Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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28. JOURNALS OF HENRY HOLMES GOODPASTURE

March 12, 1881

I HAD thought this affair of only local importance. It did not occur to me that it had spread beyond the territory. I was surprised to read a long account of it in a San Antonio paper which someone brought here, and now I have come into possession of a magazine called the Western Gazette. This so-called journal combines cheapjack writing with smudged print upon coarse paper, and is devoted almost entirely to an affair vaguely resembling, and called, “The Battle in the Acme Corral.” It is a strange experience to read an account such as this, where an occurrence one is closely acquainted with is transformed into something wild, woolly, and improbable, with only the names true, and not all of themby any means. There is a crude illustration upon the cover, depicting a huge St. George of a man whose six-shooter is almost as long as a sword, confronting a host of sombreroed dragons. The execrably written text might be the more infuriating if Blaisedell were held to be the villain of the piece, but possibly nothing could be more intolerable than the fulsome praise, the impossible prowess and nobility, and the heroic speeches that make the gorge rise. The author listed nine dead, of whom Morgan was credited with three. It is fantastic to think of people reading, and believing, this vile fiction, which is solemnly presented as Truth. Buck says there were a number of newspapermen at the trial, however, some of whom had come from great distances to attend it. Presumably Warlock will now go down in History as the site of “The Battle in the Acme Corral,” as well as of the Medusa Mine. Blood is as stirring to the human imagination as silver.

I was struck by the artist’s depiction of Blaisedell as a huge man. Since the corral shown has nothing to do with the original, other than its name, and the representation of Blaisedell the same, I find myself wondering why the artist chose to draw a great brute of a fellow. A rough-and-tumble Hero for a rough-and-tumble people? Feats of strength being more appealing than feats of finesse? No doubt the artist knows better than I the correct heroic image to present to a republican mentality.

This magazine has affected me more deeply than merely with the contempt and anger I felt upon first examining it. For are we not, perhaps, here in Warlock, sitting in upon the childbed of a Legend? Are we watching such a momentous birth all unknowingly, and, unknowing too, this one or that one of us helping it along, acting as midwife, boiling the water, holding the swaddling clothes, etc? As time goes on and if the infant does not die (literally!), and continues to grow, will not this cheap and fabulous account in this poor excuse for a magazine become, on its terms, a version much more acceptable than ours, the true one? It is a curious thought; how much do these legends, as they outstrip and supersede their originals, rest upon Truth, and how much upon some dark and impenetrable design within Man himself?

March 18, 1881

A most pleasant evening last night, spent with Buck, Joe Kennon, Jed Rolfe, Will Hart, Fred Winters, and the doctor. I held forth mightily, I talked my mouth dry, and my listeners’ ears to tatters; but I must hold that Blaisedell is a virtuous man (against no opposition in that company), and that the Acme Corral was a tragedy for him since it was not a clear-cut victory. For he deserves no other kind.

We speculated on the fact that Blaisedell has not yet returned to Warlock, although it has been two weeks since his acquittal. Morgan has been to Bright’s City, undoubtedly to see him, but has made no comment or explanation that I have heard. My fear is that Blaisedell will not return at all. This would be a blow to us, for I fear our uneasy peace is coming to an end. A miner was killed by one of his fellows in a quarrel at the French Palace last Thursday night. The survivor was arrested and has been sent to Bright’s City for trial, but it is felt that this would not have happened had Blaisedell been here. Will Hart has heard he is riding a tiger in a Bright’s City gambling hall and does not wish to quit while he is winning. Buck is irritated with him; after all, there were no provisions made for long vacations in the terms of his employment. We all, of course, fear that Warlock will revert to her former state of violence and lawlessness in his absence, temporary or permanent.

Will, I think, feels that Blaisedell would do better not to return. That, for instance, he might take offense at talk and be forced into petty quarrels. This has occurred to me too. Yet I myself want Blaisedell to return, not merely for the sake of peace here, but in order that he may in some way redeem himself in a further and completely unambiguous action. Joe Kennon, a straightforward man, wishes Blaisedell to return and kill McQuown. Buck Slavin, not so straightforward, fears that McQuown may be feeling vengeful toward him because he has sided with Blaisedell, and wishes devoutly for the same consummation. Buck proclaims that all disorder and lawlessness would die with the San Pabloite, peace would reign, and commerce flourish forever after.

McQuown’s death by gunplay, I am afraid, is the climax I also desire. Blaisedell’s reputation is important to me. It is as though, through him, I can see a bit of myself immortalized, and the others of this town, and even the whole of this western country. For how can this be done but through those men who, because of their stature among us, we raise still further in tall tales and legends that denote our respect, and which are taken by the world and the generations, from us, as standing for us?

March 20, 1881

It is said that Blaisedell’s decision to go to Bright’s City and endure trial was to a large degree brought about by Judge Holloway’s righteous rantings at him. I have heard the judge cursed for this often of late. Pike Skinner is especially bitter toward him, and there is a rumor that when Schroeder heard that Blaisedell had departed for Bright’s City, he physically assaulted the judge as being the cause. The old story, that arises whenever the judge is in an unpopular phase, is also current again: that he was run out of Dade County, Texas, where he was a J.P., for drunkenness and other more sinister vices. But I must defend him, and counter with the story which seems to me at least complementary to the other: that he was run out of Dade County because he tried to expose a criminally inclined sheriff who was, unfortunately, much better liked by the Texans than Judge Holloway and Rectitude.

I have also heard that he was at one time judge on a bench of some importance in Kansas, where people became so inflamed against him because of a series of unpopular decisions – I have no doubt that these were righteous ones, righteously delivered – that they tarred, feathered, and rode him out of town on a rail.

Certainly he is a bitter man, and one impossible to know, but if there are kernels of truth in these two tales of him, the outlines of his bitterness begin to show; nor will I condemn a man for trying to drown an abysmal bitterness in alcohol. He is a lonely man, too; he has no friends, nor even any regular drinking companions. He is uncomfortable company.

He can be awesome enough on occasion, in his wrath, although he usually ends by making a fool of himself, when he is pitiable. Yet he is, to me at least, more often than not an admirable man, and Warlock owes a debt of gratitude to him. As judge “on acceptance” he has long dealt successfully with our minor disputes and misdemeanors, and he has, almost singlehandedly, as the deputies have come and gone and Sheriff Keller has done neither, maintained at least an awareness of the law here, where there has been no law.

March 28, 1881

Blaisedell has returned. He has resigned his position as Marshal and is dealing faro at the Glass Slipper. Disappointed and heartsick as I am at this turn of events, I cannot find it in my heart to blame him.

BOOK TWO: THE REGULATORS

29. GANNON LOOKS FOR TROUBLE

GANNON was alone in the jail when he heard the pound of bootheels on the boardwalk, and Carl hurried in. Carl sailed his hat toward the peg and grunted with satisfaction when it caught and swung there. But he said, “Trouble,” as he sat down at the table.

“What?”

“They are dropping wages at the Medusa and the Sister Fan,” Carl said. One end of his mustache was wet where he had been chewing on it. “They are going to do it,” he said. “And the others’ll follow what the Porphyrion and Western Mining Company does, sure as shooting. MacDonald just told me. He is worried about it; he by God ought to be!”

“They knew it was coming.”

“Not by a dollar a day, they didn’t!”

Gannon whistled.

“Cutting them a dollar a day. MacDonald says it’s got to be that much because the price of silver’s went down, partly, and partly because they are getting all that water down on the thousand-foot level. Unprofitable labor, getting rid of water, he says. There is going to be hell broke loose when they hear about it.”

“They don’t know about it yet?”

“He’ll tell them payday.” Carl took a dirty, irregularly bitten piece of plug out of his pocket, and wrenched a corner off with his teeth.

“That’s almost twenty-five per cent.”

“It is, and there is going to be hell. MacDonald’s not likely to step out of his way to miss any trouble, either. Well, and easy enough to wreck a mine, to give him his due. Charge of giant powder somewhere, or a fire in the stope. There was that one on the Comstock burned for three years and then had to be all retimbered before they could work it again. So MacDonald is getting ready to bust them before they bust him.”

“Bust them how? Did he say?”

“He has got his mind set on running out that Brunk he fired a while back, the one he tried to get Blaisedell to post. And Frenchy Martin and old Heck, and some others he says’re agitators too. Wants us to run them out for him.” Carl looked up at him and grinned a little.

“No,” Gannon said.

“What I told him,” Carl said. The lump of tobacco moved in his cheek like a mouse. “So Mister Mac is down on me; he is a man that doesn’t take kindly to anybody saying him no. I told him we would come out to the Medusa Saturday when they announced it – try to stop trouble. But he’d got other ideas by then.”

Carl sighed and said, “And I think what he’s got in mind now is rounding up a crew of hardcases to do his dirty work for him. Regulators was what he said, and I thought he meant some Citizens’ Committee people he’d get together. But now I wonder if he wasn’t thinking San Pablo.”

“It’s what he did before.”

“Cade,” Carl said. “By God, I forgot about that. Damn it to hell!” he burst out. “I wish we could count on Blaisedell if MacDonald intends on pulling something like that. By God if I want to see Warlock run by MacDonald and a bunch of San Pablo hardcases any more than McQuown and Curley and the same. What the hell’s got into Blaisedell, you suppose, anyhow?”

Gannon went over to sit down beside the alley door, and Carl scraped his chair around to face him. “Maybe he is just waiting for McQuown to come in,” Carl went on. “Maybe that’s what he is doing. Except why’d he quit marshaling?”

“Maybe he is sick of killing.”

Carl stared at him; he licked his lips. “Johnny, you haven’t gone and turned against him because of Billy? I thought you hadn’t.”

Gannon shook his head, patiently. He had prayed that he could remain patient. Always he could feel the accusations, from both sides, picking at him like knives whenever he walked the streets. He had ignored them so far, but he was afraid he was not always going to be able to.

“Well, somebody’s got to be peace officers,” Carl said. “And killing is part of it. I don’t see—” He stopped, and shook his head and said, “I wonder if it wasn’t that Miss Jessie went and turned against him. That’d sour a man. He is not rooming there any more, and they say he don’t see her any more. That would turn a man sour.”

He rose and paced the floor, his hands gripping his shell belt, his face puzzled and angry. “There is Blaisedell banking faro for Morgan and a glass of whisky right near all the time – and why? And there is McQuown keeping down to San Pablo. Scared to death, some say, but I think he is just waiting like a damned coyote. Everything is too quiet. It is so quiet it sets my nerves to banging like a dinner bell. Everybody just sitting around waiting for something to happen. What to happen?”

“I’ve felt it too.”

“Well, there’s going to be fireworks and the band playing with this pay drop, anyhow.”

Carl went over and kicked the cell door; it swung slowly shut. Carl stood facing the cell, his head bent down dejectedly. “Well, I never said I wasn’t a scaredy-cat,” he said. “But it sure comes on me hard sometimes. If we just had Blaisedell to yell for if MacDonald starts up anything, or those jacks either. Like that night they tried to lynch Billy and the other two, out of here. That was a night! A man knew what he had to do that night, and it was surely a comfort to have Blaisedell by.”

Gannon kept silent while Carl brooded – over Blaisedell, he knew, more than that there might be trouble at the mines. Gannon found himself almost looking forward to trouble. It had been too quiet. More than once, faced with the fact that some thought him one kind of coward, and some another, one kind of traitor, or another, it had all seemed hopeless and he had thought of quitting. Now, he thought, he might be of some use.

30. THE DOCTOR CONSIDERS THE ENDS OF MEN

THE doctor sat opposite Jessie with the checkerboard between them. He watched her take his king; he was used to letting her win because he loved to hear her laugh and clap her hands in triumph. But these days she did not laugh, nor even smile much. She had been this way since Blaisedell had come back from Bright’s City, and had not come back to the General Peach. Blaisedell had not even been to see her, so far as he knew. But still she kept his room for him, and still she turned expectantly toward the door whenever anyone entered.

Her white, nervous hand moved her checkers out, and his own square, short, hairy hand retreated. She took his last king. “Oh, I have beaten you again, David!” she said.

“You can’t do it three times in a row,” he said, and began spreading the checkers out on the squares for another game. Footsteps sounded; her eyes swung toward the door. He turned too, and saw that it was only a miner, who leaned heavily upon the rail as he mounted the stairs.

“There are many of them drunk tonight,” Jessie said. “Almost every one.”

“They know a wage cut is coming tomorrow. I’m afraid they will do more than get drunk when they find it is to be a dollar a day.”

“Yes,” she said listlessly. She leaned forward to study his move.

“We may be very busy,” he said. “It is always sad when we are busy, isn’t it?” But he thought it would be angry this time.

“I hear them talking about the Miners’ Union again,” Jessie said. She jumped his checker and snatched it up, and looked up at him with her pale mouth bent into a smile and her eyes alight for an instant. But only for an instant.

“In the end they are going to have to have their union, Jessie,” he said. “They will have to have their union to get out from under the manipulations of a bunch of conniving speculators in San Francisco and New York. And maybe to get out from under – our charity just as much as that.”

“They hate charity, don’t they?” Jessie said, matter-of-factly.

He stared at her. She let the checker in her hand drop to the board. “I am tired of living like this,” she said, with infinite weariness. “What is there here for me?” He saw the sheen of dampness in her eyes. The little muscles at the corners of her lips flexed to form an ashamed smile. Then she whispered, “Do you ever feel you were made for something, David? Made to do something – oh, something fine! But not know—” She stopped and shook her head, and the ringlets danced.

“I think everyone feels that sometimes, Jessie.”

“Oh, no! Oh, I don’t think everyone does. Most of them just live along. But there are a few who can do – I suppose I mean besomething. Something that can go on even after them. And shouldn’t those people be trying every moment to bethat? I mean, God gave it to them to do or be, and if they didn’t try I should think they would be very afraid of God.”

“It is your move, Jessie,” he said.

She was leaning forward with her hand on the locket that hung at her throat, a vertical frown line creasing her forehead, and her eyes were far removed from him. She said, “How terrible for a person to know what he could have been. How he could have gone on. But instead having to live along being nothing, and know he is just going to die and that’s the end of it.”

She was talking about Blaisedell, and he did not know what to say to her. He removed the checker she had dropped upon the board. Her eyes turned toward the door again; Brunk appeared there, with his cap pulled low upon his forehead and one big hand grasping the door frame. He was grinning, and his face was flushed with liquor.

“Miss Jessie,” he said thickly. “And the good doctor Wagner. Good night.” He said it with a peculiar inflection.

“Oh, good night, Frank!” Jessie said.

“Good night, Brunk.”

“No,” Brunk said, with a solemn shake of his head. “I mean, it isa good night. Mostly, just before payday, it’s not. But this payday—” Brunk grinned again.

“Looking forward to it, are you?” the doctor said grimly.

“Am,” Brunk said. He glanced around with exaggerated caution. “Because you know what?” he whispered. “It is going to go down to three-fifty a day and they are not going to stand for it.” He raised a thick finger to his lips. “Oh, but I won’t tell them! Let them hear it from Mister Mac. Then they will bust!”

“And then we can try to patch the bloody heads they bring here.”

“Bloody heads to you, but men to me!” Brunk said proudly. “For some’ll have to get bloody heads so the others can hold theirs up. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.” He turned to Jessie. “Well, Miss Jessie, maybe Lathrop hadn’t courage enough. But Ihave. Ihave!” he said, and hit his fist upon his chest.

“That’s fine, Frank,” Jessie said, in a colorless voice. “But I wish you wouldn’t shout so.”

Brunk stared at Jessie and his face was at once shocked, hurt, and furious. “You don’t think I am good enough, do you, Miss Jessie?”

“Of course I do, Frank!”

“No, you don’t,” Brunk said. He glanced at the mezzotint of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the wall behind Jessie’s head, and his face twisted. “Because I am no gentleman,” he said. “Because I am no – no long-haired, white-handed gunman. Oh, I know I am not good enough and it is only a bunch of dirty miners anyhow.”

The doctor thrust his chair back and rose. “You are drunk,” he said. “Get out of here, you drunken fool!”

“Not so drunken as her fair-haired boy-killer!” Brunk cried. “That is so drunk his high-rolling friend’s got to half carry him away from the French Pal—”

The doctor darted forward and slapped Brunk’s face. Brunk staggered a step back. The doctor slapped him again. “Get out of here!” he cried, in a voice that tore in his throat.

Brunk put his hand to his cheek. He turned slowly away. He moved toward the foot of the stairs, where he leaned against the newel post, a thick, dejected figure in the darkness of the entryway.

Jessie was sitting up very straight, her mouth tightly pursed in her stiff face, her eyes glancing sideways at the checkerboard as though she were considering her next move. Her hand plucked nervously at the locket at her throat.

There was a scuffling sound outside on the stoop, a low cursing. More drunken miners, the doctor thought; he was tired of drunken miners beyond patience. He stepped out toward them just as they came in through the door – two men who were not miners. Clay Blaisedell had come back to the General Peach.

Morgan edged his way inside with an arm around Blaisedell, who was hatless, sagging, stumbling – not wounded in brave battle, merely drunk to helplessness. Brunk had turned and was watching them.

“Come on, Clay boy,” Morgan was saying. “Sort those feet out. Almost home now – where you were bound to go.” He was panting, his white planter’s hat pushed back on his head. “Evening, Doc,” he said. Then Morgan said, “Evening, Miss Marlow,” and the doctor felt Jessie’s fingers grip his arm.

Blaisedell pulled away from Morgan and stood swaying, his boots set apart and his great, fair head hanging as he faced Jessie. Jessie moved a step forward to confront her drunken hero. He had thought she would be shocked and disgusted but she was smiling and looked, he thought, with a painful wrench at his heart, triumphant.

But she did not speak, and after a moment Blaisedell started for the stairs, holding himself very straight. He stopped at the foot, as though realizing his incapacity to mount them, and leaned upon the newel post as Brunk backed away.

Morgan said to Brunk, “You look like you have a strong back, Jack. How about a hand upstairs?”

“Let him lay in the gutter for all of me!” Brunk said. “One that would shoot down a sixteen-year-old boy in—”

“Don’t say that, bullprod!” Morgan said; his voice was like metal scratching metal. Blaisedell clumsily tried to turn, and Morgan caught his arm as he staggered.

“Help you either!” Brunk said. “That would kick a broken-arm fellow’s teeth in!” His voice rose hysterically. “High-rollers and road agents and murdering pimps and worse! Well, I am not afraid to talk out, and there’s things—”

“Stop it!” Morgan snapped, just as the doctor heard Jessie utter the same words, her fingers tightening on his arm again. Brunk stopped and looked from Morgan to Jessie with his tortured red face.

“I have been looking for coyotes howling that tune,” Morgan said, in the metallic voice. His eyes, glinting in the light from Jessie’s room, looked as cold as murder.

“You will have a lot of teeth to kick in then!” Brunk cried.

“I’ll know where to start!”

“Never mind it, Morg,” Blaisedell said. He started up the stairs, and Morgan grasped his arm again and helped him upward, grunting with the effort and glancing back over his shoulder once at Brunk. The two men disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell, laboring and bumping against the railing.

“Frank,” Jessie said. Slowly Brunk turned, his scar of a mouth strained wide, his fists clenched at his sides. “You are to get out of my house.”

“Miss Jessie, can’t you see—”

“Get out of my house!” Jessie said. Her fingers left the doctor’s arm; he heard her go back into her room. Brunk stood gazing after her with dumb pain on his face.

“You had better leave, Frank,” the doctor said, with difficulty. He knew now that he was not the only man who had been jealous of Clay Blaisedell. He followed Jessie into her room, and heard, behind him, Brunk’s slow departing footsteps; above him, shuffling ones.

Jessie was staring up at the ceiling with round eyes. “Are they saying things like that about him?” she whispered.

“I suppose there are a few that—”

“Frank said it,” she broke in. “Oh, the fools! Oh—” She put her hands to her face. “Oh, they are!” she whispered through her hands. “It is Morgan’s fault! It is because of Morgan! Isn’t it, David?”

“I suppose in a way it is,” he said, nodding. He could not say more, and he was sorry now for Brunk, who had tried to.

“It is!” Jessie said, and he heard Morgan coming back down the stairs.

Morgan stopped and looked in the doorway, taking off his hat. His figure was slim and youthful, and his face, too, seemed young, except for his prematurely gray hair, which looked like polished pewter in the light. Slanting hoods of flesh at the corners of his eyes gave his face a half-humorous, half-contemptuous expression.

“I am sorry to bring him home in a state like this, Miss Marlow,” he said, with a mock humility. “But he would come. And sorry for the fuss with the jack.”

The doctor said, “You will have to excuse Brunk, Morgan. Stacey is a friend of his.”

“Stacey?” Morgan said, with a lift of his eyebrows.

“Whose teeth you kicked in, at your place. That was a cruel thing.”

“Was it?” Morgan said, politely.

“Mr. Morgan,” Jessie said in a stiff voice. “Possibly you could tell me what’s the matter with him. I mean, what has happened to him since he came back to Warlock.”

“What’s happened to him is for the best,” Morgan said. “Though I don’t expect you will agree with me.”

“What do you mean?” Jessie said.

Morgan smiled thinly, and said, with the polite and infuriating contempt, “Well, Miss Marlow, he is a man with some good in him. I don’t much like to see him broken down under things. He is better off out of marshaling.”

“Dealing faro in a saloon!” Jessie cried. The doctor was shocked at the venom in her voice, but Morgan only grinned again.

“Or anything. But that’s handy and pays well. Good night, Miss Marlow. Good night, Doc.”

“Just a moment, please!” Jessie said. “You didn’t want him to come back here, did you, Mr. Morgan?”

“It is hard to argue with him sometimes.”

“You don’t like me, do you?”

Morgan put his tongue in his cheek and cocked his head a little. “Why, ma’am, I am very respectful of you, like everybody else here in town.” He made as though to leave again, but seemed to change his mind. “Well, let me put it this way, Miss Marlow. I am suspicious by nature. I know what sporting women are after, which is money. But I am never quite sure what nice women are after. No offense meant, Miss Marlow.”

Again he started to leave, and again Jessie said, “Just a moment, please!” The doctor could hear her ragged breathing. She said to Morgan, “You said you didn’t like seeing him broken down under things.”

Morgan inclined his head, warily.

“So how you must hateyourself, Mr. Morgan!”

Morgan’s face looked for an instant as it had when he had confronted Brunk; then it was composed again, like a door being shut, and he bowed once again, silently, and took his leave.

Jessie put her hand down on the checkerboard and with a quick motion swept the checkers off onto the floor. “I hate him!” she whispered. “No one can blame me for hating him!” She raised her face toward the ceiling. He saw it soften and she whispered something inaudible – that must, he thought, have been addressed to Blaisedell, who had come back to her.

She seemed to become aware of him again; she smiled, and it lit her whole face. “Oh, good night, David,” she said. “Thank you for playing checkers with me.”

It was a dismissal, he knew, not merely for this evening, but of a companion with whom she had passed the time while she waited for Blaisedell to return. He nodded and said, “Good night, Jessie,” and backed out the door. She came after him, to close it, the opening narrowing into a thin slice of lamplight that framed her face. The door shut with a gentle sound.

He went up the steps to his room, and sat down on his bed. He felt as though he were smothering in the thick darkness. He felt old, and drained of all emotion except loneliness. Through the window he could see the bright stars and a narrow shaving of moon, and from here he could hear the sounds of laughter and drinking from the saloons on Main Street. He rose and fumbled on the table for the bowl of spills and matches. He lit the lamp, the darkness paled around him; he stood with his hands on the edge of the table, staring into the bright mystery of the flame. He had taken the bottle of laudanum from his bag when there was a soft knock.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Jimmy, Doc. Can I come in a minute?”

“All right,” he said.

“You’ll have to open the door for me, I guess.”

He put down the bottle and went to open the door. Young Fitzsimmons came in, carrying his bandaged hands before him as though they were parcels. He had dark wavy hair and thick eyebrows that met over the bridge of his nose. His long, young face was grave.

“Some things bothering, Doc.”

“Worried about those hands, Jimmy? Here, let me cut the bandages off and have a look.” The boy’s hands had been burned so terribly he had told him he might lose them. But miraculously they were healing, although it would be a long time yet.

“No, it’s not that,” Fitzsimmons said. He held out his hands and grinned at them. “They are coming fine – they don’t stink like they used to, do they?” He sat down on the end of the bed and his face turned grave again. “No, it’s I am kind of worried about Frank, Doc.”

“Are you?” he said, without interest.

“My daddy was a miner,” Fitzsimmons said. “And his before him and on back. I know about mines, and I know what you can do and can’t do when there is trouble with the company. They had troubles back in the old country my grandaddy used to tell about. I know one thing you don’t do is fire a stope.”

“Are they talking about that?”

“Plenty. They won’t listen to me because I am only twenty, but I know rock-drilling better than most of them, and union and company too. I know you don’t wreck a mine; because there may be trouble, but there is always a time when trouble is over for a while.”

“I know, Jimmy,” he said. He watched the boy’s brows knit up; they looked like black caterpillars. The boy shook his head and sighed, then held up his bandaged hands again.

“It’s been kind of good for me to be this way awhile, Doc,” he said. “It is fine to be quick with your hands, and hell not to be able to even button your fly or open a door the way I can’t. But it makes you understand, too, how you can be too quick with them. Now I have got to think every time before I reach out for anything. That’s a caution these others would be better off with.”

“But they won’t listen to you,” he said, and smiled.

Fitzsimmons grimaced. “There’s not three of them could beat me single-jacking before I got burnt – Brunk couldn’t. But there’s not three of them will listen to me, either. All they’ll listen to is Frank and Frenchy and old Heck. But they’ll listen to me some day!

“Frank’s all right in a way,” he went on. “He didn’t want nothing for himself, and I expect he would jump down a shaft if it would help get a union. Except he would just as soon jump everybody else downshaft too, and then look back and find there wasn’t anybody to make a union with.”