“Then we're both certain there's no reason for name-calling over my back wall.”
“You shot him, didn't you?” the other asked thinly. “You can't get away from the fact that you killed a pardner.”
“I did,” said Jason Burrage harshly. “He robbed me. But I didn't shout thief at him from the safety of the dark; it was right after dinner, the middle of the day. He was ready first, too; but I shot him. Can you get anything from that?”
“You ought to realize this isn't San Francisco,” Radlaw, the drug taker, put in. “A man couldn't be coolly derringered in Cottarsport. There's law here, there's order.” He had a harried face, dulled eyes under a fine brow, a tremulous flabby mouth, with white crystals of powder adhering to its corners, and a countenance like the yellow oilskins of the fishermen.
Jason turned darkly in his direction. “What have you or Clower got to do with law?”
“Not only them,” the apothecary interposed, “but all the other men of the town are interested in keeping it orderly. We'll have no western rowdyism in Cottarsport.”
“Then hear this,” Jason again addressed Thomas Gast; “see that you tell the truth and all the truth. My past belongs to me, and I don't aim to have it maligned by any empty liar back from the Coast. And either of you Radlaws—I'm not going to be blanketed by the town drunkards or old women, either. If I have shot one man I can shoot another, and I care this much for your talk—if any of this muck is allowed to annoy Mrs. Burrage I'll kill whoever starts it, spang in the middle of day.”
“That's where it gets him,” the ex-scholar stated. “Just there,” Jason agreed; “and this Gast, who has brought so much back from California, can tell you this, too—that I had the name of finishing what I began.”
But, once more outside, alone, his appearance of resolution vanished: the merest untraceable rumor would be sufficient to accomplish all that he feared, damage him irreparably with Honora. He was far older in spirit and body than he had been back on Indian Bar; he had passed the tumultuous years of living. The labor and privation, the continuous immersion in frigid streams, had lessened his vitality, sapped his ability for conflict. All that he now wished was the happiness of his wife, Honora, and the quietude of their big, peaceful house; the winter evenings by the Franklin stove and the spring evenings with the windows open and the candles guttering in the mild, lilac-hung air.