hotel, and, beyond, figures milled in the haze of heat and dust.

As he approached he saw that two men were supporting a third, while a fourth with a shotgun stood in the middle of the intersection facing into Grant Street. Men were running along with him on the boardwalk. He saw Pike Skinner join the group around the wounded man, and Ralph Egan come out of the Feed and Grain Barn.

It was Lafe Dawson, one of MacDonald’s foremen, pointing the shotgun toward a group of miners on the comer of Grant Street. Oscar Thompson and Fred Wheeler set the wounded man down on the hotel steps. Blood spurted from his arm as Wheeler released it, and Wheeler quickly stripped off his belt and cinched it around the arm. The man was white with dust, as though he had been rolled in flour. As Gannon ran up someone tossed a hard-hat onto the boardwalk, where it thumped and rolled erratically.

“MacDonald, for Christ’s sake!” Egan said.

MacDonald wiped his left hand over his dusty forehead, and turned his head with a reluctant movement to look at his arm. “Deputy!” he cried, in a stifled voice, as he saw Gannon. His mouth hung open and his lower lip was pulled down to show pale gums; his breath was so rapid it sounded as though he were whistling. He stared at Gannon with terrified eyes.

“Somebody’d better run for the doctor,” Gannon said.

“Doc took the other one back to Miss Jessie’s,” Wheeler said. “He’ll be along.”

“What other one?”

“Murder!” MacDonald shouted explosively.

“Who the hell shot him?” Sam Brown demanded.

Lafe Dawson was backing toward them, still holding the shotgun pointed at the miners. Pike Skinner said, “Who was it, Lafe?”

“It was that crippled one that works for Miss Jessie,” Dawson said shakily. “He was popping away from out of range. I couldn’t—”

“Oh, you hit him,” Oscar Thompson said.

“Tittle?” Gannon said.

“They put him to it!” MacDonald said. His tongue appeared to mop limply at his lips. “I know they put him to it!”

“Here comes Doc now,” Wheeler said, and Gannon glanced around to see the doctor hurrying toward them from Grant Street. There was a good-sized crowd now, and more miners had collected. He saw Blaisedell’s back as Blaisedell walked away toward the General Peach.

Men moved aside to let the doctor through. His face was as white as MacDonald’s. “This is your work, Wagner!” MacDonald cried, and his eyes rolled toward Gannon again. “He is responsible, Gannon! He put him to it!”

“Hush now,” the doctor said. He put down his bag and bent to look at the wound in MacDonald’s upper arm.

“Get him away from me! Lafe!”

“You had better wait until I’ve dressed this arm, hadn’t you?” the doctor said, straightening. “Or would it serve you better if you bled to death?”

MacDonald swayed faintly, and Thompson caught his shoulder.

From the hotel porch Morgan’s voice was raised tauntingly. “You muckers over there! How come you send a cripple to do a mob’s work?”

“You are going to open your flap one too many times yet, Morgan!” a rough voice retorted.

“Is that you, Brunk?” Morgan called, and laughed.

“Brunk’s not here. He is keeping company with McQuown and they will hang you yet!”

The doctor said, “Can a couple of you bring him over to the Assay Office?”

“Surely, Doc,” Thompson said, and he and Wheeler picked up MacDonald in a cradle-carry. The crowd parted as they carried MacDonald off down the street, with Lafe Dawson and the doctor following them.

Gannon saw Pike Skinner looking at him worriedly. Then, in the silence, he felt all the eyes on him. With an effort he kept himself from glancing down toward the General Peach, where Tittle was, where Blaisedell had gone. He heard whispering, and heard Blaisedell’s name. Peter Bacon, chewing upon a toothpick, was watching him with an expression of elaborate unconcern. Someone said, loud in the silence, “Never heard a man make such a fuss over getting shot.”

Gannon took a long breath, and, as though he were preparing to dive into very deep, cold, dark waters, slowly turned toward the corner of Grant Street. He started forward and heard the sudden stir of whispering around him. He walked steadily on and the miners on the corner parted before him; there were more before the General Peach, and these also moved silently aside for him. A curtain twitched in the window of Miss Jessie’s room, where Carl had died.

The door opened before he reached it, and Miss Jessie confronted him. She wore one of her white schoolgirl’s blouses and a black neckerchief, a black skirt. In her face was superiority and dislike, determination and contempt. Behind her, in the dimness of the entryway, he could sense, rather than see, Blaisedell standing.

“Yes, Deputy?” Miss Jessie said.

“I’ve come for Tittle, Miss Jessie.”

She merely shook her head at him, and the brown ringlets slid like live things along the sides of her head.

“He has shot and hurt MacDonald. I will have to take him up to jail for the judge to hear him.”

“He is hurt himself. I will not let him be taken anywhere.”

Gannon could see Blaisedell now, standing far back beside the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. “I guess I will have to see him, then, Miss Jessie.”

“Will you force my house?” she said, very quietly, and she caught hold of the edge of the door as though to slam it in his face.