“And how is the miners’ angel today?” MacDonald said, coming up behind them. His hands were thrust down into the pockets of his jacket; his derby hat was cocked over one eye. His pale, petulant, handsome face was coldly hateful. He inclined his head to the doctor. “And the miners’ sawbones?”

Jessie did not speak, peering at MacDonald past the edge of her bonnet. Her hand tightened on the doctor’s arm, and he said, “Idle. There have not been many broken men to try to put back together now that the Medusa is shut down.”

MacDonald’s upper lip drew up tautly as he sneered. “I’d heard you had taken up other work.”

“Have you put me on the list of men your Regulators are to deal with?”

“Please stop this!” Jessie said.

Pike Skinner had come up beside MacDonald. “He hasn’t got any Regulators any more,” Skinner said. “Why’d they quit on you, Charlie? Did you drop their pay?”

MacDonald said hoarsely, “I see you have all turned against me. I know that lies are being told about me. I know who is telling them, and who is plotting against me, and in what boardinghouse.” He pointed a finger suddenly, his upper lip twitching up again. “And I know who is the chief troublemaker now!”

The doctor looked from the finger, pointed at him, into MacDonald’s face. It was plain enough that the man was half mad with fear of losing his position. MacDonald was in a pitiable condition, but he felt no pity. He would be pleased to see him completely broken. Biting his words off sharply to keep his voice from shaking, he said, “Charlie, I am very proud that you count me among your enemies.”

“Oh, please stop it!” Jessie cried. “Aren’t there more important things than this silly bickering over the Medusa mine? I wish there were no Medusa mine!”

“I’m sure that everything will be done to see that you get your wish, Jessie!” MacDonald retorted. “I’m sure—” He stopped as Pike Skinner caught his shoulder and wrenched him around.

“Watch who you are talking to! She asked you to stop it; you stop it!”

MacDonald’s face reddened in hectic blotches; he pulled away from Skinner’s grasp, readjusted the hang of his coat, and silently marched away around the corner.

Watching him go, the doctor saw Taliaferro crossing Main Street, followed closely by the half-breed pistolero, who, it seemed, accompanied him everywhere of late. He saw the deputy coming down Southend Street toward the jail. “Poor Charlie is unhinged,” he said, and patted Jessie’s hand.

“Gannon keeps off Main Street, I notice,” Skinner was saying bitterly to Fred Winters. The doctor felt Jessie’s fingers bite into his arm as Skinner continued his denunciation of Gannon.

“I have an errand, David,” she said, and left abruptly. Her errand, he saw, involved Gannon, whose dismissal from his position had been one of the objectives of the delegation that had just left for Bright’s City. He himself had not voted for it, and he knew the majority had hoped that firing Gannon would somehow be proof that he had lied.

He waited until he saw Jessie enter the jail, and then he started alone for the General Peach, where there was to be a meeting of the miners. Strikers from the Medusa greeted him as he walked along under the arcade, and Morgan was watching him from his rocking chair on the veranda of the Western Star. Morgan inclined his head to him, but he ignored the greeting.

There were a few miners loitering on the porch of the General Peach, but the dining room, where the meeting was to be held, was empty yet, and he went on down the hall to the hospital. As he had said to MacDonald, with the Medusa closed down there had been almost a moratorium on mine accidents, and, in addition, a number of sick men had moved out in what they must have thought was a protest against Jessie’s saving Morgan from the mob. There were not many beds occupied now.

The curtains were drawn back on the tall, narrow window, and a long block of sunlight streamed in over the empty cots. Barnes, Dill, and Buell sat on Barnes’ cot, engaged in their endless game of red dog, and Ben Tittle and Fitzsimmons stood watching them. Nearby, Stacey, with his bandaged head and jaw, lay on his side reading a tattered newspaper.

Dill flung a card down. “What’s happened?” he said, in a flat voice. “Who’s shot now?”

“What’s the news, Doc?” Barnes asked.

“Is it so the Regulators have gone home?”

“They’ve gone,” he said.

“Who’s murdered now?” Dill said, to no one, staring sullenly down at the cards on the bedclothes before him.

“Where is Miss Jessie these days, Doc?” Buell said, and would not meet his eyes. “She has kind of went and forgot us in here, hasn’t she?”

“You can shut your face!” Ben Tittle said.

“Good lot of quarreling going on in here today,” Fitzsimmons said. Then he said, “I don’t know what to make of the Regulators going, do you, Doc?”

The doctor shook his head, and knew that Fitzsimmons was worried that now there would be more definite talk of burning the Medusa stope, since it was unguarded; it was what had terrified MacDonald. Fitzsimmons brushed his hands together worriedly. The fingers of the right one looked like bent sausages where they rested on the left, which was still bandaged.

“Got tired is all,” Dill said. “Nobody to shoot. Well, I say it is plain dull myself, no shooting for about twenty minutes, I guess it is now — nobody new killed?” He threw down another card. “Well, it’s come fine, I guess,” he said, “though not quite even yet. Schroeder kills Benny Connors and Curley Burne kills him, and Blaisedell him. But when Morgan kills Brunk there is Miss Jessie to—”

“I say shut your face!” Tittle cried. He swung his arm and the flat of his hand cracked against Dill’s cheek. Dill sprawled on top of Barnes, cursing, and awkwardly got to his feet to face Tittle. The long scar on his forehead was red and shiny. Watching them brawl, the doctor wondered if they were worth anyone’s trouble; he was ashamed to realize that he cared nothing for any one of them, except, perhaps, Fitzsimmons. He only hated what oppressed them, and sometimes he was afraid it was not enough.

“You shut that talk, Ira!” Tittle said. “Damn you, Ira! I’ll not hear it!”

Dill cursed him, and Fitzsimmons propped a foot on the rail of the cot between them.

“We’ve been talking, Doc,” Buell said apologetically. “And worked up a little heat before you came in. Ira and me was holding that Frank Brunk was right, and it bears hard on a man to be a poor-house case. You can see that, Doc.”

“Pay for your keep then!” Tittle said. “I say if you can pay, pay. Or shut up about it. Damned if I see why she’d keep such ungrateful, dirty-mouth bastards anyhow.”

“And what have you and Ira decided, Buell?” the doctor said.

“Well, this is a boardinghouse and she has got to make a living of it,” Buell said. “And on the other side it is poor to be on somebody’s charity. So we was just saying that those that can pay her ought to do it.”

“All right, do it.”

“Not a one of them’s got anything saved to do it,” Fitzsimmons said disgustedly. “They are talking gas. Mostly what they are worrying on is some way to make her feel bad because she did for Morgan.”

“You talk too much for a young squit,” Dill said, and Fitzsimmons grinned at the doctor.

“Yes, it is all right for her to save their lives. But not that of anyone they don’t like.”

“That’s all right, Doc,” Dill said. “We know who she likes. I guess her long-hair gunman smells sweeter than we do.”

“I’ll kill you, Ira!” Tittle cried, starting forward.

“Stop it, Ben!” the doctor said; he was struck by the fury in Tittle’s face. He nodded his head toward the door, and Tittle obediently turned away. He hobbled toward the door, his clothing hanging loosely on his stick of a body.

The doctor turned to Dill, whose eyes reluctantly met his. “I take it you are the one who can’t pay, Dill,” he said. “What do you want her to do, dun you so you can insult her?”