according to
the custom, his feet braced comfortably against the outer edge of the
sidewalk, flanked by other guests and citizens who filled the remaining
seats. Little was said to him of his encounter with the new city
marshal, and that little Morgan made less, and brought to short ending
by his refusal to be led into the matter at all. And as he sat there,
chatting in desultory way, the fretting wind died to a breath, the line
of men in the chairs grew indistinct in the gloom of early night, and
Ascalon rose up like a sleeping wolf, shaking off the drowse of the day,
and sat on its haunches to howl.

This awakening began with the sound of fiddles and pianos in the big
dance hall whose roof covered all the vices which thrive best in the
dark. Later a trombone and cornet joined the original musical din,
lifting their brassy notes on the vexed night air. Bands of horsemen
came galloping in, yelping the short, coyote cries of the cattle lands.
Sometimes one of them let off his pistol as he wheeled his horse up to
the hitching rack, the relief of a simple mind that had no other
expression for its momentary exuberance.

Sidewalks became thronged with people tramping the little round of the
town's diversions, but of different stamp from those who had sparsely
trickled through its sunlight on legitimate business that afternoon.
Cowboys hobbled by in their peggy, high-heeled gait, as clumsy afoot as
penguins; men in white shirts without coats, their skin too tender to
withstand the sun, walked with superior aloofness among the sheep which
had come to their shearing pens, preoccupied in manner, yet alert,
watching, watching, on every hand.

Now and then women passed, but they, also, were of the night, gaudily
bedecked in tinsel and glittering finery that would have been fustian by
day to the least discriminating eye. Respectability was not abroad in
Ascalon by night. With the last gleam of day it left the stage to
wantonness.

As the activity of the growing night increased, high-pitched voices of
cowboys who called figures of the dances quavered above the confusion of
sounds, a melancholy note in the long-drawn syllables that seemed a
lament for the waste of youth, and a prophecy of desolation. When the
music fell to momentary silence the clash of pool balls sounded, and the
tramp of feet, and quavering wild feminine laughter rising sharply,
trailing away to distance as if the revelers sailed by on the storm of
their flami