row of her
penance in her simple words.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SUNSET

Evening saw the fires of Ascalon subdued and confined. With the falling
of the wind the danger of the disaster spreading to embrace the entire
town decreased almost to safety, although the wary, scorched townsmen
stood watch over the smoldering coals which lay deep where the principal
part of Ascalon lately stood.

Fred Stilwell had been taken to Judge Thayer's house, where his mother
and Violet attended him. The doctor said youth and a clean body would
carry him through. As for Drumm, whose bullet had brought the young man
down, his horse with the black saddle-roll had stood hitched to Judge
Thayer's fence until evening, when the sheriff came with a writ of
attachment in Stilwell's favor and took it away. Drumm's body was lying
on a board in the calaboose, diverted for that dark day in Ascalon's
history into a morgue.

The sheriff reported that the Texas cattleman had carried more than
fifty thousand dollars in currency behind his saddle. That was according
to the custom of the times, and usage of the range, where many a man's
word was as good as his bond, but no man's check was as good as money.

Tom Conboy was already hiring carpenters to rebuild the hotel, his eye
full of the business that would come to his doors when the railroad
shops were running, and the trainmen of the division point were there
to be housed and fed. Dora and Riley had been wandering around town all
afternoon, very much like two pigeons looking for a place to nest.

And so evening found peace in Ascalon, after all its tragedy and pain.

Calvin Morgan and Rhetta Thayer stood at the bank corner at sunset,
looking down the square where the great gap in its front made the scene
unfamiliar. Morgan's disabled hand was bandaged; there was a cross of
surgical tape on his chin, closing a deep cut where some citizen had
tapped him with a revolver in the last fight of that tumultuous day.

Little groups of desolate, disheartened people stood along the line of
hitching racks; dead coals, which the wind had sown as living fire over
the square, littered the white dust. Morgan had taken off his badge of
office, having made a formal resignation to Judge Thayer, mayor of the
town. Nobody had been sworn in to take his place, for, as Judge Thayer
had said, it did not appear as if any further calamity could be left in
store among the misfortunes for that town, except it might be an