icer, introducing him in due form. They stood
now in front of the hotel, the plank awning of which extended over the
sidewalk breaking the sun, Judge Thayer about to go his way.

"We've got to change this condition of things, Seth," he said, sweeping
his hand around the quiet square, where nothing seemed awake but a few
loafers along the shady fronts: "we've got to make it a day town instead
of a night roost for the buzzards that wake up after sundown."

Seth did not answer. He stood turning his red eyes up and down the
street, as if calculating distances and advantages for future
emergencies. And as he looked there came driving into the somnolent
square two men on a wagonload of bones.

"Old Joe Lynch; he's loadin' another car of bones," Judge Thayer said.

"He used to pick up meat for me," said Seth in his sententious way,
neither surprised nor pleased on finding this associate of his
adventurous days here in this place of his new beginning.

Joe Lynch drove across the farther side of the square, a block away from
the two officials of Ascalon. There he stopped only long enough to allow
his passenger to alight, and continued on to the railroad siding where
his car stood.

Judge Thayer lingered under the hotel awning, where the breeze struck
refreshingly, perhaps making a pretense of being cooled that was greater
than his necessity, curious to see who it was Lynch had brought to town
on his melancholy load. The passenger, carrying his flat bag, came on
toward the hotel.

"He's a stranger to me," said the judge. His interest ending there, he
went his way to take up again the preparation of his case in defense of
the cattle thief whom he knew to be a thief, and nothing but a thief.

Seth Craddock, the new marshal, glanced sharply at the stranger as he
approached the hotel. It was nothing more severe than Seth's ordinary
scrutiny, but it appeared to the traveler to be at once hostile and
inhospitable, the look of a man who sneered out of his heart and carried
a challenge in his eyes. The stranger made the mental observation that
this citizen was a sour-looking customer, who apparently resented the
coming of one more to the mills of Ascalon's obscene gods.

There was a cluster of flies on the open page of the hotel register,
where somebody had put down a sticky piece of chocolate candy and left
it. This choice confection covered three or four lines immediately below
the last arrival's name, its little trickling riv