“I don’t want to die at all. I only have to stay here.” He beat his bandaged hand upon his knee. “Anyway till there is a proper sheriff down here, and all that.”

“Why?” she cried at him “Why? To show you are a man? I can show you you are more a man than that.”

“No.” He got to his feet; he rubbed his sweating hands on his jeans. “No, Kate, a man is not just a man that way. I—”

“Because you killed a Mexican once,” she broke in. Her tear-shining eyes were fastened to him. “Is that why?”

“No, not that either any more. Kate, I have set out to do a thing.” He did not know how to say it any better. “Well, I guess I have been lucky. That’s part of it, surely. But I have made something of the deputy in this town, and I can’t leave it go back down again. Not till things are — better. I didn’t drop it a while back when I was afraid, and, Kate, I can’t now because I would rather go off with you”—he groped helplessly for a phrase—“than anything else in the world.”

He wet his dry lips. “Maybe to you Warlock is not worth anything. But it is, and I am deputy here and it is something I am proud of. There are things to do here yet that I think I can do. Kate, I can’t quit till it is done.”

He saw her nod once, her face caught halfway between cruel contempt and pity. He moved toward her and put out a hand to touch her.

“Don’t touch me!” she said. “I am tired of dead men!” She stepped to the door and jerked it open. The bottom of her skirt flipped around the door as she disappeared, pulling it half closed behind her.

He took up the lamp and followed her, stopping in the hallway and holding the lamp high to give her a little light as she hurried down the stairs away from him, and, when she was gone, stared steadily at the faces that peered out at him from the other doorways until the faces were drawn back and the doors closed to leave him alone.

59. MORGAN SHOWS HIS HAND

MORGAN stood at the open window with his tongue mourning after a lost tooth and the night wind blowing cool on his bruised face. The night was a soft, purplish black, like the back of an old fireplace, the stars like jewels embedded in the soot. He stood tensely waiting until he saw the dark figure outlined against the dust of the street, crossing toward the hotel. Then he cursed and flung his aching body down into the chair, and took out a cigar. His hand shook with the match and he felt his face twisting with a kind of rhythmic tic as he listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs, coming along the hall. Knuckles cracked against the panel of his door. “Morg.”

He waited until Clay rapped again. Then he said, “Come on in.”

Clay entered, taking off his hat and bowing his head as he passed through the doorway. There was a strip of court plaster on his cheek, and his face was knuckle-marked enough. Morgan looked straight into his eyes and said, “You damned fool!”

“What was I supposed to do?” Clay said, closing the door behind him. “Post you out because you were going anyhow?”

The blue, violent stare pierced him, and his own eyes were forced down before it. “Why not?”

“Would you kill two men to serve a trick like that, Morg?”

“Why not?” he said again. His tongue probed and poked at the torn, pulpy socket. “One,” he said. “I had to take scarface first and Lew crawled for it.” With an effort he looked back to meet the blue gaze. “I told you I couldn’t let a man get away with burning me out!”

“I asked you to leave that alone.”

“Post me then, damn you!”

Clay moved over to sit on the edge of the bed, with his shoulders slumped and his face sagging in spare, flat planes. He shook his head. “I couldn’t anyhow. I am not marshall any more.”

“Well, I will back a play I have made. I don’t go unless you post me.”

Clay shrugged.

“What would it cost you? It might win you something.”

“No.”

“What does Miss Jessie Marlow say?”

Clay frowned a little. He said in a level voice, “What would you try to do this for, Morg?”

Because I never liked to look a fool, he thought. He had never hated it so much as he did now. “God damn it, Clay! A whole town full of clodhopping idiots aching for you to play the plaster hero for them one time again, and post out the Black Rattlesnake of Warlock. Which is me. And why not? It would have pleased every damned person I know of here except maybe you. Maybe you are yellow, though — a damned hollow, yellow Yankee. I hate to see you show it for these here!”

“They can have it that way if they want it. I have quit.”

“You could have posted me and quit after the big pot when I’d run.”

“It wasn’t a game to cheat and make a fraud of,” Clay said. His face looked pasty pale beneath the bruises. He shrugged again, tiredly. “Or maybe it was and it took a thing like this to show me. And maybe if it could be that, it is time and past time to quit.”

“Clay, listen. I am sick to death of this town! I am sick of sitting in the Lucky Dollar taking Lew’s money away, I am dead sick of watching the gawps from the chair on the veranda. I want to get out of here! It was a good reason for me to get out of here. I am trying to tell you it would have pleased everybody, me included. Now you are a damned has-been and a fool besides.” And you have not quit, he added, to himself; now you have not, whatever you think.

“Why, I have pleased myself then,” Clay said. He said, quietly, “What are you so mad about, Morg?”

He sat slumped down in his chair with his cold cigar clenched between his teeth. For whom was he doing this, after all? To please himself, was it? At least he wanted a live plaster saint rather than a dead one, and for that he had done what he had done, and for that he would do more. For whom? he wondered. It stuck now to try to say it was for Clay.

“Mad?” he said. “Why, I am mad because I have looked a fool. I am mad because I am used to having my way. I will have my way this time. If you won’t post me for that, I will—” He stopped suddenly, and grinned, and said, “I will ask you for it for a favor.”

Clay looked at him as though he were crazy.

“For a favor, Clay,” he said.

Clay shook his head.

“Then I will see what it takes. Do you think I can’t make you do it?”

“Why would you?” Clay said.

“I said I will have my way!” He felt his fingers touch his cheek, and the tic convulsed his face again.

“I have quit,” Clay said. “I will post no man again, nor marshal again.” He held his hand up before his face and stared at it as though he had never seen it before. “What is all this worth?” he said, in a shaky voice. “What is all this foolish talk? What’s my posting you out of Warlock worth to anybody?”

“It is worth something to me,” he said, under his breath.

“What are you trying to make of me?” Clay went on. His voice thickened. “You too, Morg! Not a human being at all, but a damned unholy thing—and a fraud of a thing in the end. No, I have quit it!”

“Do it for me, Clay,” he said. “For a God-damned favor. Post me out and turn me loose. I am sick to death of it here. I am sick of you.”

He saw Clay close his eyes; Clay shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He continued to shake it like that for a long time. He said, “Go then. I don’t have to post you so you can go. I—”

“You have to post me!”

“As soon as I did you would walk the street against me.”

“I’ve told you I wasn’t a stupid boy to play stupid boys’ games!”

“I don’t know that many of them was stupid boys,” Clay said. “But every time now it is that way. If I posted you out for whatever reason you made me — no sooner it was done than you would come against me. No, God, no!” he groaned, and slapped his hand hard against his forehead. “No, no more! What have I done that I was made to shoot pieces off myself forever? No, I have done with it, Morg!”