He stopped as Kate cried, as though she had won something from him, “So they have to! Yes, so they have to; like flies that can’t stay out of a spider web.”

“Maybe it is something like that,” he said. “Well, part that and part different things. For instance, I was thinking about Billy, and how my father used to whip him. He had to whip Billy a lot, for Billy was always wild. And he’d never cover up a thing he’d done.” He touched his nose, remembering that time. “He would always tell right off, like he was proud of it. And it seemed like he got whipped for things he hadn’t done when he could have got off by speaking up.

“So I’ve got to wondering if he wasn’t just taking the whippings to clear off things he’d done, inside himself. I mean things he felt guilty about. So that if he got whipped it paid him up for a while. I wonder— I wonder if—” He could not quite say it.

“Killed?” Kate said.

“Maybe it would pay for everything.”

“Killed?” Kate whispered.

“Why, yes.” He tried painfully to grin. “Maybe you haven’t ever felt that way, being a religious woman. If a person hasn’t got any religion there’s some things he can’t get forgiven for because he can’t forgive himself. I wondered if it wasn’t partly that with Billy.”

“Killed for it?” Kate said, and he was pleased to see there were things about men she did not know, after all her bragging that she knew them so well.

“Even that. Though I think it was more than that with Curley. He and Abe was close, and I think he was maybe trying to prove something to everybody about Abe. Or else he couldn’t admit he was wrong about Abe and was trying to prove to himself he wasn’t. It is hard to see in a man’s heart.”

“It’s not for you to do, Deputy,” Kate said. She was staring at him with a curious concern.

He nodded. “But what I was thinking was all the reasons there might be for going against Blaisedell. To prove yourself some way, or cancel something out. Or he is somebody and you are nobody and even if he kills you, you get to be somebody because of it; I have known men to think backwards like that. Or see him a devil, so you are good and fine if you go against him. Or — or just what it would make of you if by luck you managed to kill him. I think of all the reasons and—”

“You had better stop this,” Kate said.

“—and I think it is pretty terrible. I hope it isn’t so, but I can see how it might be to some, and it is a terrible thing. I think Blaisedell couldn’t stand it if he knew.”

He gazed back into her eyes and was sorry for what he saw there. He got quickly to his feet. “Oh, I was just talking foolishness,” he said. “Just unloading foolishness. I thank you for listening to me. Now I have got to ride up to—”

He heard a sound of heels outside; they thumped on the steps. There was a knock. Kate came around the table and opened the door. Past her, Gannon saw Blaisedell standing on the porch, his black hat in his hands. His fair hair was matted where the hat had compressed it, in a circle around his head.

“Hello, Kate,” Blaisedell said, in his deep voice. “I thought the deputy might be here. I wanted to talk to him.”

Kate’s hand tightened into a claw, gripping the edge of the door. She moved aside; she looked as though she had grown faint. “Talk?” she whispered.

“I wanted to ask him something,” Blaisedell said. He stepped inside past Kate, who still clung to the door, her head turning slowly as Blaisedell passed her, until she was staring into Gannon’s eyes, and he could feel the fear and hate in her so strongly that it seemed to fill the room.

“What is it, Marshal?” he asked, resting a hand on the back of his chair.

Blaisedell said almost casually, “What Schroeder told you.”

“He has already sworn what Schroeder told him!” Kate cried.

“I asked him, Kate,” Blaisedell said, and did not look at her.

“I told the truth, Marshal,” Gannon said.

“Now kill him for saying it!”

“You think badly of me, don’t you, Kate?” Blaisedell said. Still Blaisedell’s eyes remained fixed on him, and he had the sensation of being examined completely. “Jessie has decided she might have been wrong,” Blaisedell went on, after a time. “So I thought I would ask you face to face.”

Then Blaisedell nodded as though he was satisfied. “Why, I guess it has been hard, then, Deputy,” he said, “with every man down on you for it. You will understand it would be hard for her to come out now and say she has changed her mind, though. Because of what’s happened,” he said.

“Surely,” Gannon said, stiffly. It occurred to him that Miss Jessie might not have admitted willingly even to Blaisedell that she had changed her mind, or that she had lied. “That doesn’t matter, Marshal,” he said, and Blaisedell started to turn away.

“Marshal,” Gannon said. “Carl didn’t know for sure. You know he killed that miner that way, when the jack pulled on his shotgun. That was on his mind at the end. And he said — that a man ought to forgive if he wanted to be forgiven, and that he was going to judgment directly. He—” He stopped, and Blaisedell nodded to him again.

Blaisedell turned to face Kate, who drew back away from him. “I have killed another one, being too quick on the draw, Kate,” he said. “I had swore I would never do that again.”

Then he moved on outside and down the steps in the sunlight, replacing his hat. He walked with his head tipped back a little, as though he were watching something above him. Kate leaned on the door staring after him.

When she flung the door shut the tarpaper walls shivered with the shock. She swung around to face Gannon and there was a kind of wonder in her face. “I thought you had never felt anything in your life,” she said, in a stifled voice. “But you pity him.”

“I guess I do, Kate,” he said, and bent to pick up his hat.

“Him!” Kate said, as though she could not believe it. She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Pity him! Why, you were suffering because you had to tell the truth. You would have backed down except that it would have been a lie, and a lie is wrong.” She said it not angrily, as he had expected, but as though she was trying to understand.

He strained his ears for the crack of Eladio’s maul knocking Curley Burne’s coffin together. He could hear it in his mind, and hear the scrape of shovels on the rocky ground of Boot Hill, and the rustle of the wind blowing through the brush and rocky mounds and the grave-markers there. The retreating slow crack of Blaisedell’s boot-heels had been a sound as lonely, and as fatal.

“What did he mean, too quick?” Kate said, in a breathless whisper, but he did not know what Blaisedell had meant, nor did Kate seem to be speaking to him or even aware of his presence any more. She did not appear to hear when he said good-by and told her he would be going up to Bright’s City. He walked slowly back to the jail the long way around, by Peach Street, so he would not have to pass so many men on his way.

38. THE DOCTOR ATTENDS A MEETING

AFTER the Citizens’ Committee meeting the doctor walked with Jessie and some of the others to the stage yard to see Goodpasture, Slavin, and Will Hart depart for Bright’s City. Buck waved from the window as the coach swung out of the yard, carrying another frantic delegation to General Peach, with another series of demands and pleas. And with threats this time.

With Jessie’s hand on his arm, he moved on to Goodpasture’s corner. The coach was already almost lost to sight in the dust that followed its rapid progress east along Main Street. Jessie, beside him, was silent; it had been a difficult meeting for her, he knew. She had hardly spoken a word throughout, and she seemed listless and tired. There were unhealthy-looking smudges beneath her eyes.