hotel was a ruin, Gray's store only a recollection, the little shops
between it and Peden's long, hollow skeleton of a barn already coals.

Men, women, and children were on the roofs of buildings across the
street from Peden's, pouring precious water over the fires which sprang
from falling brands. It seemed that this shower of fire must overwhelm
them very soon, and engulf the rest of the business houses, making a
clean sweep of everything but the courthouse and the bank. The
calaboose, in its isolation, was still safe.

"Where was you last night?" Gray demanded, insolence in his narrow face
as he turned again to Morgan, poking out with his gun as if to vex the
answer from him as one prods a growl from a dog.

"None of your ---- business!" Morgan replied, rising into a rage as
sudden as it was unwise, the unworthiness of the object considered. He
made a quick movement toward Gray as he spoke, which brought upon him
the instant restraint of many hands.

"You don't grab no gun from nobody here!" one said.

"Why wasn't you here attendin' to business when that gang rode in this
morning?" one at Morgan's side demanded. It was the barber; his shop was
gone, his razors were fused among the ashes.

Morgan ignored him, regretting at once the flash of passion that had
betrayed him into their hands. For they were madmen--mad with the
torture of hot winds and straining hopes that withered and fell; mad
with their losses of that day, mad with the glare of sun of many days,
and the stricken earth under their bound and sodden feet; mad with the
very bareness of their inconsequential lives.

Seth Craddock heaved up to his knees, struggled to his feet with quick,
frantic lumbering, like a horse clambering out of the mire. He stood
weaving, his red eyes watching those around him, perhaps reading
something of the crowd's threat in the growl that ran through it,
beginning in the center as it died on the edge, quieting not at all. His
hat was off, dust was in his hair, a great welted wound was black on his
temple, the blood of it caked with dust on his face.

The two prisoners on horseback, one of them wounded so badly his life
did not seem worth a minute's reprieve, were pulled down; all were
bunched with Morgan in the middle of the mob. Gray began again with his
denunciation, Morgan hearing him only as the wind, for his attention was
fixed on the activities of Dell Hutton, working with insidious swiftness
and apparent success a