Clay’s chin jerked up as the batwing doors swung in, and the number two deputy came in. There was a deeper hush than before, and a longer one, as Gannon came over toward them. Gannon’s face was gray, his bent nose too big for his thin face; his hair was rumpled when he took off his hat. “Have a seat, Deputy,” Clay said gently.
Gannon sat down and put his hat on the floor beside him, folded his hands on the table before him.
“Whisky?” Morgan asked.
“Yes,” Gannon said, without looking at him. “Thanks.”
Morgan beckoned for a glass. Gannon did not speak until it had been brought, and Clay was silent too. The faces still stared in the mirrors, but the noise began again.
Gannon said suddenly, “I guess I had better tell you, Marshal. Before it comes out another way. Billy wasn’t with them when they stopped the stage. I don’t know whether Luke was or not, but Billy wasn’t.”
Carefully Morgan did not look at Clay; he felt the sickening rapid pump of his heart again.
“What good does this do, Deputy?” Clay said harshly.
Gannon shook his head, as though that were not the point. “He wasn’t there,” he said. “He held with them because he was caught with them and I guess it was all — he thought he could do. And came in because of being posted out, I guess, Marshal.”
“There was three of them at the stage at least,” Clay said.
“Not him,” Gannon said stubbornly. He cleared his throat. “Marshal, I know. Billy said so, and—”
“You could have told me,” Clay said.
“What good would that have done?” Gannon said. He sounded almost angry now, and he brushed his fingers back nervously through his hair. “What could you have done different than you did?” he said. “He would have come in against you whatever. He was that kind.”
“What difference does it make?” Morgan said, staring at the deputy. “He shot that posseman, didn’t he?”
Gannon looked back at him with his deep-set, hot eyes. “That is nothing to do with it.” He said to Clay, “Marshal, I am just saying there is probably others than me that know. So I thought you better had.”
Clay sat with his head bent down and his mouth drawn tight. He nodded his head once, as though in thanks, and in dismissal. Gannon pushed his chair back and rose. He hesitated a moment, and then, since Clay did not speak again, plucked up his hat and went outside.
Morgan leaned forward toward Clay and said, “What the hell difference does it make? He killed that posseman and was out to kill you. Everybody knows that!”
Clay nodded a little, but when he raised his head the flesh of his face looked eroded, and his eyes were shuttered. He said in a quiet voice, “One time wrong and then every time wrong after it.”
To himself Morgan cursed Clay and his rules, his scruples and his conscience. He cursed the Cletus brothers, the Gannon brothers, and himself. He said through his teeth, “You did everything but beg him to get the hell out of town!”
Clay did not reply; Morgan refilled Clay’s glass, and filled his own. “How?” he said.
“I guess I had better do it,” Clay said, and got to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Bright’s City,” Clay said. He put on his hat and patted the crown.
“What for?”
“Stand trial,” Clay said, and went outside. The batwing doors swung through their arcs and came to rest behind him.
Morgan rinsed whisky through his mouth, and finally swallowed it. He smoothed his hands back over his hair, and halted them midway to press his head hard between them. “Damn you, Clay!” he whispered. Yet he should have foreseen, as soon as Gannon had spoken his piece, that Clay would feel he had to do this. One time wrong and every time wrong after it; Bob Cletus to Pat Cletus, and Pat Cletus to Billy Gannon; and not a one of them worth a minute’s bother.
He rose and started down along the bar. Men were standing there two-deep now, and thick around Basine’s layout. He caught Murch’s eye and nodded to the other layout. Men greeted him cordially as he passed; he ignored them, listening to the names dropping out of the loud whine of talk — Billy Gannon, Pony, Calhoun, Curley Burne, Cade, McQuown, Johnny Gannon, Schroeder, and his own name and Clay’s. Eyes watched him in the mirror and the talk died a little. He heard his name again, and halted.
A short, heavy-set miner with an arm in a dirty muslin sling was talking to McKittrick and another up-valley cowboy. “Why, this fellow I knew was up there at the trial and he said there wasn’t anything but smoke blown against those poor boys there. They wasn’t within fifty miles of that stage! So I say it is clear enough who stopped that stage if they didn’t, and they didn’t. Oh, there is plenty knows how come the marshal and Morgan had to shoot those poor boys down dead crack-out-of-the-box like they did, and you can bet they are sick Friendly got away. For what’s dead is dead and don’t talk back, and what’s dead’s forgotten about too. If the marshal and Morgan didn’t throw down on that stage, I’ll eat—”
His voice faltered as one of the cowboys nudged him, and he broke off. Slowly he raised his eyes to meet Morgan’s in the mirror. The cowboys edged away.
“Eat what?” Morgan said.
The miner turned toward him. His mouth was pursed as though he had been sucking on a lemon. With his left hand he shifted the sling around before him. McKittrick moved farther away from him, with disclaiming gestures.
“Eat what?” Morgan said again. “I want to know what you are thinking of eating.”
“Sneak around listening you will hear a lot of things,” the miner said. He glanced around to see if he was getting any support. Then he said, “I just don’t aim on ruckusing with anybody, Mr. Morgan, with this smash elbow I got.”
“I want you to get started eating whatever it was you were fixing to eat,” Morgan said. He stared into the miner’s frightened eyes until the miner shifted the slinged arm again, with a fraud of a grimace of pain as he did it. “Because,” Morgan said, “you are a dirty-mouth, stinking, lying, buggering, pissant, yellow-belly, mule-diddling, coyote-bred son of a nigger whore. Which is to say a mucker.”
The miner’s Adam’s apple bounced once. He wiped his free hand across his mouth. “Why, I guess you wouldn’t talk like that and still be standing if I had the use of my right arm here,” he said. “I said what I said, Mr. Morgan.”
“You said it in the wrong place.”
The miner said stubbornly, “I guess a man can still talk—”
“Eat this, then,” Morgan said, and hit the miner in the mouth. He kicked him in the crotch and the miner screamed and doubled up, clutching himself, and fell. Morgan kicked him in the face as he fell.
The miner lay face down by the rail at the base of the bar, his slinged arm beneath his body, one leg stretching and pulling up rhythmically. He groaned in a hoarse monotone. Murch came stumping up with the toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
“Get him out of here.”
Murch picked the miner up by his belt and carried him like a suitcase toward the louvre doors.
Morgan swung around and went over to the second faro layout, and seated himself in the dealer’s chair. He held his hands out over the box. His right knuckle was torn whitely and a trickle of blood showed, but his hands were as steady and motionless as though they were a part of the painted layout beneath them.