's due."

"Might as well, everybody's down there. You won't sell as much as a pack
of gum till the train's gone and this thing's off of people's minds."

Gray went in for his hat, to spend a good deal of time at the glass
behind his prescription case setting it at the most seductive slant upon
his luxuriant brown curls. This was an extremely enticing small hat,
just a shade lighter brown than the druggist's wavy hair. It looked like
a cork in a bottle placed by a tipsy hand as Druggist Gray passed down
the street toward the hotel, to post himself where he might see how well
Morgan's luck was going to hold in this encounter with the meat hunter
of the Cimarron.

As the undertaker had said, nearly everybody in Ascalon was already
collected in front and in the near vicinity of the hotel, fringing the
square in gay-splotched crowds. Beneath the canopy of the Elkhorn hotel
many were assembled, as many indeed, as could conveniently stand, for
that bit of shade was a blessing on the sun-parched front of Ascalon's
bleak street.

Business was generally suspended in this hour of uncertainty, public
feeling was drawn as tight as a banjo head in the sun. In the courthouse
the few officials and clerks necessary to the county's business were at
the windows looking upon the station, all expecting a tragedy of such
stirring dimensions as Ascalon never had witnessed.

The stage was set, the audience was in waiting, one of the principal
actors stood visible in the wings. With the rush of the passenger train
from the east Seth Craddock would make his dramatic entry, in true color
with his violent notoriety and prominence in the cast.

Unless friends came with Craddock, these two men would hold the stage
for the enactment of that swift drama alone. Morgan, silent, determined,
inflexible, had drawn his line around the depot, across which no man
dared to pass. No friend of Craddock should meet him for support of
warning word or armed hand; no innocent one should be jeopardized by a
curiosity that might lead to death.

The moving question now was, had Peden's gun-notable friends joined
Craddock? If so, it would call for a vast amount of luck to overcome
their combined numbers and dexterity.

Morgan was troubled by this same question as he waited in the saddle
where the sun bore hot upon him at the side of the station platform.
About there, at that point, the station agent had told him, the
smoking-car would stand when the train came