He was the first man
that ever drove a herd of cattle from Texas to load for market when this
railroad was put through. Some of those skulkers from Glenmore shot him
down at his door two months after he took office."

"I thought the boy looked like he'd been trained on the range," Morgan
said, thoughtfully.

"Yes, Dell was raised in the saddle, drove several trips from Texas up
here. Dell"--softly, a little sorrowfully, Morgan thought--"was the
other principal in that affair with our late editor."

"Oh, I see. He was exonerated?"

"Clear case of self-defense, proved that Smith--the editor was
Smith--reached for his gun first."

Morgan did not comment, but he thought that this seemed a thing easily
proved in Ascalon. He parted from the judge at the bank corner, which
was across the way from the hotel.

The shadow of the hotel fell far into the public square, and in front of
the building, their chairs placed in what would have been the gutter of
the street if the thoroughfare had been paved, their feet braced with
probably more comfort than grace against the low sidewalk, a row of men
was stationed, like crows on a fence. There must have been twenty or
more of them, in various stages of undress from vest down to suspenders,
from bright cravats flaunting over woolen shirts and white shirts, and
striped shirts and speckled shirts, to unconfined necks laid bare to the
breeze.

Whether these were guests waiting supper, or merely loafers waiting
anything that might happen next, Morgan had not been long enough in town
to determine. He noticed the curious and, he thought, unfriendly eyes
which they turned on him as he approached. And as Morgan set foot on the
sidewalk porch of the hotel, Seth Craddock, the new city marshal, rose
out of the third chair on the end of the row nearest him, hand lifted in
commanding signal to halt.

"You've just got time to git your gripsack," Craddock said, coming
forward as he spoke, but stopping a little to one side as if to allow
Morgan passage to the door.

"Time's no object to me," Morgan returned, good-humored and undisturbed,
thinking this must be one of the jokes at the expense of strangers for
which Ascalon was famous.

Some of the loafers were standing by their chairs in attitude of
indecision, others sat leaning forward to see and hear. Traffic both
ways on the sidewalk came to a sudden halt at the spectacle of two men
in a situation recognized at a glance in quick-triggered