"From what I hear goin' around," Conboy continued, dropping his voice to a cautious, confidential pitch, "there'll be a bunch of bad men along in a day or two to help Craddock hold things down. It looks to me like it's goin' to be more than any one man can handle." "It may be that way," Morgan said, lingering in the door, Conboy doing his talking from the rear. Morgan was thinking the morning had a freshness in it like a newly gathered flower. "It'll mean part closed and part open if that man takes hold of this town again," Conboy said. "Him and Peden they're as thick as three in a bed. Close all of 'em, like you did last night, or give everybody a fair whack. That's what I say." "Yes," abstractedly from Morgan. "It was kind of quiet and slow in town last night, slowest night I've ever had since I bought this dump. I guess I'd have to move away if things run along that way, but I don't know. Maybe business would pick up when people got used to the new deal. Goin' to let 'em open tonight?" "Night's a long way off," Morgan said, leaving the question open for Conboy to make what he could out of it. Conboy was of the number who could see no existence for Ascalon but a vicious one, yet he was no partisan of Seth Craddock, having a soreness in his recollection of many indignities suffered at the hands of the city marshal's Texas friends, even of Craddock's overriding and sardonic disdain. Yet he would rather have Craddock, and the town open, than Morgan and stagnation. He came to that conclusion with Morgan's evasion of his direct question. The interests of Peden and his kind were Conboy's interests. He stood like a housemaid with dustpan and broom to gather up the wreckage of the night. "When can I get breakfast?" Morgan inquired, turning suddenly, catching Conboy with his new resolution in his shifty, flickering eyes, reading him to the marrow of his bones. "It's a little early--not half-past five," Conboy returned, covering his confusion as well as he could by referring to his thick silver watch. "We don't begin to serve till six, the earliest of 'em don't come in before then. If you feel like turnin' in for a sleep, we'll take care of you when you get up." Morgan said he had sleep enough to carry him over the day. Dora, yawning, disheveled, appeared in the dining-room door at that moment, tying her all-enveloping white apron around her like Poor Polly Bawn. She blushed when she saw Morgan, and put up her hands to smooth her hair. "I had the best sleep last night I can remember in a coon's age--I felt so _safe_," she said. "You always was safe enough," Conboy told her, not in the best of humor. "Safe enough! I can show you five bullet holes in the walls of my room, Mr. Morgan--one of 'em through the head of my bed!" "Pretty close," Morgan said, answering the animation of her rosy, friendly face with a smile. "Never mind about bullet holes--you go and begin makin' holes in a piece of biscuit dough," her father commanded.