Jessie Marlow

He put his coat back on, and the note in his pocket. He was pleased that she had sent for him — the Angel of Warlock summoning the Black Rattlesnake of Warlock. Probably she would tell him that what she wanted for a wedding present was his departure.

He went outside, across Main Street, and down Broadway. The sun burned his shoulders through his coat. It was the hottest day yet, and it showed no signs of cooling off now in the late afternoon. There were a number of puffy, ragged-edged clouds to the east over the Bucksaws, some with gray bottoms. When he reached the corner of Medusa Street he saw that one was fastened to the brown slopes by a gray membrane. It was rain, he thought, in amazement. He walked on down past the carpintería and turned in the rutted tracks that led to the rear of the General Peach.

There was a small corral there, roofed with red tile. He entered, removing his hat and striking a cobweb aside with it. There was a loud, metallic drone of flies. The June-bride-to-be was sitting on a bale of straw, wearing a black skirt, a white schoolgirl’s blouse, and a black neckerchief. She sat primly, with her hands in her lap and her feet close together, her pale, big-eyed, triangular face shining with perspiration.

“It was good of you to come, Mr. Morgan.”

“I was pleased to be summoned, Miss Marlow.” He moved toward her and propped a boot on the bale upon which she sat; she was a little afraid he would get too close, he saw. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“For Clay.”

“For Clay,” he said, and nodded. “My, it is hot, isn’t it? The kind of day where you think what is there to stop it from just getting hotter and hotter? Till we start stewing in our own blood and end up like burnt bacon.” He fanned himself with his hat, and saw the ends of her hair moving in the breeze he had created. “Clay has told me you are being married,” he said. “I certainly wish you every happiness, Miss Marlow.”

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan.” She smiled at him, but severely, as though he were to be pardoned for changing the subject since he was observing the amenities. Each time he talked to her she seemed to him a slightly different person; this time she reminded him of his Aunt Eleanor, who had been strict about manners among gentlefolk.

“Mr. Morgan, I am very disturbed by some talk that I have heard.”

“What can that be, Miss Marlow?”

“You are suspected of murdering McQuown,” she said, staring at him with her great, deep-set eyes. He saw in them how she had steeled herself to this.

“Am I?” he said.

He watched her maiden-aunt pose shatter. “Don’t—” she said shakily. “Don’t you see how terrible that is for Clay?”

“There is always talk going around Warlock.”

“Oh, you must see!” she cried. “Don’t you see that it is bad enough that people should think he had something to do with your going down there and — and — Well, and even worse, that—”

“Why, I don’t know about that, Miss Marlow. I am inclined to think that whoever killed McQuown did Clay a favor. And you.”

“That is a terrible thing to say!”

“Is it? Well, Clay might be terrible dead otherwise.”

She opened her mouth as though to cry out again, but she did not. She closed it like a fish with a mouthful to mull on. He nodded to her. “McQuown was coming in here with everything Clay would have had a hard time turning a hand against. I don’t mean a bunch of cowboys dressed up to be Regulators, either. I mean Billy Gannon and most of all I mean Curley Burne.”

“They were dead,” she whispered, but she flinched back as he stared at her and he knew he had been right about Curley Burne.

“Dead pure as driven snow,” he said. “Curley Burne, that is, and Billy Gannon not quite so pure but maybe pure enough because of the talk going around Warlock. McQuown was coming in with that and he could have come alone, only he didn’t know enough to see it. Clay would have been running yet. But since he wasn’t coming alone Clay didn’t have to run, and he may be the greatest nonesuch wonder gunman of all time but he wouldn’t have lasted the front end of a minute against that crew. The man who shot McQuown did him a favor. And you.”

He heard her draw a deep breath. “Then you did kill McQuown,” she said, and now she was severe again, as though she had gotten back on track.

He shrugged. Sweat stung in his eyes.

“Well, that is past,” she said, in a stilted, girlishly high voice. “It cannot be undone. But I hope I can persuade you—” Her voice ran down and stopped; it was as though she had memorized what she was going to say to him in advance, and now she realized it did not follow properly.

“What do you want, Miss Marlow?”

She didn’t answer.

“What do you want of him?” he said. “I think you want to make a stone statue of him.”

She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. “You cannot think me strange if I want everyone to think as highly of him as I do.”

It was fair enough, he thought. It was more than that. She had cut the ground right out from beneath him with the first genuine thing she had said. She smiled up at him. “We are on the same side, aren’t we, Mr. Morgan?”

“I don’t know.”

“We are!” Still she smiled, and her eyes looked alight. She was not so plain as he had thought, but she was a curious piece, with her face not so young as the dress she affected and the style of her hair. But her eyes were young. Maybe he could understand why Clay was taken with her.

“What if we are?”

“Mr. Morgan, you must know what people think of you. Whether it is just or not. And don’t you see—”

He broke in. “People don’t think as highly of him as they should. Because of me.”

“Yes,” she said firmly, as though at last they had come to terms and understood one another. “And everyone is too ready to criticize him,” she went on. “Condemn him, I mean. For men are jealous of him. Too many of them see him as what they should be. I don’t mean bad men — I–I mean little men. Like the deputy. Ugly, weak, cowardly little men — they have to see all their own weaknesses when they see him, and they are jealous — and spiteful.” She was breathing rapidly, staring down at her clasped hands. Then she said, “Maybe I understand what you meant when you implied he would have been helpless against McQuown, Mr. Morgan. But he is helpless against the deputy, too, because you killed McQuown for him, and the deputy is in the right pursuing it.”

Her eyes shone more brightly now. There were tears there, and he turned his face away. He had thought he could be contemptuous of her because of the different poses she affected — the faded lady, the maiden aunt, the innocent schoolgirl, the schoolmarm. What she was herself was lost among the poses, and must have been lost years ago. It did not matter to him that there was something piteous in all this, but he was shaken by the sincerity that shone through it all. He had not stopped to think before that she must love Clay.

“He will attack Clay through you,” she went on. “He will do it so that Clay will either have to defend you or — Oh, I don’t know what!”

He did not speak and after a moment she said, as though she were pleading with him, “I think we are on the same side, Mr. Morgan. I can see it in your face.”

What she had seen in his face was the thought that he would rather have someone like Kate scratch his eyes out than Miss Jessie Marlow kiss them. But he could not scorn her concern for Clay. He sighed, removed his foot from the bale, and stood upright to light a cigar. He frowned at the match flame close to his eyes. She must think she was handling him as she would a bad actor among her boarders. “Well,” he said finally. “I guess I have a lien to pay off on that buggy ride, don’t I? What do you want? Me to pack on out?”

She hesitated a moment. She licked her lips again with a darting movement of her tongue. “Yes,” she said, but he had seen from her hesitation that there was more to it and it angered him that she might be one step ahead of him. But he nodded.