of
Violet, whose sympathy was like balm to a bruise. Rhetta had come
through the night strained almost to breaking. All day she had hidden
like one crushed and shamed, in Stilwell's house, pouring out to Violet
the misery of her soul.

Now, at night, she was calmer, the haunting terror of the scene which
rose up before her eyes was drawing off, like some frightful thing that
had stood a menace to her life. But she felt that it never would dim
entirely from her recollection, that it must endure, a hideous picture,
to sadden her days until the end.

The two girls had gone to the river, where the moonlight softened the
desert-like scene of barren bars, and twinkled in the ripples of shallow
water which still ran over against the farther shore. They were sitting
near the spot where Morgan had laved his bruised feet in the river not
many nights past. A whippoorwill was calling in the tangle of
cottonwoods and grapevines that grew cool and dark on a little island
below them, its plaint as sad as the mourner's own stricken heart.

"I begged him to give up the office and let things go," said Rhetta,
pleading to mitigate her own blame, against whom no blame was laid.

"You'd have despised him for it if he had," said Violet.

"But he wouldn't do it, and now this has happened, and he's a man-killer
like the rest of them. Oh it's terrible to think about!"

"Not like the rest of them," Violet corrected, in her firm, gentle way.
"He had to stand up like a man for what he was sworn to do, or run like
a dog. Mr. Morgan wouldn't run. Right or wrong, he wouldn't run from any
man!"

"No," said Rhetta, sadly, "he wouldn't run."

"You talk like you wanted him to!"

"I don't think I would," said Rhetta.

"Then what _do_ you expect of a man?" impatiently. "If he stands up and
fights he's either got to kill or be killed."

"Don't--don't, Violet! It seems like killing is all I hear--the sound of
those guns--I hear them all the time, I can't get them out of my ears!"

"Suppose," said Violet, looking off across the runlet sparkling,
gurgling like an infant across the bar, "it was him you saw when you
looked in there, instead of the others. You'd have been satisfied then,
I suppose?"

"Violet! how can you say such awful things!"

"Well, somebody had to be killed. Do you suppose Mr. Morgan killed them
just for fun?"

"They say, they were talking all over town that night--last night--and
saying the same thing this morning, that h