ng passions, to land by and by on the shores of morning,
draggled, dry-lipped, perhaps with a heartache for the far places left
behind forever.

Morgan was not moved by a curiosity great enough to impel him to make
the round. All this he had seen before, time over, in the frontier towns
of Nebraska, with less noise and open display, certainly, for here in
Ascalon viciousness had a nation-wide notoriety to maintain, and must
intensify all that it touched. He was wondering how the townspeople who
had honest business in life managed to sleep through that rioting, with
the added chance of some fool cowboy sending a bullet through their thin
walls as he galloped away to his distant camp, when Tom Conboy came
through the sidewalk stream to sit beside him in a gutter chair.

The proprietor of the Elkhorn hotel appeared to be under a depression of
spirits. He answered those who addressed him in short words, with manner
withdrawn. Morgan noted that the diamond stud was gone out of the desert
of Conboy's shirt bosom, and that he was belted with a pistol. Presently
the man on Conboy's other hand, who had been trying with little result
to draw him into a conversation, got up and made his way toward the
bright front of the dance hall. Conboy touched Morgan's knee.

"Come into the office, kind of like it happened, a little while after
me," he said, speaking in low voice behind his hand. He rose, stretching
and yawning as if to give his movements a casual appearance, stood a
little while on the edge of the sidewalk, went into the hotel. Morgan
followed him in a few minutes, to find him apparently busy with his
accounts behind the desk.

A little while the proprietor worked on his bookkeeping, Morgan lounging
idly before the cigar case.

"Some fellers up the street lookin' for you," Conboy said, not turning
his head.

"What fellows? What do they want?"

"That bunch of cowboys from the Chisholm Trail."

"I don't know them," said Morgan, not yet getting the drift of what
Conboy evidently meant as a warning.

"They're friends of the city marshal; he belonged to the same outfit,"
Conboy explained, ostensibly setting down figures in his book.

"Thank you," said Morgan, starting for the door.

"Where you goin' to?" Conboy demanded, forgetting caution and possible
complications in his haste to interpose.

"To find out what they want."

"There's no sense in a man runnin' his arm down a lion's throat to see
if he's hungry," Conb