The temperature of the crowded hall seemed to fall forty degrees in the second or two Morgan stood pushing his rifle against Peden's breastbone. Those who had talked with loud boasts, picturesque threats, high-pitched laughter, of going out to find this man but a little while before, were silent now and cold around the gills as fish. Morgan was watching the two men at the front door while he held Peden up those few seconds. He knew there was no use in disarming Peden, to turn him loose where he could get fifty guns in the next two seconds if he wanted them. He believed, in truth, there was not much to fear from this fellow, who depended on his hired retainers to do his killing for him. So, when Peden, watching Morgan calculatively, shifted a little to get himself out of line so he would not stand a barrier between his gun-slingers and their target and longer block the opening of operations to clear the hall of this upstart, Morgan let him go. Then, with a sudden bound, Peden leaped across into the crowd. A moment of strained waiting, quiet as the empty night, Morgan standing out a fair target for any man who had the nerve to pull a gun. Then a stampede in more of sudden fear than caution by those lined up along the bar, and the two hired killers at the front of the house began to shoot. Morgan pitched back on his heels as if mortally hit, staggered, thrust one foot out to stay his fall. He stood bracing himself in that manner with out-thrust foot, shooting from the hip. Three shots he fired, the roar of his rifle loud above the lighter sound of the revolvers. With the third shot Morgan raised his gun. In the smoke that was settling to the floor the taller of the gunmen lay stretched upon his face. The other, arms rigidly at his sides, held a little way from his body, head drooping to his chest, turned dizzily two or three times, spinning swiftly in his dance of death, gave at the knees, settled down gently in a strange, huddled heap. Dead. Both of them dead. The work of one swift moment when the blood curse fell on this new, quick-handed marshal of Ascalon. There was a choking scream, and a woman's cry. "Look out! look out!" Peden, on the fringe of a crowd of shrinking, great-eyed women, ghastly in the painted mockery of their fear, fired as Morgan turned. Morgan blessed the poor creature who was woman enough in her debauched heart to cry out that warning, as the breath of Peden's bullet brushed his face. Morgan could not defend himself against this assault, for the coward stood with one shoulder still in the huddling knot of women, and fired again. Morgan dropped to the floor, prone on his face as the dead man behind him. Peden came one cautious step from his shelter, leaning far over to see, a smile of triumph baring his gleaming teeth; another step, while the crowd broke the stifling quiet with shifted feet. Morgan, quick as a serpent strikes, raised to his elbow and fired.