the girl explained, the pink gone out of her pretty face, the
reflection of her mother's horror in her eyes.

"My God!" said the woman, clutching her breast, looking with a wilder
terror into Morgan's face.

"Oh, I wish they'd take him away! I wish they'd take him away!" the girl
moaned, cringing against the counter, covering her face with her hands.

Outside a crowd collected around the fallen man, for common as death by
violence was in the streets of Ascalon, the awe of its swift descent,
the hushing mystery of its silence, fell as coldly over the hearts of
men there as in the walks of peace. Presently the busy undertaker came
with his black wagon to gather up this broken shape of what had been a
man but a few minutes past.

The marshal did not trouble himself in the case further. Up the street
Morgan saw him sauntering along, unmoved and unconcerned, from all
outward show, as if this might have been just one incidental task in a
busy day. Resentment rose in Morgan as he watched the undertaker and his
helper load the body into the wagon with unfeeling roughness; as he saw
the marshal go into a saloon with a crowd of noisy fellows from the
stock pens who appeared to be applauding his deed.

This appeared to Morgan simply murder in the name of the law. That
bragging, simple, whisky-numbed cowboy could not have hurt a cat. All
desire for dinner was gone out of Morgan's stomach, all thought of
preparing it from the girl's mind. She stood in the door with her
mother, watching the black wagon away with this latest victim to be
crushed in Ascalon's infernal mill, twisting her fingers in her apron,
her face as white as the flour on her mother's hands. The undertaker's
man came hurrying back with a bucket of water and broom. The women
turned away out of the door then, while he briskly went to work washing
up the dark little puddle that spread on the boards of the sidewalk.

"Dora, where's your pa?" the elder woman asked, stopping suddenly as she
crossed the room, her face drawn in a quick stroke of fear, her hands
lifted to ease the smothering in her breast again.

"I don't know, Ma. He ain't been around since dinner."

The woman went to the door again, to lean and peer up and down the
street with that great anxiety and trouble in her face that made it old,
and distorted the faint trace of lingering prettiness out of it as if
it had been covered with ashes.

"He's comin'," she said presently, in voice of immeasurable