Still there was silence. The torches flared and smoked. The front rank had drawn back from the rail.

Then someone shouted, “He won’t shoot!”

Others took it up. “He won’t shoot to save that murdering high-roller! He’s bluffing! Run him down!”

The yelling mass began swaying forward once more, compressing those who tried to hold back away from the rail. Then the railing went down and miners leaped and crowded onto the boardwalk. Blaisedell and the deputies were swamped by the blue-clad bodies in a melee of flailing arms and gun barrels. There were two shots, two furry spurts of flame reaching upward. Again the miners retreated. Gannon and Schroeder appeared, and Blaisedell with his hat gone. One of the deputies was down; Pike Skinner and Tim French helped him inside the jail.

“Who was that, Moss?” Wheeler cried.

“Chick Hasty.”

“He won’t shoot!” the same voice shouted again, and again the miners took up the cry.

“They are going to run him,” Mosbie said hoarsely.

Blaisedell stood before the jail door with a lock of hair fallen over one eye, his chest heaving, and both his Colts out. Schroeder, shouting unheard, stood on one side of him, Gannon on the other. Skinner and French came out of the jail again and took up their posts. Once more the torches began to swing, and sparks flew upward in the wind.

“They are going to bust over him,” Mosbie said.

“There they go again!”

The miners flung themselves forward and Blaisedell and the deputies were thrown back before them. Blaisedell went down; there was a yell as the watchers saw it, and a groan; the other deputies went down. One retreated inside the jail, dragging another with him, and slammed the door. The miners crashed against it, drew back, and crashed against it again.

“Look at that! Look!” cried the man beside Mosbie on the railing.

But no one noticed him as the jail door broke and the miners streamed inside, yelling in triumph. Almost immediately they began thrusting themselves back out again, while others still fought to enter. The deputies began to appear among them.

“What the hell happened?” Wheeler demanded.

“Look! It’s Miss Jessie!”

A buggy was coming out of Southend Street. Miss Jessie Marlow was in it, and there was a man on the seat beside her. She was trying to turn the bay horse that drew the buggy east into Main Street and the horse was scaring in the crowd. Miss Jessie sat very straight with a bonnet on, and a white frilled blouse with a black necktie. The man lounging on the seat beside her was Morgan.

“It’s Morgan with her!”

“It is Morgan, for Christ’s sake!”

Miss Jessie flicked the buggy whip down once, and the bay pranced ahead. Men moved out of the way. The lighted tip of a cigar glowed in Morgan’s hand. The two of them looked as though they had been out for a pleasant ride.

“She took him out of the back!” a man cried. “I saw that buggy turning in the alley there a while ago. Look at that, will you?”

“She won’t get away with it,” Mosbie said, in the hoarse voice.

“Hurry up!” Wheeler whispered, hitting his fist against the tie rail. “Hurry up, ma’am! Bust that bay again!”

The buggy continued its slow progress through the men in the street. The miners had fallen silent, and now the main traffic was away from the jail. Some of them appeared out of the alley in Southend. “He’s gone!” a miner shouted. “Got out the back!”

“There he is! In the buggy!”

Miners surged around the buggy, the whole mass of them changing direction now, and pressing back up Main Street. But the miners who surrounded the buggy began to drop away from it. Others ran after it, looked in, and dropped back too. Mosbie began to laugh.

“Did it!” he said. “They are going to make it, by God! Came right through them, and the best thing she could’ve done, too.”

The buggy began moving more swiftly now, out of the press; it disappeared into the darkness up Main Street.

“Taking him to the General Peach,” someone commented calmly. “Well, they’ll never bust over her.”

“Where’s Blaisedell?”

“He just went inside the jail. He’s all right, looked like.”

“He held them long enough for her to get Morgan out. Slick!”

“I’d a lot rather seen him cut a few of them down.”

Miners stood in uncertain groups in the street. The deputies were shooing them off the boardwalk. Two of them carried off the miner who had been shot. Schroeder had a long, bloody cut over one eye. Gannon retrieved Blaisedell’s black hat from a miner who had picked it up.

Mosbie climbed down from the tie rail. “What the hell did Blaisedell let those sons of bitches run over him for?” he said to Wheeler. “That’s what I don’t see. God damn it to hell.”

Nick Grain appeared beside Wheeler. “Did you see him get run over, Fred?” he cried, in an excited voice. “They sure called his bluff.”

“Shut up!” Mosbie said. He caught Grain by his shirt collar. “Shut up! You push-face cow-turd of a butcher! Shut up!” He flung Grain away from him, and Grain disappeared hurriedly into the crowd.

“I hate that stupid asinine flap-mouth son of a bitch,” Mosbie said. He and Wheeler started back along the boardwalk with the others. The men around them were talking in low tones; one of them laughed and Mosbie glared at him.

Groups of men stood in the street, looking toward the jail, or up toward the General Peach where the buggy had gone. The miners were heading into the saloons, or congregating along the boardwalks.

Wheeler and Mosbie walked on east in the deep shadow under the arcade, crossed Broadway, and continued up to Grant Street, where they joined a group standing by the side of the Feed and Grain Barn. All the windows were lighted in the General Peach. The buggy stood in front, the fat bay scratching her neck against the hitching post. Eight or ten miners stood near the buggy, and the crippled miner, Tittle, was watching them from the porch with a rifle in his hands.

“The Doc’s buggy,” someone commented.

“Not a one to try and stop her!” Paul Skinner said. “Not a one!”

“There’s a woman with more guts than any man I know.”

“Shame to see them bust over Blaisedell,” said another.

“Should’ve shot one for himself like Carl did.”

“I heard Carl didn’t go to. The stupid muck got hold of his shotgun and yanked on it, and Carl’s finger on the trigger.”

“Looks like maybe Blaisedell’s a human being like the rest of us though,” another man said. Mosbie started toward him, but Wheeler grasped his arm.

“There comes Curley Burne,” someone whispered.

Curley Burne came across Grant Street toward them with the light from the General Peach gleaming on his black curls.

“Curley,” someone said, and several others also greeted him.

“Big night, boys,” Curley said. “You boys fun it like this every night in Warlock?”

There was some laughter. “Where’s those Regulators of MacDonald’s, Curley?” a man drawled from the shadow of the adobe wall. “Just when we needed those Regulators bad they didn’t show for beans.”

“Warlock’s too calky for them,” Curley said. “Curl a man’s hair just to walk down the street here.” He indicated his own head with a sweep of his hand, and there was more laughter.

“There’s Blaisedell.”

They all fell silent. Blaisedell rounded the corner; he limped a little as he walked down toward the General Peach. As he mounted the porch past Tittle he held to the hand rail, and, in the light there, he did not look so tall. The front door closed behind him with a hollow whack.

“The marshal got himself some chewed up tonight,” Curley Burne said.

Wheeler gripped Mosbie’s arm, but Mosbie pulled away with a curse. “Go tell it to Abe McQuown, Curley!” he said thickly. “Maybe it will bring him out of his hole.”

“Who said that?” Curley said.

Mosbie crouched a little. “I said it!”