Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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37. GANNON ANSWERS A QUESTION

“COME IN, Deputy,” Kate said. She was tall in her white shirt with a velvet band around the collar, and her thickly pleated black skirt. Her hair hung loose around her head, softening the angular lines of her face. She looked neither pleased nor displeased to see him. “Haven’t left town yet?” she said.

“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 youout 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—”

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.”

“ Killedfor 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 feltanything 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.

“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 otherwork.”

“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?”

Dill said nothing.

“Others who seem to have felt the way you do have had the decency to leave here,” he went on, still staring into Dill’s ugly face. “I suggest that you do so. You are not worth her care, nor my trouble. You are not worth anyone’s trouble.”

“Oh, I’ll be moving out,” Dill said. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“I suggest that you buy a stock of pencils from Mr. Goodpasture and sell them on the street. That way you will not be a charity case.”

“I’d rather. Don’t think I wouldn’t.”

The doctor took a step toward Dill, who backed away. He saw Jimmy Fitzsimmons watching him worriedly and he fought to keep his voice level. “Let me tell you something, Dill. I don’t know what you have been saying here, but if you manage to cause her any pain in your stupid spite, I will do my best to break that head I mended for you.”

“Easy, Doc,” Fitzsimmons whispered.

“I mean exactly what I say!” he said, and Dill retreated before him. “Did you hear me, Dill?”

“Like Morgan busting Stacey, huh, Doc?” Dill said.

“Exactly.”

Dill shrugged cockily, and moved over to his own cot; he stood there glancing back out of the corners of his eyes.

“Go on!” the doctor said. “Get out, Dill!”

He heard Ben Tittle call him from the doorway, and he swung around. “Miss Jessie wants to see you, Doc.”

Abruptly his rage died. Almost he could feel sorry for Dill and the others, each of whom fought his own lonely battle to maintain a semblance of pride. He walked out past Tittle and went down the hall. There were a number of miners standing inside the entryway now, worried-looking, stern-faced men in clean blue clothing, several with six-shooters stuck inside their belts. All greeted him gravely. There were some, he knew, who were responsible men, men with dignity who could act for themselves if they were shown the way. He wondered why he must always be so short with them.

He knocked on Jessie’s door, and entered when she called to him. She stood facing him with her fists clenched at her sides, and tears showing in her round eyes. He had never seen her look so angry.

“What is it, Jessie?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

“That hateful little man! Oh, that hateful, jealous little man!”

“Who?”

“The deputy!” she said, as though he had been stupid not to know. “I don’t see why he couldn’t do it! It is just that he is so jealous. So little!He—”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Jessie. Gannon wouldn’t do what?”

She made an effort to compose herself. The little muscles tugged at the corners of her mouth, and it was, he thought, as if those same muscles were connected to his heart. “What is it, Jessie?” he said, more gently.

“I went to tell him that Henry, Buck, and Will had gone to Bright’s City to see that he was removed,” she said. “I told him I – that I didn’t know whether they would succeed or not. And I– Well, I thought he would leave if I asked him, David.”

“Did you?” he said, and wondered how she could presume such a thing, and what she hoped to gain by it.

“I thought if Iasked him,” she said. The tears shone in her eyes again; she daubed at them with her handkerchief. “I thought if I made him understand—” Then she said furiously, “Do you know what he said? He said that Clay could not do it!”

“You asked him to quit so that Blaisedell could be deputy,” he said, and, although he nodded, he knew that Gannon was right. There were many reasons why Blaisedell could not do it, but he would rather have slapped her face than try to reason with her.

“Hateful, jealous, smuglittle man!” Jessie said. She put her handkerchief to her mouth in what seemed an unwarranted degree of grief.

“What is it, Jessie?” he said again, and put an arm around her straining shoulders.

“Oh, it is Clay,” she whispered. “Clay told him I had lied, and he was so smug. Oh, I hate him so!” She drew away from him, and threw herself down on her bed. She sobbed into the pillow. He thought he heard her say, “If he would leave no one would know!”

He went to sit beside her, and after a time she took hold of his hand with her tight hand, and held it against her damp cheek. “Oh, David,” she whispered. “You are so kind to me, and I have been such a terrible person.”

“You are not terrible, Jessie.”

“I lied to him. And he found it out.”

“Blaisedell?” he asked, for it was not clear.

She nodded; he felt her tears warm and wet on his hand. “I lied to him about what Carl Schroeder said.”

He said nothing, staring down at her tumbled ringlets; gently, awkwardly, he stroked his left hand over them. She sobbed again.

“I told him I had even liedfor him. That’s how he knew. But I did it for him!I thought if I could just ask the deputy to—”

“Hush!” he said. “Not so loudly, Jessie. It will be all right.”

“Clay hates me, he must hate me!”

“No one could hate you, Jessie.”

There was a knock at the door. “Doc, it’s time for the meeting.” It was Fitzsimmons’ voice.

“Just a moment,” he called. He stroked his hand over Jessie’s hair, and said, “It will be all right, Jessie,” without even thinking what he was saying. He looked down at the brown head beneath his hand. She had done something that had been unworthy of her – for Clay Blaisedell. She had dedicated herself to him. He prayed with a sudden fury for a return of the days when there had been no Clay Blaisedell in Warlock.

“But what am I going to do now?” Jessie said. “David, if Gannon would only leave no one would believe him!”

He did not answer, for Fitzsimmons was knocking again. “Doc, they are starting! You had better come.”

Jessie was sobbing quietly when he left her, and Fitzsimmons looked relieved to see him. “Come on! Daley is saving us a place!”

There were about thirty men in the dining room. The plank tables and benches had been pushed back against the walls, and men sat on them and on two ranks of chairs at the far end of the room beyond which were Frenchy Martin and old man Heck, at Jessie’s table. There were a number of miners standing. The doctor noticed that although most of the men were from the Medusa, there was also a contingent from the Sister Fan, and, it seemed, at least one from each of the other mines. This was the skeleton of the Miners’ Union that had been set up under Lathrop’s leadership, had lapsed since, but had not been forgotten.

Daley had saved two chairs for them in the front row. Fitzsimmons sat down stiffly, adjusting his hands before him, and the doctor was aware that Fitzsimmons’ habit of holding them so, was, in part, to call attention to them – like a soldier’s wounds, as some kind of proof of adulthood and initiation before the rest.