"I wouldn't ask Mr. Morgan to take the office," said Rhetta when Judge Thayer paused, "if I felt safe to stay in Ascalon another day with anybody else as marshal." "That's a compelling reason for a man to take a job," Morgan told her, looking for a daring moment into the cool clarity of her honest brown eyes. "But I might make it worse instead of better. Trouble came to this town with me; it seems to stick to my heels like a dog." "You got rid of most of it this morning--_that_ gang will never come back," she said. Morgan looked out of the open door, a thoughtfulness in his eyes that the nearer attraction could not for the moment dispel. "One of them will," he replied. "Oh, one!" said she, discounting that one to nothing at all. "The gamblers and saloon men are right about it," Morgan said, turning to the judge; "this town will dry up and blow away as soon as it loses its notorious name. If you want to kill Ascalon, enforce the law. The question is, how many people here want it done?" "The respectable majority, I can assure you on that." "Nearly everybody you talk to say they'd rather have Ascalon a whistling station on the railroad, where you could go to sleep in peace and get up feeling safe, than the awful place it is now," Rhetta said. She removed her sombrero as she spoke, and dropped it on the floor at her feet, as though weary of the turmoil that vexed her days. Morgan noted for the first time that she was not dressed for the saddle today as on the occasion of their first meeting, but garbed in becoming simplicity in serge skirt and brown linen waist, a little golden bar with garnets at her throat. Her redundant dark hair, soft in its dusky shade as summer shadows in a deep wood, was coiled in a twisted heap to fit the crown of her mannish sombrero. It came down lightly over the tips of her ears in pretty disorder, due to the excitement of the morning, and she was fair as a camelia blossom and fresh as an evening primrose of her native prairie land. "I wouldn't like to be the man that killed Ascalon, after all its highly painted past," Morgan said, trying to turn it off lightly. "It might be better for all the respectable people to go away and leave it wholly wicked, according to its fame." "That might work to the satisfaction of all concerned, Mr. Morgan, if we had wagons and tents, and nothing more," said the judge. "We could very well pick up and pull out in that case. But a lot of us have staked all we own on the future of this town and the country around it. We were here before Ascalon became a plague spot and a by-word in the mouths of men; we started it right, but it went wrong as soon as it was able to walk." "It seems to have wandered around quite a bit since then," Morgan said, sparing them a grin. "It's been a wayward child," Rhetta sighed. "We're ashamed of our responsibility for it now."