“Leave him in her custody, Deputy,” Blaisedell said, in his deep voice. “He’ll not be leaving here.”

Gannon tapped his hat against his leg. This was not right, he thought; it did not matter that this was Miss Jessie Marlow, and Blaisedell behind her; it did not matter that it was MacDonald who was hurt, or that it was the crippled fellow who worked for Miss Jessie that had shot him. With growing anger he gazed back into Miss Jessie’s contemptuous face. But he wished it had not happened this way.

Someone called his name. The judge came hurrying through the miners on the boardwalk, his crutch flying out and his body lurching so that he looked as though he would fall at every step. The judge waved a hand at him, and, panting, made his way up onto the porch. His hat had slipped forward over one eye. “Miss Jessie Marlow!” he panted. “The prisoner is released on your recognizance. Is that all right with you, ma’am? Fine!” he said, without waiting for an answer. He turned his sweating red face to Gannon. “Fine!” he said, more loudly, as though it were a command. “Now you help me down these steps, Deputy, before I break my neck!”

The judge swung around and tottered; Gannon caught his arm. “Come on!” the judge whispered. Gannon helped him down the stairs, and immediately the judge set out back along the boardwalk with his lurching, pounding gait. The miners stared at them expressionlessly as they passed.

They turned up Main Street under the arcade. “Come on, you damned fool!” the judge said. When they were alone and out of earshot of the men in the street he slowed his pace a little, panting again. “You will leave well enough alone!” he said savagely. “Or I will take this crutch and club you senseless — which you already are. Son, any kind of a damned fool ought to know not to snatch at gnats when there’s camels to be swallowed still!”

“I know what I have to snatch at. What am I supposed to do, let any wild mucker that wants to shoot at MacDonald just because nobody likes MacDonald?”

“Right now you are going to.”

“You damned old fraud!”

“I am,” the judge said. “I have admitted it a hundred times. It is a time for fraud and not for bullheadedness. Son, I didn’t ever think it of you. Did MacDonald make a complaint against him?”

“Not yet.”

“You will anyhow wait till he does. And what will you do then? Tittle has got a load of buckshot in him; will you haul him to jail regardless?”

“She wouldn’t let me see him even,” Gannon said. His rage was running out, but it did not change anything. He had stood in the street where MacDonald had been shot and felt the eyes upon him, and had known they thought to a man that he would not go after Tittle because of Blaisedell. He would not let it matter what they thought of him, John Gannon, but it was time that it mattered what they thought of the deputy sheriff in Warlock.

“Son,” the judge said, almost gently. “Have you been watching Blaisedell these days? I thought you saw things. He will step back so you can come forward, and God bless him for it. But he is not going to step back because you have come forward. Don’t you even think of trying to push on him.”

“I was trying to arrest a man that assaulted another with a deadly weapon in this town I am deputy in.”

“Son, son,” the judge said, in a tired voice. “It is like hearing myself talk when I was young and thought there was nothing but two ways about a thing. Do you know what I learned in the war besides that a minie ball can take a leg off? I learned it is better to swing around a flank than charge straight up a hill.”

“Judge,” he said. “I am going to stand up or I’m not. If I did not go there after Tittle I backed down in every man’s eyes. And it was not just me that backed down.”

“There is a time when a man does best to back down,” the judge said, and evaded his eyes.

Gannon started on down toward the Assay Office, where there was another knot of men watching him come. The Judge crutched along beside him, grunting with the effort. Gannon knocked on the door of the doctor’s office. It opened a crack and Dawson’s scared face appeared. “What do you want?”

“I want to see MacDonald.” Past Dawson he could see the doctor washing his hands in a crockery bowl. The doctor shook his head.

“Not now, Deputy. He’s resting now. He has lost some blood.”

“I want to see him as soon as he is able,” he said, and Dawson nodded and closed the door. As he started on back to the jail Pike Skinner caught up with him and caught his arm, and he heard the crack of the judge’s crutch behind him.

“Johnny, for Christ’s sake!” Pike whispered. “Are you trying to get Blaisedell in a brace?”

“He has caught pride like a dose,” the judge said.

Gannon swung around to face them. “It is not so, Judge,” he said thickly.

“Listen!” Pike whispered. “Do you know what MacDonald did, Johnny? Went in the General Peach there and called Miss Jessie a whore to her face, and it a whorehouse! Johnny, any man’d done what that crippled one did. MacDonald is lucky Blaisedell wasn’t there!”

Gannon looked from Pike’s face to the judge’s. His mind felt as though it would burst. It did not signify, he told himself. He walked slowly away from them, past Goodpasture’s store, and across Main Street to the jail. He sat down heavily in the chair behind the table and stared at the sunlight that came through the door. Nothing was ever clear, everything was incredibly difficult, complex, and suspect; there was no right way. He sat in miserable loneliness contemplating himself and his deputyship. It was a long time before he heard footsteps on the boardwalk outside, and he supposed that it was Dawson coming.

Pike Skinner came inside, grinning. “MacDonald has skedaddled,” he said. “Dawson went and got his buggy and brought it around just now, and they have lit out on the Bright’s City road.” He grinned more widely. “The judge said you might be pleased to hear it.”

He didn’t answer, and Pike’s face stiffened. “What are you going to do, Johnny?”

He shook his head; relief made him feel giddy. “Why, nothing I guess. I guess there is nothing to do.”

53. AT THE GENERAL PEACH

I

UPSTAIRS in the General Peach a group of miners had collected in old man Heck’s room. Heck was standing; his skinny neck stuck out as he spoke. “If there is any trouble we will stand behind Blaisedell,” he said. “That’s what we have to do, every man jack of us. He said to me there wasn’t going to be any trouble and no reason looking for any, and how the deputy’d just left Ben in Miss Jessie’s custody. But I notice Miss Jessie didn’t look so sure. I told him we would stand right behind him all the way. It is something we got now.”

“That deputy’s gone and got too big for his britches,” Bull Johnson said.

“Jimmy said MacDonald called Miss Jessie a whore,” Frenchy Martin said.

They all looked at Fitzsimmons, who stood before the door. He placed one disfigured hand in the other and nodded.

“Why, God damn him!” Bull Johnson said, with awe in his voice. “He did? Did you hear him, Jimmy?”

Fitszsimmons told them what he and Ben Tittle had heard MacDonald say to Miss Jessie and the doctor.

“Dirty God-damned buggering rotten son of a bitch!” Bardaman cried. Patch added his curses, and each man cursed MacDonald in turn, formally, as though it were a kind of ritual.

“We should’ve burnt the Medusa long since!” old man Heck said. “And run MacDonald right out of the territory.”

“It’s not too late,” Bull Johnson said. “There’s matches still.”

“Is Ben hurt bad, Jimmy?” Patch asked.

They all looked to Fitzsimmons again. “He has got some shot in him. In his legs mostly.” Fitzsimmons looked as though he could hardly restrain a smile.

“I’ll break Lafe Dawson in half!” Bull Johnson said.