urning them curse for curse, voluble in
picturesque combinations of damning sentences as if he had practiced
excommunication longer than the oldest pope who ever lived. In the
excess of his scorn for their fallen might he smeared his filthy broom
across their faces, paying back insult for insult, bold and secure under
the protection of this stern eagle of a man who had dropped on Ascalon
as from a cloud.

When the last man was bound, the last kick applied by the bartender's
great, square-toed foot, Morgan motioned his sullen captives toward the
door.

"Wait a minute--have something on the house," the bartender urged.

Morgan lifted his hand in gesture at once silencing and denying, and
marched out after the heroes of the Chisholm Trail. Through it all he
had not spoken.

They cursed Morgan as he drove them into the street, and surged against
their bonds, the only silent one among them the Dutchman, and the only
sober one. Now and then Morgan saw his face as the others bunched and
shifted in their struggles to break loose, his mocking, sneering, pasty
white face, his wide-set teeth small and white as a young pup's. His
eyes were hateful as a rattlesnake's; lecherous eyes, debased.

Morgan herded them into the public square beyond the line of hitching
racks which stood like a skeleton fence between courthouse and business
buildings. People came pouring from every house to see, hurrying,
crowding, talking in hushed voices, wondering in a hundred conjectures
what this man was going to do. Gamblers and nighthawks, roused by the
very feeling of something unusual, hastened out half dressed, to stand
in slippers and collarless shirts, looking on in silent speculation.

Citizens, respectable and otherwise, who had suffered loss and
humiliation, danger and terror at the hands of these men, exulted now in
their downfall. Some said this man was a sheriff from Texas, who had
tracked them to Ascalon and was now taking them to jail to await a
train; some said he was a special government officer, others that the
governor had sent him in place of troops, knowing him to be sufficient
in himself. Boys ran along in open-mouthed admiration, pattering their
bare feet in the thick dust, as Morgan drove his captives down the
inside of the hitching racks; the outpouring of citizens, parasites,
outcasts of the earth, swept after in a growing stream.

From all sides they came to witness this great adventure, unusual for
Ascalon in that th