His voice faltered as one of the cowboys nudged him, and he broke off. Slowly he raised his eyes to meet Morgan’s in the mirror. The cowboys edged away.

“Eat what?” Morgan said.

The miner turned toward him. His mouth was pursed as though he had been sucking on a lemon. With his left hand he shifted the sling around before him. McKittrick moved farther away from him, with disclaiming gestures.

“Eat what?” Morgan said again. “I want to know what you are thinking of eating.”

“Sneak around listening you will hear a lot of things,” the miner said. He glanced around to see if he was getting any support. Then he said, “I just don’t aim on ruckusing with anybody, Mr. Morgan, with this smash elbow I got.”

“I want you to get started eating whatever it was you were fixing to eat,” Morgan said. He stared into the miner’s frightened eyes until the miner shifted the slinged arm again, with a fraud of a grimace of pain as he did it. “Because,” Morgan said, “you are a dirty-mouth, stinking, lying, buggering, pissant, yellow-belly, mule-diddling, coyote-bred son of a nigger whore. Which is to say a mucker.”

The miner’s Adam’s apple bounced once. He wiped his free hand across his mouth. “Why, I guess you wouldn’t talk like that and still be standing if I had the use of my right arm here,” he said. “I said what I said, Mr. Morgan.”

“You said it in the wrong place.”

The miner said stubbornly, “I guess a man can still talk—”

“Eat this, then,” Morgan said, and hit the miner in the mouth. He kicked him in the crotch and the miner screamed and doubled up, clutching himself, and fell. Morgan kicked him in the face as he fell.

The miner lay face down by the rail at the base of the bar, his slinged arm beneath his body, one leg stretching and pulling up rhythmically. He groaned in a hoarse monotone. Murch came stumping up with the toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

“Get him out of here.”

Murch picked the miner up by his belt and carried him like a suitcase toward the louvre doors.

Morgan swung around and went over to the second faro layout, and seated himself in the dealer’s chair. He held his hands out over the box. His right knuckle was torn whitely and a trickle of blood showed, but his hands were as steady and motionless as though they were a part of the painted layout beneath them.

When he looked up to meet the eyes that watched him from the glass behind the bar, no longer friendly, he saw that what had been bound to pass had already quickly passed.

23. GANNON WITNESSES AN ASSAULT

GANNON stood in the doorway of the carpintería staring at the greasy tarpaulin furred with sawdust and fine curls of wood. It was so stiff that the separate shapes beneath it were not discernible. He could not even tell which of the three pairs of boots that protruded beyond its edge was Billy’s.

Old Eladio, with a maul and chisel, was cutting dovetails in a yellow pine board, and beyond him the other carpenter pushed his long plane along the edge of another board, freeing crisp curls of wood, which he shook from the plane from time to time. One of the coffins was already finished, and Gannon seated himself upon it. He tried to keep his eyes from those three pairs of narrow-toed boots. Eladio fitted an end and a side together, and meshed the dovetails with sharp raps of his maul.

“Va bien?” Gannon said, just to be saying something.

“Si, bien,” Eladio said. He bowed his bald, wrinkled brown head for a moment. “Que lástima, joven.”

Gannon nodded and closed his eyes, listening to the clean scuff of the plane and the tapping of the maul. Then abruptly he went out into the hot sunlight, and started up Broadway toward the jail. His Colt felt very heavy upon his thigh, his star heavy where it was pinned to his vest; his boots scuffed and tapped along the boardwalk. The men he passed watched him with carefully indifferent side glances.

In the thick shadow of the arcade on Main Street a knot of them, standing before the Billiard Parlor, moved aside to let him by, and he saw a horseman swing out of Southend Street, turning east. It was the marshal, riding a big-barreled black with white face and stockings. Blaisedell rode stiff-backed and heavy in his black broadcloth, trouser legs tucked into his boots, black hat tipped forward against the sun. The black’s hoofs danced in the dust. Blaisedell glanced toward Gannon briefly, and he felt the intense blue stare like a physical push. The horse broke into a trot. He heard the men before the Billiard Parlor whispering as the black danced on down Main Street, horse and horseman gradually smaller and more and more dimly seen in the dust, until they disappeared on the Bright’s City stage road.

As he went on again, toward the jail, he felt relieved; he had not been sure that Blaisedell had believed him.

The judge sat at the table, his crutch leaning beside him, before him his hard hat, his pen, bottle of ink, Bible, rusty derringer, and a half-empty pint of whisky — all the accoutrements of his office, which he brought out when he sat to fine or jail an evening’s transgressors. He frowned when he saw Gannon; he had not shaved, and there was a thick gray stubble on his cheeks and chin. Carl sat on his heels against the wall, teasing a scorpion with a broomstraw. His jaw was shot out and he looked sullen and stubborn.

“Deputy Schroeder has resigned,” the judge said.

“I haven’t either, you old fool!” Carl got up and smashed the scorpion with his heel. “Damn, how you badger a man!”

“Badger you to do your duty like you are sworn to,” the judge said. “You won’t, so you have resigned.” He looked up at Gannon and said, “Will you do your duty, Deputy?”

“Damned old bastard!” Carl cried. “Murderer, hell!” Then he said apologetically, “Johnny, I am sorry talking this way now, but he has drove me to it. What kind of judge are you?” he said to the judge. “Four hardcases trying to burn down a peace officer and it isn’t self-defense? I never heard—”

“Not for you to judge what it is,” the judge said.

“Or you!”

Gannon sat down beside the cell door and leaned back. Watching the two angry faces, his eyes felt as though they were bleeding.

“Warned him!” the judge said. “Warned him what he was doing. Making a murderer out of himself, issuing ukases and banishments like a duke. Now he has to stand trial like any ordinary mortal man and poor sinner, and I will witness against him if I have to crutch it into Bright’s City.”

“You couldn’t,” Carl said. “There is no place to buy whisky on the way.”

“I’ll witness against you for malfeasance of duty while I am at it. Will you arrest Blaisedell, Deputy Gannon?”

“He’s gone,” Gannon said.

The judge stared at him.

“Gone where?” Carl said.

“He rode out toward Bright’s City. I expect he’s gone up to court.”

“What the hell would he do that for?”

“To be shriven,” the judge said. He smiled and stretched, smugly. “Ah, he listened after all, did he? Yes, to get it off himself.”

“Nothing on him, Christ’s sake.” Carl swung toward Gannon. “He only did what he had to do. Johnny, you heard him trying to talk Billy out of it!”

Gannon nodded with an incomplete and qualified assent. Carl was right to the boundaries of what he had said; Blaisedell had done what he had to do, given the circumstances. Yet the judge was right when he said that Blaisedell must be accountable. Billy would not have died had the Citizens’ Committee not decided to post him, and had Blaisedell not decided to honor their decision, as he had not in the case of the miner Brunk. But on the other hand Billy would not have been posted had McQuown not loaded the court in Bright’s City with perjured witnesses, tricked it with a clever lawyer, menaced it with gunmen and the threat inherent in his name. And, in the end, Billy would not have died had he not set himself to kill Blaisedell.