“Or anything. But that’s handy and pays well. Good night, Miss Marlow. Good night, Doc.”

“Just a moment, please!” Jessie said. “You didn’t want him to come back here, did you, Mr. Morgan?”

“It is hard to argue with him sometimes.”

“You don’t like me, do you?”

Morgan put his tongue in his cheek and cocked his head a little. “Why, ma’am, I am very respectful of you, like everybody else here in town.” He made as though to leave again, but seemed to change his mind. “Well, let me put it this way, Miss Marlow. I am suspicious by nature. I know what sporting women are after, which is money. But I am never quite sure what nice women are after. No offense meant, Miss Marlow.”

Again he started to leave, and again Jessie said, “Just a moment, please!” The doctor could hear her ragged breathing. She said to Morgan, “You said you didn’t like seeing him broken down under things.”

Morgan inclined his head, warily.

“So how you must hate yourself, Mr. Morgan!”

Morgan’s face looked for an instant as it had when he had confronted Brunk; then it was composed again, like a door being shut, and he bowed once again, silently, and took his leave.

Jessie put her hand down on the checkerboard and with a quick motion swept the checkers off onto the floor. “I hate him!” she whispered. “No one can blame me for hating him!” She raised her face toward the ceiling. He saw it soften and she whispered something inaudible — that must, he thought, have been addressed to Blaisedell, who had come back to her.

She seemed to become aware of him again; she smiled, and it lit her whole face. “Oh, good night, David,” she said. “Thank you for playing checkers with me.”

It was a dismissal, he knew, not merely for this evening, but of a companion with whom she had passed the time while she waited for Blaisedell to return. He nodded and said, “Good night, Jessie,” and backed out the door. She came after him, to close it, the opening narrowing into a thin slice of lamplight that framed her face. The door shut with a gentle sound.

He went up the steps to his room, and sat down on his bed. He felt as though he were smothering in the thick darkness. He felt old, and drained of all emotion except loneliness. Through the window he could see the bright stars and a narrow shaving of moon, and from here he could hear the sounds of laughter and drinking from the saloons on Main Street. He rose and fumbled on the table for the bowl of spills and matches. He lit the lamp, the darkness paled around him; he stood with his hands on the edge of the table, staring into the bright mystery of the flame. He had taken the bottle of laudanum from his bag when there was a soft knock.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Jimmy, Doc. Can I come in a minute?”

“All right,” he said.

“You’ll have to open the door for me, I guess.”

He put down the bottle and went to open the door. Young Fitzsimmons came in, carrying his bandaged hands before him as though they were parcels. He had dark wavy hair and thick eyebrows that met over the bridge of his nose. His long, young face was grave.

“Some things bothering, Doc.”

“Worried about those hands, Jimmy? Here, let me cut the bandages off and have a look.” The boy’s hands had been burned so terribly he had told him he might lose them. But miraculously they were healing, although it would be a long time yet.

“No, it’s not that,” Fitzsimmons said. He held out his hands and grinned at them. “They are coming fine — they don’t stink like they used to, do they?” He sat down on the end of the bed and his face turned grave again. “No, it’s I am kind of worried about Frank, Doc.”

“Are you?” he said, without interest.

“My daddy was a miner,” Fitzsimmons said. “And his before him and on back. I know about mines, and I know what you can do and can’t do when there is trouble with the company. They had troubles back in the old country my grandaddy used to tell about. I know one thing you don’t do is fire a stope.”

“Are they talking about that?”

“Plenty. They won’t listen to me because I am only twenty, but I know rock-drilling better than most of them, and union and company too. I know you don’t wreck a mine; because there may be trouble, but there is always a time when trouble is over for a while.”

“I know, Jimmy,” he said. He watched the boy’s brows knit up; they looked like black caterpillars. The boy shook his head and sighed, then held up his bandaged hands again.

“It’s been kind of good for me to be this way awhile, Doc,” he said. “It is fine to be quick with your hands, and hell not to be able to even button your fly or open a door the way I can’t. But it makes you understand, too, how you can be too quick with them. Now I have got to think every time before I reach out for anything. That’s a caution these others would be better off with.”

“But they won’t listen to you,” he said, and smiled.

Fitzsimmons grimaced. “There’s not three of them could beat me single-jacking before I got burnt — Brunk couldn’t. But there’s not three of them will listen to me, either. All they’ll listen to is Frank and Frenchy and old Heck. But they’ll listen to me some day!

“Frank’s all right in a way,” he went on. “He didn’t want nothing for himself, and I expect he would jump down a shaft if it would help get a union. Except he would just as soon jump everybody else downshaft too, and then look back and find there wasn’t anybody to make a union with.”

“I have noticed that in Brunk,” the doctor said.

“He is that way, all right. They are all too wrapped up in how they hate MacDonald’s guts. Well, I do too, but it doesn’t do anybody much good — hating Mister Mac. He is not the only super there’ll ever be. The way they are thinking, union now is only something against MacDonald. If the company was smart enough to fire MacDonald the whole union idea’d blow up in Brunk’s face.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true, Jimmy,” he said. Fitzsimmons looked pleased.

“I’ve tried to tell them MacDonald is nothing but company policy, and policy will change a good deal faster if the company sees it is good sense to change. Burning the stope or the rest of it’ll just bring in a harder man than MacDonald. But they won’t listen.”

He sat there frowning. This was the most serious the doctor had ever seen Jimmy Fitzsimmons; even when he had warned him about his hands he had been cheerful. He was a strange boy, though not a boy. He wondered if there was not more iron in him than there was in Brunk. There was certainly better sense.

“Well, Jimmy,” he said. “I would vote for you for president of the union rather than Brunk, I’ll say that.”

He had meant it jokingly; he saw that Fitzsimmons had not taken it so. “No,” the boy said, very seriously. “I’m too young yet.” He looked up from under his thick eyebrows and grinned again. “But I would vote for you, Doc.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said; his heart began to labor, as though he had been running.

“No, I’d vote for you,” Fitzsimmons said. “There’s others that would too. There’s a lot that’s sensible but just get carried along by the wild ones like Brunk because they’re loudest. Doc, what we need is somebody that can talk straight with MacDonald and Godbold and the rest of them and not be made a fool of. Somebody that is quick and smart, but somebody that is respectable too. It’s true what Frank says. But because we are not respectable don’t mean a man doesn’t have pride in being a miner. My grandaddy and my dad had pride in it, and me too. Brunk doesn’t much, underneath all. That is his trouble trying to deal with MacDonald — so that all he can think to do is things like stope-burning. But there is talking and dealing has to be done too, and that is where you would do for us, Doc. Some of us have talked of it already.”

“I’m no miner, Jimmy.”

“You are for us, Doc. Everybody knows that. That’s the main thing.”