business of his expulsion from the town. One of the men
supporting their defeated champion saw Morgan as he rounded the table,
and set up the alarm that the granger was breaking for the range.

Even then Morgan could have escaped by a running dash, for those
high-heeled horseback men were not much on foot. But he could not pay
that much for safety before the public of Ascalon, despicable as those
of it gathered there might be. He made a pretense of watching the faro
game while the Texans put down their glasses to rush after him and make
him prisoner, threatening him with clubbed pistols above his head.

The lookout at the faro game, whose patrons were annoyed by this renewal
of the brawl, jumped from his high seat and took a hand in the row.
Friends of the marshal or friends of the devil, he said, made no
difference to him. They'd have to go outside to finish their fuss. This
man, a notorious slayer of his kind, quicker of hand than any man in
Ascalon, it was said, urged them all toward the door.

The cowboys protested against this breach of hospitality, but Peden
stood in his customary pose of calmness to enforce his bouncer's word,
hand pushing back his long black coat where it fell over the holster at
his belt.

Morgan was in no mind to go with them, for he began to have a disturbing
alarm over what these men might do in their drunken vengeance, relieved
as they thought themselves to be of all responsibility to law by the
liberty their friend Craddock had given them. Without regard to the
bouncer's orders or Peden's threatening pose, he began to lay about him
with his fists, making a breach in the ranks of his captors that would
have opened the way to the door in a moment, the outbreak was so
unexpected and violent, if it had not been for a quieting tap the
bouncer gave him with one of the lethal instruments which he carried for
such exigencies.

Morgan was conscious of a sensation of expulsion, which seemed swift,
soft, and soundless, with a dim sense of falling at the end. When his
dispersed senses returned to their seat again, he found himself in the
open night, stretched on the ground, hands bound behind his back.

CHAPTER VII

A GENTLE COWBOY JOKE

As Morgan's faculties cleared out of their turgid whirl, and the stars
began to leave off their frivolous capers and stand still, he heard
voices about him in the dark, and they were discussing the very
interesting question of whether he should be hun