“Him and Frenchy’s up in old man Heck’s room, I think,” MacGinty said.
“You want him, Doc?” Fitzsimmons said. “I’ll go tell him.” He went out, his bandaged hands held protectively before him.
“Hey, Doc, how many got posted?” a man called.
“Four,” he said. Someone laughed; there was a swell of excited speculation. He said. “Ben, could I see you for a minute?”
He stepped back out into the dark hall. When Tittle came out, he told him to go find Blaisedell in half an hour. Then he went back down to Jessie’s room; she glanced up at him and apprehensively smiled when he entered, and he went over and put out a hand to touch her shoulder. But he did not quite touch it, and, as he stared down at the curve of her cheek and the warm brown glow of the lamplight in her hair, his throat swelled with pain, for her. He turned away and his eye caught the dark mezzotint of Bonnie Prince Charlie, kilted, beribboned, gripping his sword in noble and silly bravado.
He heard heavy footsteps descending the stairs. “Come in, Frank,” he said, as Brunk appeared in the doorway.
Brunk came inside. “Miss Jessie,” he said. “Doc. What was it, Doc?”
“The Citizens’ Committee has voted to have you posted out as a troublemaker,” he said, and saw Brunk’s eyes narrow, his scar of a mouth tighten whitely.
“Did they now?” Brunk said, in a hoarse voice. All at once he grinned. “Is the marshal going to kill me, Miss Jessie?”
“Don’t be silly, Frank.”
Brunk held out his hands and looked down at them. Then, with a ponderous, triumphant lift of his head Brunk looked up at the doctor and said, “Why, I expect he is going to have to, Doc. Do you know? The boys wouldn’t move for Tom Cassady, but maybe they will if—”
“Don’t be a fool!” he said.
“Now, Frank, you are to listen to me,” Jessie said, in a crisp, sure voice, and she rose and approached Brunk. “I am going to ask him not to do this thing, whatever the Citizens’ Committee has decided. But if I—”
“Ah!” Brunk broke in. “The miners’ angel!”
“You will be civil, Brunk!”
A flush darkened Brunk’s face. He took hold of his forelock and pulled his head down, as though in obeisance. “Bless you, Miss Jessie,” he said. “I am beholden to you again.”
“I have promised to try,” Jessie went on. “But as I was saying when you interrupted me — if I cannot, then you must promise to leave.”
“Run for it?” Brunk said. “Run?”
“Do you have to go out of your way to be offensive, Brunk?”
“Doc, I am trying to go out of my way to be a man! But she won’t let me, will she? She will nurse me off this. She is too heavy an angel! She wouldn’t let Tom Cassady die when he was begging to. She won’t let me—” He stopped, and his mouth drew sharply down at the corners. “If I had courage enough,” he said. “But maybe I don’t.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, Frank.”
“I don’t know what I am talking about either. Because they would not move even for me, and I would be a fool. But what would you do, Doc?”
“I think I would do as she asks,” he said, and could not meet Brunk’s eyes.
“Why, I have to, don’t I?” Brunk said. “She has kept me since I was fired at the Medusa. Put up with me, and fed me. But, Miss Jessie — you said Jim Lathrop didn’t have courage enough. Why won’t you let me have it? Maybe I have got enough.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about,” Jessie said. “But if you will not do this for your own sake — and I understand that men must have their pride, Frank — then you must do it for mine. I hope it will not be necessary.”
Brunk stared at her. “Why, I would be a fool, wouldn’t I?” he said in his heavy, infinitely bitter voice. “And ungrateful too, since it is for your sake, Miss Jessie. But don’t you see, Doc?”
The doctor could say nothing, and Jessie put a sympathetic hand on Brunk’s arm. But Brunk drew away from her touch and backed out the door. His heavy tread slowly remounted the stairs.
“I don’t understand,” Jessie said, in a shaky voice.
“Don’t you?” he said. “Brunk was just wishing he might be a hero, and knows he cannot be. It is difficult for a man to bring himself to be a martyr when he is afraid he might look a fool instead. Do you think you can persuade Blaisedell?”
She did not answer. She was staring at him strangely, tugging at the little locket that hung around her throat.
“It is very important that you do,” he went on. “Because of what the miners would think of you if Blaisedell went through with this. Whether Brunk fled, or not. And because of what everyone would think of Blaisedell.”
He felt a blackguard; he turned so as to confront himself in her glass, and saw there a short, gray man with bowed shoulders in a shabby black suit, undistinguished looking, not handsome, not heroic in any way, almost old. The eyes that gazed back at him from the glass looked like those of a man with a dangerous fever.
“There is Clay,” Jessie whispered, as footsteps came along the boardwalk outside her window.
“I wish you luck with him, Jessie,” he said. He went out into the entryway just as Blaisedell entered; a little light from Jessie’s open door gleamed in the marshal’s hair as he took off his hat.
“Evening, Doc,” he said gravely.
“Pardon me,” the doctor said, and Blaisedell stepped aside so that he could pass.
Outside he stood on the porch for a moment, breathing deeply of the fresh, cool air, and gazing up at the stars bright and cold over Warlock. Behind him he heard Blaisedell say, “Did you want to see me, Jessie?” Quickly the doctor descended the steps to get out of earshot. He went up the boardwalk, across Main Street, and on up toward Peach Street and the Row.
19. A WARNING
IN THE jail Carl Schroeder, Peter Bacon, Chick Hasty, and Pike Skinner were talking about the posting, while at the cell door Al Bates, from up valley, watched them with his whiskered chin resting on one of the crossbars.
“You suppose the news got down to Pablo yet?” Hasty asked.
“Dechine was in,” Bacon said, from his chair at the rear. “And went back down valley yesterday. I expect he’d take it as neighborly to stop in and tell McQuown the news on his way home.”
“They won’t come,” Schroeder said, hunched over the table, scowling, gouging the point of a pencil into the table top.
Hasty said, “I guess Johnny’s plenty worried Billy’ll show.”
“Worried of getting in bad with McQuown, mostly,” Skinner said. “He—”
“You!” Schroeder said. “I am sick of hearing you picking at Johnny Gannon!” He flung the pencil down. “He come in here and put on that star, you didn’t! You quit fretting at him, Mister Citizens’ Committee Skinner!”
Peering up at Skinner from under his hat brim, Hasty said, “Is MacDonald going to see the Committee fires Blaisedell for saying them no on that jack, Pike?”
“He did right,” Skinner said, with a sour face. “Nobody’s thought of firing him. MacDonald fired that son of a bitch Brunk how long ago, but he still hangs around trying to drum up a fuss. It’s the Committee’s business to post out troublemakers, but Blaisedell can’t go against a dumb jack that doesn’t know one end of a Colt from the other.”
“Old Owen was saying he heard some muckers talking that if the Committee fired Blaisedell over it, the miners would get together and hire him themself,” Schroeder said. “And put him to post MacDonald first thing.”
The others laughed.