ry their hands at rounding up the crooks and killers of this town and
showing them the road the way you did that gang yesterday? Yes, I know
all about that kind of luck."

Morgan walked with her toward Judge Thayer's office, whither she was
bound with the mail. Behind them the loafers snickered and passed quips
of doubtful humor and undoubted obscenity, but careful to present the
face of decorum until Morgan was well beyond their voices. No matter
what doubt they had of his luck holding with Seth Craddock, they were
not of a mind to make a trial of it on themselves.

"I think the best thing to do with this town is just let it go till it
dries up and blows away," she said, with the vindictive impatience of
youth. "What little good there is in it isn't worth the trouble of
cleaning up to save."

"Your father's got everything centered here, he told me. There must be a
good many honest people in the same boat."

"Maybe we could sell out for something, enough to take us away from
here. Of course we expected Ascalon to turn out a different town when we
came here, the railroad promised to do so much. But there's nothing to
make a town when the cattle are gone. We might as well let it begin to
die right now."

"You're gloomy this morning, Miss Thayer. You remember the Mennonites
that wanted to settle here and were afraid?"

"There's no use for you to throw your life away making the country safe
for them."

"Of course not. I hadn't thought of them."

"Nor any of these cold-nosed cowards that turn their backs on you for
fear your luck's going to change. Luck! the fools!"

"They don't figure in the case at all, Miss Thayer."

"If it's on account of your own future, if you're trampling down a place
in the briars to make your bed, as pa called it, then I think you can
find a nicer place to camp than Ascalon. It never will repay the peril
you'll run and the blood you'll lose--have lost already."

"I'm further out of the calculation than anybody, Miss Thayer."

"I don't see what other motive there can be, then," she reflected, eyes
bent to the ground as she walked slowly by his side.

"A lady asked me to undertake it. I'm doing it for her," he replied.

"She was a thoughtless, selfish person!" Rhetta said, her deep feeling
stressed in the flush of her face, her accusation as vehement as if she
laid charges against another. "Last night she thought it over; she had
time to realize the danger she'd asked a generous strang