"He shoots from behind, he shot Mr. Smith in the back, and it was at night, besides. Don't you see how it was? Peden must have bribed him to do it, promised to make good his losses, or something like that." "Plain as a wagon track," Morgan said. "I don't know why I ever got you into this tangle," she lamented, "I don't know what made me so selfish and so blind." "It's just one more little complication in Ascalon's sickness," he comforted her, "it doesn't amount to beans. The poor little fool was so scared that morning he could hardly lift his gun. He'll never make another break." "If I only thought he wouldn't! He's as treacherous as a snake, you can't tell where he's sneaking to bite you. Give it up, Mr. Morgan, won't you, please?" She turned to him suddenly, appealing with her eyes, with her wistful lips, with every line of her sympathetic, anxious face. "Give it up?" he repeated, her meaning not quite clear. "The office, I mean. Surely, as I coaxed you into taking it, I've got a right to ask you to give it up. You've done what you took the place to do, you've got Craddock out of it and away from here. Your work's done, you can quit now with a good conscience and no excuse to anybody." "Why," said Morgan, reflectively, "I don't believe I could quit right now, Miss Rhetta. There's something more to come, it isn't quite finished yet." "There's a great deal more to come, the end of all this fighting and killing and grinning treachery never will come!" she said, in great bitterness. "What's the use of one man putting his life against all this viciousness? There's no cure for the curse of Ascalon but time. Let it go, Mr. Morgan--I beg you to give it up." Morgan took the hand that she reached out to him in her appeal. The great fervor of her earnest heart had drawn the blood away from it, leaving it cold. He clasped it, tightly, to warm it in his big palm, and spoke comfortingly, yet he would not, could not, tell her that he would give over the office and leave the town to its devices. The work he had begun on her account, at her appeal, was not finished. He wanted to give her a peace that would make permanent the placidity of her eyes such as had warmed his heart during those three days. But he could not tell her that. "If it goes on," she said, sad that he would not yield to her appeal, "you'll have to--you'll have to--do what the rest of them have done. And I don't want you to do that, Mr. Morgan. I want you to keep clean." "As it must be, so it will be," he said. "But I don't see any reason why I can't keep on the way I've started. There's nobody doing any shooting here now." "They're only waiting," she said. "I'll have to watch them a little longer, then," he told her; "somebody might shoot your windows out." He led her away from the subject of Ascalon's dangers and unrest, its sinister ferment and silent threat, but she would come back to it in a little while, and to Dell Hutton, who shot men in the back.