“Bud!” Wash cried, behind him.
He halted. The ticking seemed closer and louder. He turned. Wash was facing him again, crouching, his hand hovering. Wash cried shrilly, “Go for your gun, you murdering son of a bitch!”
“I won’t unless you make me, Wash.”
“Go for it, you murdering backshooting—”
“Kill him!” Dad McQuown screamed.
Wash’s hand dove down. Someone yelled; instantly there was a chorus of warning yells. They echoed in his ears as he twisted around in profile and his wounded hand slammed down on his own Colt; much too slow, he thought, and saw Wash’s gun barrel come up, and the smoke. Gannon stumbled a step forward as though someone had pushed him from behind, and his own Colt jarred in his hand. He was deafened then, but he saw Wash fall, hazed in gunsmoke. Wash fell on his back. He tried to roll over, his arm flopped helplessly across his body, and his six-shooter dropped to the planks. He shuddered once, and then lay still.
Gannon glanced at the doors of the Lucky Dollar; the faces there had disappeared. Then he had a glimpse of the long gleam of the rifle barrel leveled over the side of the wagon. He jumped back, just as a man vaulted into the wagon. It was Blaisedell, and old McQuown screamed as Blaisedell kicked out as though he were killing a snake — and kicked again and the rifle dropped over the edge of the wagon to the boardwalk.
He could see the old man’s fist beating against Blaisedell’s leg as Blaisedell stood in the wagon, facing the doors of the Lucky Dollar. No one appeared there for a moment, and Gannon started back to where Wash lay. But then Chet Haggin came out and knelt down beside his brother’s body, and Gannon turned away. The old man had stopped screaming.
He walked on down toward the corner. After a moment he remembered the Colt in his hand, and replaced it in its holster. There was the same silence as before, but it buzzed in his shocked ears. His hand felt hot and sticky, and, looking down, he saw blood leaking dark red from beneath the bandage. At the corner he turned and crossed Main Street, and mounted the boardwalk on the far side in the shadow. Peter didn’t look at him, standing stiffly with the rifle in his white-clenched hands. Tim’s eyes slid sideways toward him and Tim nodded once. He heard Mosbie whistle between his teeth. Blaisedell had returned to this side of the street, and leaned against a post, watching the wagon. Now Gannon could hear the old man’s pitiable cursing and sobbing, and he could see Chet still bent over Wash.
“I thank you,” he said, to Blaisedell’s back, and walked on. He looked neither right nor left now but kept his eyes fixed on the black and white sign over the jail doorway. Kate’s face appeared there briefly. He had made his turn through Warlock, as was his right, as was his duty; but his knees felt weak and the sign over the jail seemed very distant. He could feel the blood dripping from his fingers, and his wrist brushed the butt of his Colt as his arm swung.
“Hallelujah!” Pike Skinner whispered, as he came to the corner. He did not reply, and crossed Southend Street, feeling the stares of the men — not vigilantes — who were stationed there. Again he saw Kate appear in the jail doorway, but when he approached she disappeared back inside, and, when he entered, she stood with her back to him.
The judge sat hunch-shouldered at the table, his crutch leaning beside him, his bottle and hard-hat before him, his hands clasped between them. Buck’s face was framed in the bars.
“Got you in the hand, did he?” Buck said, in a matter-of-fact voice.
“I just broke it open again.”
The judge didn’t speak as he moved in past the table. He heard Kate gasp. “Your belt!” she cried. He reached back to feel a long gap in the leather and some cartridge loops gone. He sat down abruptly in the chair beside the cell door.
Kate stood facing him. He saw her stocking as she pulled up her skirt. She tore at the hem of her petticoat and then stooped to bite on the hem and pull loose a long strip. She took his hand and roughly bound the strip of smooth, soft cloth around it, and tore it again and tied the ends.
Then she stepped back away from him. “Well, now you are a killer,” she said, with her lips flattened whitely over her teeth.
“Who was it, Johnny?” Buck said.
“Wash.”
“What’re they going to do now?”
“I expect they’ll go out.”
“He’s got a brother, hasn’t he?” Kate said. The judge was regarding the whisky bottle, his face a mottled, grayish red, his hands still clasped before him.
Buck cleared his throat and said, “Well, you have made some friends this day, Gannon.”
“Friends!” Kate cried. “You mean men to think he is a wonder because he killed a man? Friends!” she said hoarsely. “A friend is someone who will say he did right and what he had to do, and hold to it. They will stew on this until they have figured he murdered this one like he murdered McQuown. I have seen it done too many times. Friends! They will—”
“Now, Kate,” Buck said.
“I didn’t murder Abe McQuown, Kate.”
“What difference does that make?” she cried at him. “Friends! A friend lasts like snow on a hot griddle and enemies like—”
“You are bitter for a young woman, miss,” the judge said.
Gannon hung his head suddenly, and bent down still farther. He felt faint and his stomach kept rising and swelling against his laboring heart, and he could taste bile in his throat. In his mind’s eye he saw not Wash Haggin’s wooden face, but the frantic dark face of the Mexican sweeping up the bank toward him still. “Bitter?” he heard Kate say, above the humming in his ears. “Why, yes, I am bitter! Because men have found some way to crucify every decent man, starting with Our Lord. No, it is not even bitter — it is just common sense. They will admire him for a wonder because he killed a man they wouldn’t’ve had the guts to go against. But they will hate him for it, because of that. So they will say he murdered him like he murdered McQuown. Or they will say it was nothing, with Blaisedell there to back him, and those others. They will say it for they are men. Don’t you know they will, Judge?”
“You are bitter,” the judge said, in the same dull voice. “And scared for him too. But I know men better than you, I think, Miss Dollar. They are not so bad as that.”
“Show me one that isn’t! Show me one. But don’t show them. Or they will kill him for it!”
“There are men that love their fellow men and suffer for their suffering,” the judge said. “But you wouldn’t see them for hatefulness, it looks like, miss.”
Gannon raised his head to look at Kate’s face, which was turned toward the judge — and it was hard and hateful, as he had said.
“I would show you Blaisedell for one,” the judge said.
“Blaisedell,” Kate whispered. “No, not Blaisedell!”
“Blaisedell. Hard as I have judged him, he is a good man. That knew better than you, miss, what had to be done just now. That let Johnny take his play and glory just now, for he needed them, with McQuown took from him. He is a good man. And I will show you Pike Skinner that thought Johnny threw this town down with Curley Burne, but backed him now all the same. And the rest of them out there. Good men, Miss Dollar! The milk of kindness is thick in them, and thicker all the time!”
“Thick as blood!”
“Thicker than blood. And will win in the end, miss — for all your sneering at a man that says it to you. So this old world remakes itself time and time again, each time in labor and in pain and the best men crucified for it. People like you will not see it, being bitter; as I have been myself, and so I know. So they can say a town like this one has its man for breakfast every morning—” He slammed his hand down on the table top, his voice rose. “But not killed to eat for breakfast any more! Not burnt on crosses to the glory of God any more! Not butchered up—”