Dancers were worming and shuffling in close embrace, couples breaking out of the whirl now and then to rush to the bar; players stood deep around the tables; men reached over each other's shoulders to take their drinks from the bar. All was haste and hilarity, all a crowding of pleasure with hard-pursuing feet, a snatching at the elusive thing with rough boisterous hands, with loud laughter, with wild yells. Pleasure, indeed, seemed on the flight before these coarse revelers, who pursued it blindfold down the steeps of destruction unaware. Peden shouldered his way through the throng toward the farther end of the long bar, nodding here with a friendly smile, stopping now and then to shake hands with some specially favored patron, throwing commands among his female entertainers from his cold, hard, soulless eyes as he passed along. And in that sociable progression down his thronging hall, ten feet from the farther end of his famous bar, Peden came face to face with Morgan, as grim as judgment among the crowd of wastrels and women of poisoned lips, who fell back in breathless silence to let him pass. Morgan was carrying his rifle; his pistol hung at his side. The big shield of office once worn by Seth Craddock was pinned on the pocket of his shirt; his broad-brimmed hat threw a shadow over his stern face. Peden stopped with a little start of withdrawal at sight of Morgan, surprised out of his poise, chilled, perhaps, at the thought of the long pistol shot between this unexpected visitor and the hired killers at his front door, the way between them blocked by a hundred revelers. So, this was the cunning of this range wolf, to come in at his back door and fall upon him in surprise! Peden's resentment rose in that second of reflection with the dull fire that spread in his dark face. He flung his hand to his revolver, throwing aside the skirt of his long coat. "Let your gun stay where it is," Morgan quietly advised him. "Get these people out of here, and close this place." "Show me your authority!" Peden demanded, scouting for a moment of precious time. The musicians in the little orchestra pit behind Morgan ceased playing on a broken note, the shuffle of dancing feet stopped short. Up the long bar the loud hilarity quieted; across the hall the clash of pool balls cut sharply into the sudden stillness. As quickly as wind makes a rift in smoke the revelers fell away from Morgan and Peden, leaving a fairway for the shooting they expected to begin at the door. Peden stood as he had stopped, hand upon his gun. Morgan stepped up to him in one long, quick stride, rifle muzzle close against Peden's broad white shirt front. In that second of hesitant delay, that breath of portentous bluff, Morgan had read Peden to the roots. A man who had it in him to shoot did not stop at anybody's word when he was that far along the way. "Clear this place and lock it up!" Morgan repeated.