Billy stood there with his upper lip working over his teeth; he twisted away as Wash put out a hand toward him. Then McQuown said, over his shoulder, “Let’s go, Billy,” and Billy let his hands fall to his sides.

The men who had crowded back in through the batwing doors now squeezed apart to let McQuown through, and Friendly, Calhoun, and Pony Benner behind him. Wash and Billy came down past Gannon, and Curley stooped to retrieve his gun, holstering it with a flourish. Billy stared at Blaisedell as he passed, and Wash, walking heavy-footed behind him, rolled his eyes exaggeratedly at Gannon. Curley came last, and made a little saluting gesture to Blaisedell. He looked pale, but unconcerned now.

Then Blaisedell turned squarely to face him, John Gannon. The lookout gazed down at him still from the stand, and Morgan watched him from the doorway at the end of the bar. Everyone was looking at him; he felt it like a blow in the stomach, and slowly he too started out after the rest. Behind him there was the sudden whispering of the Glass Slipper coming back to life.

They stood on the boardwalk in the near-darkness. As he came outside, slipping his still-bleeding hand into his pocket, he saw Curley standing close to Abe. He heard Curley laugh nervously. “Whooooo-eee, Abe! Fast, I mean!”

Gannon let the batwing doors swing closed behind him. They struck against his back on their outswing, without force. Jack Cade was sitting on the rail, his head in his round-crowned hat bent down. He rose and came forward, his face featureless in the darkness.

“You God damned yellow-livered son of a bitch!” Cade whispered. “By God, I will cut your damned throw-down interfering hand right—”

Gannon backed up a step. Billy sprang forward toward Cade. “Shut your face!” he cried, almost hysterically. “You was supposed to hold on that lookout! I saw you making for Blaisedell, you backshooting son—”

“Here!” Curley said, and Wash stepped between Cade and Billy. “Abe’s going, boys,” Curley said. “Let’s go along now, and not stand around squawling at each other.” He started after McQuown, his sombrero swinging across his back from the cord around his neck. Abe was already a half-block away, heading toward the Acme Corral.

The group before Gannon dissolved as Billy and Wash moved aside. Gannon stared into Jack Cade’s face — without judgment, for he had known what Cade was for a long time; and now he knew, too, that McQuown had put Cade to the backshooting which had just failed. With a slow, upward movement of his hand, Cade hooked his thumb behind his front teeth and snapped it out viciously.

“I’ll shoot that thumb off, one day, Jack,” Billy said, in a quieter voice. “Come on, Bud,” he said to Gannon.

Gannon stepped past Cade, and ducked under the tie rail to join the others in the street. Billy laid an arm over his shoulders; it felt like wire rope.

“Back to old San Pablo with our tails between our legs,” Wash said.

“Did you see that damned Morgan?” Luke Friendly said, in an aggrieved voice. “Brought that God damned short-barreled out of somewhere and had it on us before you could say spit.”

Cade caught up and fell into step with Benner. “Who is going to get hisself posted first?” he said, and there were curses.

“He had it his way this time!” Pony said shrilly. “But there’ll be another time!”

“We should’ve known better than to make a play in that damned place,” Friendly said. “Too bad odds.”

Gannon trudged through the dust between his brother and Wash Haggin, Billy’s arm heavy on his shoulders. He had never felt so tired, and his dread of Cade was lost in his revulsion against them all. Ahead, alone, Abe McQuown disappeared in the shadows on the corner before Goodpasture’s store. He heard muffled laughter behind them, and Billy cursed under his breath. Someone called, “Say, did you see those gold-handles good enough, Curley Burne?”

“Ah, sons of bitches!” Calhoun muttered. Curley, strolling ahead of the rest, began to hum a mournful tune on his mouth organ. Gannon remembered that mouth organ, and Curley playing it on quiet evenings in the bunkhouse — that had been one of the pleasant things. There had not been many.

And suddenly he knew he was not going with them back to San Pablo. He slowed his steps; he felt the strain of stubbornness in him that was as strong as the same strain in Billy, tighten and halt him like a snubbed rope caught around his waist. Billy’s arm slipped off his shoulders.

Gannon turned to face his brother. “I guess I will be staying in town, Billy,” he said.

6. THE DOCTOR AND MISS JESSIE

DOCTOR WAGNER, bag in hand, watched the riders appear against the whitish dust of the street and the night sky. They turned west toward the rim, one of them riding well ahead, the others bunched behind. The suspirant music of Curley Burne’s mouth organ was mingled with the confused pad of hoofs as they disappeared into the darkness.

Clearly they were leaving town. There had been no shooting, no need for his bag of medicines and his small skill. He heard a man near him sigh with relief.

He turned and pushed his way through the crowd of men along the boardwalk. “Doc,” one said, in greeting. Others took it up: “Doc!” “Evening, Doc.” Behind him the piano in the Glass Slipper began tinkling brightly. A man caught his arm. “What happened, Doc?” Buck Slavin cried excitedly.

“The marshal got the drop on Curley Burne in the Glass Slipper. The cowboys have all gone out of town.”

Slavin let out an amazed and pleased ejaculation. The doctor disengaged his arm and hurried on, for he must go and tell Jessie, who would be waiting.

He crossed Broadway. Several men were standing on the veranda of the Western Star Hotel, outlined against the yellow windows there.

“What happened, Wagner?” MacDonald called, in his harsh voice.

A burst of whooping from the men back in the central block gave the doctor an excuse not to hear the superintendent of the Medusa mine. He hurried away across Main Street. There was no reason not to be civil, he thought, and he was irritated with himself. When the miners came to him with their complaints and wrongs, he could patiently explain that MacDonald’s ways were only company policy, common practice — yet it was hypocrisy, for he shared their hatred of MacDonald.

He turned down Grant Street toward the high, narrow bulk of the General Peach. A lamp was burning in the window of Jessie’s room, on the ground floor to the right of the doorway. All the other windows were dark, the boarders in town to watch trouble, to see one of the gun fights that were at the same time Warlock’s chief source of entertainment and Warlock’s curse. They had been disappointed this time, he thought.

Panting a little, he mounted the plank steps to the porch, opened the door, and set his bag down inside the dense block of darkness of the entryway.

“Jessie!” he called, but before her name was spoken the darkness paled and she was standing in the doorway of her room.

“I haven’t heard anything,” she said quietly.

“There was no shooting.”

She smiled a flickering, tentative smile. He followed her into her room and sat down in the red plush chair just inside the door. Jessie stood facing him, slight and straight in her best black dress with its lace collar and cuffs. Her hands were clasped at her waist. Her hair, parted neatly in the middle, fell almost to her shoulders in cylindrical brown ringlets that slid forward along her cheeks when she inclined her head toward him. Her triangular face was strained with anxiety. It was a face that some thought plain; they did not see the light behind it.

“Tell me,” she said pleadingly.

“I didn’t see it, Jessie. I had gone to get my bag. But from what I heard, the marshal got the drop on Curley Burne, and took the occasion to announce to McQuown his intentions here. There was no trouble, and McQuown and his people have gone.”