deserted hall that morning. He was
quite sufficient for all the demands of the hour, his only customers
being the unprofitable gang of cattle herders whom Morgan sought. True
to their training in early rising, no matter what the stress of the
night past, no matter how broken by alarm and storm, they were all
awake, like sailors called to their watch. They were improving while it
might last the delegated authority of Seth Craddock, which opened the
treasures of a thousand bottles at a word.

The gambling tables in the front of the house were covered with black
cloths, which draped them almost to the floor, like palls of the dead.
Down at the farther end of the long hall a man was sweeping up the
debris of the night, his steps echoing in the silence of the place. For
there was no hilarity in the sodden crew lined up at the bar for the
first drink of the day. They were red-eyed, crumpled, dirty; frowsled of
hair as they had risen from the floor.

Peden's hall was not designed for the traffic of daylight. There was
gloom among its bare girders, shadows lay along its walls. Only through
the open door came in a broad and healthy band of light, which spread as
it reached and faltered as it groped, spending itself a little way
beyond the place where the lone bartender served his profitless
customers.

Morgan walked into the place down this path of light unnoticed by the
men at the bar or the one who served them, for they were wrangling with
him over some demand that he seemed reluctant to supply. At the end of
the bar, not a rod separating them, Morgan stopped like a casual
customer, waiting his moment.

The question between bartender and the gang quartered upon the town was
one of champagne. It was no drink, said the bartender, to lay the
foundation of a day's business with the bottle upon. Whisky was the
article to put inside a man's skin at that hour of the morning, and then
in small shots, not too often. They deferred to his experience,
accepting whisky. As they lined up with breastbones against the bar to
pour down the charge, Morgan threw his rifle down on them.

No chance to drop a hand to a gun standing shoulder to shoulder with
gizzards pressed against the bar; no chance to swerve or duck and make a
quick sling of it and a quicker shot, with the bore of that big rifle
ready to cough sixteen chunks of lead in half as many seconds, any one
of them hitting hard enough to drill through them, man by man, down to
the