“And do just the opposite,” he said, and smiled.
“Not if we tell them what they are going to do is what they want to do.”
“I think there are more than old Heck who want to burn the Medusa still. Or more than ever.”
Fitzsimmons shook his head condescendingly. “They are too scared, Doc. Just so nobody says they are scared. We had just better be damned sure nobody speaks up to say we had better settle quick before the cavalry gets back. That’s all we have to watch out for.”
“And make sure we show Willingham we think he is in rather a worse position than we are.”
“Expect it would be a good idea to get up a torchlight parade tonight?”
“I think it would be very effective, and a good thing for you to turn your energies to. If you are sure you could control it.”
“I could control it, all right,” Fitzsimmons said stiffly, and glanced at him sideways again.
The little procession passed the wood yard and turned into the vacant property, which had been used for miners’ meetings since Lathrop’s time. There were a number of miners there already.
The doctor stopped and looked around to meet the eyes that were all fixed upon him. It was as though they knew instinctively that he had been chosen, and deferred without question to the choice. “Doc,” Patch said, in grave greeting, and then many of the others took it up. Their tone was different from that of their usual greetings — a pledge of loyalty that had a suspended skepticism in it. They greeted Fitzsimmons by name too, but less deferentially.
“Frenchy,” the doctor said, as the rest of the men from Daley’s house came up to group around him, “will you see that those planks are set up on the barrels so the speakers will have a place to stand?” Fitzsimmons grinned crookedly as Frenchy went to do it, and the doctor realized why he had spoken so loudly, and to Martin in particular.
“Doc!” Stacey, with his bandaged head, was hurrying toward him. Stacey raised a hand and broke into a trot. “Doc,” he panted, as he came up. “You had better come. Miss Jessie needs you at the General Peach.”
He felt Fitzsimmons’ eyes. “I can’t come now,” he said curtly. But all at once what had happened at the General Peach, which he had tried to put from his mind as irrelevant, crushed down upon him, and he felt pity for Jessie like a dagger stroke. But not now, he almost groaned; not now. He could not go now.
“It was the marshal sent me,” Stacey whispered. Beneath his muslin turban his freckled forehead was creased with worry. “He says she has got the nerves very bad, Doc.”
He nodded once. “Get my bag from the Assay Office, will you?” He turned to Fitzsimmons, whose eyebrows rose questioningly in his bland face. “Jimmy, I must go and see about Miss Jessie. You will have to do your best here until I get back.”
Fitzsimmons nodded, and then on second thought frowned as though it were a terrible burden and responsibility. “I will do my best, Doc,” Fitzsimmons said, massaging the torn knuckles with which he had made sure of his future. “You hurry,” he said.
“I will,” he replied grimly. He left the lot, ignoring those who called after him; he almost ran down Grant Street to the General Peach. Jessie’s door was closed, but he could hear her voice raised shrilly inside her room. Blaisedell opened the door for him.
He stared in shock at Blaisedell’s face. It was cross-hatched with great red welts, and his bruised eyes were swollen almost closed. “Thank God you have got here,” Blaisedell said, in a low voice. “You had better give her something. She is—”
“David!” Jessie cried, as he entered past Blaisedell. She stood in the center of the room facing him. Her white triangle of a face looked wasted, as though the fire that blazed in her eyes was consuming the flesh around them. Her face contorted into a wild grimace that he realized was meant to be a smile.
Blaisedell closed the door and came up beside him, moving as though he were sore in every fiber. He sounded exhausted. “She wants us to lead the miners up to burn the Medusa mine,” he said. “I have been trying to tell her it is — not the right time. I thought if you could give her something to quieten her,” he whispered.
“It is the time!” Jessie cried. “It is the time now! David, we will lead them, and we will—”
“Lead the miners, Jessie?” he broke in, and the words seemed a mockery of himself.
“Yes! We will ride up to the Medusa at the head of them, an army of them. How they will cheer and sing! There are barricades there, they say, but that cannot stop us! Oh, Clay!”
“Jessie, Blaisedell is right, I’m afraid. It is not the time.”
“It is the time! The cavalry has gone, and — and we have to do something!” She had a handkerchief in her hands, which she kept winding around one hand and then the other.
“We don’t have to do anything, Jessie,” Blaisedell said in a patient voice.
Her sunken, blazing eyes stared at Blaisedell, shifted to stare at the doctor; it was as though she were looking past them both to the Medusa mine, to glory or redemption — he did not know what. She pulled the handkerchief tight between her hands again. “David,” she said calmly. “You must help me make him understand.”
There was a knock. “That is Stacey with my bag,” he said to Blaisedell, who went to open the door. He took Jessie’s hands. The handkerchief was wet with perspiration, or with tears. He smiled reassuringly at her and said, “No, Jessie, I’m afraid it really is not the right time. Everything is very confused right now. But maybe tomorrow or the next day you and—”
“Now!” she cried, and her voice was suddenly deep with grief. “Oh, now, now!” She swung toward Blaisedell. “Oh, it must be now, before they forget him. Clay, it is for you!”
He took the bag from Blaisedell, and the bottle from it. There was a glass on the bureau and he filled it with water from the pitcher, and stained the water with laudanum. Behind him Jessie said despairingly, “Clay, it is for your sake!”
In the mirror the doctor saw the agony and revulsion written on Blaisedell’s cruelly bruised face. Jessie flew to him and pressed her face to his chest, her ringlets flying as she turned her head wildly from side to side, murmuring something to Blaisedell’s heart he neither could hear nor wished to hear. Blaisedell stared at him over her brown head as, awkwardly, he patted her back.
The doctor indicated the glass, and Blaisedell said, “Jessie, Doc has got something for you.”
Instantly she swung around. Her face darkened with suspicion. “What’s that?”
“It is some laudanum to let you rest.”
“Rest?” she cried. “Rest! We cannot rest a moment!”
“You had better take it, Jessie,” Blaisedell said, in the gentle voice.
The doctor raised the glass with the whisky-colored liquid in it to her, but she lifted a hand as though she would strike it to the floor. “Jessie!” he said sharply.
Her shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes. She began to sob convulsively. She rubbed her knuckles into her closed eyes and swayed, and Blaisedell put an arm around her. The doctor could see the sobs tearing at her frail body. They tore at him as well; with each one he was wrenched with pity for her, and with anger at Clay Blaisedell and the world that had broken her. His hand shook with the glass.
“Drink it, Jessie.”
Obediently she drank it down, and he went to turn the coverlet back on the bed. Blaisedell helped her to the bed and she lay down with her hands over her face, her fingers working in her tangled ringlets, her head moving ceaselessly from side to side. The doctor pulled the coverlet up over her as Blaisedell stepped back toward the door.