“I’ll probably clean them out myself,” Morgan said, “if they get noisy.” Schroeder stared, and Clay grinned at him. Morgan watched them leave, taking a cigar from his breast pocket and clamping his teeth down on it. Schroeder kept close as a shadow to Clay’s heels.
As soon as they had gone, Murch signaled to Basine to replace him as lookout. Murch clambered ponderously down and came over toward Morgan. He looked like a carp, with his wall eye and his great slit of a mouth.
“Something going to come off in here?” Murch said, in his gravelly voice.
“Yes.”
“How you want to handle it?”
“Tell Basine I want him behind the bar. You on the stand. They’ll play one behind him. It’ll probably be Cade. You hold on whoever it is with the shotgun and let go if he moves.”
“Holy Jumping H. Jupiter!” Murch muttered. “I can’t let that thing off, it’s crowded in here! It’ll mash half the place full. I’ll—”
“You’ll let it off if one of them makes a move at Clay’s back,” he said, through his teeth. He stared into Murch’s straight-on eye. “I don’t care who you mash.”
Murch said, “All right,” unemotionally. The piano began to play again. Murch poured whisky into the glass Clay had left; his throat worked as he drank.
“What’s chewing the professor?” he asked.
“Taliaferro wants him to play that new piano at the French Palace. That Wax’s been scaring him.”
“That’s poor of Wax,” Murch said.
“He just works for Taliaferro, and Taliaferro’s got a new piano and nobody to run it.”
Murch nodded stolidly. “What’ll we do about it, Tom?”
“I’ll see,” Morgan said. “Get back up on that stand. I meant what I said about backshooters, Al.”
Murch nodded again. Sweat showed on his forehead in a delicate fringe beneath his receding hair. He went back over to the faro layout.
Morgan poured himself another quarter-inch of whisky, leaned back, and waited.
It was dark outside when McQuown came in, wearing a pale buckskin shirt, smiling pleasantly, his face slanted down and his red beard against his chest, the lamplight catching glints off the big silver conchos on his belt. With him were Billy Gannon and Calhoun. Billy looked like his brother, Morgan thought, except that he was six or eight years younger and had a sparse young mustache sprouting on his lip, and his nose was straight, his eyes narrower and warier. His walk was a copy of Curley Burne’s slow-gaited, cocky stride.
Morgan nodded to McQuown as the three of them went on down the bar. Billy yelled with surprise and jumped forward to embrace his brother, while McQuown glanced casually around the room. Now there was a steadier exodus. When McQuown’s eyes met his for a moment, Morgan grinned back. “All right, McQuown,” he whispered, hardly aloud. “Clay Blaisedell won’t play your game, but I can, and better than you.”
5. GANNON SEES A SHOWDOWN
STANDING beside his brother at the bar of the Glass Slipper, John Gannon looked from one to another around him — at Pony Benner’s mean, twisted little face; at Luke Friendly, who could, at least, be dismissed as a blowhard and braggart; at the sour, cruel, dark features of Jack Cade, whom he had always feared; at Calhoun, with whom he had learned to be merely careful, as with a rattlesnake out of striking distance; at Curley Burne, who, with Wash Haggin, had been his friend, whose droll, easy manner of speech he had once tried to copy, and whose easy gait he had seen that Billy was copying now. He looked at Abe McQuown’s keen, cold, red-bearded face. Once, when he had been Billy’s age, he had admired Abe more than he ever had any other man.
Now he was back among them, and he tried to smile at Billy, his brother. Billy looked thinner and taller in his double-breasted flannel shirt and his narrow-legged jeans pants. It was like seeing a photograph of himself taken five years ago — same height, same weight, the same quick, not quite sure movements that he recognized as having been his own, but surer than his own had been; the same narrow, intent, deep-eyed face, with the only differences the mustache Billy was trying to grow, and Billy’s nose straight still, whereas his own slanted off to one side, broken-bridged and ugly. Billy was watching Abe McQuown.
“Blaisedell’ll be about halfway to Bright’s by now,” Pony said, in his shrill voice, and Luke Friendly laughed and glanced toward the batwing doors.
“Don’t you wish it, Shorty,” Wash Haggin said, and winked at Gannon. He had a big mustache, whereas his twin was — or had been — cleanshaven, silent, and reserved. Chet was home, Wash had said, disgustedly, when Gannon had asked.
“Blaisedell’ll be around,” Wash went on, to Pony. “This one is a different breed of horse.”
Abe smiled and bent his head forward as he lit a cheroot. In the brightness of the match flame, his skin looked clear and fine as oiled parchment. Long, harshly cut wrinkles ran down his cheeks into his beard. He shook the match out, blew smoke, glanced up to meet Gannon’s gaze, and smiled again.
“It is surely nice to see you back, Bud,” he said. His eyes were bright as wet green stones. Casually he turned his buckskin back, and Cade leaned forward to whisper to him. Abe nodded in reply.
Gannon saw the big, flat-faced lookout staring down at them. “What’s going on?” he said to Billy.
“New marshal,” Billy said. “Clay Blaisedell, that’s a gunman from Fort James. Citizens’ Committee hired him to run us out of town. We’ll see who’s going to run tonight.”
“Well, I expect he won’t run,” Wash said cheerfully. “He’s the one that shot Big Ben Nicholson,” he told Gannon. “And got a pair of gold-handled Colts from some Wild West writer for it.”
Gannon nodded, watching Billy’s stony young profile. “Pretty bad odds against him, isn’t it?” he said, more drily than he intended.
Billy’s face turned sullen. “Why, we’ll make a play in here,” he said.
“Not so bad odds in here,” Wash explained. He jerked a thumb and whispered, “Morgan over there is kin to him, I heard; anyway they are partners here. And a charge of buckshot up there,” he went on, indicating the lookout. “Only I hope to God it is birdshot. And count up Morgan’s dealers and barkeeps and who knows what the hell else besides. Morgan is supposed to’ve cut plenty score himself. It is a fair enough shake.”
Cade finished his conversation with Abe and turned to the bar with his back to the others. Calhoun was watching the door, scraping a thumbnail along his boneless nose.
“Billy,” Abe said. “Maybe you and me and Curley and Wash could have a hand of cards over there.”
Billy nodded tautly, and, with Wash and Curley, moved off after Abe. As they sat down in the rear, beyond the piano, a group of miners hurriedly vacated a nearby table. The piano player banged his hands down in a sour chord, and got up too, bumping, in his departure, against Calhoun and Friendly as they moved down to the end of the bar, and apologizing profusely. Pony Benner swaggered over toward the lookout’s stand. Men were crowding out the door.
Gannon felt leaden as he stood alone against the bar, watching, in the mirror, McQuown’s disposition of his men. At the table Billy sat facing the bar, with Abe and Wash on either side of him, Curley across from him, back to the room. So it would be Billy. He remembered that his father, dying, had charged him with watching out for Billy until Billy was grown. But Billy had grown too fast for him, and already Deputy Jim Brown was dead by Billy’s six-shooter. His responsibility had been long ago dissolved in incapacity, and now the dread he felt as he stared into the mirror was more disgust and hopelessness than fear. He had fled this hard and aimless callousness where a human life was only a part of a game, and never, so far as he had seen, a fair game. He had thought he could escape it by fleeing it. But he could not escape having been one of McQuown’s, nor the nightmare-crowded memory of what they had done, himself as much as any of them, one day six months ago, in Rattlesnake Canyon just over the border; and he could not escape himself.