“Here! I don’t give a damn about—”

“I know you did!” she said. She bit her lip, breathing deeply. “But it went wrong. People know you did it and they are saying Blaisedell sent you. It is so wonderful when some dirty thing you do goes wrong.”

He sat down again, and propped his boots up on the bed beside her. “I know I am everything bad that’s ever happened in this town. I’ve just been reading about it. Look under the pillow there.”

She felt under the pillow as though there might be a rattlesnake there, which, in fact, there was. She looked at the picture on the cover without interest. After a moment she let the magazine drop to the floor.

“I’m famous, Kate!” he went on. “I’m probably the evilest man in the West.” He felt his finger touch his cheek, where the picture had showed the wart. “Women will use me to scare their babies with.”

“I know you killed McQuown,” Kate said. “You did it for Clay, too, didn’t you?”

“I forget why I did it, Kate. Sometimes I just can’t keep track of why I do things.” He took out a cheroot and scratched a match. He blew smoke between them and regarded her through the smoke as she slowly inclined her face down away from his eyes, to stare at her clasped hands in her lap.

“Tom,” she said. “I will ask you to do something for me for once.”

“What do you want? The Glass Slipper for you and Buck and Taliaferro to turn into a dance hall? It is in pretty poor shape.”

“No, I don’t want anything to do with a dance hall. I want you to do something for me. I am asking you a favor, Tom.”

“Ask it.”

She spoke rapidly now, and her voice sounded frail and thin. “You’ve heard about this afternoon. I don’t know what happened exactly but — but all of a sudden everybody seems to know there is going to be trouble between the deputy and Clay.”

He leaned back and blew more smoke between them.

“Not only that,” Kate went on. “But there is talk you killed McQuown. Whether you did or not, there is talk.”

“You are back on that again.”

“Because I think — I think he has an idea you did it. He—”

“Who?”

“The deputy! I think he thinks you did it. I think he will be after you about it. Tom, don’t you see that sets him against Clay again?” He watched her eyes begin to redden, and her nose. He took the cigar from his mouth and examined it. “I am not going to let Clay Blaisedell kill him!” Kate continued. Now she sounded as though she had a cold in her head.

“Another Bob Cletus,” he said. “Well, I am nothing to do with it this time, Kate.”

“You can stop Clay.” Her eyes glistened with tears, and the tears made little tracks in the powder on her cheeks.

“Why, Kate, you have gone and got yourself in love with that ugly clodhopping farmer of a deputy. Again. What do you want to do, marry him and raise a brood?”

She didn’t answer.

“Why, you pitiful old whore,” he said, and it twisted within him like a big wrench forcing a rusty bolt.

“There is no word for you!” she whispered.

“Black rattlesnake?” he suggested. “Evilest man in the West?” He stopped; he did not know why he should suddenly feel so angry at her.

“Tom,” she begged. “You could ask Clay the way I am asking you. How would it hurt you to do something for me? Make Clay go with you.”

“He has got Miss Jessie Marlow to hold him. And she won’t go; she is prime angel here.”

“You could do something!”

“I might make a bargain with you.”

“What?”

“Since your deputy is the only one that matters. If you went with me I might be able to do something.”

He saw her close her eyes.

“I know you would like to marry up with a famous hardcase-killer, now that your deputy has got to be one. Like Miss Angel Marlow with Clay. But I have got to come out of it with something, so you and me is the bargain. Why, you would be a mistress to the evilest man in the West and famous in your own right. We will go around in sideshows and charge admission to see the worst old horrors there are, make a fortune at it. We’d make a pair.”

She did not speak, and he went on. “If I can figure some way to get Clay out of line toward killing your deputy, this is. I might as well set it all out for you to agree to, or not. For instance, things might get bad from time to time so that we needed a stake. It would be up to you to apply yourself to your line of work and make us one. Now and then.”

“Yes,” Kate whispered.

His voice hurt in his throat; his grin hurt his face. “Well, and you would be party to my evil schemes. Murder people together, you and me. Rob stages. Corrupt innocent people to our evil ways — all that sort of thing.”

She did not speak, but she was looking up at him. He rose to stand before her, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why, Kate,” he said shakily. “You act like you don’t believe what I’m saying.”

She shook her head a little.

“You have gone and got yourself in terrible shape over that deputy, haven’t you? Pretty decent, is he, Kate?”

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

He took his hand from her shoulder. He felt as though he had been poisoned. “Not to me?” he said viciously. “Pretty good in your bed, is he? That lean, hungry-looking kind.”

Slowly, silently, she bent her head still farther until all he could see was the top of her hat. “Tell me what you want, Tom.”

“We’ll make our bargain right here and now, then. You are sitting in the right place.”

Sour laughter coiled and wrenched inside him as he watched one of her hands rise to her throat. It fumbled at the top cut-steel button of her dress. The button came open and her hand dropped to the second one. Her shoulders were shaking. “Oh, stop it,” he said. “I don’t want you.”

He stooped and picked up the magazine, where she had dropped it. He rolled it and slapped it hard against his leg as he sat down in the chair again. Kate had not moved. Her hand fumbled at the top button again; then she folded her hands in her lap.

“You have touched my black heart,” he said. When he released his grip on the magazine it sprang open, but he did not want to see the picture again and he brushed it off onto the floor. He touched the place on his cheek. It occurred to him that he was making a mannerism of this, and it seemed strange that it should be like the one of Kate’s he knew so well.

“So I have to give you Johnny Gannon for Bob Cletus,” he said.

Her head jerked up, her wet eyes slid toward his. He said harshly, “Clay would no sooner go after him than—” He stopped.

“I am afraid Johnny will make him,” Kate said. “Or — they will make him.”

“They?”

She shrugged, but he nodded.

“She,” he said. “More likely. Miss Angel,” he said, nodding matter-of-factly. That would be it, although that was a part of it that Kate didn’t know enough to worry about yet.

He said, “Well, Gannon for Cletus and square,” and laughed a little. “All right, Kate.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

“Get out of here now. People will think you are not a lady.”

Obediently she rose and moved to the door. She was very tall; with her hat on she was taller than he was. She looked back at him as she started to pull the door closed, and he said, “You don’t need to worry, Kate. I expect Clay would rather shoot himself than your deputy.”

The door shut her face from him. He sat slumped in the chair, chewing on his cigar and listening to her retreating footsteps. He was tired of it all, he told himself. He had no interest in Kate, less in her deputy; what did he care what happened to Clay? He did not care to see how it would all come out. Nothing ever ended anyway. He sat there brooding at the sunlit window, sometimes raising a finger to his cheek with an exploratory touch. He was the evilest man in the West, he told himself, and tried to laugh. This time it would not come.

After a while he rose reluctantly. It was time to go and try himself against Lew Taliaferro again. Last night he had let Taliaferro beat him. But no one could beat him if he did not want it, and he was tired of that, too.