Ascalon's temper was not improved by the close passing of the rain, which had refreshed but a small strip of that almost limitless land. The sun came out as hot as before, the withering wind blew from the southwest plaguing and distorting the fancy of men. Everybody in town seemed sulky and surly, ready to snap at a word. The blight of contention and strife seemed to be its heritage, the seed of violence and destruction to be sown in the drouth-cursed soil.

The judgment of men warped in that ceaseless wind, untempered by green of bough overhead or refreshing turf under foot. There was no justice in their hearts, and no mercy. Morgan himself did not escape this infection of ill humor that rose out of the hard-burned earth, streamed on the hot wind, struck into men's brains with the rays of the penetrating sun. Not conscious of it, certainly, any more than the rest of them in Ascalon were aware of their red-eyed resentment of every other man's foot upon the earth. Yet Morgan was drilled by the boring sun until his view upon life was aslant. Resentment, a stranger to him in his normal state, grew in him, hard as a disintegrated stone; scorn for the ingratitude of these people for whom he had imperiled his life rose in his eyes like a flame.

More than that, Morgan brooded a great deal on the defilement of blood he had suffered there, and the alienation, real or fancied, that it had brought of such friends as he valued in that town. By an avoidance now unmistakably mutual, Morgan and Rhetta Thayer had not met since the night of Peden's fall.

One thing only kept Morgan there in the position that had become thankless in the eyes of those who had urged it upon him in the beginning. That was the threatened vengeance of Peden's friends. He was giving them time to come for their settlement; he felt that he could not afford to be placed in the light of one who had fled before a threat. But it seemed to him, on the evening of the second day after the rain storm's passing, that he had waited long enough. The time had come for him to go.

There were a few cowboys in town that evening, and these as quiet as buzzards on a fence as they sat along the sidewalk near the hotel smoking their cigarettes. The wind had fallen, leaving a peace in the ears like the cessation of a hateful turmoil. There was the promise of a cool night in the unusual clearness of the stars. Morgan rode away into the moonless night, leaving the town to take care of its own dignity and peace.

Morgan's thought was, as he rode away into the early night, to return Stilwell's horse, come back to Ascalon next day, resign his office and leave the country. Not that his faith in its resources, its future greatness and productivity when men should have learned how to subdue it, was broken or changed. His mind was of the same bent, but circumstances had revised his plans. There was with him always, even in his dreams, a white, horror-stricken face looking at him in the pain of accusation, repulsion, complete abhorrence, where he stood in that place of blood.

This was driving him away from the hopes he had warmed in his heart for a day. Without the sweet flower he had hoped to fend and enjoy, that land would be a waste to him. He could not forget in going away, but distance and time might exorcise the spirit that attended him, and dim away the accusing pain of that terrified face.

Ascalon's curse of blood had descended to him; it was no mitigation in her eyes that he had slain for her. But he had brought her security. Although he had paid the tremendous price, he had given her nights of peace.

Even as this thought returned to him with its comfort, as it came always like a cool breath to preserve his balance in the heat and turmoil of his regret and pain, Rhetta Thayer came riding up the dim road.

Her presence on that road at night was a greater testimonial to her confidence in the security he had brought to Ascalon and its borders than her tongue might have owned. She was riding unattended where, ten days ago, she would not have ventured with a guard. It gave Morgan a thrill of comfort to know how completely she trusted in the security he had given her.

"Mr. Morgan!" she said, recognizing him with evident relief. Then, quickly, in lively concern. "Who's looking after things in town tonight?"

"I left things to run themselves," he told her quietly, but with something in his voice that said things might go right or wrong for any further concern he had of them.

"Well," she said, after a little silence, "I don't suppose you're needed very much."

"That's what the business men are saying," he told her, sarcasm in his dry tone.

"I don't mean it that way," she hastened to amend. "You've done us a great service—we'll never be able to pay you——"

"There isn't any pay involved," he interposed, almost roughly. "That's what's worrying those nits around the square, they say they can't carry a marshal's pay with business going to the devil since the town's closed. Somebody ought to tell them. There never will be any bill."

"You're too generous," she said, a little spontaneous warmth in her voice.

"Maybe I can live it down," he returned.

"It's such a lovely cool night I couldn't stay in," she chatted on, still laboring to be natural and at ease, not deceiving him by her constraint at all, "after such a hard day fussing with that old paper. We missed an issue the week—last week—we're getting out two in one this time. Why haven't you been in? you seem to be in such a hurry always."

"I wanted to spare you what you can't see in the dark," he said, the vindictive spirit of Ascalon's insanity upon him.

"What I can't see in the dark?" she repeated, as if perplexed.

"My face."

"You shouldn't say that," she chided, but not with the hearty sincerity that a friend would like to hear. "Are you going back to town?"

"I'll ride with you," he granted, feeling that for all her friendly advances the shadow of his taint lay between them.

They were three miles or more from town, the road running as straight as a plumbline before them. A little way they jogged on slowly, nothing said. Rhetta was the first to speak.

"What made you run away from me that day I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Morgan?"

"Did you want to, or were you just—did you want to speak to me that day, Miss Thayer?" Morgan's heart began to labor, his forehead to sweat, so hard was the rebirth of hope.

"And you turned right around and walked off!"

"You can tell me now," he suggested, half choking on the commonplace words, the tremor of his springing hope was so great.

"I don't remember—oh, nothing in particular. But it looks so strange for us—for you—to be dodging me—each other—that way, after we'd started being friends before everybody."

"Only for the sake of appearances," he said sadly. "I hoped—but you ran away and hid for a week, you thought I was a monster."

Foolish, perhaps, to cut down the little shoot of hope again, when a gentle breath, a soft word, might have encouraged and supported it. But it was out of his mouth, the fruit of his brooding days, in his resentfulness of her injustice, her ingratitude for his sacrifice, as he believed. He saw her turn from him, as if a revulsion of the old feeling swept her.

"Don't judge me too harshly, Mr. Morgan," she appealed, still looking away.

Morgan was melted by her gentle word; the severity of the moment was dissolved in a breath.

"If we could go on as we began," he suggested, almost pleading in his great desire.

"Why, aren't we?" she asked, succeeding well, as a woman always can in such a situation, in giving it a discouraging artlessness.

"You know how they're kicking and complaining all around the square because I've shut up the town, ruined business, brought calamity to their doors as they see it?"

"Yes, I know."

"They forget that they came to me with their hats in their hands and asked me to do it. Joe Lynch says the hot wind has dried their reason up like these prairie springs. I believe he's right. But I didn't shut the town up for them, I didn't go out there with my gun like a savage and shoot men down for them, Miss Thayer. If you knew how much you were——"

"Don't—don't—Mr. Morgan, please!"

"I think there's something in what Joe Lynch says about the wind," he told her, leaning toward her, hand on the horn of her saddle. "It warps men, it opens cracks in their minds like the shrunk lumber in the houses of Ascalon. I think sometimes it's getting its work in on me, when I'm lonesome and disappointed."

"You ought to come in and talk with me and Riley sometimes."

"I've often felt like going to them, whining around about the town being killed," he went on, pursuing his theme as if she had not spoken, "and telling them they didn't figure in my calculations at the beginning nor come in for any of my consideration at the end—if this is the end. There was only one person in my thoughts, that one person was Ascalon, and all there was in it, and that was you. When I took the job that day, I took it for you."

"Not for me alone!" she hastened to disclaim, as one putting off an unwelcome responsibility, unfriendly denial in her voice.

"For you, and only you," he told her, earnestly. "If you knew how much you were to me——"

"Not for me alone—I was only one among all of them," she said, spurring her horse in the vehemence of her disclaimer, causing it to start away from Morgan with quick bound. She checked it, waiting for him to draw up beside her again. "I'd hate to think, Mr. Morgan—oh, you can't want me alone to take the responsibility for the killing of those men!"

Morgan rode on in silence, head bent in humiliation, in the sad disappointment that fell on him like a blow.

"If it could have been done, if I could have brought peace and safety to the women of Ascalon without bloodshed, I'd have done it. I wanted to tell you, I tried to tell you——"

"Don't—don't tell me any more, Mr. Morgan—please!"

She drew across the road, widening the space between them as she spoke. Perhaps this was due to the unconscious pressure on the rein following her shrinking from his side, from the thought of his touch upon her hand, but it wounded Morgan's humiliated soul deeper than a thousand unkind words.

"No, I'll never tell you," he said sadly, but with dignity that made the renunciation noble.

Rhetta seemed touched. She drew near him again, reaching out her hand as if to ease his hurt.

"It was different before—before that night! you were different, all of us, everything. I can't help it, ungrateful as I seem. You'll forgive me, you'll understand. But you were different to me before then."

"Yes, I was different," Morgan returned, not without bitterness in his slow, deep, gentle voice. "I never killed a man for—I never had killed a man; there was no curse of blood on my soul."

"Why is it always necessary to kill in Ascalon?" she asked, wildly, rebelliously. "Why can't anything be done without that horrible ending!"

"If I knew; if I had known," he answered her, sadly.

"Forgive me, Mr. Morgan. You know how I feel about it all."

"I know how you feel," he said, offering no word of forgiveness, as he had spoken no word of reminder where a less generous soul might have spoken, nor raised a word of blame. If he had a thought that she must have known when she urged him to the defense of the defenseless in Ascalon, what the price of such guardianship must be, he kept it sealed in his heart.

They rode on. The lights of Ascalon came up out of the night to meet their eyes as they raised the last ridge. There Morgan stopped, so abruptly that she rode on a little way. When he came up to her where she waited, he was holding out his hand.

"Here is my badge—the city marshal's badge," he said. "If you can bear the thought of touching it, or touch it without a thought, I wish you would return it to Judge Thayer for me. I'm not needed in Ascalon any longer, I'm quitting the job tonight. Good-bye."

Morgan laid the badge in her hand as he spoke the last word, turned his horse quickly, rode back upon their trail. Rhetta wheeled her horse about, a protest on her lips, a sudden pang in her heart that clamored to call him back. But no cry rose to summon him to her side, and Morgan, gloomy as the night around him, went on his way.

But the lights of Ascalon were blurred as if she looked on them through a rain-drenched pane when Rhetta faced again to go her way alone, the marshal's badge clutched in her hand. Remorse was roiling in her breast; the corrosive poison of regret for too much said, depressed her generous heart.

If he had known how to accomplish what he had wrought without blood, he had said; if he had known. Neither had she known, but she had expected it of him, she had set him to the task with an unreasonable condition. Blood was the price. Ascalon exacted blood, always blood.

The curse of blood, he had said, was on his soul, his voice trembling with the deep, sad vibration that might have risen from a broken heart. Yes, there was madness in the wind, in the warping sun, in the hard earth that denied and mocked the dearest desires of men. It had struck her, this madness that hollowed out the heart of a man like a worm, leaving it an unfeeling shell.

Rhetta had time for reflection when she reached home, and deeper reflection than had troubled the well of her remorse as she rode. For there in the light of her room she saw the bullet-mark on the dented badge, which never had come quite straight for all Morgan's pains to hammer out its battle scars. A little lead from the bullet still clung in the grooves of letters, unmistakable evidence of what had marred its nickled front.

Conboy had regarded Morgan's warning to keep that matter under his hat, for he had learned the value of silence at the right time in his long experience in that town. Nobody else knew of the city marshal's close escape the night of his great fight. The discovery now came to Rhetta Thayer with a cold shudder, a constriction of the heart. She stared with newly awakened eyes at the badge where it lay in her palm, her pale cheeks cold, her lips apart, shocked by the sudden realization of his past peril as no word could have expressed.

Hot thoughts ran in thronging turmoil through her brain, thoughts before repressed and chilled in her abhorrence of that flood of blood. For her he had gone into that lair of murderous, defiant men, for her he had borne the crash of that ball just over his heart. For there he had worn the badge—just over his honest heart. Perhaps because she had thought his terrible work had been unjustified, as the spiteful and vicious told, she had recoiled from him, and the recollection of him standing on grim guard among the sanguinary wreckage of that awful place. If he had known any other way, he had said; if he had known!

Not for the mothers of Ascalon, of whom he had spoken tenderly; not for the men who came cringing to beg their redemption from the terror and oppression of the lawless at his hand. Not for them. But for her. So he had said not half an hour past.

But he had said no word to remind her where reminder was needed, not an accusation had he uttered where accusation was so much deserved, that would bring back to her the plain, hard fact that it was at her earnest appeal he had undertaken the regeneration of that place.

On the other hand, he had spoken as if he had assumed the task voluntarily, to give her the security that she now enjoyed. She had sent him to this work, expecting him to escape the curse of blood that had fallen. But she had not shown him the means. And when it fell on him, saddening his generous heart, she had fled like an ingrate from the sight of his stern face. Now he was gone, leaving her to the consideration of these truths, which came rushing in like false reserves, too late.

She put out the light and sat by the open window, the scarred badge between her hands, warming it tenderly as if to console the hurt he had suffered, wondering if this were indeed the end. This evidence in her hand was like an absolution; it left him without a stain. The justification was there presented that removed her deep-seated abhorrence of his deed. In defense of his own life he had struck them down. His life; most precious and most dear. And he was gone.

Was this, indeed, the end? For her romance that had lifted like a bright flower in an unexpected place for a little day, perhaps; for Ascalon, not the end. Something of unrest, as an impending storm, something of the night's insecurity, troubled her as she sat by the window and told her this. The sense of peace that had made her nights sweet was gone; a vague terror seemed growing in the silent dark.

This feeling attended her when she went to bed, harassed her sleep like a fever, woke her at early dawn and drew her to the window, where she leaned and listened, straining to define in the stillness the thing that seemed to whisper a warning to her heart.

There was nothing in the face of nature to account for this; not a cloud was on the sky. The town, too, lay still in the mists of breaking morning, its houses dim, its ways deserted. Alarm seemed unreasonable, but her heart quivered with it, and shrunk within her as from a chilling wind. There was no warder at the gate of Ascalon; the sentry was gone.

Rhetta turned back to her bed, neither quieted of her indefinable uneasiness nor inclined to resume her troubled sleep. After a little while she rose again, and dressed. Dread attended her, dread had brooded on her bosom while she slept uneasily, like a cat breathing its poisoned breath into her face.

Dawn had widened when she went to the window again, the mist that clung to the ground that morning in the unusual coolness was lifting. A horseman rode past the corner at the bank, stopped his horse in the middle of the street, turned in his saddle and looked around the quiet square.

Other riders followed, slipping in like wolves from the range, seven or eight of them, their horses jaded as if they had been long upon the road. Cowboys in with another herd to load, she thought. And with the thought the first horseman, who had remained this little while in the middle of the street gazing around the town, rode up to the hitching rack beside the bank and dismounted. Rhetta gasped, drawing back from the window, her heart jumping in sudden alarm.

Seth Craddock!

There could be no mistaking the man, slow-moving when he dismounted, tall and sinewy, watchful as a battered old eagle upon its crag. With these ruffians at his back, gathered from the sweepings of no knowing how many outlawed camps, he had come in the vengeance that had gathered like a storm in his evil heart, to punish Ascalon and its marshal for his downfall and disgrace.