body at his belt, turning the old
thing foolishly like a wheel, so unexpectedly confronted by this girl
again, before whom he desired to appear as a man, and the best that was
in the best man that he could ever be. And she stood smiling before him,
mischief and mastery in her laughing eyes, confident as one who had
subjugated him already, playing a tune on him, surely--a tune that came
like a little voice out of his heart.

"I didn't know, I didn't suspect," he said.

"Of course not. She isn't anything like me." Judge Thayer laughed over
it, mightily pleased by this evidence of confusion in a man who could
heat his branding iron to set his mark on half a dozen desperadoes, yet
turned to dough before the eyes of a simple maid.

"No more than a bird is like a bear," said Morgan, thinking aloud,
racing mentally the next moment to snatch back his words and shape them
in more conventional phrase. But too late; their joint laughter drowned
his attempt to set it right, and the world lost a compliment that might
have graced a courtier's tongue, perhaps. But, not likely.

Morgan proffered the chair he had occupied, but Rhetta knew of one in
reserve behind the display of wheat and oats in sheaf on the table. This
she brought, seating herself near the door, making a triangle from which
Morgan had no escape save through the roof.

Judge Thayer resumed the discussion of the most vital matter in Ascalon
that hour, pressing Morgan to take the oath of office then and there.

"I wouldn't ask Mr. Morgan to take the office," said Rhetta when Judge
Thayer paused, "if I felt safe to stay in Ascalon another day with
anybody else as marshal."

"That's a compelling reason for a man to take a job," Morgan told her,
looking for a daring moment into the cool clarity of her honest brown
eyes. "But I might make it worse instead of better. Trouble came to
this town with me; it seems to stick to my heels like a dog."

"You got rid of most of it this morning--_that_ gang will never come
back," she said.

Morgan looked out of the open door, a thoughtfulness in his eyes that
the nearer attraction could not for the moment dispel. "One of them
will," he replied.

"Oh, one!" said she, discounting that one to nothing at all.

"The gamblers and saloon men are right about it," Morgan said, turning
to the judge; "this town will dry up and blow away as soon as it loses
its notorious name. If you want to kill Ascalon, enforce the law. The
question