The doctor smiled and said, “No, I won’t get in your way. I am a doctor, after all, not a miner. But try to remember that you are serving them, sometimes. Not just yourself, Jimmy.”

Fitzsimmons’ face flushed more deeply, but his mouth was hard and crookedly set. “Why, it goes together, doesn’t it, Doc? Or does sometimes,” he said, and grinned and took his leave, his shoulders held very straight, his hands carried before him. No doubt those burned hands would be useful with Willingham, and no doubt Fitzsimmons meant to use them for all they would gain him, and the miners — that went together sometimes. And perhaps, he thought, as he closed the door, it was as much as could be expected in a world of men.

He returned to sit beside Jessie again. As he watched her sleeping face he smiled and felt at rest himself. He thought there was no better vocation he could have asked, had he ever had a choice. Her sleeping face was quite beautiful, but he was worried about her thinness. She was tired, there had been too much strain upon her, but it would be better with Blaisedell gone. He started to touch her hair again, but he was afraid of waking her, so he contented himself with staring at her face as though to memorize it.

He started as there was a shot in Main Street; he frowned as he saw her eyelids move. There were more shots. Her eyes opened.

“What’s that?” she whispered.

“Only a cowboy making a little excitement.”

Her forehead was wrinkled with worry, her eyes looked troubled. There were more shots, followed by shouting.

“It is just some cowboy,” he said soothingly. He took the bottle of laudanum up again and measured ten more drops into her glass, and rose to fill it with water. “Drink this,” he said, and she raised her head to drink. The shooting continued, sporadically, and the shouting. Jessie smiled and he saw her relax as Blaisedell’s footsteps descended the stairs.

“Clay will stop that,” she whispered, as she lay back upon the pillow again.

He felt very tense as he listened to Blaisedell’s steps in the entryway, and then he too relaxed as they passed Jessie’s door and went outside. “I think I will join you, Jessie,” he said, smiling down at her. He measured into the glass his usual dosage, in which he had not indulged for some time now, and then added five more drops and poured the water in. He raised the glass ceremoniously. He thought, as he drank the bitter and puckery draught, that it was not too early in the day.

64. MORGAN CASHES HIS CHIPS

TOM MORGAN sat on the veranda of the Western Star Hotel and watched the sun’s slow descent toward the bright peaks of the Dinosaurs. The crowd of miners had drifted away and now there was no one in the street for whom he had to put on a show of being mine-owner-bought, which had made him feel like a fool. Alone now, with the sun going down, he felt at ease.

At the same time he had never felt so excited, nor so pleased with himself. His tongue pried and poked after the tooth he had lost the other night, to Clay, and it seemed to him now that he had played out his life like a kind of bad tooth, merely filling a hole in the jawbone of mankind, to leave, when he had passed on by, a momentary tender spot that not even a blind tongue would remember. But not now; they would remember him.

And now he thought he must have seen the way some time ago. He had told Clay that since he was leaving he might as well be posted out. It was only a step farther, ace over king. He knew what it would do to Clay, clearly he saw that; and yet he knew that it was right, and had to be, for Clay Blaisedell. It would wipe out General Peach, it would do more than that. For after it they could not touch Clay. After it they could make him neither more nor less. Clay would have come the route, and they would have to let him be, for there was no more. And they would remember Tom Morgan.

He felt an urge to crow, like a cock.

But he whispered, “Yes, me too, you poor damned lost son of a bitch!” He glanced to the left where he could see the roof of Miss Jessie Marlow’s boardinghouse, where Clay was, and wondered what he was doing now, thinking now, feeling now. He clasped the shotgun that leaned between his legs and banged the butt gently against the planks. “Clay, I am sorry,” he whispered. “But it is the only thing.” He counted a few more regrets: that he would not be able to beat Peach’s head off with his own leather-bound quirt; Taliaferro. He laughed at himself as he realized that there was another regret, too. He wished that someone might know why he was doing this. He wished that Kate, at least, might know. But there was no way, and he supposed that it was fair enough.

He squinted up at the descending sun. Not so fast there! he thought. A miner walked along the far side of the street, and Morgan made a show of scowling and tipping the shotgun forward. Godbold came out of the hotel and down the steps past him, and walked quickly across Broadway.

He watched, in the late afternoon, the slant of sun under the arcades, the bright, shiny brown of a horse’s haunch, the colors of the dresses of two whores looking in the window of Goodpasture’s store. Sam Brown had not got his sign back up yet, and the yellow rectangle was fading in the sun. The wind blew up a whirl of dust, which traveled a way and died, and sent a dry weed rolling and rustling along the edge of the boardwalk. The light changed as the sun slid down the western slope of the sky, and the shadow line advanced across the dusty street. Now, where the sun struck, it made darker stronger colors that seemed tinged with red. It was getting late, and it was coming time.

He banged the shotgun butt down again and rose. Dawson leaned in the doorway with a rifle under his arm, and looked as though he were putting a lot into wishing he were someplace else. He went inside past Dawson, and propped the shotgun against the counter. The Medusa people were all in the dining room. Newman sat gazing out the window. Willingham was playing a game of solitaire, his black hard-hat seated squarely on top of his head, a hand pulling at his fringe of red beard. MacDonald, seated across from him, was morosely watching the cards.

“The muckers will be in from the other mines pretty quick now,” Morgan called into the dining room. “There will be hell busting the door down then.”

MacDonald grimaced, and shifted his black-slinged arm around in front of his body. Willingham turned the cards and said, “Mr. Morgan, you enjoy alarming us.” He took a gold watch from his vest pocket and consulted it. “I suppose we can’t count on that old idiot getting back here tonight, can we?”

“He’s forgotten us,” MacDonald said, in a hollow voice. Newman, his shoulders hunched, had turned to watch them. Three foremen sat at another table at the far end of the room. None of them looked as though they had anything to be pleased about.

Willingham said, “I told him I would ruin him. I will feel quite put out if he ruins himself by blundering down into Mexico.”

“What you big mining men need is a more reliable army. Chasing off after Apaches!”

“I don’t believe there are any Apaches,” MacDonald said. “Mr. Willingham, I think we ought to get that coach around and—”

“I will not be driven out of here!” Willingham said. He looked down at his cards again. “Well, Mr. Morgan? I thought our bargain was that you were to maintain the battlements. That is out in front, not here.”

“Things are slow out there. I can’t pick a fight with anybody.”

“Good God!” MacDonald said. “We don’t want any fights!”

“I thought I was to pick fights and shoot holes in jacks. Run some of them out of town.”

“Good God!”

“Mr. Morgan, kindly remove your dubious frontier humor and yourself. Your post is on the veranda.”