Morgan stepped back, thinking only of her, seeing only her, making a way for her, only, to pass. That others might follow was not in his mind. He stepped out of the way for her. She came on toward him now, one finished, one refined, among that press of crudity, one unlooked for in that place of wild lusts and dark passions unrestrained. She carried a packet of newspapers and letters under her bent arm, telling of her mission on the street; the thong of her riding quirt was about her wrist. Her soft dark hair was low on her neck, a flush as of the pleasure that speaks in bounding blood when friend meets friend glowed in her face. Morgan removed his hat as she passed him. She looked into his face and smiled. The little crowd broke and followed, but Morgan, oblivious to the movement around him, stood on the sidewalk edge looking after her, his hat in his hand. CHAPTER V ASCALON AWAKE Ascalon was laid out according to the Spanish tradition for arranging towns that dominated the builders of the West and Southwest in the days when Santa Fe extended its trade influence over a vast territory. Although Ascalon was only a stage station in the latter days of traffic over the Santa Fe Trail, its builders, when it came occasion to expand, were men who had traded in that capital of the gray desert wastes at the trail's end, and nothing would serve them but a plaza, with the courthouse in the middle of it, the principal business establishments facing it the four sides around. There were many who called it _the plaza_ still, especially visitors from along the Rio Grande who came driving their long-horned, lean-flanked cattle northward over the Chisholm Trail. Santa Fe, at its worst, could not have been dustier than this town of Ascalon, and especially the plaza, or public square, in these summer days. Galloping horses set its dust flying in obscuring clouds; the restless wind that blew from sunrise till sunset day in and day out from the southwest, whipped it in sudden gusts of temper, and drove it through open doors, spreading it like a sun-defying hoarfrost on the low roofs. All considered, Ascalon was as dry, uncomfortable, unpromising of romance, as any place that man ever built or nature ever harassed with wearing wind and warping sun. The courthouse in the middle of the public square was built of bricks, of that porous, fiery sort which seem so peculiarly designed to the monstrous vagaries of rural architecture. Here in Ascalon they fitted well with the arid appearance of things, as a fiery face goes best with white eyebrows, anywhere.