was a cattle
country; they knew it for a branding iron.

Morgan thrust the brand into the fire, piled wood around it, leaning
over it a little in watchful intent. This relic of his past he also had
retrieved from the bottom of his trunk along with boots and spurs,
corduroys and hat, and it had been a long time, indeed, since he heated
it to apply the Three Crow brand to the shoulder of a beast. That brand,
his father's brand in the early days in the Sioux country where he was
the pioneer cattleman, never had been heated to come in contact with
such base skins as these, Morgan reflected, and it would not be so
dishonored now if cattle were carrying it on any range.

When the Indians killed his father and drove off the last of the herd,
the Three Crow became a discontinued brand in the Northwest. The son had
kept this iron which his father had carried at his saddle horn as a
souvenir of the times when life was not worth much between the Black
Hills and the Platte. The brand was not recorded anywhere today; the
brand books of the cattle-growers' associations did not contain it. But
it was his mark; he intended to set it on these cattle, disfiguration of
face for disfiguration, and turn them loose to return smelling of the
hot iron among their kind.

Sodden with the dregs of last night's carousel, slow-headed, surly as
the Texans were when Morgan encountered them, they were all alert and
fully cognizant of their peril now. No rough jest passed from mouth to
mouth; there was no sneer, no laugh of bravado, no defiance. Some of
them had curses left in them as they sweated in the fear of Morgan's
silent preparations and lunged on their ropes in the hope of breaking
loose. All but the Dutchman appealed to the crowd to interfere,
promising rewards, making pledges in the name of their absent patron,
Seth Craddock, the dreaded slayer of men.

Now and again one of them shouted a name, generally Peden's name, or the
name of some dealer or bouncer in his hall. Nobody answered, nobody
raised hand or voice to interfere or protest. During their short reign
of pillage and debauchery under the protection of the city marshal, the
members of the gang had not made a friend who cared to risk his skin to
save theirs.

To add to their disgrace and humiliation, their big pistols hung in the
holsters on their thighs. People, especially the men of the range,
remarked this full armament, marveling how the stranger had taken six
men of such des