“There was a time when I could eat hot chiles too. That was when I was younger.”

“I can’t look her in the face,” Clay said, in an expressionless voice. “I think I could look any Cletus in the face, but I can’t her.”

Morgan reached for the decanter again. Clay did not take on this way very much, and when he did Morgan was angry, first at Clay, and then at himself; and part of the time it would seem a foolish joke, and part of the time it would sit his back heavy as pig lead because it sat Clay’s so. He had not yet discovered how he must act with Clay when Clay was like this. “A little whisky, Clay?” he said.

“Por favor.”

He poured whisky into the two glasses, and wondered if Clay had any idea that the man drinking with him had done it to him. “How?” he said.

“How,” Clay said. He drank the whisky off at a swallow and got to his feet, putting his hat on. Standing, his face remote and calm, Clay said, “There was a time when I used to pray it wasn’t so, what I’d done. It is hard to blame a person for what he does when he is scared, but you can blame yourself. Trigger-nervous and edgy like I was, and seeing a Tejano coming at me around every corner. But maybe a man has to have something like that on him.” Abruptly he stopped, and turned away from the desk.

“Why, Clay?” Morgan said.

“Why, just so he’ll know, I guess,” Clay said distantly. He went out. The sounds of gambling and drinking and monotonous talking were loud for a moment before Clay shut the door behind him.

Morgan took a cheroot from the box. He lit it with steady fingers, and inhaled deeply until he felt the smoke gripe his lungs. “How?” he said, raising his glass to the fuzzy, fat nude on her red couch. She smirked back at him, flat-faced, and he said, “Don’t smile at me, for I would hire you out in a minute if I needed a stake.”

He brought the cheroot up close before his slitted eyes, until all he could see in the world was the hoared cherry ember. Inverting the cigar, he mashed it out against the back of his hand, curling his lips back against the fierce, searing pain, and breathing deep of the stink of burning hair and flesh.

Then he sat grinning idiotically at the red spot on the back of his hand, thinking of Clay saying that he had prayed.

14. GANNON WATCHES A MAN AMONG MEN

I

GANNON waited alone at the jail. About ten o’clock the judge appeared, coming in the doorway with his hard hat cocked over his eye, a bottle under one arm and his crutch under the other, his left trouser leg neatly turned up and sewed like a sack across the bottom. Heavy and awkward on the crutch he moved around to the chair behind the table, which Gannon vacated, and sank into it, grunting. He put the bottle down before him, and leaned the crutch against the table.

“Left you behind, did they?” he said, swinging around with difficulty to confront Gannon, who had seated himself in the chair beside the cell door. The judge’s face was the color of unfresh liver.

Gannon nodded.

“You see any reason why they should have?” the judge demanded, continuing to regard him with his muddy eyes.

“Yes.”

“What reason?”

“I expect you know, Judge.”

“I asked you,” the judge snapped.

“Well, one they are after is maybe my brother.”

“By God, if you are the law you arrest your own brother if he breaks it, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But maybe you lean a little toward McQuown’s people,” the judge said, squinting at him. “Or Carl is afraid you do. Do you?”

“No.”

“Lean toward Blaisedell then, like most here? Seeing he is against McQuown?”

“I don’t guess I lean either way. I don’t take it as my place to lean any way.”

Footsteps came along the boardwalk and Blaisedell turned into the doorway. “Judge,” he said, nodding in greeting. “Deputy.”

“Marshal,” Gannon said. The judge turned slowly toward Blaisedell.

“Any word from the posse?” Blaisedell asked. He leaned in the doorway, the brim of his black hat slanting down to hide his eyes.

“Not yet,” he said. He felt Blaisedell’s stare. Then Blaisedell inclined his head to glance down at the judge, who had muttered something.

“Pardon, Judge?” Blaisedell said.

“I said, who are you?” the judge said, in a muffled voice.

“Why, we have met, Judge, I believe.”

“Who are you?” the judge said again. “Just tell me, so I will know. I don’t think it’s come out yet, who you are.”

Gannon stirred nervously in his chair. Blaisedell stood a little straighter, frowning.

“Something a man’s got a right to know,” the judge went on. His voice had grown stronger. “Who are you? Are you Clay Blaisedell or are you the marshal of this town?”

“Why, both, Judge,” Blaisedell said.

“A man is bound by what he is,” the judge said. “An honest man, I mean. I am asking whether you are bound by being marshal, or being Clay Blaisedell.”

“Both, I expect. Judge, I don’t just know for sure what you are—”

“Which first?” the judge snapped.

This time Blaisedell didn’t answer.

“Oh, I know what you are thinking. You think I am a drunk, one-legged old galoot pestering you, and you are too polite to say so. Well, I know what I am, Mister Marshal Blaisedell, or Mister Clay Blaisedell that is incidentally marshal of Warlock. But I want to know which you are.”

“Why?” Blaisedell said.

“Why? Well, I got to thinking and it seems to me the trouble in a thing like law and order is, there is people working every which way at it, or against it. Like it or not, there has got to be people in it. But the trouble is, you never know what a man is, so how can you know what he is going to do? So I thought, why not ask straight out? I asked Johnny Gannon here just now what he was and where he stood, and he told me. Are you any better than another that you shouldn’t?”

Blaisedell still did not speak. He looked as though he had dismissed the judge’s words as idle, and was thinking of something else.

The judge went on. “Let me tell you another thing then. Schroeder has gone after those that robbed the stage and killed a passenger. I expect him and that posse would just as soon shoot them down ley fuga as bring them back. But say he will catch them, and say he gets them back whole. Well, there will be a lynch mob on hand, like as not, from what I’ve heard around tonight. But say the lynch mob doesn’t pan out, or Schroeder sort of remembers what he is here for and stops them. Then those road agents will go up to Bright’s City to trial, and likely get off just the way Earnshaw did.

“Then it is your turn, Mister Marshal, or whatever you are. Which is why I am asking you now beforehand if you know what you are, and what you stand for. If a man don’t know that himself, why, nobody does except God almighty, and He is a long way off just now.”

“Judge,” Blaisedell said. “I guess you don’t much like what you think I stand for.”

“I don’t know what you stand for, and it don’t look like you are going to tell me, either!” Gannon heard the judge draw a ragged breath. “Well, maybe you can tell me this, then. Why shouldn’t the Citizens’ Committee have gone out and made itself a vigilante committee like some damned fools wanted to do, instead of bringing you here?”

Blaisedell spread his legs, folded his arms on his chest, and frowned. “Might have done,” he said, in his deep voice. “I don’t always hold with vigilantes, but sometimes it is the only thing.”

“Don’t hold with them why?”

“Well, now, Judge, I expect for the same reason you don’t. Most times they start out fine, but most times, too, they go bad. Mostly they end up just a mob of stranglers because they don’t know when to break up.”

“Wait!” the judge said. “You are right, but do you know why they go bad? Because there is nothing they are responsible to. Now! Any man that is set over other men somehow has to be responsible to something. Has to be accountable. You—”