he shots sounded in Peden's
hall, stopped him with a gasped appeal.

Dead. Peden and the gun-slingers he had brought there to kill Morgan;
any number of others who had mixed in the fight; Morgan himself--all
dead, the floor covered with the dead. That was the terrible word that
rolled from Gray's excited tongue. And when she heard it, Rhetta put out
her hands as one blind, held to the door frame a moment while the blood
seemed to drain out of her heart, staring with horrified eyes into the
face of the inconsequential man who had come in such avid eagerness to
tell this awful tale.

People were hastening by in the direction of Peden's, scattered at
first, like the beginning of a retreat, coming then by twos and threes,
presently overflowing the sidewalk, running in the street. Rhetta stood
staring, half insensible, on this outpouring. Riley Caldwell, the young
printer, rushed past her out of the shop, his roached hair like an
Algonquin's standing high above his narrow forehead, his face white as
if washed by death.

Impelled by a desire that was commanding as it was terrifying, moved by
a hope that was only a shred of a raveled dream, Rhetta joined the
moving tide that set toward Peden's door. Dead--Morgan was dead! Because
she had asked him, he had set his hand to this bloody task. She had sent
him to his death in her selfish desire for security, in her shrinking
cowardice, in her fear of riot and blood. And he was dead, the light was
gone out of his eyes, his youth and hope were sacrificed in a cause that
would bring neither glory nor gratitude to illuminate his memory.

She began to run, out in the dusty street where he had marched his
patrol that first night of his bringing peace to Ascalon; to run, her
feet numb, her body numb, only her heart sentient, it seemed, and that
yearning out to him in a great pain of pity and stifling labor of
remorse. It was only a little way, but it seemed heavy and long, impeded
by feet that could not keep pace with her anguish, swift-running to
whisper a tender word.

The lights were bright in Peden's hall, a great crowd leaned and
strained and pushed around its door. There were some who asked her
kindly to go away, others who appealed earnestly against her looking
into the place, as Rhetta pushed her way, panting like an exhausted
swimmer, through the crowd.

Nothing would turn her; appeals were dim as cries in drowning ears.
Gaining the door, she paused a moment, hands pressed