the swift-running noose settled over Craddock's body, the horse
leaped at the pressure of its rider's knees. Craddock fired as the
flying rope snatched him from his feet, the noose binding his arms
impotently to his sides; in his rage he fired again and again as he
dragged in ludicrous tangle of long, thrashing legs from the platform
into the dust.

There, in a cloud of obscuring dust from the trampled road, the horse
holding the line taut, Morgan flung from the saddle in the nimble way of
a range man, bent over the fallen slayer of men a little while. When the
first of the crowd came breaking across the broad space intervening and
drew up panting and breathless in admiration of the bold thing they had
witnessed, Seth Craddock lay hog-tied and harmless on the ground, one
pistol a few feet from where he struggled in his ropes, the other in the
holster at his side.

And there came Judge Thayer, in his capacity as mayor, officious and
radiant, proud and filled with a new feeling of safety and importance,
and took the badge of office from Craddock's breast, in all haste, as if
it were the most important act in this spectacular triumph, this
bloodless victory over a bloody man.

CHAPTER XVII

WITH CLEAN HANDS

Seth Craddock was a defiant, although a fallen man. He refused to resign
the office of marshal of the third-class city of Ascalon when Morgan
released his feet at Judge Thayer's direction, allowing him to stand.
Somebody brought his hat and put it down harshly on his small,
turtle-like head, flaring out his big red ears. There he stood,
glowering, dusty, blood on his face from an abrasion he had got in the
rough handling at the end of Morgan's rope.

Judge Thayer said it made no difference whether he gave up the office
willingly, he was without a voice in the matter, anyhow. He was fired,
and that's all there was to it. But no, said Seth; not at all. The
statutes upheld him, the constitution supported him, and hell and
damnation and many other forces which he enumerated in his red-tongued
defiance, could not move him out of that office. He demanded to be
allowed to consult his lawyer, he glared around and cursed the curious
and unawed public which laughed at his plight and the figure he cut,
ordering somebody to go and fetch the county attorney, on pain of death
when he should come again into the freedom of his hands.

But nobody moved, except to shift from one foot to the other and laugh.
The terror s