onboy allowed, "not many, and all of them big
eaters. You don't make anything off of a man that rides thirty or forty
miles before breakfast when you sit him down to a twenty-five cent
meal."

Morgan said he was not a hotel man, but it seemed pretty plain even to
him that there could be no wide border of profit in any such
transaction.

"No, it was those night-working men, dealers, bartenders, and that
crowd, that were the light and profitable eaters. A man that drinks
heavy all night don't get up with a thirty-mile appetite in him next
day. Well, they're gone; they'll never come back to this man's town."

"You were one of the men that wanted the town cleaned up."

"No niggers in Ireland, now, Morgan--no-o-o niggers in Ireland!"

Conboy made a warning of his peculiar expression, as if he halted Morgan
on ground that was dangerous to advance over as far as another word. It
was impressive, almost threatening, given in his deep voice, with grave
eye and face suddenly stern, but Morgan knew that it was all on the
outside.

"Cowboys don't any more than hit the ground here till they hop on their
horses and leave," Conboy continued. "Nothing to entertain them, no
interest for a live man in a dead town, where the only drink he can get
is out of the well. There was just three horses tied along the square
last night, where there used to be fifty or a hundred. I'll have to
leave this man's town; I can't stand the pressure."

"A man with a little nerve ought to swallow his present losses for his
future gains," Morgan said, beginning to grow tired of this whining.

"If I could see any future gains comin' my way I'd gamble on them with
any man," Conboy returned with some spirit. "I'm goin' over to Glenmore
this afternoon and see what it looks like there. That's the comin' town,
it seems to me; good crops over there in the valley, no cattle starvin'.
They may bend the railroad around to touch that town, too--they're
talkin' of it. That's sure to happen if Glenmore wins the county seat
this fall. Then you'll see skids put under every house in this town and
moved over there. Ascalon will be a name some of us old-timers will
remember twenty years from now, and that's all."

"If Judge Thayer and the railroad colonization agent put through a big
deal they've got going, I don't see why this town shouldn't pick up
again on a healthy business foundation," Morgan said.

"Them Pennsylvania Dutch?" Conboy scoffed. "They're not the kin