place in the uneventful quiet of the town. He had not carried his
rifle since the night of his battle in Peden's hall. Today he was
beginning to consider leaving off his revolver. A pocketknife for
whittling would be about all the armament a man would need in Ascalon
from that time forward.

Earl Gray was leaning on one long leg in the door of his drug-store, oil
on his fluffy brown hair. He was melancholy and downcast, plainly
resentful in his bearing toward Morgan as the contriver of this business
stagnation. He swept his hand around the emptiness of the town as Morgan
drew near, giving voice to his contemplation.

"Look at it--not a dime been spent around this square this morning! I
ain't sold but one box of pills in two days! If it wasn't for the little
trade in t'backer and cigars of a night when the cowboys come in, I'd
have to lock up and leave. I will anyhow--I can see it a-comin'."

Morgan leaned against the building close by the door, the indolence of
the day over him. There was nothing to do but hear the dying town's
complaint. He was not a doctor; he had nothing to prescribe. He realized
that the merchants had been hit hard by this sudden paralysis. It would
not have been so much like disaster if the town had been left to die in
its own way, as time and change would have attended to more slowly.

Morgan could not tell Druggist Gray, whose trade in pills had come to a
standstill; he could not tell the hardware merchant, whose traffic in
firearms and ammunition had fallen away; he could not explain to the
proprietor of the Santa Fe cafe, or any of the other merchants of the
town who had come to regret their one spasm of virtue, induced by fear,
that he had not considered either their prosperity or their loss when he
closed up the saloons and gambling-houses and drove the proscribed of
the law away. They were squealing now, exactly as he had known they
would squeal in spite of their assurance before the event. Let them
squeal, let them stagnate, let dust settle on their wares that no man
came to buy.

For the security of somebody's sleep, for the tranquillity of somebody's
dreams; for the peace of two brown eyes, for the safety of a short
little white hand, strong and comforting just to see--for these, for
these alone, he had closed up the riotous places and swept away like a
purging fire the chaff and pestilence of Ascalon. He could not tell them
this. Even her he could not tell.

Earl Gray, giving off