"It would mean ruination to most of us to pull out and leave it to these wolves," said the judge. "We couldn't think of that." "Of course not, I was only making a poor joke when I talked of a retreat," Morgan said. "Things will begin to die down here in a year or two--I've seen towns like this before, they always calm down and take up business seriously in time, or blow away and vanish completely. That's what happens to most of them if they're let go their course--change and shift, range breaking up into farms, cowboys going on, take care of that." "I don't think Ascalon will go out that way--not if we can keep the county seat," Judge Thayer said. "If you were to step into the breach while that killer's away and rub even one little white spot in the town----" Morgan seemed to interpose in the manner of throwing out his hand, a gesture speaking of the fatuity and his unwillingness to set himself to the task. "Not just temporarily, we don't mean just temporarily, Mr. Morgan, but for good," Rhetta urged. "I want to take over editing the paper and be of some use in the world, but I couldn't think of doing it with all this killing going on, and a lot of wild men shooting out windows and everything that way." "No, of course you couldn't," Morgan agreed. "The railroad immigration agent has been trying to locate a colony of Mennonites here," Judge Thayer said, "fifty families or more of them, but the notoriety of the town made the elders skittish. They were out here this spring, liked the country, saw its future with eyes that revealed like telescopes, and would have bought ten sections of land to begin with if it hadn't been for two or three killings while they were here." "It was the same way with those people from Pennsylvania," said Rhetta. "We had a crowd of Pennsylvania Dutch out here a week or two after the Mennonites," the judge enlarged, "smellin' around hot-foot on the trail as hounds, but this atmosphere of Ascalon and its bad influence on the country wouldn't be good for their young folks, they said. So _they_ backed off. And that's the way it's gone, that's the way it will go. The blight of Ascalon falls over this country for fifty miles around, the finest country the Almighty ever scattered grass seed over. "You saw the possibilities of it from a distance, Mr. Morgan; others have seen it. Wouldn't you be doing humanity a larger service, a more immediate and applicable service, by clearing away the pest spot, curing the repulsive infection that keeps them away from its benefits and rewards, than by plowing up eighty acres and putting in a crop of wheat? A man's got to trample down his bed-ground, as I've said already, Morgan, before he can spread his blankets sometimes. This is one of the places, this is one of the times."