the absent girl.

"The only mistake you made was when you handed him back his gun. You
ought to 'a' handed it back to a corpse," the rancher said.

"We knew that feller he killed," the younger man explained, with a world
of significance in his voice.

"He used to live up here in this country before he went to Abilene; he'd
come back to blow his money in Ascalon, I guess," the rancher said. "He
was one of them harmless bluffin' boys you could take by the ear and
lead around like he had a ring in his nose."

"That's what I told them," Morgan commented, in thoughtful, distracted
way.

"You sized him up right. He wouldn't 'a' pulled his gun, quick as he was
to slap his hand on it and run a sandy. I guess it was just as well it
happened to him then as some other time. Somebody was bound to kill him
when he got away among strangers."

The rancher, who introduced himself as Stilwell, asked for the details
of the killing, which Morgan gave, together with the trivial thing that
led up to it. The big rancher sighed, shaking his head sadly.

"You ought to took his gun away from him and bent it around his fool
head," he said.

"It would have been better for him, and for me, I guess," Morgan agreed.

"Yes, that marshal was purty sore on you for takin' his gun away from
him right out in public, it looks like," the rancher suggested, a bid in
his manner for the details of his misfortune which Morgan felt were his
by right of hospitality.

"I ran into some of his friends later on. He'd turned the town over to
them, a bunch of cowpunchers just up from the Nueces."

The rancher started at the word, exchanging a startled, meaning look
with his son.

"That outfit that loaded over at Ascalon yesterday?" he inquired.

"Yes; seven or eight of them stayed behind to look after the
horses--eight with the marshal, he's one of the outfit."

"Did them fellers rope you and drag you away out here?" Stilwell
inquired, leaning over in the tensity of his feeling, his tanned face
growing pale, as if the thought of such atrocity turned his blood cold.

"They hitched me to a freight train. The rope broke at the river."

The rancher turned to his son again, making a motion with open hand
outflung as if displaying evidence in some controversy between them that
clinched it on his side without another word. The younger man came a
step nearer Morgan's couch, where he stood with grave face, hesitant, as
if something came forward in his mind to