Welcome To Hard Times Part 11

"Why you think you're bad off? You don't even know! You've made enough money from this town, you've made enough I'll tell you and if you don't have tidy little bundles cached away you're bigger fools than I take you for."

"Blue, please"-the Russian held out his arms and he had this begging smile on his face, I could see that gold tooth of his-"please, we are losing everything."

I had to sit down. I put my hands on my face and I felt my breath on my icy fingers. Those white- faced, black-derbied Eastern sons of h.e.l.l! How long had they known-maybe since the afternoon they waited for Alf, fanning themselves and keep- ing their mouths shut? Someone said they had made tests when they were up there, they had made markings on their charts-a year past! But they'd had their intentions, else why had the Territory Office sent Hayden Gillis? How long had we been waiting for something that was never to be? Even as the street was filling up the ore wagons were carting worthless rock westerly to the mills.193 Even as I scanned the flats each morning that letter to Brogan was lying on my desk. There is no fool like a fool in the West, why you can fool him so bad he won't even know his possibilities are dead, his hopes only ghosts.

I said: "Get out while you can. Load your wagons and travel, because sure as you're breath- ing it won't be long and all these people stuck here like pigs on a pitchfork-they're going to set up a holler."

"What's this!"

"A pair of dumb cowboys, that's all you are. Fretting about your property when it's your hides you should be thinking of-"

"What ye mean?"

"G.o.d help you what do you think I mean, you got eyes don't you? This town is a bust. Every man in it has been sold!"

Now what I wonder is why they didn't leave. I saw by the looks on their faces they knew I was telling them right. They had the chance to get out and I can't account that they stayed, that they ran out of my door and went back, each to his selling counter, putting on a face and coddling the custom- er right past the time it became too late to leave. Will we not believe our disasters? Or was there nowhere they could go? It was the same with Swede too, there was time to pack and move on before the moon rose but he didn't, not even in those last free moments after the man came.

Molly had opened her door to see the fuss, she stood there barefooted with her hair hanging down, she looked like Wrath. By the time Zar and Isaac had run out there was a dawn in her eyes. Color came into her cheeks and she broke out in194 a smile and she said to the boy, who was standing by her: "Lord, did you ever hope to see such a sight? Mayor, is that you I hear telling people to get on their horse?"

She began to giggle, she was really joyful, it might have been some farm girl laughing at her suitor. "Jimmy I swear, listen to Mayor Blue here, all these people he's been a-wis.h.i.+n' and a-wantin', well here they are and look at him, he's sick, the s.h.i.+t is scared out of him-"

When Alf came along in the afternoon he had from a distance the sight of a town filled with people and he didn't need to be told what was going on. He reined his team a good way out, near the graves, and turned them around the other way before he and his helper started to toss off the freight. Even so they weren't fast enough, miners were running out there, lugging their gear, there was.a rush for the stage. I ran out too to say something to Alf but he was in no mood for talk. He grabbed the money pouch I gave him without even counting and climbed up on the box and flung out his whip and off the coach went, groaning, men were all over it like ants. I watched it going and then one man who hadn't gotten a good hold fell off and he ran after for a bit, ending up standing out there waving his fist as the dust covered him.

Here was all this freight, boxes and barrels, standing in the open like wreckage. In my hands was the order list for Alf, and I looked back at the street and tore the paper into pieces. Swede came out, half running, pulling a handcart behind him, and began to load it up. He grunted and sweat fan down from his yellow hair and he picked up those barrels in a hug, those crates, even scooping195 up crackers where they had spilled out of a box broken open in its fall.

"d.a.m.nit," I said to him, "it's not some lady's rug you have to leave clean!"

He began pulling the cart in, it was Isaac's goods more than his own, he leaned forward on the bar like some a.s.s, some dumb ox. I couldn't help being furious at him, I wanted to hit him. *

I walked beside Swede, my eyes on the town. It had no earthly reason for being there, it made no sense to exist. People naturally come together but is that enough? Just as naturally we think of ourselves alone. "Listen to me Swede: Gather up your belongings, take the locks off your spokes and you and your woman get out of here. With those bulls you got you'll need a good start. Do you un- derstand what I'm saying?"

"Aaah, ya-"

"Find yourself some' other Swedes . . ."

I had the same advice for Bert Albany. When I got back to the street I suddenly thought of Bert and I sought him out. He was in the crib where they lived, comforting his wife, but n.o.body was comforting him. At first he didn't want to leave- "Where to?" he said, he felt a loyalty to Zar, but more he was afraid any trip would put his China- girl in labor. I said, "Bert don't argue with an old man. Wrap up what you can carry and come with me. No child has ever been born in this town, and that's the saddest thing I will ever know, but it's true and it always will be."

Roebuck, the smithy, had a wagon, I found him ready to leave and I gave him all the greenbacks in my pocket to take on the couple. But when I put Bert and his wife up behind him I said only: "This196 man has consented to let you ride." And I walked with the wagon through the milling people, stop- ping at the edge of the flats and watching it go on. "We was doing alright, Mr. Blue," the boy called back, "what happened to us? Where do we go now?" And I saw that little girl turn back to look, a puffy, tear-stained face taking in with her eyes what her mind didn't understand.

Soon there was a string of travelers spread out on the flats. And then, not ten feet in front of me, Angus Mcellhenny was standing, pulling tight the ropes on his mule's load; and though I had known what to tell Zar and Isaac and Swede and Bert my brain was muddled now, and I couldn't believe what was happening any more than they could. I went over to Angus but no words would leave my mouth, I didn't even know what I wanted from him. His pipe was tight in bis teeth, he wouldn't look at me.

"You don't tarry, Angus."

"I'm no fool. Ye'll be traveling yerself hae you any sense."

"Angus," I grabbed his arm, "can there still be gold up there?"

He sighed: "That mountain is picked so hollow, why it's holey as a honeycomb, there's nothin' holdin' it up save air. Listen to me Blue, there's maybe a score of men still up at the site who can't bear to be sold out. They'll rot up there tryin' to take it out on the rock."

"It's a property isn't it? The Company will sell it if they can."

"Aye, there's enough fer salt. They will make a Chinaman of some poor soul who will buy the397 stock and come out and dig. And when he sees what he's got he'll blow out his brains."

Another miner standing near Angus gave a laugh.

I tried to say something but the words choked in my throat. I looked ahead at the endless reaches, lit red in the late afternoon, and I felt the blood drying up in me.

"Blue," Angus Mcellhenny said softly, and he glanced a moment at me, "dinna spook me wi" yer troubles. Goodbye to ye. I know yer feelings fer yer wee town but I canna bear to think on it."

Well that was the moment I asked myself what I was going to do. Everything was come to nothing. You try to dispose of your life to some purpose even though it appears to have none. My savings were gone; if I could get Molly and the boy on the buckboard how far could they go? Like Angus marching away out there among the others was the shambles of the town blowing off in every di- rection. All afternoon I watched to see who was leaving, feeling the pain of slow torture. But I have always been one for the protraction of misery and perhaps I counted each man who left as one less twist to the final pain. What I mean to say is I never made up my mind to leave, my will was exhausted. When the dusk came on there was a stillness over the town although the numbers were still thick. Men stood around, hardly anyone was moving. Anger, like heat, lay on the dust of the air. Jimmy came running by me, his eyes bulging, his mouth open as if he were about to scream. I looked where he'd come from, and I walked closer to see what I was seeing. From inside Zar's saloon198 came the sound of one man's haw haw laugh. Tied up at the railing was a bony used-up nag that I saw was once Hausenfield the German's handsome bay.

Looking over the doors I could see only his shoulders and his hat. But then he raised his head and there was his dark reflection in Zar's fancy mirror behind the bar. Two Bad Men, the Man multiplied. I remember feeling: He never left the town, it was waiting only for the proper light to see him where he's been all the time.

"Hey, who's the boss here," he called out.

Someone pointed to Zar who was standing at the end of the counter.

"Say, friend, come have a drink, it's good pizen ye made, I'll swar-"

Zar didn't move, and in the silence of that packed saloon the man leaned down the bar and shoved a full gla.s.s along. It went the whole dis- tance, people stepping back not to block the way; and at the end of the counter it tipped gently on its side, a-making a pool of whiskey that spread and began to drip to the floor.

With a frown Zar lifted the bottom of his ap.r.o.n and began to dab at the liquid. The Man thought that was funny and laughed, and everyone looking on in that steaming glowing room began to laugh with him. Then Turner stood up to his full height so I could see now that blaze on the side of his face, the peculiar stare of his eye. He had caught sight of Mae and Mrs. Clement, standing shy be- hind the Russian.

"Hey honey," he said softly but there was no other sound now. "Hey honey," he said crooking his finger. In that moment I could feel my heart199 tipping, spilling out its shame, its nausea. I had to run from the Trick, I couldn't tolerate it, what other name is there for the mockery that puts us back in our own steps? Here the earth turns and we turn with it, around it spins and we go mad with it.

Inside Jenks's stable I found the mule and led him quickly. to the cabin, but not by the street but behind the houses. I hitched him to the major's rig and then I went around to the front and stepped inside the door.

There was no light and I couldn't see. I heard a rustle from the dugout and when I lit the lamp and held it up I saw them both cowering back in- side there. Molly had the boy in front of her, he was gripping the shotgun; and over his shoulder she was pointing that knife at me.

"The mule's. .h.i.tched," I said, "yu want to quick take some things and ride out."

"I'll kill you Mayor," she whispered. She stared at me like I was some animal ready to spring, poised with her legs wide and her hand high hold- ing that stiletto. She looked as if it was I who had summoned him up.

"Don't come any closer-"

"Molly in the name of G.o.d listen to what I'm telling you!"

In the shadows her eyes had the light of fire.

"Don't you care!" I shouted. "You want it to happen again? You think I can atone more? Take him away from here, you're mother to him, a bobcat'll curry its young, won't you do that, won't you take him the h.e.l.l out of here!"

The boy stood between us and now he raised the gun a little. "Look at this," I said, "it should200 make you proud the way you've hexed this boy. Well I'm finished, I don't want him, he's nothing to me, go on the hoth of you, get out. The rig's yours, the mule's yours, everything-but quit my sight, you've been only misery to me. I rue the day I saw you Molly, I swear I curse the moment I laid eyes on you. Had I known what you was why I would have stood up to be shot, I would have held out my arms to the Bad Man. Shoot true, brother, or Molly Riordan is waiting who will do it much slower-"

And all the while I raged I could see I had no name in her gaze, this was what she wanted, for the Bad Man to returnl She'd been waiting for him, a proper faithful wife. Nothing mattered to her, not me, not Jimmy, just herself and her Man from Bodie. I was ready to kill her.

And the boy standing there like he thought he was her son, it filled me with disgust. "What do you think you're guarding there sonny, something worth the trouble? You think she cares a d.a.m.n for you? Why she thinks no more of you than she does of me, right now she wouldn't know if you put that, muzzle in your eye and squeezed the trigger. Tell him Molly, he don't believe me. Why you're a simp to stand there, you ain't got half the sense of your Daddy, you did and you'd be riding away right now!" I said, "Go on Jimmy, get out of here while you can, you don't need her, you're not the first she's fooled, it's no shame. Go on, boy. Go on-"

But he only raised the barrel a little. Well I'm thankful for that, there was not a flicker of belief in his eyes. What he was to do was not my reckon- ing, it burst from him with the force of shot, he201 was a long time in the squeeze. How I failed is how Molly did not fail, and in the miserable waste of our three lives I want to declare only for my own guilt.

Now in all this and what followed only once did it strike me to overcome both of them, hustle them on the wagon and take them away myself. It was at this moment, with no thought as how it could be done. I lunged at Molly over the boy's out- stretched arms almost at the same instant she heard the coach coming down the street. She crouched and came up past me, swiping at my ribs with the stiletto, putting a rent in my side-and she was out of there while I was stumbling over the boy. , That was as close as I came. Afterwards I hadn't the time.

"Jenks," screamed Jessie, "in a second I'm driv- ing this thing myself, Jenks-"

"Now," Molly was cooing, "here you tell me Mr.. Jenks will run and just one man he has to take care of?" Her voice was as soft and natural as a sane woman's. "Why Sheriff, I know you can shoot the b.a.l.l.s off a man quick as a blink. You're not runnin" Sheriff, no sir, it makes no sense. Look here, even this s.h.i.+t yellow spine of a Mayor ain't running."

"That's his business, please ma'am, the way I see hit I can't shoot all those people down in much health."

"Just him," Molly gripped his s.h.i.+rt again, "just him, just that Bad Man from Bodie, you know what he did to me, you have any idea?"

"Well-"202 "Jenks I promise good things, I swear, I can do more than those two on the box put together. Do you believe that?"

That brought Miss Adah out of her daze. Every- thing Molly had been saying suddenly made her stand up and point her finger: "Why I always knew," she said with a voice of surprise, "yes I did, even when I pa.s.sed on my wedding dress to you, that you was no lady."

Down the street someone near the door of Zar's Palace turned and saw the woman's figure atop the coach. He said something and then a few men had separated from the crowd and were running to- ward us, shouting. The Bad Man was putting a match to everyone.

"Oh Lord, Jenks-" Jessie screamed, and she took up the reins. The Sheriff started to climb to the box but Molly grabbed his arm. At the same time I found myself slapping the horses' rumps just as Jimmy did, although I think we had different reasons. And off lurched the coach, Miss Adah fall- Ing back on the roof.

The wheels spun up a cloud of blue dust under the moon. A minute after they were gone, three or four men hooted by on their horses, giving the chase, choking us standing there, flattening us against the cabin wall. I never saw either of those women again and I don't know what happened to them.

"Oh lookit thet!" said Jenks. "G.o.damighty," his voice broke, "lookit what hew done to me!"

Molly giggled: "Sheriff honey, you'll listen to me now, won't you?"

I'm trying to put down what happened but the closer I've come in time the less clear I am in my203 mind. I'm losing my blood to this rag, but more, I have the cold feeling everything I've written doesn't tell how it was, no matter how careful I've been to get it all down it still escapes me: like what happened is far below my understanding be- yond my sight. In my limits, taking a day for a day, a night for a night, have I showed the sand s.h.i.+fting under our feet, the terrible arrangement of our lives?

I can't remember her foul words, poor Molly, what she said to Jenks, but only that it kept Jimmy rooted where he stood; and that by and by Jenks was spinning his Colt and checking each chamber, his simpleton pride rising like manhood to her promises. Or did he really believe he could stop the riot by killing Turner? At the far end of the street a bunch of men were running out of sight toward John Bear's cabin. Next to the saloon Isaac's store was locked and dark, but already someone was banging on the door.

In those moments I was unable to act. The way I am, I will do as well as anyone until a show- down. But also I was raging that Jenks could be- lieve this woman cared for anything but herself and the Bad Man. The wolfy fool licked the syrup of her words and was marching up the street al- most before I could run back inside and get my gun from the drawer. Molly ran in the dugout, already praying with that cross of hers. Jimmy, holding the shotgun slack in one hand, was in a stupor. "Get back inside!" I said to him.

I ran to catch up with Jenks: "You know what you're doing?"

He was trotting like a hero: "Reckon," he al- lowed himself to say. I wasn't worth too much204 of his attention now Molly's declarations were in his ears.

"Well I hope you find it worth it, Mr. Sheriff," I said. "But you better have a plan!"

"Stay back-"

"You're a d.a.m.n fool. He won't give you the time to sight. This ain't a target to shoot, this is a Man from Bodie!"

"I kin get 'm awraht."

I wanted to believe him. On the left side of the street one side of Swede's tent was buckling and there was the clatter of pots and kettles. I could see now to the end of the street and in the bright blue shadow they were knocking John Bear's shack to pieces. I thought Yes, can one shot do it? It will scatter the flames and the fire will go out, 13.That was the idea I held on to like my life, it moved me to action, it was a clear simple thought and I took it over from Jenks, becoming the fool he'd been, lifting the fool's hat from his dead body to fit on myself, becoming Molly's final fool, as I am now. But who could not in the face of such ruin, with the race burning crazy in that moon's light? It was justice to kill him, the single face, the one man; I had to do something and what was most futile made the most sense. It was a giving in to them all, every one of those accursed people rolling over each other in the still warm dust of the street, scampering this way and that to find what to destroy.

But I wasn't going after it the way Jenks did. He marched up the steps holding his polished pistol and he pulled one of the saloon doors back. "Hey!" he cried, raising the gun to sight, but the flood of light from inside made him blink, and what easy game he was bathed and blinking against the dark. After a great second's silence there was a rush for the door, men stumbling outside, their shadows 205.206 looming long on the lighted porch, down the steps, shadows turning into men in the street. Jenks was knocked off his balance, he tried to right himself, his gun hand was swinging wildly.

I heard Zar's voice, "No, no!" and maybe the Russian was going toward the door thinking in a panic of the mirror in back of his bar, or the lamps hanging so grandly above the sawdust. I think it was Jenks's wild shot which caught Zar in the stomach. From inside the Bad Man's gun sounded twice, but Jenks was. .h.i.t twice, the first shot took him in the chest and spinned him around, the second surely broke his neck. Jenks did a clown's tumble down the steps and there he was twisted double, his face in open-mouthed sur- prise looking up at me from under his arm.

He's still there, they're all as they are. I can write with one hand but I can't dig. Horses s.h.i.+ed away from his fall, a man was running toward me, I thought What is he going to tell me? but he had a barrel stave in his hand. I held up my gun and he veered off like a dog on a richer scent.

Across the street Swede's restaurant was a pile of canvas, humping and s.h.i.+fting, a living thing. He was pulling his wife out from under and I ran over and helped him. We put her on her feet and she grabbed Swede and held on to him, sobbing and hugging him. He was crying too, holding an iron skillet in his hand, his anger making him cry, and when it got the best of him he broke out of her grasp, cursing, and started to beat at the movement under the canvas, swinging that skillet with all his strength..

Helga pulled at him, trying to get him away. People were running every which way, meeting207 and grappling in the street. It was a lunatic town.

"Swede," I cried, "get her out of here!"

He came to his senses, I have a glimpse now of his face suddenly calm under its shock of hair, white in the moon's color. He picked up his wife and walked away quickly, straight out past the sump, going toward the shadow of the rocks.

From Zar's Palace issued a woman's rising voice of moans stopping short in one deathly scream.

I had remembered a bale of barbed wire stand- ing behind Isaac's store, a big spool of it, maybe Isaac from Vermont had been expecting the herds to come to Hard Times. I made for it, proud of my cunning; and I was in such a fever with my idea, the tear in my side didn't hurt, nor the thought of Molly and the boy awaiting what might be, nor the moment's glimpse I had, going down the alley of the looters beating down Isaac's door. Through the walls of the saloon I could hear Turner begin to sing drunkenly, throw the furni- ture around-and it was thrilling to concentrate my hate.

Now from that spot there was a clear view to the rock hills lying under the moon as far east as the eye could see. I have the image in my mind of John Bear looking on from a ledge up there, al- though I'm not sure now this was the moment I spotted him. What can I say, he had no hat or s.h.i.+rt as he waited there on one knee while the mob wrecked his shack, by then he had no reason to wear white men's clothes. I can't understand how my eye found him, he was so still. But the moon picked him out for me, it was a lye moon etching him on my brain. There was motion in his stillness, something already done in his pose, and208 although I was not to see him again there is no break in the picture I have between then and this morning when I found the Russian on the floor by his bar.

Plotting for the Bad Man I couldn't have under- stood John Bear last night, if I'd known what he was contemplating it would have made no sense to me. I was dragging that heavy spool up the alley in sweat and in pain and in righteousness. I saw Swede return, striding heavily toward Isaac's store, and I called him and made him help me with the burden. "Ezra!" came Isaac Maple's cry from with- in his store, "Ezraa-a-a!" out of the cracks and crashes from within and the agonized Swede wanted to go help him, but I kept him with me, infecting him with my madness, and like penitents hurrying before G.o.d's wrath we made a bed of barbs on the porch, a trip wire from one post to the other, unwinding the roll, pus.h.i.+ng it back and forth, back and forth, as Turner sang.

Swede had a length of planking and with it he climbed atop the overhang and lay flat, waiting; while I stepped back into the street feeling the moon's light like a desert sun on my back. Behind the man's horse I crouched, Hausenfield's bay-a friend, like me, spurred to its bones-and "Turn- er!" I cried out. "Do you dare come out, Turner!" screaming his name again and again, the voice in my throat someone else's, some stranger's voice doing my work while I watched quietly as one by one the gas lights inside tinkled out and the saloon became dark. Then I shut up. My fingers squeezed out the slack in the trigger, my arm rested across the man's own saddle, with my other hand I held the bay's ear twisted tightly in my fist. In the209 great silence between that saloon door and me there was no movement. But all around there was riot: people were banging on sheet iron, attacking Isaac'8 rented boxes down the street; someone was trying to get his wagon going but his horse s.h.i.+ed and reared; it was the moment I saw, from the corner of my eye, the hunchback scuttling out of Maple Bros, store with his arms laden, a roll of yard goods streaming out after him.

Well he had the darkness he wanted, if he'd kept the light he might have seen the wire, but he needed to know where I was, where he'd be shooting. He came out, those doors snapping back against the wall, just a shape, a shadow with a hole of fire in its center. Even before the thwack in the horse's side I had let go my shot. I heard a roar of surprise and saw him fall across the porch, a shadow becoming a man hideously stuck on those infernal barbs.

It is so easy if you have the conviction. I stood up and fired two more times, missing him but not caring, feeling the wonder of the event like a child. A fine spray of blood from the bay's neck covered one side of my face. I could taste it. The Bad Man was trying to get off the wire, but I had hit him in the leg and he couldn't raise himself. Swede didn't have to swing down with that plank, he hung over the edge trying to bash the Bad Man but there was no need, his reach was too short. "No, Swede!" The man turned over on his back on his bed of barbs and shot straight up through the wood.

Swede slumped where he lay, dying like he would, with no sound. This morning Helga came back to the street from her hiding place. She called him and looked everywhere, poking at bodies in210 the wreckage, but she didn't think to look up. Then she caught sight of those long arms hanging over the edge of the porch top, that head of yellow hair -and for a long while she screamed at him to come down. Swede dead was one of my blunders, one of the last great ones in my life of blunders beginning when I came to this land. I clubbed the Man from Bodie till he was insensible but it didn't help Swede.

And then you see that wasn't my last blunder at all, for I didn't kill Turner I stopped too soon. It was still the Trick that made me cry out my misery and feel the shame of my being. Had I finished my work I would have only d.a.m.ned myself. All around the fights were going on, miners and towners try- ing to cripple and kill one another, hate riding their voices, gleaming on their knives, imprinted behind their running boots. And none of it had to do with Turner. He was just a man, my G.o.d! I felt his weight, I felt the weight of him over my shoulder, I smelled the sweat of him and the whiskey, it was blood that ran from his head and matted his hair. He had lost part of a staring eye on the barbs, his leg was broke, all my senses were glutted with him, I held his wrists together in my hands, and stum- bled past that patient horse standing in the street and bleeding to death-and what else but the con- tinuing Mockery could have given me the strength to tote him to the cabin?

"Alright Molly? Is it alright now? Is this what you wanted Molly?"

But she didn't hear me. She stood against the wall as far away as she could and watched me drop him on the table. I could hardly catch my breath, I thought my head would burst and I remember211 falling and crawling to the cabin door and leaning my back against it because I felt if I lay down I would never be able to get up again. And I wish now I could not have seen what happened, or if I had to see it that my mind could split me from the memory. I would like to die on some green some- where in the coolness of a tree's shadow, when did I last sit with my back against a tree? the wish is so strong in me, like a thirst, I believe I must perish from it. When I think that Ezra Maple might have put him up on his mule and ridden him off to learn the storekeep's trade; or that I might have taken him away myself, in those first hours, before Molly ever put her hooks into him, a carpenter's son, just a hollow-eye orphan-a groan pushes through my lips like my ghost already in its h.e.l.l before I am dead. Helga walks up every few minutes, her hair hanging straight down, and she stands gazing at me with her mad eyes while she slowly tears her dress to tatters. Is it Molly again, those eyes? Is it all the eyes of those dead faces? I think no man has ever had such a watchfulness of dead faces, I have farmed the crop of this country, the land's good yield along with Men from Bodie.

I told him to get by the door for it wouldn't be minutes before the looters would reach us. I said with what breath I could gather, "Jimmy, over here, stand here with that gun." But he was look- ing at her as he'd been looking for the year or more, he couldn't do anything but look at her. It was his suffering, it was what she demanded.

What caution was Molly's, what disbelief as she slowly moved toward Turner, the man of her dreaming, the great insulter, lying helpless in his own stinking juices on the eating table. Yes it was212 him alright the same one sure enough by G.o.d it was him and no need to wave her cross for protec- tion, a knife would do, the stiletto, now she would use it. A jab to see if he was still alive, a gentle stick to hurt him awake, and he flinched and groaned. Back she jumped and then forward into another place and he tried to writhe away from the point. "Eh?" says Molly. "Eh?" as if to say re- member me? remember your Molly? "Eh?" does this make you remember, or this, or this!-almost dancing with the grace of retribution.

"Molly, oh Lord, Molly stop it, stop it-" I shouted stumbling up, going for her. It was an end- less frenzy, I cannot describe what she was doing, G.o.d have mercy on her, I saw the boy's horror, for how many endless moments did he endure it? And how else could he speak, finally, when he had to call her and claim her as a right? How else could he make the sound of his need, create it true again? He spoke as she had taught him, manfully, with the proper instrument, booming of birth.

It was the moment Turner's arms had closed around Molly as if in embrace. My hand was over the muzzle of the gun but the blast killed them both. Fainting, I could hear people outside tipping over the water tank, and it was that sound I lis- tened to, the spread of water, an indecent gush.

14.And now I've put down what happened, every- thing that happened from one end to the other. And it scares me more than death scares me that it may show the truth. But how can it if I've written as if I knew as I lived them which minutes were im- portant and which not; and spoken as if I knew the exact words everyone spoke? Does the truth come out in such scrawls, so bound by my limits?

But for Helga I have the town to myself, who's not dead is scattered over the plains. The air is hot, and dry and still. The light of the sun parches me, my mouth is filled with dust, I cannot make spittle. There is no wind to stir the welcome banner, not a cloud. Only the flock of buzzards--sometimes rising, fluttering from some imagined scare-makes an occasional shadow. The .street is busy with the work of jackals and vultures, flies, bugs, mice. To- gether they make a hum of enterprise.

I can forgive anyone but myself. The way I'm facing I can see out over the flats as the afternoon sun bakes colors across them. Who am I looking for, Jimmy? He's gone, he's riding hard, that mule 213.214 and rig will take him places, another Bad Man from Bodie, who used to be Fee's boy.

I seem to remember a man saying once they would build a railroad along the wagon trails west. It will bring them along the edge of the flats with their steam engines. I can see if I peer hard enough, I can see those telegraph poles up there like st.i.tch- ing between the earth and sky. Am I dying that slow?

This morning, before I started this, when the pain was too much to sit with, before my arm turned numb, I walked up and down seeing the fruit of the land. Isaac is dead in his store. In the rubble of Zar's Palace that Mrs. Clement is dead although I don't see a mark on her. The dealer must be upstairs, Mae is lying across a table, her dress pulled up around her neck. Her skull is broken and her teeth scattered on the table and on the floor.

In front of his bar lies the Russian, scalped ex- pertly. The bullet he got was in his stomach-a red stain over his ap.r.o.n-he must still have been alive when John Bear reached him. As much as anything it was the sight of Zar, who once struck the Indian from behind, which got me to take my books out here and sit down and try to write what happened. I can forgive everyone but I cannot forgive myself. I told Molly we'd be ready for the Bad Man but we can never be ready. Nothing is ever buried, the earth rolls in its tracks, it never goes anywhere, it never changes, only the hope changes like morn- ing and night, only the expectations rise and set. Why does there have to be promise before de- struction? What more could I have done-if I hadn't believed, they'd be alive today. Oh Molly,215 oh my boy .. . The first time I ran, the second time I stood up to him, but I failed both times, no matter what I've done it has failed.