“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” Jessie said. “But if you will not do this for your own sake — and I understand that men must have their pride, Frank — then you must do it for mine. I hope it will not be necessary.”

Brunk stared at her. “Why, I would be a fool, wouldn’t I?” he said in his heavy, infinitely bitter voice. “And ungrateful too, since it is for your sake, Miss Jessie. But don’t you see, Doc?”

The doctor could say nothing, and Jessie put a sympathetic hand on Brunk’s arm. But Brunk drew away from her touch and backed out the door. His heavy tread slowly remounted the stairs.

“I don’t understand,” Jessie said, in a shaky voice.

“Don’t you?” he said. “Brunk was just wishing he might be a hero, and knows he cannot be. It is difficult for a man to bring himself to be a martyr when he is afraid he might look a fool instead. Do you think you can persuade Blaisedell?”

She did not answer. She was staring at him strangely, tugging at the little locket that hung around her throat.

“It is very important that you do,” he went on. “Because of what the miners would think of you if Blaisedell went through with this. Whether Brunk fled, or not. And because of what everyone would think of Blaisedell.”

He felt a blackguard; he turned so as to confront himself in her glass, and saw there a short, gray man with bowed shoulders in a shabby black suit, undistinguished looking, not handsome, not heroic in any way, almost old. The eyes that gazed back at him from the glass looked like those of a man with a dangerous fever.

“There is Clay,” Jessie whispered, as footsteps came along the boardwalk outside her window.

“I wish you luck with him, Jessie,” he said. He went out into the entryway just as Blaisedell entered; a little light from Jessie’s open door gleamed in the marshal’s hair as he took off his hat.

“Evening, Doc,” he said gravely.

“Pardon me,” the doctor said, and Blaisedell stepped aside so that he could pass.

Outside he stood on the porch for a moment, breathing deeply of the fresh, cool air, and gazing up at the stars bright and cold over Warlock. Behind him he heard Blaisedell say, “Did you want to see me, Jessie?” Quickly the doctor descended the steps to get out of earshot. He went up the boardwalk, across Main Street, and on up toward Peach Street and the Row.

19. A WARNING

IN THE jail Carl Schroeder, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Pike Skinner were talking about the posting, while at the cell door Al Bates, from up valley, watched them with his whiskered chin resting on one of the crossbars.

“You suppose the news got down to Pablo yet?” Hasty asked.

“Dechine was in,” Bacon said, from his chair at the rear. “And went back down valley yesterday. I expect he’d take it as neighborly to stop in and tell McQuown the news on his way home.”

“They won’t come,” Schroeder said, hunched over the table, scowling, gouging the point of a pencil into the table top.

Hasty said, “I guess Johnny’s plenty worried Billy’ll show.”

“Worried of getting in bad with McQuown, mostly,” Skinner said. “He—”

“You!” Schroeder said. “I am sick of hearing you picking at Johnny Gannon!” He flung the pencil down. “He come in here and put on that star, you didn’t! You quit fretting at him, Mister Citizens’ Committee Skinner!”

Peering up at Skinner from under his hat brim, Hasty said, “Is MacDonald going to see the Committee fires Blaisedell for saying them no on that jack, Pike?”

“He did right,” Skinner said, with a sour face. “Nobody’s thought of firing him. MacDonald fired that son of a bitch Brunk how long ago, but he still hangs around trying to drum up a fuss. It’s the Committee’s business to post out troublemakers, but Blaisedell can’t go against a dumb jack that doesn’t know one end of a Colt from the other.”

“Old Owen was saying he heard some muckers talking that if the Committee fired Blaisedell over it, the miners would get together and hire him themself,” Schroeder said. “And put him to post MacDonald first thing.”

The others laughed.

“There is talk Miss Jessie had a hand in the marshal changing his mind about Brunk,” Hasty said.

“Lot of talk up our way them two is going to come to matrimony right quick,” Bates said from the cell. “Make a fine-looking couple.”

Nobody spoke for a time, and finally Bacon sighed and said, “You suppose the four of them is going to come against him? Or not?”

“They won’t come,” Schroeder said again, grimly. He began to jab his pencil at the table top once more.

Standing in the doorway Skinner worriedly shook his head. He turned as there was an approaching cracking sound on the board-walk.

“Here comes old Judge,” Bates said. “Charging along on that crutch of his to give everybody pure hell again.”

The judge entered past Skinner. With his shoulders hunched up by the crutch and his claw-hammer coat hanging loose, the judge looked like a big, awkward, black bird. He halted and his bloodshot eyes glared fiercely around the jail. “Where’s the deputy?”

“Here!” Schroeder said. He raised himself reluctantly from the judge’s chair, and leaned against the cell door.

“Not you. The other one.”

“Sleeping, I guess. He was on late last night.”

“There’s no sleep any more,” the judge said. He shifted his weight from the crutch to a hand braced on the table, and sat down with a grunt. His crutch clattered to the floor.

“Aw, please, Judge,” Hasty said. “Leave us sleep sometimes. We got little enough else.”

The judge scraped his chair around to face the others. “You would sleep through the roof of the world caving in and not even know it,” he said. He removed his hat, using both hands, and set it before him. He glared around the room.

“By God, you stink, Judge,” Skinner said. “Why don’t you come down to the Acme and me and Paul and Nate’ll scrape you down in the horse trough?”

“I don’t stink like you all stink.” The judge rubbed at his eyes, muttering to himself. “Where is Blaisedell?” he said suddenly. “He is running from me!”

Everyone laughed. “Laugh!” the judge cried. “Why, you poor, ignorant pus-and-corruption sons of bitches, he is afraid of me!”

“He’s went for his gold-handles, Judge,” Schroeder said. “Then he’ll show.”

They laughed again, but the laughter broke off abruptly as a shadow fell in the door. Blaisedell came in, bowing his head a little as he stepped through the doorway. He was coatless, wearing a clean linen shirt and a broad, scrolled-leather shell belt, with a single cedar-handled Colt holstered on his right thigh.

“Judge,” he said. He nodded to each of them. “Deputy. Boys. Looking for me, Judge?”

“I was,” the judge said, and Bates snickered. The judge said, “I am warning you, Marshal. You are now standing naked and all alone. The Citizens’ Committee has gone and disqualified itself plain to everyone from pretending to run any kind of law in this town. Ordering you to something that wasn’t only illegal and bad but was pure damned outrage besides. And you have gone and disqualified yourself from them by refusing to do it. Now!” he said, triumphantly.

Blaisedell took off his hat and idly slapped it against his knee. He looked at once amused and arrogant. “You are speaking for who, Judge?” he asked politely.

“I am speaking—” the judge said. His voice turned shrill. “I’m speaking for— I’m just warning you, Marshal!”

“Listen to him go at it!” Bates whispered. “By God, he is a real Turk, that old Judge.”

Blaisedell glanced at him and he looked abashed.

“For what you have done,” the judge went on, more calmly, “you have run up a ukase on those four boys all by yourself now.”

“Pardon?” Blaisedell said.

“Now, hold on, Judge—” Schroeder began.