Fitzsimmons laughed, then, and said, “Do you know what is funny? MacDonald thinks he is way ahead of us now.”

“How’s that, Jimmy?” Daley asked.

“Why, because Ben shot him. He thinks he can hold it up to everybody now how we are a bunch of wild men.”

“What’s so funny about that?”

“I believe,” Bull Johnson said, squinting at Fitzsimmons. “I do believe that sonny-boy here is going to lecture the grownups again, and going around the barn to do it.”

Fitzsimmons flushed. “Well, MacDonald does, and he is wrong. You fellows should have seen him downstairs. Miss Jessie asked him to his face if he’d got orders to settle, and you should have heard him yell. He yelled too much,” he said, and grinned. “I would just make a bet he had got orders to settle, and he is scared to death we can sit him out. But now he thinks he is way ahead of us, on account of getting shot. Do you know the best thing that could happen to us? If Ben got taken to the judge and heard. And better yet if he got sent up to Bright’s City to court. We would be the worst kind of tom-fools to try to stop them from taking him out of here. Because then it would come out in court what MacDonald said to Miss Jessie. Threatening her like he did, and calling her what he did. You see?”

“I see we ought to cut his balls for him,” Bardaman said uncertainly.

Fitzsimmons shook his head and leaned easily against the door. “No, for if we just tread soft for a while he has ruined himself for good. There’ll be others to cut his balls for us when this gets out. And if it came to trial at Bright’s! I expect Mister Mac might hear more from Willingham. People think high of Miss Jessie, and not just here. MacDonald is gone out in the bucket if we just play it right. If we can just last it out.”

“I think maybe Jimmy is talking sense,” Bardaman said.

“Good sense,” Daley added quietly.

“By God, maybe we are not plowed under yet!” Patch cried.

Frenchy Martin leaned forward. “You think we might pull it off yet, eh, Jimmy?”

“I know so.”

“What about the union, Jimmy?” Bardaman said. He leaned forward too. Old man Heck was scowling a little, and Bull Johnson gnawed on a knuckle, but he was watching Jimmy Fitzsimmons too. They all watched him, waiting to hear what he had to say, and he smiled triumphantly from face to face, and began to speak.

II

In the hospital room, Ben Tittle lay on his cot like a bas-relief figure beneath the bedclothes. The whisky bottle the doctor had left was on the floor beside him. When Miss Jessie and Blaisedell appeared Tittle raised his head and grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth. The flesh on his bony face was an unhealthy, tender-looking white. “They going to hang me, Miss Jessie?” he said.

“No, they are not going to hang you, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. She came forward to sit on the edge of his cot, while the marshal remained in the doorway.

“Why, heck, and I was just in the mood for a hanging, too,” Tittle said. “Hello, Mr. Blaisedell.” The drunken grin looked pasted to his face. He said in a quieter voice, “Mister Mac cashed in yet?”

“Nobody’s heard,” Blaisedell said.

“You are to quiet down, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. “You have been drinking too much of that whisky. The doctor left it to stop the pain.”

“What did you want to take a shot at MacDonald for, fellow?” Blaisedell asked gravely. “That didn’t do anybody any good.”

The pasted smile disappeared. Tittle pouted. “Well, I know what is owed around here, Mr. Blaisedell. Even if no other ungrateful mutts don’t. I can pay my debts as well as any man.”

Blaisedell frowned. Miss Jessie, however, patted Tittle’s hand, and he seemed relieved. He lay back on his pillow with the smile returning.

“Why, I don’t like to make trouble for nobody, Marshal,” he said. “Excepting for a man who would talk to a lady like that. Said dirty things,” he said, and his voice fell with embarrassment. Then his voice grated as he said, “I hope he goes out painful, if I get lawed for it or not.”

“Said what things?” Blaisedell said.

“He threatened me, Clay,” Miss Jessie said quickly. “For feeding them here.”

“I know that. Said what dirty things, fellow?”

Cords drew tight in Tittle’s neck as he raised his head again. “Why, I guess — I guess I knew it was your place, Marshal,” he said. “But it come on me so, you see. But I guess you would have got him square, and finished him.” He looked pleadingly at Miss Jessie. “Did I do wrong, ma’am?”

She patted his hand. “No, Ben.”

“I did it for you. The only thing I ever found to show—” He stopped, and drew a deep breath and said, angrily now, “For all of us! And if I hang for it that is fine too, and little enough.”

“We won’t let them hang you, Ben,” Miss Jessie said. She gazed at Blaisedell with her great eyes. Blaisedell moved aside as footsteps hurried down the hall and the doctor appeared. His gray, crop-bearded face was grim.

“MacDonald?” Blaisedell asked.

“He is all right,” the doctor said. He stood frowning down at Tittle. “As a matter of fact he has left for Bright’s City. Ben, you have not done the Medusa strikers much good today.”

Ben Tittle laughed shrilly. “I run him out!”

“Maybe you did,” the doctor said, but he shook his head at Miss Jessie, and strain showed suddenly in her face. “Well, I will give you a little laudanum, Ben,” the doctor said. “And start picking the lead out of your hide.” He put his bag down and rummaged through it. “Jessie, you had better leave.”

Miss Jessie rose quickly. She went over to join Blaisedell, and took his arm as Tittle cried happily, “Go ahead and dig, Doc. A man can stand a lot to know that he has run Mister Mac out of Warlock!”

54. MORGAN MAKES A BARGAIN

MORGAN sat in his chair in his room at the hotel, reading the magazine by the late sunlight that came in the window. From time to time he chuckled, and frequently he turned back to the cover where, on the cheap gray paper, there was a crude woodcut of a face that was meant to be his face. Beneath it was the inscription: The Black Rattlesnake of Warlock.

It was a narrow, dark face with Chinese-slanted eyes, a drooping mustache, and lank black hair combed like a bartender’s. There was a wart high on the right cheek, close to the nose. Maybe it was only an ink smear, he thought, and brought the face closer to his eyes; it was a wart. He raised a hand to touch his own mustache, his own hair, his his own cheek where the wart was shown. “Why, you devil!” he said, with awed hilarity. “The Black Rattlesnake of Warlock!” He whooped and beat his hand on his thigh.

He skipped rapidly through the account of the Acme Corral shooting again, grinning, shaking his head. “Well, that will teach them to stand around with their backs to the Black Rattlesnake,” he said. There was a knock, and he rose and stuffed the magazine under his pillow. “Who’s that?”

“It’s Kate, Tom.”

He stretched and yawned, and went to open the door. Kate came in. She closed the door behind her and he nodded approvingly. “Dangerous,” he said. “Dangerous for anybody to know you are creeping in to see Tom Morgan. That’s a handsome bonnet, Kate.”

“Are you going?” she asked abruptly. Her eyes were very black in her white face, her jaw seemed set crookedly.

“Why, one of these days,” he said. “When I get through bleeding Taliaferro. I will have the price of the Glass Slipper back from him before long.”

“Where are you going?”

“North, or east. I might go west, though, or south. Or up, or down.”

She seated herself on the edge of the bed. She said, “I know you killed McQuown.”

“Do you? Well, you don’t miss much, do you, Kate?”

“You did it so they would blame the deputy for it.”