“Schroeder!” MacDonald cried. “Tell this idiot to get out of the way.”

“Do like he says, Mister Mac!” Carl called back. His voice was shrill. “And Jack Cade, you had better hang up that hog leg, for I am laid in on your belt buckle.”

Gannon stood watching MacDonald and he thought he had won.

“What do you say, Mister Mac?” Cade said, in his flat, harsh voice. “Shoot in or crawl out?”

Wash said, “You had better back off and let us handle it, MacDonald.”

“He doesn’t go unless you all go,” Gannon said.

“Very well!” MacDonald said. “Your piece there speaks with more authority than you do. I’m forced to honor it, since I want no bloodshed. You will hear more about this from Sheriff Keller.” He stood in his stirrups and called to Carl, “This is not the end of this, Schroeder!” He sawed viciously with the reins, and the white-faced horse bucked, scaring Chet’s mare sideways. Gannon swung the shotgun toward Wash and Jack Cade. Cade nodded once, thumbed his teeth, nodded again. The Regulators became, for a moment, a milling mass of horsemen, cursing and muttering among themselves as they turned away. Then they sorted themselves out into the same two ranks, and, with MacDonald again at the head, faded into hazy shapes in the twilight as they retreated. A roar went up from the miners; taunts were shouted after them. Gannon made his way back to the boardwalk and mounted it once more. Pike Skinner was standing with Carl; Pike watched him come up with his mouth pursed, and his hat brim shadowing his eyes. Carl was laughing.

“They’ll be back, deputy!” someone yelled from among the miners in the street. “Don’t think they won’t be back!”

Gannon leaned against the adobe wall. The sign above his head creaked a little. He let the shotgun barrel droop.

“Why, I guess you had better clear out of the street then,” Carl said. “So they won’t ride you down.”

“We want Morgan!” someone shouted. A few took it up, but soon the cry died away. Gannon leaned against the wall and watched the miners drift off. A tension had gone out of the air. “Meeting!” somebody was yelling. “Meeting!” The crowd began to break up into small clots of men. A wagon came across on Southend, breaking it up still further.

“You had better go scratch your name on the wall in there, Johnny,” Carl said. “You have done smart work tonight. I thought we was due for two falls at once, but damned if you didn’t take them both instead. What’s that you say, Pike?” he said, turning toward Pike Skinner, who had said nothing.

“It isn’t done with yet,” Pike said grouchily.

“Well, I expect you are right,” Carl said. “And you are deputized, you and Pete and Chick and Tim. Hunt them up for me, will you? There’s a good fellow.”

Pike went off along the boardwalk. Carl slapped Gannon on the back as he followed him into the jail. Morgan was leaning against the cell door, almost invisible in the darkness.

“Hanging off?” he said.

“For a spell anyway,” Carl said. He pulled down the pulley lamp and lit it. Now Gannon could see Morgan’s face; it looked as gray and tired as he himself felt. “I wouldn’t say clear off, no,” Carl went on. “Well, you surely went and roused things up. What’d you want to kill this Brunk for?”

“Bled his dirty blood all over me,” Morgan said, distantly. Gannon sat on the table edge with the shotgun leaning against his leg and his arms folded, watching the gambler’s face. For all the expression that was there Morgan might have meant what he said.

“I suppose you might call that a reason,” Carl said. “You taken up fighting jacks as a steady thing now, Morgan. Knife fight, was it? What was all that yelling how it was supposed to be a fair fight?”

Morgan said in a disgusted voice, “Brunk had me in a little trouble so Murch shot him.”

“Heard them saying Murch’s lit out, but damned if I think I had better take after him the way things stand. You put Murch to shooting him?”

“He thought of it before I did.”

“Get me to believe you didn’t put him to it.”

“Believe it or don’t!”

“Now don’t go scratchy, Morgan,” Carl said mournfully. “If a hardcase that works for you kills a man that’s got you in trouble, maybe it is on your back some.”

“Nothing’s on my back,” Morgan said, and withdrew into the shadows.

Gannon said to Carl, “Maybe somebody’d better get the judge.”

“Time enough. You’re not in any hurry, are you, Morgan?”

“I’m patient by nature,” Morgan said.

Peter Bacon appeared in the doorway; he nodded at Gannon, and raised an eyebrow.

“Witnesses?” Carl said to Morgan.

“All muckers,” Morgan replied. “Old Goat-beard and that one with the waxed mustaches, and another one called Patch.”

“Old Heck and Frenchy,” Carl said. “They seemed kind of maddest, all right. You sure you didn’t tell Murch to blow him loose from you?”

There was a crash and splatter of glass and a rock rebounded from the far wall, and came to rest among the shards of glass beneath the broken window. Peter Bacon disappeared out the door, and Gannon ran to look. He could see no one in the darkness, and after a moment Peter returned along the boardwalk, shaking his head. Gannon went back inside, where Carl was cursing and trying to push the broken glass into a pile with the side of his boot.

“Oh, hello, miss,” Peter said from the doorway, and Kate Dollar came in.

“Good evening, Deputy,” Kate said to Carl. “Deputy,” she said to Gannon. She wore a tight jacket, a long, thickly pleated black skirt, and her black hat with the cherries on it. She smiled her harsh, unpleasant smile as Morgan appeared at the cell door again.

“Is that Tom Morgan?” Kate said, and her voice was as unpleasant as the smile. “I heard the miners had him on the run.”

Gannon backed up uncertainly to lean against the wall, and Carl said, “It sure is him, Miss Dollar. And he sure was running. Not much of a lead on the pack, either.”

“You running, Tom?” she said, and laughed.

“Oh, I can run with the best of them,” Morgan said. His voice was as harsh as Kate’s, his face, framed in the thick, hand-smoothed bars, was blank. “I have run before this. There was a place called Grand Fork I ran and got caught.”

“Did they hang you?” Kate asked, and Gannon felt that he was witnessing something he did not want to see, or know.

“Maybe they did,” Morgan said. He frowned with thought. “No, come to remember, a friend I had there set fire to the hotel where those vigilantes had me, and during the whoop-de-do I got out some way. No, I didn’t hang that time.”

“But no friends here?” Kate said.

“Well, now, miss, we made out all right,” Carl said uncomfortably. “Johnny and me didn’t need any help.”

Gannon saw Peter Bacon grimacing painfully as Kate spoke to Morgan again. “But I understand you didn’t kill him yourself, Tom. Was he a good man, Tom? That you had your gunman kill for you?”

“Just a big, stupid mucker, Kate,” Morgan said. “But you probably would have liked him, at that.”

“But what was the matter with Clay?” Kate cried. Now she sounded hysterical, and now, Gannon thought, he must stop this.

He put a hand out toward her and said, “Kate!” just as Morgan said loudly, “What kind of jail is this, where anybody can drift in off the street and bedevil the prisoners?”

“Bedevil!” Kate cried.

Gannon touched her arm. “Now, Miss Dollar,” he said.

“Well, now, yes, miss,” Carl said. “I don’t expect you ought to be in here with a bunch of wild jacks around throwing rocks through the window and all. I guess you had better—”

“I just came down to tell you they are throwing rocks through the windows of the Glass Slipper, too,” Kate said, calmly now. “There are some people trying to stop them, but I don’t know if they will.”

“Durn!” Carl said. “I should’ve thought of that. I’d better go, Johnny.” He took up the shotgun and hurried out. “Come on, Pete!”