Текст книги "Warlock"

Автор книги: Oakley Hall

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14. GANNON WATCHES A MAN AMONG MEN

I

GANNON waited alone at the jail. About ten o’clock the judge appeared, coming in the doorway with his hard hat cocked over his eye, a bottle under one arm and his crutch under the other, his left trouser leg neatly turned up and sewed like a sack across the bottom. Heavy and awkward on the crutch he moved around to the chair behind the table, which Gannon vacated, and sank into it, grunting. He put the bottle down before him, and leaned the crutch against the table.

“Left you behind, did they?” he said, swinging around with difficulty to confront Gannon, who had seated himself in the chair beside the cell door. The judge’s face was the color of unfresh liver.

Gannon nodded.

“You see any reason why they should have?” the judge demanded, continuing to regard him with his muddy eyes.

“Yes.”

“What reason?”

“I expect you know, Judge.”

“I asked you,” the judge snapped.

“Well, one they are after is maybe my brother.”

“By God, if you are the law you arrest your own brother if he breaks it, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But maybe you lean a little toward McQuown’s people,” the judge said, squinting at him. “Or Carl is afraid you do. Do you?”

“No.”

“Lean toward Blaisedell then, like most here? Seeing he is against McQuown?”

“I don’t guess I lean either way. I don’t take it as my place to lean any way.”

Footsteps came along the boardwalk and Blaisedell turned into the doorway. “Judge,” he said, nodding in greeting. “Deputy.”

“Marshal,” Gannon said. The judge turned slowly toward Blaisedell.

“Any word from the posse?” Blaisedell asked. He leaned in the doorway, the brim of his black hat slanting down to hide his eyes.

“Not yet,” he said. He felt Blaisedell’s stare. Then Blaisedell inclined his head to glance down at the judge, who had muttered something.

“Pardon, Judge?” Blaisedell said.

“I said, who are you?” the judge said, in a muffled voice.

“Why, we have met, Judge, I believe.”

“Who are you?” the judge said again. “Just tell me, so I will know. I don’t think it’s come out yet, who you are.”

Gannon stirred nervously in his chair. Blaisedell stood a little straighter, frowning.

“Something a man’s got a right to know,” the judge went on. His voice had grown stronger. “Who are you? Are you Clay Blaisedell or are you the marshal of this town?”

“Why, both, Judge,” Blaisedell said.

“A man is bound by what he is,” the judge said. “An honest man, I mean. I am asking whether you are bound by being marshal, or being Clay Blaisedell.”

“Both, I expect. Judge, I don’t just know for sure what you are—”

“Which first?” the judge snapped.

This time Blaisedell didn’t answer.

“Oh, I know what you are thinking. You think I am a drunk, one-legged old galoot pestering you, and you are too polite to say so. Well, I know what I am, Mister Marshal Blaisedell, or Mister Clay Blaisedell that is incidentally marshal of Warlock. But I want to know whichyou are.”

“Why?” Blaisedell said.

“Why? Well, I got to thinking and it seems to me the trouble in a thing like law and order is, there is people working every which way at it, or against it. Like it or not, there has got to be peoplein it. But the trouble is, you never know what a man is, so how can you know what he is going to do?So I thought, why not ask straight out? I asked Johnny Gannon here just now what he was and where he stood, and he told me. Are you any better than another that you shouldn’t?”

Blaisedell still did not speak. He looked as though he had dismissed the judge’s words as idle, and was thinking of something else.

The judge went on. “Let me tell you another thing then. Schroeder has gone after those that robbed the stage and killed a passenger. I expect him and that posse would just as soon shoot them down ley fugaas bring them back. But say he will catch them, and say he gets them back whole. Well, there will be a lynch mob on hand, like as not, from what I’ve heard around tonight. But say the lynch mob doesn’t pan out, or Schroeder sort of remembers what he is here for and stops them. Then those road agents will go up to Bright’s City to trial, and likely get off just the way Earnshaw did.

“Then it is your turn, Mister Marshal, or whatever you are. Which is why I am asking you now beforehand if you know what you are, and what you stand for. If a man don’t know that himself, why, nobody does except God almighty, and He is a long way off just now.”

“Judge,” Blaisedell said. “I guess you don’t much like what you think I stand for.”

“I don’t knowwhat you stand for, and it don’t look like you are going to tell me, either!” Gannon heard the judge draw a ragged breath. “Well, maybe you can tell me this, then. Why shouldn’t the Citizens’ Committee have gone out and made itself a vigilante committee like some damned fools wanted to do, instead of bringing you here?”

Blaisedell spread his legs, folded his arms on his chest, and frowned. “Might have done,” he said, in his deep voice. “I don’t always hold with vigilantes, but sometimes it is the only thing.”

“Don’t hold with them why?”

“Well, now, Judge, I expect for the same reason you don’t. Most times they start out fine, but most times, too, they go bad. Mostly they end up just a mob of stranglers because they don’t know when to break up.”

“Wait!” the judge said. “You are right, but do you know why they go bad? Because there is nothing they are responsible to. Now! Any man that is set over other men somehow has to be responsible to something. Has to be accountable. You—”

Blaisedell said, “If you are talking about me, I am responsible to the Citizens’ Committee here.”

“Ah!” the judge said. He sat up very straight; he pointed a finger at the marshal. “Well, most ways it is a bad thing, and it is not even much of a thing, but it is an important thing and I warrant you to hang onto it!”

“All right,” Blaisedell said, and looked amused.

“I am telling you something for your own good and everybody’s good,” the judge whispered. “I am telling you a man like you has to be always right, and no poor human can ever be that. So you have got to be accountable somehow. To someone or everybody or—”

“To you, you mean, Judge?” Blaisedell said.

Gannon looked away. His eyes caught the names scratched on the wall opposite him, that were illegible now in the dim light. He wondered to whom those men, each in their turn, had thought they were responsible. Not to Sheriff Keller certainly, nor to General Peach.

The judge had not spoken, and after a moment Blaisedell went on. “Judge, a man will say too often that he is responsible to something because he is afraid to face up alone. That is just putting off on another man or on the law or whatever. A man who has to always think like that is a crippled man.”

“No,” the judge said; his voice was muffled again. “No, just a man among men.” He drank again, the brown bottle slanting up toward the base of the hanging lamp above him.

Blaisedell stood with his long legs still spread and his hands upon his shell belt beneath his black frock coat. Standing there in the doorway he seemed as big a man as Gannon had ever seen. When he examined Blaisedell closely, height and girth, he was not so tall nor yet so broad-chested as some he knew, yet the impression remained. Blaisedell’s blue gaze encased him for a moment; then he turned back to the judge again.

“Maybe where you’ve been the law was enough of a thing there so people went the way the law said,” he said. “You ought to know there’s places where it is different than that. It is different here, and maybe the best that can be done is a man that is handy with a Colt’s – to keep the peace until the law can do it. That is what I am, Judge. Don’t mix me with your law, for I don’t claim to be it.”

“You are a prideful man, Marshal,” Judge Holloway said. He sat with his head bent down, staring at his clasped hands.

“I am,” Blaisedell said. “And so are you. So is any decent man.”

“You set yourself as always right. Only the law is that and it is above all men. Always right is too much pride for a man.”

“I didn’t say I am always right,” Blaisedell said. His voice sounded deeper. “I have been wrong, and dead wrong. And may be wrong again. But—”

“But then you stand naked before the rest in your wrong, Marshal,” the judge said. “It is what I am trying to say. And what then?”

“When I have worn out my use, you mean? Why, then I will move along, Judge.”

“You won’t know when it is time. In your pridefulness.”

“I’ll know. It is something I’ll know.” Gannon thought the marshal smiled, but he could not be sure. “There’ll be ones to tell me.”

“Maybe they will be afraid to tell you,” the judge said.

Blaisedell’s face grew paler, colder; he looked suddenly furious. But he said in a polite voice, “I expect I’ll know when the time comes, Judge,” and abruptly turned and disappeared. His bootheels cracked away to silence outside.

The judge raised his bottle to drain the last of the whisky in it. With a limp arm he reached down to set it beside his chair, and knocked it over with a drunken hand. It rolled noisily until it brought up against the cell door, while the judge leaned forward with his face in his hands and his fingers working and scraping in his hair.

After a long time he rose and clapped his hat on his head, staggering as he fitted the crutch under his arm. Gannon had a glimpse of his face as he swung out the door. Hectically flushed, it was filled with a sagging mixture of pride and shame, dread and grief.

II

It was well after midnight when the posse returned. Gannon stared at the doorway with aching eyes as he heard the tramp of hoofs and shouting. Men began running in the street past the jail, and he felt his heart swell in his chest as though it would smother him. He thrust down hard on the table with his hand, forcing himself to his feet, and went outside.

The street seemed filled solid with horsemen and men on foot milling around the horses. Someone was swinging a lantern to illuminate the faces of the riders – he saw Carl’s face, Peter Bacon’s, Chick Hasty’s; the lantern showed Pony Benner’s scowling, frightened face, and the men in the street howled his name. The pale light revealed Calhoun, and another shout went up. Then Gannon saw Billy sitting straight and hatless in the saddle, with his hands tied behind him.

The lantern swung again to show a riderless horse; but not riderless, he saw, for there was a body tied over the saddle.

“Ted Phlater!” someone said, in a sudden silence.

Immediately a roar went up. “Hang them!” a drunken voice screamed. “Oh, hang the sons of bitches! Hang them, boys!”

“Shut that up!” Carl shouted. Gannon swung off the boardwalk and made his way through the crowd as Carl dismounted. Carl looked into his face and gripped his arm for a moment.

“Got Ted Phlater shot and lost Friendly, damn all,” he said.

Another drunken voice was raised. “Where’s Big Luke, Carl?”

“Where is McQuown? You went and forgot Abe and Curley, boys!”

“They got the barber-killer!”

There was laughter, more shouting. “Hang them, boys! Hang them!” the first voice continued, shrill and mechanical, like a parrot.

“Horse!” Carl called to Peter Bacon. “You and Pike bring them inside.” He started for the jail, and Gannon made his way toward Phlater’s horse, to help Owen Parsons with the body. Men surged and shouted, mocked and joked and threatened as Pony, Calhoun, and Billy were dismounted. The crowd pressed toward the jail now, as the prisoners came up on the boardwalk, where a man held a lantern high as they moved past him.

“Hang them! Hang them!”

Gannon and Parsons lifted Phlater down and tried to make their way to the jail. “Get the God-damned jumping hell out of the way!” Parsons cried hoarsely. “Got any respect for the dead?”

Inside they put Ted Phlater’s stiffening body on the floor at the rear of the jail, and Peter appeared unfolding a blanket, with which he covered it. Pike Skinner was untying Calhoun’s arms; he thrust him roughly into the cell with Billy and Pony, and Carl slammed and locked the door.

Chick Hasty and Tim French came inside with the strongbox from the stage, which they shoved under the table. The hanging lamp swung like a pendulum when one of them brushed against it, and shadows swung more wildly still. The dusty window was crowded with bloated, featureless faces pressed against the glass, and men were pushing in at the door.

“Out of here!” Carl shouted. His face was lined with fatigue and gray with dust. “Isn’t any damned assembly hall. Out of here before I get mad! You!” Pike Skinner swung around and with his arms outstretched forced the men back.

“Hang the murdering sons of bitches!” someone yelled from outside. Pony’s scared face appeared at the cell door, and Calhoun’s lantern-jawed, cadaverous one; Gannon could see Billy’s hand on Calhoun’s shoulder.

“Expect they mean to try something, from the sound of them,” Peter Bacon said calmly.

“No they won’t,” Carl said. He stretched and rubbed his back, and grinned suddenly. “Well, three out of four,” he said. “That is better than one out of two like we made last time, anyhow.”

“You going to want some of us here tonight, Carl?” Parsons said, and Gannon saw that he tilted his grizzled head in his direction. He looked quickly away, to meet Calhoun’s eyes. Calhoun pursed his slack mouth, hawked, and spat.

“Go home and get some sleep,” Carl said, and slumped down in the chair at the table. “We are all right here.”

“I’m staying,” Pike Skinner said.

“Stay then. Chick, you and Pete go get some sleep. We’ll be taking them into Bright’s in the morning.”

There was muttering among the men bunched in the doorway. A muffled shout went up outside. The possemen pushed out the door, spurs clinking and scraping.

When they had gone, Pike Skinner swung the door closed and slid the bar through the iron keepers. The goblin faces still pressed against the window glass. There was another burst of shouting and hurrahing outside. Pike Skinner walked heavily to the rear, let himself fall into the chair there, and stared hostilely at Gannon. At the table Carl sighed and rubbed his knuckles into his eyes.

“Didn’t take you long,” Gannon said.

Carl laughed. “We ran onto them just before they hit the river. Pony and Calhoun, that is. They separated but we rode them down easy. Ted and Pike here kind of flushed Billy out of some trees down there and—”

Pike said abruptly, “It was Billy shot Ted.”

“He was shooting at me,” Billy said, in a harsh voice, from the cell. “What was I supposed to do, sit and let him do it?”

“Carl,” Pony said. “You are not going to let those bastards take us out of here, are you, Carl?”

“Shut your face,” Pike said. “You chicken-livered ugly little son of a bitch.”

“Thought you wanted me to let you go,” Carl said. “Thought you told me I might as well, for a jury up at Bright’s would do it anyhow. Save me trouble, you said.”

“I got something to tell you, Bud Gannon,” Calhoun said. “Come over here so’s I can whisper it.”

“Never mind,” Billy said. “Never mind, Bud.”

Gannon didn’t look toward the cell, leaning against the wall where the names were scratched, and watching within himself the slow turn of the cards, knowing each one as it turned. He stared at the goblin faces at the window and listened to the shouting and muttering outside. It was the only card he had not foreseen.

“You are so God-damn sure you caught your road agents!” Pony yelled.

“Hush!” Carl said.

“Be damned if I do! You got the wrong people! You—”

Carl got up, swung swiftly and hit Pony in the face through the bars. Pony fell backward, cursing.

“Wrong people!” Carl said, rubbing his knuckles. “You just happened to pick up that strongbox where somebody else dropped it, I guess.”

“One wrong, though,” Calhoun said quietly, and laughed; he moved back as Carl raised his fist again. Gannon stared in the cell at Billy and he felt his heart swell and choke him again; he had almost missed another card. Billy just looked back at him, scornfully.

“Listen to those boys yell out there,” Pike said.

Gannon started and Carl reached for the shotgun as there was a knock. Carl motioned to Gannon to unbolt the door. It was the Mexican cook from the Boston Café; he slipped in, carrying a tray covered with a cloth. The men outside set up a steady whooping, and the Mexican looked very frightened as he put the tray down and departed. As Gannon swung the door closed behind him he had a glimpse of the vast, dark mass in the street, and groups of pale, whiskered faces showing here and there by lanternlight. Someone was haranguing them from the tie rail at the corner. He bolted the door again.

Carl passed bowls of meat and potatoes into Calhoun. Pony threw his to the floor. “Go hungry then,” Carl said.

Pike took a steak in his hand and wolfed it down, and Carl attacked his hungrily too. Gannon set his plate on the floor beside him. There was another round of shouting outside, with one voice rising above the rest. The words were lost in the uproar. The faces at the window had vanished.

“Bud,” Billy said. Pony and Calhoun had retreated into the darkness. Gannon felt Pike Skinner watching him. “What the hell would you do, Bud?” Billy said. “People after you and throwing lead all over the landscape. What the hell would you’ve done?”

“I don’t know,” he said. Carl was pretending not to listen.

Pike said, “You might’ve thought how come there was a posse after you in the first place.”

Gannon saw Billy’s face twist, and something in him twisted with it. Another yell went up outside, and Pony appeared at the cell door again.

“Sit there and lap your supper!” he shrilled at Carl. “They are coming! Can’t you hear them coming?”

“We’ll stop them,” Carl said, “if they come. You can quit wetting your pants.”

“Bud,” Billy said again.

“Never mind it now, Billy,” Gannon said tightly. Pike glowered at him from the chair beside the alley door. Carl sat hump-backed at the table, forking food into his mouth.

“Long ride to Bright’s,” Carl said, over a mouthful. “You boys in there better get some sleep.”

“We’ll never get to Bright’s!” Pony cried.

“Oh, hush that!” Calhoun said.

Bud—Gannon could hear it, repeated and repeated, although Billy hadn’t spoken again. Reluctantly he turned his head to look at Billy again, and he saw Billy’s lips tilt beneath the pitiful young mustache. “Go ahead and say you told me what I was heading for,” Billy whispered. “Go ahead, Bud.”

“What good would that do?”

“No good,” Billy said, and disappeared. The cot springs creaked. Gannon could hear them whispering in the cell. “Why don’t you tell him?” he heard Calhoun say; then the tumult outside grew suddenly louder, and faces were pressed against the window again.

Someone beat on the door with the flat of his hand. “ Carl!”

Carl grunted and rose. He wiped his mustache, hitched at his shell belt, and glanced significantly at Gannon and Skinner. He took up the shotgun and nodded at Gannon to unbar the door.

Gannon did so, and leaped back, jerking his Colt free as the door burst inward. Two men hurtled in, to stop suddenly as they saw Carl’s shotgun. There was a knot of others jammed in the doorway, and behind them Gannon could feel the whole huge and violent thrust of the mob. Pike leaped forward with his Winchester in his hands. Outside they were whooping steadily again.

“You are going to have to give them up, Carl,” Red Slator said loudly, as he and Fat Vint backed up to join the others in the doorway. Close behind these two, Gannon could see Jed Smith, a foreman at the Thetis, Nate Bush, Hap Peters, Charlie Grace, who was one of Dick Maples’ bakers, Kinkaid, a cowboy from up the valley, several miners, and Simpson and Parks, who were both macs for some of the crib girls. Their faces were grim. Fat Vint looked drunker than usual.

“Get out of here, you miserable sons of bitches!” Carl said.

“You can’t stop us!” Charlie Grace shouted, and cheers went up from the dark, featureless mass behind them.

“See if I don’t,” Carl said. “If you think a bunch of pimps and drunk bullprods is going to bust this jail, you are mistaken. Get out of here!”

“We will tramp you down!” Vint yelled blusteringly. “You hear, Pike?” He looked at Gannon with his bloodshot pig-eyes, and sneered, “And you’ll keep out of it if you know what’s good for you, Johnny Gannon.”

“Get out of here!” Carl said, in a level voice.

“We’ll get out of here taking them with us!” Slator said. “We are going to hang the murdering bastards and bust over you if we have to, Carl Schroeder. You know what’ll happen at Bright’s; by God, everybody knows. They’ll get off sure as hell, with McQuown to send up lying hardcases by the dozen and scare the jury green too. You know that, Carl!” The men in the doorway began all to shout at once, and the shouting gathered power outside until the whole world seemed to be shouting.

Carl waited until the noise had subsided a little; then he said, “Red, I’d like to see them hang as much as you. I caught them and lost Ted Phlater doing it.” His voice rose. “And we went out and caught them while you and this bunch was sitting on your slat-asses drinking whisky. So I will be damned if you will take them off us now the hard work is done! Now get!”

He jammed the shotgun against Slator’s chest and Slator backed up. Vint grabbed at the shotgun and Gannon slammed the barrel down on the fat hand. Vint yelped. Pike started forward, and, feinting blows with the butt of the Winchester, drove them all back through the doorway.

“Tromp them down! Tromp them down, fellows!”

“Christ, give us something to help stand them off with, Bud!” Calhoun cried.

They pushed the mob leaders before them out the door, and the crowd in the street gave way. Then it surged forward again with a wild yelling. Hands caught Carl’s shotgun and pulled him forward. He stumbled to his knees, then fought and scrambled back away from the men crowding in on him. Gannon fired twice into the air. Someone yelled in terror and the mob fell back again.

The three of them stood close together before the jail door. Carl was panting.

“They won’t shoot!” a hoarse voice yelled from the rear of the mob. “They know better than to shoot!”

“Give us a God-damned iron, Carl!” Calhoun shouted.

“Good Christ, Carl, for Christ’s sake, give us a gun to hold them off with! Bud!”

“Don’t be a damned fool, Carl!” Slator said.

“Get the hell out of the way, Johnny Gannon! You two-way son of a bitch!”

“What the hell are you doing, Pike? Leave us take them!”

Slator, Vint, and Simpson started forward again; Vint was grinning. “You dassn’t shoot, Carl!”

“One step more,” Carl panted.

“Give us a chance, Carl!” Pony screamed.

“One step more, you bastards!” Pike said, and Gannon started to swing his Colt at Simpson’s head.

There were three shots in rapid succession from Southend Street, and then silence, sudden and profound. Craning his neck, Gannon saw men hurrying to get off the boardwalk, and Blaisedell appeared, walking rapidly, the Colt in his hand glittering by lanternlight. A whisper ran through the crowd. “The marshal!” “Blaisedell!” “Here comes the marshal!” “It is Blaisedell!”

Blaisedell joined them before the jail. “Need another man?” he said.

“Surely do,” Carl said, and let out his breath in a long, shaking, whispering laugh. “We surely do, Marshal.”

“We are taking those road agents out to hang, Marshal!” someone cried from across the street.

“You are not going to stop us, Marshal!” Fat Vint blustered. “We will tromp you with the rest. We are—”

“Come here and tromp me,” Blaisedell said.

Vint stepped back. Those around him retreated further.

“Come here,” Blaisedell said. “Come here!” Vint came a step forward. His face looked like gray dough.

“This is none of your put-in, Marshal!” someone yelled, but the rest of the mob was silent.

“Come here!” Blaisedell said once more, dangerously. Vint sobbed with fear, but he came on another step. Blaisedell’s hand shot up suddenly, the Colt’s barrel gleaming as he clubbed it down. The fat man cried out as he fell. There was silence again.

“Damn you, Marshal!” Slator cried. “This is none of your—”

“Come here!” Blaisedell said. When Slator didn’t move he fired into the planks at his feet. Slator jumped and yelled. “Come here!” Slator moved forward, trying to cover his head with his hands. Blaisedell slashed the gun barrel down and he staggered back. Hands caught him and he disappeared into the crowd.

“Take that one off, too,” Blaisedell said, and the same men hurriedly dragged Vint off the boardwalk.

“You have done McQuown’s work tonight, Blaisedell!” a man yelled.

“If you have got something to say, step up here and say it,” Blaisedell said, not loudly. “Otherwise skedaddle.” No one spoke. There was a movement away down Main Street. “Then all of you skedaddle,” Blaisedell said, raising his voice. “And while you are doing it think how being in a lynch mob is as low a thing as a man can be.”

There was bitter muttering in the street, but the mob began to disperse. Blaisedell holstered his Colt. Gannon could see his face in profile, stern and contemptuous, and thought how they must hate him for this. But he had saved shooting; he had probably saved lives.

Carl was mopping his face with his bandanna. “Well, thank you kindly, Marshal,” he said. “I expect there isn’t a one in there worth any man’s trouble. But damned if you don’t hate to be run by a bunch of whisky-primed, braying fools like that.”

Blaisedell nodded. Pike Skinner, Gannon saw, was looking at the marshal with a reluctant awe on his face.

“Prisoners get a scare?” Blaisedell asked.

“Caterwauling like a bunch of tomcats in there,” Carl said, and chuckled breathlessly.

Blaisedell nodded again. Suddenly he said, with anger in his voice, “A person surely dislikes a mob like that. They are men pretending they are brave and hard, but every one so scared of the man beside him he can’t do anything but the same.” He glanced from Pike to Gannon. “Well, I didn’t go to butt in so,” he said, as though apologizing. “I expect you boys could’ve handled it. It is just I surely dislike a mob of men like that.”

“I guess we couldn’t’ve handled it, Marshal,” Pike said. “Things had got tight.”

Gannon said, “I guess we would’ve had to go to shooting,” and Blaisedell smiled with a brief, white show of teeth below his mustache. He made a curt gesture of salute, as though acknowledging that as the proper compliment.

The four of them stood in awkward silence, watching the men drifting away before them in the darkness. Then Carl turned and went inside, and Pike followed him. When the others had gone, Blaisedell said to Gannon, “Your brother was with them, I heard.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Too bad,” Blaisedell said. “Young fellow like that.” Blaisedell stood with him a moment longer, as though waiting for him to speak, but he could think of nothing to say and after a time the marshal said, “Well, I’ll be going.” With long strides he faded off into the darkness.

Gannon slowly turned back inside the jail. His clothes were soaked with sweat. Billy stood alone at the cell door. “Well,” Carl was saying to Pike, leaning against a corner of the table with his arms folded over his chest, “good lesson on how to run off a mob. Haul them out and knock their heads loose one at a time.”

“More lesson than that,” Pike said ruefully. “For it takes a man to do it.” He nodded toward the door.

Gannon looked down at the blanket-wrapped body that was Phlater, whom Billy had shot. So the cards he had missed had not mattered. The lynch mob was gone. He knew that Billy had not been at the stage, but with Phlater dead and Billy’s stubborn pride, that would not matter either. So the rest of the cards would continue to play themselves out.

Pony said savagely, “Shut up about that gold-hanneled son of a bitch and leave us get some sleep in here.”

Carl’s face stiffened. Pike said hoarsely, “Gold-handled son of a bitch that just saved your rotten lives for you!”

“Sleep good on that,” Carl said.

Billy’s voice was bitter as gall. “Bring his boots and we’ll kiss them for him. Like he wants. Like you all do. Bring us his damned boots.”

Pike took a step toward the cell door and Billy retreated. Now none of them were visible in the deep shadow of the cell, but it was as though Gannon could see through it, and beyond it, and beyond Bright’s City even, see all the massive irrevocable shadows with only the details not clear.

He went out to the Boston Café, after a while, for a pot of coffee to take back to the jail, and sat the night, sleepless himself, watching Carl and Pike fighting sleep. In the morning Buck Slavin furnished a special coach, and Carl, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Tim French took the prisoners into Bright’s City for trial.