d of
people that ever stay in a hotel, they carry their blankets with 'em and
flop down under their wagons like Indians. When they come to town they
bring a basket of grub along, they don't spend money for a meal in any
man's hotel. You put Pennsylvania Dutch into this country and there'll
never be another coroner's jury called!"

Morgan knocked the ashes out of his short, clubby little pipe, put it in
his shirt pocket behind his badge, and went on. He paused at the door of
the _Headlight_ office to look within, hoping to see a face that had
been missing since the night of his great tragedy. Only Riley Caldwell,
the printer, was there, working furiously, as if fired by an ambition
that Ascalon, dead or alive, could not much longer contain. The
droop-shouldered alpaca coat once worn by the editor now dead, hung
beside the desk, like the hull he had cast when he took flight away from
the troubles of his much-harassed life.

Only the day before Judge Thayer had told Morgan that Rhetta was still
at Stilwell's ranch, whither she had gone to compose herself after the
strain of so much turmoil. Morgan could only feel that she had gone
there to avoid him, shrinking from the sight of his face.

There was not much warmth in Morgan's reception by the business men of
Ascalon around the square that morning, hot as the weather was. It
seemed as if some messenger had gone before him crying his coming, as a
jaybird goes setting up an alarm from tree to tree before the squirrel
hunter in the woods.

Earnest as their solicitations had been for him to assume the office of
marshal, voluble as their protestations in the face of fear and
insecurity of life and property that they would accept the result
without a whimper, there were only a few who stood by their pledges like
men. These were the merchants of solider character, whose dealings were
with the cattlemen and homesteaders. The hope of these merchants was in
the coming of more homesteaders, according to Judge Thayer's dream. They
were the true patriots and pioneers.

While these few commended Morgan's stringent application of the letter
and spirit of the state and town laws, their encouragement was only a
flickering candle in the general gloom of the place. Morgan knew the
grunters were saying behind his back that he had gone too far, farther
than their expectations or instructions. All they had expected of him
was that he knock off the raw edges, suppress the too evident, abate