Morgan disappeared again and Kate stood facing the cell for a moment longer. Then she bowed her head and turned away. Without looking at Gannon, she said, “Will they try again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t try to save him,” she said in the ugly voice. “Don’t try to do anything for him. He doesn’t want you to, and anybody that ever did has been sorry for it the rest of their lives.” She stopped and he saw that she looked almost ashamed; then her face tightened again, and she swept on out of the jail.

In the cell Morgan was laughing softly.

Gannon went outside to stand beneath the gently creaking sign in the cool night breeze. He could hear shouts and see the dark shapes of men against the whitish dust of the street up before the Glass Slipper.

He heard the sad, suspirant music of a mouth organ. A thin figure was coming toward him.

“Well, howdy, Deputy Bud Gannon.”

“Hello, Curley,” he said. “Did you come in with MacDonald?”

“No, just rode in to watch the fun,” Curley said. “Should have; Mister Mac is giving six dollars a day and expenses. There is going to be a lot of expenses, too, up at the French Palace and around.”

“No, there’s not. They’re not coming in here.”

Curley looked at him with his eyebrows crawling up. He ran his fingers back through his black curls, and took a step back, raising his hands in mock terror. “By God, posted out of town by Bud Gannon! Not me too, Bud? Say it isn’t so!”

Gannon shook his head and tried to grin.

“Whuff!” Curley said. “I was ready to fork it and crawl. Well, I guess I’ll have the French Palace to myself then.” He looked at Gannon sharply, and his clownish expression vanished. “What’re you going to do if some of them come back anyway, Bud?” he said quietly. “Brace a man?”

“They haven’t come back in.”

“Might, though,” Curley said. He pried at a crack in the boardwalk with the toe of his boot. “You know, people don’t take to posting so good. Billy didn’t.”

“I’m not posting anybody,” he said tightly. “We are just not going to have MacDonald and that crew in here chasing miners around.”

“Strikers,” Curley said. “Agitators, what MacDonald said. Bunch of damned, over-paid—”

“Why didn’t you hire out with the rest, then?”

Curley laughed cheerfully. “Well, I just don’t like Mister Mac much, Bud. One of a few I don’t.”

“Including me. Are you down on me too, Curley?”

“Yep,” Curley said.

“All right,” he said, and felt his eyes burning.

Curley sighed and said, “Well, I kind of am and kind of not. I see you think you did right and maybe I see how you could think it honest. But I can’t think that way. How a man is brought up, I guess, and you are a cold one, Johnny Gee.”

“Maybe I am.”

“That was your brother, Bud. The only kin you had.”

Gannon said in a shaky voice, “Most people here think Blaisedell only did what he had to.”

“You think that way, don’t you?” Curley said. His boot toe scuffed at the planks again. “No, I am not all the way down on you, Bud. But I am about the only one. You sure ought to think about putting distance between you and here — when you get a chance.”

“Thanks.”

“Por nada,” Curley said.

A group of men was coming across Southend Street and onto the boardwalk. Gannon heard the crack of the judge’s crutch; with him were Carl, Pike, Peter Bacon, and some others. Carl stopped while the rest went on into the jail.

“You ride in with the Haggins, Curley?” Carl said, in a rasping voice.

“Oh, no!” Curley said. “No, sir, I am separate. I just swore it in blood to your partner here. I’m just having a little chin with Bud about this posting fellows out of town. You boys have come pretty hard against us cowboys, haven’t you?”

“Yeh,” Carl said, in a kind of grunt. “Hard.”

“The Acme Corral for you boys, huh? Big medicine. Run up a score, maybe they’ll make you marshal, Carl, now Blaisedell has quit. Money in it, I hear. Scalp money for—”

“D-don’t you say anything against Blaisedell to me!” Carl said.

Gannon could feel the hate. “Carl,” he said. But Carl didn’t look at him.

“Don’t even say his name to me,” Carl said hoarsely. “You Goddamned picayune rustler.”

“You have rewrote the laws, have you?” Curley whispered, dangerously. “A man can still talk, I guess.”

“Not to me,” Carl said. “Not here or Bright’s City either. You or any other rustler.”

Gannon took out his Colt and held it pointed down before him. Curley glanced toward him, only his eyes moving in his rigid face. “Better move along, Curley,” Gannon said.

Curley shrugged and sauntered off into the darkness. The sound of the mouth organ drifted back. Carl stood staring after him, rubbing his right hand on his pants leg.

“Schroeder!” the judge shouted from the jail, and Pike Skinner appeared in the doorway: “Come on, Carl!”

“Let’s go in, Carl,” Gannon said.

“Kind of pleasant not to be scared of a man for a change,” Carl said in the hoarse voice. “Sure, let’s go in and get the hearing started.”

33. A BUGGY RIDE

THE strikers from the Medusa and the sympathetic miners from the other mines held their meeting on the vacant ground next to Robinson’s wood yard on Peach Street. Torches made an orange glow there and smoke from the torches overlay the meeting like a milky sheet illuminated from below. There was a steady roar of shouting and clapping as they listened to various of their number harangue them, or broke up into smaller groups to attend half a dozen different speakers at once.

The town had fortified itself against riot. Shopkeepers sat inside their stores with shotguns close to hand. Horses were kept off Main Street. The Glass Slipper was dark, its front windows broken and a frame of timbers nailed up before the batwing doors. Men stood along the arcades listening to the sounds of the miners’ meeting. Inside the Lucky Dollar the gambling layouts were packed and townsmen stood three deep along the bar. Among them were Arnold Mosbie, the freight-line mule skinner, Fred Wheeler, who worked at the Feed and Grain Barn, Nick Grain, the beef butcher, and Oscar Thompson, Kennon’s blacksmith. These four were sharing a bottle of whisky, Mosbie and Wheeler squeezed against a narrow strip of bar, while the others stood behind them.

“Listen to those sons of bitches yell up there!” Mosbie said.

“Think they’re going after Morgan again?” Thompson said, glancing worriedly toward the doors.

“Working themselves up to it?” Wheeler commented. “I’ll bet Carl and Gannon’s wetting their pants.”

“Looks like they might’ve done better not to let out the judge wasn’t holding Morgan for Murch killing that jack,” Thompson said. “Just keeping him in jail for his own good.”

“I heard old Owen wouldn’t go stand by the jail with the rest,” Grain said, reaching past Wheeler for the bottle. “I sure agree with him about Morgan. I don’t hold with miners much, but I’ll whistle when they set out to hang Morgan.” He glanced at the others from beneath his colorless lashes. “Blaisedell is going to let him hang, too. See I’m not right.”

“Sure been scarce today,” Wheeler said, shaking his head.

“What’s wrong with Morgan?” Mosbie asked.

“Well, you heard about him and that little Professor of his, didn’t you?” Grain said. “Morgan wasn’t paying him enough so he was going to go to work for Lew Taliaferro, playing that new piano Lew got for the French Palace. So Morgan had that Murch of his fill Lew’s piano with lime mortar, and the Professor knew about it and was going to tell — you know what happened to him. Looked like he got tramped by a horse out here, but it wasn’t any horse.”

Wheeler snorted. “I heard it,” he said. “I didn’t have to believe it, though.”

Mosbie had turned to face Grain. “That is Lew’s story, Nick,” he said. “And bull piss just like his whisky.”