He jammed the shotgun against Slator’s chest and Slator backed up. Vint grabbed at the shotgun and Gannon slammed the barrel down on the fat hand. Vint yelped. Pike started forward, and, feinting blows with the butt of the Winchester, drove them all back through the doorway.

“Tromp them down! Tromp them down, fellows!”

“Christ, give us something to help stand them off with, Bud!” Calhoun cried.

They pushed the mob leaders before them out the door, and the crowd in the street gave way. Then it surged forward again with a wild yelling. Hands caught Carl’s shotgun and pulled him forward. He stumbled to his knees, then fought and scrambled back away from the men crowding in on him. Gannon fired twice into the air. Someone yelled in terror and the mob fell back again.

The three of them stood close together before the jail door. Carl was panting.

“They won’t shoot!” a hoarse voice yelled from the rear of the mob. “They know better than to shoot!”

“Give us a God-damned iron, Carl!” Calhoun shouted.

“Good Christ, Carl, for Christ’s sake, give us a gun to hold them off with! Bud!”

“Don’t be a damned fool, Carl!” Slator said.

“Get the hell out of the way, Johnny Gannon! You two-way son of a bitch!”

“What the hell are you doing, Pike? Leave us take them!”

Slator, Vint, and Simpson started forward again; Vint was grinning. “You dassn’t shoot, Carl!”

“One step more,” Carl panted.

“Give us a chance, Carl!” Pony screamed.

“One step more, you bastards!” Pike said, and Gannon started to swing his Colt at Simpson’s head.

There were three shots in rapid succession from Southend Street, and then silence, sudden and profound. Craning his neck, Gannon saw men hurrying to get off the boardwalk, and Blaisedell appeared, walking rapidly, the Colt in his hand glittering by lanternlight. A whisper ran through the crowd. “The marshal!” “Blaisedell!” “Here comes the marshal!” “It is Blaisedell!”

Blaisedell joined them before the jail. “Need another man?” he said.

“Surely do,” Carl said, and let out his breath in a long, shaking, whispering laugh. “We surely do, Marshal.”

“We are taking those road agents out to hang, Marshal!” someone cried from across the street.

“You are not going to stop us, Marshal!” Fat Vint blustered. “We will tromp you with the rest. We are—”

“Come here and tromp me,” Blaisedell said.

Vint stepped back. Those around him retreated further.

“Come here,” Blaisedell said. “Come here!” Vint came a step forward. His face looked like gray dough.

“This is none of your put-in, Marshal!” someone yelled, but the rest of the mob was silent.

“Come here!” Blaisedell said once more, dangerously. Vint sobbed with fear, but he came on another step. Blaisedell’s hand shot up suddenly, the Colt’s barrel gleaming as he clubbed it down. The fat man cried out as he fell. There was silence again.

“Damn you, Marshal!” Slator cried. “This is none of your—”

“Come here!” Blaisedell said. When Slator didn’t move he fired into the planks at his feet. Slator jumped and yelled. “Come here!” Slator moved forward, trying to cover his head with his hands. Blaisedell slashed the gun barrel down and he staggered back. Hands caught him and he disappeared into the crowd.

“Take that one off, too,” Blaisedell said, and the same men hurriedly dragged Vint off the boardwalk.

“You have done McQuown’s work tonight, Blaisedell!” a man yelled.

“If you have got something to say, step up here and say it,” Blaisedell said, not loudly. “Otherwise skedaddle.” No one spoke. There was a movement away down Main Street. “Then all of you skedaddle,” Blaisedell said, raising his voice. “And while you are doing it think how being in a lynch mob is as low a thing as a man can be.”

There was bitter muttering in the street, but the mob began to disperse. Blaisedell holstered his Colt. Gannon could see his face in profile, stern and contemptuous, and thought how they must hate him for this. But he had saved shooting; he had probably saved lives.

Carl was mopping his face with his bandanna. “Well, thank you kindly, Marshal,” he said. “I expect there isn’t a one in there worth any man’s trouble. But damned if you don’t hate to be run by a bunch of whisky-primed, braying fools like that.”

Blaisedell nodded. Pike Skinner, Gannon saw, was looking at the marshal with a reluctant awe on his face.

“Prisoners get a scare?” Blaisedell asked.

“Caterwauling like a bunch of tomcats in there,” Carl said, and chuckled breathlessly.

Blaisedell nodded again. Suddenly he said, with anger in his voice, “A person surely dislikes a mob like that. They are men pretending they are brave and hard, but every one so scared of the man beside him he can’t do anything but the same.” He glanced from Pike to Gannon. “Well, I didn’t go to butt in so,” he said, as though apologizing. “I expect you boys could’ve handled it. It is just I surely dislike a mob of men like that.”

“I guess we couldn’t’ve handled it, Marshal,” Pike said. “Things had got tight.”

Gannon said, “I guess we would’ve had to go to shooting,” and Blaisedell smiled with a brief, white show of teeth below his mustache. He made a curt gesture of salute, as though acknowledging that as the proper compliment.

The four of them stood in awkward silence, watching the men drifting away before them in the darkness. Then Carl turned and went inside, and Pike followed him. When the others had gone, Blaisedell said to Gannon, “Your brother was with them, I heard.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Too bad,” Blaisedell said. “Young fellow like that.” Blaisedell stood with him a moment longer, as though waiting for him to speak, but he could think of nothing to say and after a time the marshal said, “Well, I’ll be going.” With long strides he faded off into the darkness.

Gannon slowly turned back inside the jail. His clothes were soaked with sweat. Billy stood alone at the cell door. “Well,” Carl was saying to Pike, leaning against a corner of the table with his arms folded over his chest, “good lesson on how to run off a mob. Haul them out and knock their heads loose one at a time.”

“More lesson than that,” Pike said ruefully. “For it takes a man to do it.” He nodded toward the door.

Gannon looked down at the blanket-wrapped body that was Phlater, whom Billy had shot. So the cards he had missed had not mattered. The lynch mob was gone. He knew that Billy had not been at the stage, but with Phlater dead and Billy’s stubborn pride, that would not matter either. So the rest of the cards would continue to play themselves out.

Pony said savagely, “Shut up about that gold-hanneled son of a bitch and leave us get some sleep in here.”

Carl’s face stiffened. Pike said hoarsely, “Gold-handled son of a bitch that just saved your rotten lives for you!”

“Sleep good on that,” Carl said.

Billy’s voice was bitter as gall. “Bring his boots and we’ll kiss them for him. Like he wants. Like you all do. Bring us his damned boots.”

Pike took a step toward the cell door and Billy retreated. Now none of them were visible in the deep shadow of the cell, but it was as though Gannon could see through it, and beyond it, and beyond Bright’s City even, see all the massive irrevocable shadows with only the details not clear.

He went out to the Boston Café, after a while, for a pot of coffee to take back to the jail, and sat the night, sleepless himself, watching Carl and Pike fighting sleep. In the morning Buck Slavin furnished a special coach, and Carl, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Tim French took the prisoners into Bright’s City for trial.

15. BOOT HILL

WARLOCK’S Boot Hill was not a hill at all, but a knoll protruding from the plateau next to the town dump, where flies hovered in great black swarms. From Boot Hill itself the valley all the way to the Dinosaurs was visible: near at hand the jumble of great rocks of the malpais, farther down the cottonwoods lining the river in irregular stretches, the greasy-green mesquite thickets, and the drier green of the grama grass along the bottoms. To the south were the barren, tan sides of the Bucksaws, marked here and there with winding mine roads, the neat ugly smears of tailings below the gallows of the shafthead frames. Farther to the west were the chimneys of the stamp mill at Redgold, with the smoke blowing southwest in gray chunks.