"Who was they?" Stilwell inquired, bringing his chair down from its easy slant against the sod wall, leaning forward to catch the particulars of this unequaled record of slaughter. "I didn't hear," said Fred, panting faster than his hard-ridden horse. "I hope none of the boys off of this range around here got into it with him," Stilwell said. "They say he's closed up all the gamblin' joints and saloons but Peden's, and the bank's been shut four or five days, Judge Thayer and a bunch of fellers inside of it with rifles. Tom Conboy told me the judge had telegraphed to the governor asking him to send soldiers to restore law and order in the town." "Law and order!" Stilwell scorned. "All the law and order they ever had in that hell-hole a man'd never miss." "Where's the sheriff--what's he doing to restore order?" Morgan inquired. "The sheriff ain't doin' nothing. I ain't been over there, but I know that much," Stilwell said. "They say he's out after some rustlers," Fred replied. "Yes, and he'll stay out till the trouble's over and come back without a hide or hair of a rustler. What else are they doin'?" "Rairin' and shootin'," said Fred, winded by the enormity of this outlawry, even though bred in an atmosphere of violence. "Are they hittin' anybody, or just shootin' for noise?" Stilwell asked. "Well, I know they took a crack at me when I went out of Conboy's to git my horse." Mrs. Stilwell and Violet, who had hastened out on Fred's excited arrival, exclaimed in concern at this, the mother going to her boy to feel him over as for wounds, standing by him a little while with arm around him. "Did you shoot back?" Stilwell wanted to know. "I hope I did," Fred replied. Stilwell got up, and stood looking at the moon a little while as if calculating the time of night. "They need a man or two over there to clean that gang up," he said. "Well, it ain't my business to do it, as long as they didn't hit you." Mrs. Stilwell chided him sharply, perhaps having history behind her to justify her alarm at these symptoms. "Let them fight it out among themselves, the wolves!" she said. Morgan had drawn a little apart from the family group, walking to the corner of the house where he stood looking off toward Ascalon, still and tense as if he listened for the sounds of conflict. He was dressed in Stilwell's clothes, which were somewhat too roomy of body but nothing too large otherwise, for both of them had the stature of proper men. His feet were in slippers, his ankles bandaged and soaked with the penetrating liniment designed alike for the ailments of man and beast. Violet studied him as he stood there between her and the moon, his face sterner for the ordeal of suffering that had tried his manhood in that two-mile run beside the train, where nothing but a sublime defiance of death had held him to his feet.