“So, since I am going anyway…” he said. He drew on the cigar and blew out a gush of smoke. She was working up one of her inadequate little smiles.

He finished it. “He might as well post me out.”

“Yes,” she said, in a low voice. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and touched it to her temples. Then she wound it around her hand.

“I’d already thought of that. There is only one thing wrong with it.”

“What, Mr. Morgan?”

“Why, I don’t expect he’d want to. I don’t know if you’d understand why he wouldn’t want to, but I am afraid it would take some doing. What am I supposed to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I—”

“It would have to be something pretty bad,” he broke in. He eyed her with an up-and-down movement of his head. She flushed scarlet, but she was watching him closely nevertheless. There was no sound but the buzzing of the flies, and a creaking of buggy wheels in Grant Street.

Finally she said, “Will you try to do something, Mr. Morgan? For my sake?”

“No,” he said.

She looked shocked. She flushed again. “I mean for his sake.”

“If I can think of something.” All of a sudden rain splattered on the tile roof, with a dry, harsh sound like a fire crackling. He glanced up at the roof; a fine mist filtered through the cracks, cool upon his face. Miss Jessie Marlow was still staring at him as though she hadn’t noticed the rain.

“Just one thing,” he said. “Saying I can think of something and they post me, and I run from him like the yellow dog I am. Afterwards can you let him be?” His voice sounded hoarse. “Can you let him bank faro in a saloon or whatever it is he wants to do? Can you let him be? There’ll be others that won’t, but if you—”

“Why, of course,” she said impatiently. “Do you think I would try to force—” She stopped, as though she had decided he had insulted her.

“Did you hear Curley Burne turning in his grave just now?” he said, and she flinched back from him once again as though he had slapped her. He saw the tears return to her eyes. But he said roughly, “You have been telling me a lot of things I ought to see — but you had better see this will be a place he can stop. If he wants to stop I will put it on you to let him. Understand me now!”

Her expression showed that she was not going to quarrel with him, and, more than that, that she thought she had cleverly brought him to the idea of getting himself posted. He had been considering it all day, but it cost nothing to let her think there was no man she couldn’t get around.

The rain rattled more sharply on the tiles, and she seemed to become aware of it for the first time. “Why, it’s raining!” she cried. She clapped her hands together. Then she got to her feet and put out a hand to him. He took it and she gripped his hand tightly for a moment. “I can promise you that, Mr. Morgan!” she said gaily. “I knew we were on the same side. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. I know you will do your part beautifully!”

He gaped at her. She sounded as though he had promised to play the organ at her wedding and did not know how, but would learn, for her. He laughed out loud and she looked momentarily confused. But then she gathered up her skirts and ran out of the corral and through the pelting rain toward the back steps of the General Peach. She ran as a young girl runs, lightly but awkwardly.

He put on his hat and went out into the rain, and his cigar sizzled and died. The rain beat viciously down on his hat and back from an oyster-colored sky. It made craters in the dust where it fell, and muddy puddles spread in the ruts. He walked back to the Western Star Hotel in the rain.

57. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

June 3, 1881

IT HAS been most oppressively hot this last week or ten days, as though the sun were burning each day a little closer to the earth. Then this afternoon it rained, a brief and heavy downpour that turned the streets to mud. By tomorrow the mud will be gone, and the dust as fine and dry as ever. Yet we will have a spring: here there is a miniature spring of green leaves and blossoms appearing after any rain. This should cheer us, for all have been tense, or listless.

Six weeks have passed since Whiteside made his promise to us. Buck feels we should set out immediately to put our threats into effect, but I have instead written a strong letter to Whiteside saying that in one more week we will do so. I am sure my further threats are worthless, but it allows me to procrastinate. Hart, more honest than I, readily admits he has no stomach for another journey to Bright’s City.

The Sister Fan has had to put on a night crew. The water struck there at the lower levels has become a problem of increasing dimensions. They have a fifty-gallon bucket to bail out the excess and men must be kept working night and day to stay abreast of the flow. God-bold, the superintendent, says it looks as though expensive pumping machinery will have to be brought in. The Medusa strikers are, the doctor says, in despair over this (as they were previously over a rumor that Mexicans were to be brought in to work the idle Medusa), feeling that the Porphyrion and Western Mining Co. will not attempt to settle the strike until it is seen how grave is the water problem at the Sister Fan.

All is quiet in the valley. The Cowboys, now apparently led by Cade and Whitby, have, according to report, descended into Mexico on a rustling and pillaging expedition. This is looked upon as foolhardy at the present time, since the border is supposedly under close surveillance.

It is whispered that a board cross appeared briefly upon McQuown’s grave, with the inscription “murdered by Morgan.” In a way, I think, people have come to fear Morgan as they once feared McQuown. It is an unreasonable thing, and I suppose it is closely akin to the passions aroused in a lynch mob. Somehow he stands convicted of the murder of McQuown, and other murders as well, by some purblind emotionality for which there seems little basis in fact.

There is talk of bad blood between Gannon and Blaisedell, this stemming, evidently, from the encounter they had when the miner who shot MacDonald took refuge, himself wounded, in the General Peach. No one seems to know what actually passed between them, but I have found from long experience that much smoke can be generated here from no fire at all. The human animal is set apart from other beasts by his infinite capacity for creating fictions.

I must say that I myself have felt it necessary to change my own opinions of the deputy to a degree. I feel he is an honorable, though slow-moving man — a plodder. He has taken on a certain stature here — proof of which lies in the pudding of the speculation and of contention regarding him. He has become what none of the other deputies here has ever been — except possibly, and briefly, for Canning — a man to reckon with.

MacDonald is in Bright’s City. I suspect he will soon return, and I suspect that he is plotting reprisal. He is indeed hot-headed enough to seek illegal means of punishing the strikers, who I am sure he feels conspired to take his life by means of a hired assassin. If he is fool enough, however, to attempt to convene his erstwhile Regulators again to this purpose, he will find an angry town solidly aligned against him. MacDonald has no friends in Warlock.

So life in Warlock, with terrors more shadows at play upon the wall than actuality. The atmosphere remains a charged one, yet I wonder if it is not merely something that will go on and on without ever breaking into violence; if it is not, indeed, merely part of the atmosphere of Warlock, with the dust and heat—

I spoke too soon. Another drought is ended. A gunshot; I think from the Lucky Dollar.