while would
suffice to see their obliteration, a little longer to witness the
destruction of the town if the wind should carry the coals and blazing
shingles to other roofs, dry as the sered grasses of the plain.

The sound of this fire set by Seth Craddock in celebration of his return
to Ascalon was in Morgan's ears like the roar of the sea; the heat of it
drew the tough skin of his face as he rode fifty yards from it into the
center of the square. There he stopped, his rifle across his breast,
waiting for the discovery.

The man in the street near Peden's was the first to see and recognize
him as he waited there on his horse in the pose of challenge, in the
expectant, determined attitude of defense. This fellow yelled the alarm
and charged, breakneck through the smoke, shooting as he came.

Morgan fired one shot, offhand. The charging horse reared, stood so a
moment as rigidly as if fixed by bronze in that pose, its rider leaning
forward over its neck. Then, in whatever terrible pang that such sudden
stroke of death visits, it flung itself backward, the girths snapping
from its distended belly. The rider was flung aside, where Morgan saw
him lying, head on one extended arm, like a dog asleep in the sun.

The others came whooping their triumphant challenge and closed in on
Morgan then, and the battle of his life began.

How many were circling him as he stood in the center of the square, or
as close to the center as he could draw, near the courthouse steps,
Morgan did not know. Some had come from behind the courthouse, others
from the tame fight with the citizens back of the stores not yet on
fire.

The dust that rose from their great tumult of charge and galloping
attack, mingling with the smoke that trailed the ground, was Morgan's
protection and salvation. Nothing else saved him from almost immediate
death in the fury of their assault.

Morgan fired at the fleeting figures as they moved in obscurity through
this stifling cloud, circling him like Indians of the plains, shouting
to each other his location, drawing in upon him a little nearer as they
rode. He turned and shifted, yet he was a target all too plain for
anything he could do to lessen his peril.

A horse came plunging toward him through the blinding swirl, plain for a
flash of wild-flying mane and tossing rein, its saddle empty, fleeing
from the scene of fire-swept conflict as if urged on by the ghost of the
rider it had lost.

Bullets clipped Mo