stinence, in the redundant vitality of youth, mocking all
restraint, insolent of any reckoning of circumstance or time.

Peden distended with satisfaction to see the free spending, the free
flinging of money into his games. A little virtuous recess seemed to be
profitable; it was like giving a horse a rest. His two guards waited at
the door, his lookout at the faro table swept the hall from his high
chair with eyes keen to mark any hostile invasion. Morgan never could
come six feet inside his door.

Well satisfied with himself and the beginning of that night's business,
exceedingly comfortable in the thought that this defiance of the law
would bring a newer and wider notoriety to himself and the town of which
he was the spirit, Peden sauntered among the boisterous merrymakers on
his floor.

Dancers were worming and shuffling in close embrace, couples breaking
out of the whirl now and then to rush to the bar; players stood deep
around the tables; men reached over each other's shoulders to take their
drinks from the bar. All was haste and hilarity, all a crowding of
pleasure with hard-pursuing feet, a snatching at the elusive thing with
rough boisterous hands, with loud laughter, with wild yells.

Pleasure, indeed, seemed on the flight before these coarse revelers, who
pursued it blindfold down the steeps of destruction unaware.

Peden shouldered his way through the throng toward the farther end of
the long bar, nodding here with a friendly smile, stopping now and then
to shake hands with some specially favored patron, throwing commands
among his female entertainers from his cold, hard, soulless eyes as he
passed along.

And in that sociable progression down his thronging hall, ten feet from
the farther end of his famous bar, Peden came face to face with Morgan,
as grim as judgment among the crowd of wastrels and women of poisoned
lips, who fell back in breathless silence to let him pass.

Morgan was carrying his rifle; his pistol hung at his side. The big
shield of office once worn by Seth Craddock was pinned on the pocket of
his shirt; his broad-brimmed hat threw a shadow over his stern face.

Peden stopped with a little start of withdrawal at sight of Morgan,
surprised out of his poise, chilled, perhaps, at the thought of the long
pistol shot between this unexpected visitor and the hired killers at his
front door, the way between them blocked by a hundred revelers.

So, this was the cunning of this range wolf,