“Hold off now!” Paul Skinner said. “Hold off! Curley, you leave be! Moss!” Wheeler stepped between Curley and Mosbie.

“You shouldn’t have said it, Moss,” Curley said, and his voice was as thick as Mosbie’s.

“I’ll say it again!”

“Take it and forget it, Curley,” a voice said from the darkness. “He has got friends here and you haven’t.”

“We are pretty sick of cowboys up here,” another man said.

Curley glanced toward the two who had spoken, looked past Wheeler at Mosbie, shrugged, and turned away. His hat swung across his back as he disappeared into the darkness.

“Soooooo-boy!” Wheeler said. “He is no man to mess with, Moss!”

“I am no man to mess with tonight either,” Mosbie said.

Behind him someone laughed a little, relievedly.

“God damn it to hell!” Mosbie said, and kicked in fury and frustration at the dust.

34. GANNON PUTS DOWN HIS NAME

I

GANNON leaned limply against the cell door, pressing a hand to his ribs. Pike Skinner and Peter Bacon were hunkered down with their backs to the wall opposite him, Pike with a bloody ear over which he kept cupping the palm of his hand, Peter supporting himself on the shotgun. Tim French had helped Hasty, who had been badly shaken up, home to bed.

“Nothing to do now,” Carl said. He sat at the table brushing his hand back over his graying, thinning, sweat-tangled hair. “It is off our back anyhow. Blaisedell is probably right, there is less chance of trouble if we stay away from the General Peach.” He sat looking down at the crooked trigger finger of his right hand.

Gannon slowly seated himself in the chair beside the cell door, holding his breath at the sudden ache in his ribs.

“Damn them,” Carl said, without heat. “Looked like they might’ve saved that one I shot. But they had to let him bleed it out and then tramp what was left of him. Course, any man that’s fool enough to give a jerk on a gun barrel when it’s pointed right at him and cocked, and your finger—”

“Sure, Horse,” Peter said. “None of your doing.”

“Well, he held them off long enough for Miss Jessie to get Morgan out the back,” Carl said. “What we was after, after all — save a lynching.”

“Yes,” Gannon said, and Peter Bacon glanced up at him and nodded.

“I guess he did pure right not shooting,” Peter said. “But that didn’t make it a better thing to see.”

“I admire to see a woman cool as Miss Jessie was,” Carl said. He straightened and stretched. “You boys go home and get some sleep. This deputy’s office is just about to close up for the night.”

Pike said, “I’m going out and drink some of the meanness out of me.”

“You stay out of scrapes with jacks, now!” Carl said. “I don’t want anything more to mess with tonight. If I don’t get some rest for my old bones I am going to have to lay right down and die.”

“’Night,” Peter said, rising; he nodded to Carl and Gannon, and he and Pike went outside into the darkness.

Carl went over and kicked at the broken glass on the floor, and inspected the broken latch of the door. “You suppose the Citizens’ Committee’ll pay for fixing these? Place could fall down for all of Keller. All I asked him for here was a new sign, but I guess I am not going to get it unless I pay for it myself.” Blood had scabbed over the long scratch above his right eye, and run and crusted on his cheek. “Bad night,” he said, in a sad voice. “Let’s close up, Johnny.”

Gannon pulled down the lamp and blew out the flame, and followed Carl out. Outside, in the thick dark, the town seemed very still.

“Quiet,” Carl said, and sighed. “I guess I’ll have a whisky before I go home. You, Johnny?”

“I guess not; thanks.” He watched Carl go off along the boardwalk, frail-looking and limping a little, his bootheels cracking unevenly on the planks.

II

Gannon went along past the wood yard to Grant Street and turned down toward Kate’s house. He could see a light burning at the back.

He mounted the two steps, knocked, and waited. He felt for the key in his jeans pocket, and his face prickled; he knocked again. He heard her footsteps inside, and the door was opened a crack.

“It’s me,” he said.

The crack widened and he was aware of her close to him, although he could not see her yet in the darkness. “Oh, it’s my gentleman caller,” she said.

“I just came by to tell you Morgan is all right now.”

“Come in, Deputy,” Kate said. He went inside; Kate was outlined for a moment against the lighted bedroom doorway, but she moved aside to become invisible again. Something thumped on the oilcloth-covered table and he realized that she had had the derringer in her hand.

“Blaisedell?” she said.

“He showed up, but he couldn’t stop them either. It was Miss Jessie got him out. She came in the doctor’s buggy and took him out through the alley. He’s at the General Peach now.”

“Is he?” Kate said, as though she were not interested. She was silent for a long time, and he felt like a prying fool. He turned to go.

“Well, I’ll be going. I just—”

“The angel of Warlock,” Kate said. He couldn’t make out her tone. “Is she Blaisedell’s sweetheart?”

He nodded, and realized that she could not see him nod. But before he could speak, she said, “I’d heard of her before I came here. She is what you hear of when you hear of Warlock. And I’ve seen her on the street. What’s she like?”

“Why, she is a fine woman, Kate. It took some doing what she did tonight.”

“She is a nice woman,” Kate said, in the tone he could not make out.

“She is. She—”

“I hate nice women,” Kate said. It shocked him to hear her. Again he turned to go; he felt strangely angry.

“Anxious to go, Deputy?”

“It’s not that. But I just came by to tell you about Morgan.”

“Did you think I cared what happened to Morgan?”

He licked his lips. He could see her now, standing across the table from him. There was some kind of shawl draped over her shoulders. “Well, I couldn’t help hearing what you was saying to him earlier tonight,” he said. “When you came in the jail. And I thought—”

“Is it any of your business?”

He nodded, and the anger ached in him like the savage ache in his ribs where the miner had kicked him.

“Is it?” Kate said.

“Yes.”

“All right. I saved him like that once.”

“In Grand Fork.”

“He’d killed a man that called him for cheating. That was when he still let himself get caught cheating once in a while. The vigilantes took him to the hotel to hold him till they could hang him. I started a fire and—”

“I understood what he was saying.”

“Did you?” Kate said, in a flat voice. “And you want it your business? If you don’t want it, say so now.” She sounded as though she were warning him. “Maybe you don’t,” she said.

“I want to know.” He leaned on the back of a chair.

“I was Tom Morgan’s girl for four years,” she said. His fingers tightened on the chair back, not to hear her telling him what he had already sensed, but to hear her say it as though it were no different than telling him where she was born, or how old she was, or who her parents were.

“Most of the time he was flush,” she continued. “There were scrapes and sometimes we’d have to run, and sometimes he would bust; but mostly he was flush. He is a real high-roller. He has owned places here and there, the way he does now, but he would always sell out sooner or later and go back to playing against the bank. He did that best. He liked that best. He will get tired of running the Glass Slipper here and sell out and go somewhere else to buck the tiger. That’s all he really wants to do. But he has to have a stake to start.

“After we’d run from Grand Fork we went to Fort James. He didn’t have a dollar — except me.” She laughed a little. Then her voice went flat again as she said, “So he wanted me to make a stake for him. Going back to what I’d been doing when he took me up. Back,” she said, as though he might not have understood.