“No,” he said, and sat down at the table, as she indicated he was to do. The oilcloth was cool and cleanly greasy to his touch. He felt something in him relax suddenly, here, for the first time since the posse had returned with Curley. He had become used to men falling silent as he passed them, and whispering behind his back, but now all his strength and will were spent staying out of quarrels, or worse. They no longer whispered behind his back.

“Well, they haven’t got a lynch party after you yet,” Kate said.

He tried to smile. “I’m not so worried about lynch parties as I am a shooting scrape.”

Kate seated herself opposite him, and, regarding him steadily, said, “What did you expect when you swore him out of it?”

“What I said was so.” His voice took on an edge he had not meant to have, here.

“Was it?” Kate said. The corners of her mouth pulled in deeply; with contempt, he thought. “Not because he was a friend of yours?”

“No.”

“That doesn’t signify? No, I thought what you swore was probably so, Deputy. The rest of this town hates you because they think you lied, but I don’t think much better of you because I know you didn’t. Because you would have sworn it the other way just as well if it had been the other way, friend or not — just what is true out of your cold head. But nothing out of hate or love or anything.”

He said roughly, “I don’t have any friends.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Nor anything.” She put out her hand and laid it cool against his for a moment, and then withdrew it. “Why, it’s warm!” she said.

Even here, he thought, and he felt as though he had gone blind. He had tried to tell himself it did not matter what everyone thought of him; but it mattered, and he did not know how much longer he could stand under it.

But Kate continued, mercilessly. “You had a brother. Didn’t you love your brother?”

“I knew what he was.”

“God!” Kate said. “Isn’t there anything — haven’t there been any people you loved? That you’d do things for because you loved them even if you saw in your cold head it was wrong, or bad?” Her chair scraped back as she rose suddenly; she stood staring down at him with her hands held spread-fingered to her breast. “What do you see here?” she said hoarsely. “Just a bitch, and you know all I want is Blaisedell dead and that’s wrong? Well, it may be wrong, but it comes out of here!”

“Stop it, Kate!”

“I want to know what you see! Have you got eyes to see just exactly what is there and no more — no blur or warmth in them ever? Then what do you come here for?”

He couldn’t answer, for he did not know. Today, he thought, he had only wanted a respite. He shook his head mutely.

“Just to talk?” Kate said, more quietly. “To unload a little. And you have picked me to unload on?”

He nodded again, for maybe that was it.

“You need me?” she said, as though it were a condition she insisted upon.

“Yes; I guess.”

“Holy Mary!” Kate said. “There is something to shake the world — that you need anything but your cast-iron conscience.” She sat down again, and he heard the drowsy buzzing of flies against her window, and found himself listening for the distant crack of Eladio’s maul in the carpintería. He could not hear it from here.

“Are you afraid of Blaisedell now?” Kate said.

He shook his head.

“Every other man here is. Or ought to be.”

“No, Kate.”

“Don’t you know why he went back to marshaling and posted Burne out of town?”

“He didn’t post him, Kate. The Citizens’ Committee did.”

“Wait!” she said. “Deputy, there are some people who might kill a man because they hated him. And there are some that might because they thought it was right; cold, like you. And then there is Blaisedell. Do you know why he killed Burne?”

“Because the Cit—”

“He killed him because his reputation was slipping. Do you know why he took the job as marshal again?”

He didn’t answer.

“Because he knew the Citizens’ Committee would tell him to post Burne out of town. Because he knew that was what everybody wanted, and so he could be the Great Man again. It is like a gambler starting to double his bets because he is losing. Recouping like that. Not hating Curley Burne, or not even thinking of the right or wrong of it. Just his reputation to keep. And where is your brassbound conscience now, when Schroeder told you Burne hadn’t done it on purpose?”

“Blaisedell thinks I was lying. Everybody does. They knew I’d been friends with Curley and Abe, and they think I lied because—”

Kate said, “Do you know that the Citizens’ Committee almost asked him to post you out with Burne? Buck Slavin told me. And Blaisedell would have done it. And killed you, too.”

“I don’t believe he would have done it. He wouldn’t with Brunk.”

“He would have posted you and killed you just to feed the kitty. Because people hated you and it would make him a bigger man.”

“Stop it!” he said, as anger rose sudden and sickening in him. “Don’t do it any more. Trying to pimp a man into going against Blaisedell.”

Kate’s mouth fell half open; then she closed it tightly, but not, it seemed to him, in the fury he had expected. He watched the rims of her nostrils whiten and slacken with the rhythm of her breathing. Her black eyes stared back into his. Then, at last, she shook her head. “No. No, I don’t mean that, Deputy. Not any more.”

She was silent for a long time, and all at once it came to him what he must do. Ride to Bright’s City to see Keller, to see Peach himself if he could. He could go now, for the Regulators were disbanded and gone, and maybe if he himself were absent for a few days it would not be so bad when he returned. He would go and see Keller and even Peach himself and seek the means of warding off more tragedy, even knowing that those means would be whimsically or ruthlessly withheld, as they had always been.

“What kind of man was Curley Burne?” Kate asked.

“Why, I guess about everybody liked him, even though he rode for McQuown. He was pleasant to talk to, and friendly, and there was no scratch to him. Though he could be hard enough if he wanted to be, and he was man enough to go as he pleased. I told you he wouldn’t go along on that in Rattlesnake Canyon.” He scraped his fingernails along the oilcloth in little wrinkled tracks.

“He was strong on kin and friends and that,” he went on. “We argued that after Billy got killed. He was always Abe’s best friend.” He looked up at Kate. “I guess you would have liked him.”

“Why did he do it?”

“Come in against Blaisedell? Why, you heard about what he said. Just to show the color of his belly. Just to show he had as much right to walk the street as Blaisedell.”

It was not enough, he knew. He sighed and said, “I don’t know, Kate. I have been thinking maybe it was for McQuown.”

“I guess I would have liked him,” Kate said. Then she frowned and said, “Why for McQuown?”

“Well, he said something funny when he was let go and he knew he’d better get out in a hurry. He said he guessed he had been chosen to clear the air. But that he guessed he just couldn’t oblige. I didn’t know what he meant exactly, but—”

“Blaisedell,” Kate said scornfully.

“No, I thought he meant McQuown some way. But then he came in after all. I don’t know — probably it was just what he said; how he wanted to show he wasn’t yellow.”

“Or just being a man,” Kate said, in her most contemptuous voice. “I have seen men bucking cards they knew were stacked against them and losing their stake and borrowing more and losing that. All the time knowing they couldn’t win.”

“I don’t know,” he said. He tried to formulate what was disturbing him more and more. “I’ve tried to think it through. Why Billy came in, and why Curley did, when it looked at first as though he wasn’t going to. I’m afraid — what I’m afraid is that there is something about Blaisedell so they—”